"the point." that does it for our two hour show at msnbc. i'm ari melber. find me on social media. right there. #thepoint to share any questions or ideas. keep it locked. "meet the press" with chuck todd is next. this sunday, connecting the dots between the trump campaign and russia. after telling the senate this -- >> i did not have communications with the russians. >> attorney general jeff sessions concedes he did meet with the russian ambassador. >> i have recused myself in the matters that deal with the trump campaign. >> the growing evidence of the trump-russia connection threatens to consume the opening months of donald trump's presidency. i'll talk to republican senator marco rubio, a member of the senate intelligence committee. >> plus what happens next? many democrats are calling for sessions to resign. >> the attorney general, top cop in our country lied under oath. >> attorney general sessions should resign. >> this morning my interview

with the senate democratic leader chuck schumer. also, did obama white house officials leave a bread crumb trail to make it easier for congress to investigate russia and the election? i'll ask a man who would know, the former director of national intelligence under president obama, james clapper. and president trump's tweet claiming president trump tapped his phones. can the white house provide evidence or is the president just trying to get people to stop talking about russia? joining me for insight and analysis is tom friedman, columnist for "the new york times." kim strosle, columnist for the wall street journal. democratic pollster cornell belcher and danielle pletka of the american enterprise institute. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press". from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in tv history celebrating its 70th year, this is "meet the press" with cck todd.

>> good sunday morning. a good bet that the white house hoped and expected the big story this week would be president trump's initially well received speech to the nation on tuesday night. instead, almost immediately the white house was forced to fight off a parade of new revelations linking the trump campaign to russia, perhaps to distract everyone from this drip, drip, drip, president trump yesterday tweeted without any evidence that president obama had his phones tapped. quote, how low has president obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. this is nixon watergate. bad or sick guy. we'll have more on that later, but the revelations this week added to a growing list of people with ties to the trump campaign, whose contact with russian officials only came to light after reporters broke the story. chief among them was jeff sessions who was forced to recuse himself from any investigation involving the campaign and many episodes traced a familiar pattern, full denials followed by oh, yeah, i forgot about that meeting.

>> i have recused myself in the matters that deal with the trump campaign. >> that statement by the attorney general on thursday came after the washington post revealed that sessions met twice last year with russian ambassador sergei kislyak. sessions scrambled to clarify. >> in retrospect i should have slowed down, but i did meet one russian official a couple of times and that would be the ambassador. >> sessions met with kislyak on july 18th, after speaking with a group of ambassadors in the republican convention and he met again with the russian ambassador at his office on september 8th, just three days after president obama took a hard line on russian sanctions in a g-20 meeting with vladimir putin. since the election, trump and his surrogates have repeatedly denied any contacted between the campaign and russian officials. >> i'm telling you it's all phony, baloney garbage. >> all of the contact by the trump campaign and the associates was with the american people.

>> you are not aware of any contacts during the course of the election. >> how many times do i have to answer this question? i have nothing to do with russia. to the best of my knowledge no person that i deal with does. >> but the sessions reversal is one example of a growing list of admissions, dragged out of the trump administration after reporting on contact between trump associates and russian officials. there is now former national security adviser michael flynn who had publicly denied he had discussed sanctions and phone conversations with kislyak in december. after reporting detailed phone calls, flynn reversed himself and was forced to resign. jared kushner, reports disclose he was part of a december meeting with kislyak at trump tower. then there's mr. trump's former campaign chairman paul manafort. in july he denied that to appease the russians. the campaign fought to have the republican platform not include weapons for ukraine. >> it did not come from the trump campaign. i don't know who everybody is,

but i guarantee you. >> nobody from the trump campaign wanted that change in the platform? >> no one. zero. >> but former trump policy adviser j.d. gordon tells abc nbc news that manafort was not forth right with us. gordon says he was in the room and told the committee chairman that the amendment was a, quote, problem for the campaign. gordon also met with the russian ambassador at the convention and then there's carter page, a one-time trump policy adviser who was also at that meeting. he has changed his story about meeting with russian officials. >> i had no meetings. no meetings. >> but on thursday, page's answer changed. >> did you meet sergei kislyak in cleveland? did you talk to him? >> i'm not going to deny that i talked to him. >> by the way, we contacted paul manafort last night and he told us, quote, he has always been forthright with us and had no knowledge of the platform change until the sunday after the convention so he could haven't

authorized the change. joining me is senator marco rubio. republican of florida. welcome back to "meet the press," sir. >> thank you. good morning. >> good morning. you traveled with the president on friday down to florida on air force one. and on saturday morning the president went on a tweet storm accusing former president obama of illegally having him wiretapped. do you have any insight? first of all, did the president talk to you about this on friday and do you have any insight on what precipitated all of this? >> we never discussed that, number one, and i have no insight into what exactly he's referring to, and i would imagine the president and the white house in the days to come will outline further what was behind that accusation. i've never heard that before, and i have no evidence or no one's ever presented anything to me that indicates anything like that. in the days to come you guys are going to ask him and i imagine he'll answer it.

>> for what is it worth, as a member of the senate intelligence committee, if there was a wiretap on donald trump's campaign isn't that something that you would have been made aware of? >> the term wiretap is thrown around very loosely by a lot of people so we have to understand exactly what they're talking about. i don't have any basis, i never heard that allegation made before by anybody, and i've never seen anything about that anywhere before. but, again, the president put that out there and now the white house will have to answer to exactly what he's referring to. >> it's such a serious allegation. it is either, if it's true, it's an extraordinary political scandal and if it's not true, it's an extraordinary political scandal. fair? >> well, if it's true, and i just hate speculating about these things. >> this is the president of the united states on your behalf? >> clearly, if that were true then there's no doubt that it would be a very newsworthy item with a lot of discussion about it, and if it's not true then obviously one would ask themselves why would you put that out there. what was the rationale behind

it? i didn't make the allegation and i'm not the person that went out there and said it. i've never said that before. i would not say that to you today, and i have no basis to say that. if the president and the white house does they'll lay it out over the next few days and we'll be interested to see what they were talking about. >> are you concerned that the president has a credibility problem? we can go back to the birther business, 3 to 5 million illegal votes and now this wiretap thing that you say you're not aware of. this is the president of the united states. can we take him at his word? >> first of all, i would say the president has gotten elected and in many ways he's doing what he told the people he was going to do. a lot of this outrage is donald trump is doing what he said he would do if he were elected and you see that reflected in the public polling where a large number of americans are saying he's doing exactly what he said he was going to do, and that's what people are mostly focused on. is the president's style different than mine? absolutely. is he an unorthodox political figure? absolutely. that's what people voted for and that's what they wanted in this election.

he's doing what he said he was going to do. and i think voters -- >> you don't think voters want to be mislead. you don't think voters want their president to intentionally mislead them do you? >> no one is saying that. i'm saying that the president has a unique style of communicating different from what i would do. and people voted for donald trump to be president of the united states and they want him to be donald trump and he's doing what he said he was going do if elected. >> let's move on with this investigation. are you concerned? it seems as if people associated with the trump administration who are also associated with the campaign they seem to deny any contacts with any russian officials during the campaign, then there's a report that comes out. then they sort of reluctantly admit, oh, yes, i forgot about that meeting or i forgot about this meeting and it's turning into a pattern and we have three or four or five officials that that's happened to. are you concerned about this pat pattern? >> ultimately, what i would be concerned about -- what i'm concerned about the most is what

the active measures undertaken by the russians to interfere with, participate in, steer and undermine our elections. what was that composed of? that's what i want to focus on. there are facts that may emerge as a result of that that will be interesting to the american people and that we're going to put out in our report when the senate intelligence committee has done. that's what we're doing. we're gathering facts so that not only do we know what happened, but we're prepared for the future of what this could mean. i just returned a week ago from france and germany where they have pending election and they're seeing the active measures undertaken. the purpose of the investigation is to gather facts and put them before the senate and the american people so we know what happened and we can deal with it in the future because this will be an ongoing thing, unfortunately, not just in elections and in our public policy debates. incidental to that there may be facts that people look and say this may require attention from someone else. i'm not saying that is where it will lead. we'll gather the facts and put them out there

wherever those facts lead us and we'll allow people to make judgments based on those facts. >> given that there have been reports that the white house reached out to your chairman of this intelligence committee richard berg of north carolina. some democrats are concerned, including mike warner are concerned that the credibility of the intelligence committee's investigation is now at peril because of this. is there a point, and i know you believe you guys can do this. you have tweeted that you guys can do this yourselves in the intel committee. is there a point that it might be better for the political process to take politics out of this and have a special prosecutor, whatever youant call it, and put this sort of out of congress right now? >> not now. i certainly don't think we're at that point at this moment and here's why. the job of the intelligence committee is not to be a law enforcement agency. the job of the intelligence committee is to gather facts and evidence to go through counterintelligence programs and intelligence programs and understand all of the evidence and the facts that's out there about how the russians did this and why they did this, et cetera and put this all in a report and that's our job to gather facts

and i've told everybody i'm not going to be a part of a witch hunt and i'll also not be part of a cover-up. i want to put the facts out there wherever the facts lead us and that's what the senate intelligence committee will do. i will tell you this, if it's not what we do and if it's not the product we produce i will be among the first people out there on this program and out there that i did not sign my name on the report because it gave irrelevant facts that the american people deserve to know. we're a finder of facts, a collector of facts and we will put that in the report and people will make those judgments based on those facts. >> right after the fbi director comey briefed the intelligence committee, i believe it was about -- in fact, it was exactly february 17th, you tweeted the following. i am now very confident senate intel committee i serve on will conduct a thorough bipartisan investigation of interference of putin influence. i understand that was what you

were briefed on, but what gave you more confidence to tweet that than before that day. >> first of all, because i'm interactive with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and what i have very strongly is every member of that committee is interested at arriving at the facts and the truth. no one is looking at this from a political angle and everybody at the end of the day understands what the job is, understands that the credibility of the committee is on the line and we want to arrive at the truth. everyone in there is prepared to go where the facts lead us irrespective of what the implications will be politically. i am very confident of that. i remain confident of that. if that changes then i will be the first out there to say hat committee is no longer capable of doing their job and we're not at that point, thankfully. >> you said you're not going to participate in a witch hunt and that is words that the president has used to describe all of this. the more he does that, is that an irresponsible use of phrase right now? >> i don't know why. he obviously feels very strongly that he's being accused of things that he hasn't done and

there's hysteria in the media and he has the right to say. he has every right to defend himself and that's what he's doing. my use of the term has to do with the following and that is i want to go where the truth is irrespective of its political implications. wherever the truth is where we're going to go and everyone else needs to be committed to that principle, as well. and i believe in the intelligence committee that we are and if that changes, as i told you, i'll be the first among them to say it. >> do you believe the intelligence community's assessment that the russians interfered in this election and did so to try to benefit donald trump? >> well, i've never doubted that the in -- from back in october i've been telling people, i was in the middle of my campaign, and i refused to talk about wikileaks because it was the work of a foreign intelligence agency trying to influence our elections. the key is not just to understand what they did, but how they did it because they'll try to do it again and again, not just to influence elections and to influence political debates in washington, d.c.

i want to make sure that we don't spend so much time focused on things that may not have happened that we don't focus on the things that actually did happen because they're happening now in france. they're happening now in germany and it will happen again in this country if we don't learn from it. >> senator marco rubio, republican of florida. thanks for coming on and sharing your views. always a pleasure, sir. >> thank you. >> thank you. on thursday before attorney general jeff sessions recused himself from any investigation involving russia and the trump campaign, chuck schumer from new york joined a growing list of democrats calling for sessions to resign. on friday afternoon president trump released that photo and called him a hypocrite. on this ♪, senator schumer joins me now. >> good morning. >> good morning to you, sir. there are so many tweets to keep up with. >> happily talked with putin and his associates and took place in '03 in full view of press and

public under oath. would you and your team, that's you challenging them under oath. let me ask you this, this morning the president's press secretary came out and said the following, reports concerning politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election are very troubling. president trump is requesting that as part of their investigation into russian activity the congressional intelligence committee exercise their oversight authority whether executive branch powers were abused in 2016. is that a fair ask of this administration? >> well, look, president obama has flatly denied that he has done this, and either way, chuck, the president's in trouble if he falsely spread this kind of misinformation, that is so wrong and beneath the

dignity of the presidency. it is something that really hurts people's view of government. its civilization warping, and i don't know if any president democrat or republican in the past has done this. it shows this president doesn't know how to conduct himself. on the other hand, if it's true it's even worse for the president because that means that a federal judge independently elected has found probable cause that the president or people on his staff have had probable cause to have broken the law or to have interacted with a foreign agent. that's serious stuff. either way, the president makes it worse with these tweets. is he trying to divert this here? yeah. the president denied this. i don't have any doubt that president obama has been telling the truth. if they want to investigate it, sure, but the real point is we need a special prosecutor to investigate what went on in the trump campaign transition and presidency. >> let me ask you -- let me start with that, actually. >> please. >> do you no longer have confidence in the intelligence committee to do this on the

senate side to conduct this investigation? >> let me answer that in two parts. first, the intelligence committee has congressional oversight, and yes, i have doubts about chairman burr. he first denied that they should investigate and when pushed by mike warner he said, okay, we'll investigate and then of course at the administration's request he went to the president and said something is wrong. that's taking sides in the investigation. the faith i have in the intelligence committee is in mike warner and the democrats. they've been holding burr's feet to the fire and they will look for another alternative if chairman burr doesn't pursue this. there is another point to this. people mix up the two. the other is, of course, whether the law was broken and whether the trump campaign was complicit in working with the russians to influence the election. that needs a special prosecutor. rod rosenstein, he's a career man, he will be before the

judiciary committee for his nomination for deputy attorney general. i am urging him at that hearing to say that he will appoint a special prosecutor to look into this because it's on the executive side that any investigation is done and any criminality is put forward. >> let me ask you about this specific charge, what you were just talking about with president trump, this idea that there may have been a court order surveillance of some form or another. you're part of what's called so many gangs on senate side and you're one of the gang of eight on intelligence matters, the most sensitive intelligence matters. you're briefed on this. is it fair -- wouldn't you have been briefed if the fbi had gone to a fisa court to get surveillance of a foreign government involving the trump campaign? wouldn't you know this? >> i don't comment on classified briefings. >> it's fair to say -- can you -- why not, if you know this information why not share it at this point?

>> as i said -- >> we have a problem of trust and it goes to what you just quoted of ben sasse. >> you cannot comment on classified briefings and i'm not going to violate those rules. >> okay. so -- >> sorry. >> but we are to sit here and wonder and ponder. >> well, no, if we have a special prosecutor they will get to the bottom of all of this and that's what we need. a special prosecutor is much better than letting a lying department person do it for three reasons and this is in doj guidelines. first, a special prosecutor has much more freedom day to day, who to subpoena and what documents to look at and the path of the investigation. second, the special prosecutor can only be fired for cause. so if they're hitting some real stuff they can't just be gotten rid of by sally yates was gotten rid of by the trump administration when she didn't do what they wanted and third, they have to report to congress so we really need a special prosecutor, and i'm hoping that rosenstein will agree to that

and make that -- say he's going to make that happen at the committee meeting. i know our committee members will be asking him about it. >> let me ask you this. congressman adam schiff, the top-ranking democrat on the house intelligence committee has implied that the fbi has not been forthcoming in their various briefings. you get these briefings. would you -- is he correct? do you believe the fbi has not been forthcoming on what it's doing with the trump campaign? >> well, let me just say this. the fbi is the premier investigative agency here in our government, and i believe that they will do their job and get to the bottom of this without political interference. >> right, but do you believe they have been withholding information from congress? >> well, there are certain kinds of information that can't be given to congress that, you know, or all of congress that's classified or that can't be released and there is a prosecutorial sort of way of doing things that you don't comment on ongoing investigations. >> so in this case, you wouldn't level the same criticism that

congressman schiff has? >> i'm just saying i am -- i believe they will get to the bottom of this. i hope they will, and if they don't, they'll be -- it will be a real dereliction of their duty. >> you have full confidence in the fbi right now? >> i gave you my answer. >> senator chuck schumer. democrat from new york. >> thanks, chuck. >> thanks for coming on and sharing your views. coming up, did the obama white house really leave a trail of bread crumbs about the trump/russia connection? for investigators to find a bit easier? i'll ask james clapper. brought to you by keytruda. to learn more, go to keytruda.com. needs a stable fo. a body without proper foot support can mean pain. the dr. scholl's kiosk maps your feet and recommends our custom fit orthotic to stabilize yo fndation and relieve foot, knee or lower back pain from being on your feet. dr. scholl's. hi, i'm frank.

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welcome b welcome back. panelists here. cornell belcher author of the book "a black man in the white house." kim strossel, member of the wall street journal editorial board and danielle pletka and tom friedman, columnist for "the new york times".

i don't know where to begin here, but tom friedman, it was jarring, president trump accusing president obama, and obviously, i guess it was an attempt to distract, but i don't know how this distracts from the russia story. >> it was beyond jarring, really, when you think about it, chuck. this is such a serious charge. under normal circumstances it would be a six-column headline in my paper and i think any other paper and a serious person before he made such a charge would have brought together the congressional leaders and briefed them on it, and brought together the intelligence community and the fact that he lobbed this on twitter at 6:00 in the morning is shocking. i think we have to keep one thing in mind, the big picture. e bipicture, chuck, is russia is not our friend. vladimir putin is not our iend. he has very specific goals. he wants to fracture nato. he wants to fracture the european union so it won't be a threat and he wants to destroy

the ability of the united states to lead a western alliance. right now in moscow they must be clinking vodka glasses because for less than the cost of a mid 29 they have thrown the west into complete disarray. >> it doesn't matter what you think of their intentions was, look at our country right now. >> what the russian intentions are and what happened during the election are two very different things. it's not just the russians who want to interfere in our election. lots of countries want to interfere in our elections, lots have tried. remember the chinese and al gore? the point was there someone inside the trump campaign that was working with them and did the president know about that and were they successful? and i think on those latter two questions we have no idea. >> no evidence. there's no evidence. i just heard chuck schumer suggest exactly what he did. we know that this is the case. there's nothing there. especially this recent discussion about jeff sessions which is the kind of height of

the ludicrousness of this, okay? if jeff sessions really was a mole working for the russian government he probably would have found a better place to have met with them than his public senate office surrounded by his aides so the meetings are not necessarily what matter. they don't prove anything. >> the one thing i will say this on these meetings -- >> is there any substance? >> they do have this pattern of oh, yeah, i forgot i had this meeting. >> as many in washington have suddenly forgot, mr. schumer, for instance about meeting with russian ambassador. >> but there is a difference? >> i don't know. >> you don't think there is a difference between those two? >> no. if you headed to a meeting and a bunch of ambassadors head to you, you wouldn't remember that? >> that i understand. after the mike flinn situation do you not try to correct the record? >> i agree, there is no evidence, that's why we need a special prosecutor and independent commission and we need to see

trump's taxes. >> there is an awful lot of smoke not to be a fire and you've had three people resign. the idea that i'll forget about a meeting with russians when there are news stories every day coming out about how russia has tried to influence what's happening in our country is kind of breathtaking, and i've got to side with marco rubio on this. look, he talked about he wasn't going to talk about it because he understood that russians are trying to influence our election and will continue to try to do something about it. this is a threat to our country, right? and the idea that russia is different from other countries, russia is very different from other countries because we have a history of the cold war with russia that apparently we thought was over because we have a short history lesson and view of the world and putin paused and clearly, they are clearly trying to influence and dominate the world than we've seen in a long time. >> i would be sympathetic to your argument if over the last eight years i would have heard it from people in your position. the problem is, for the last eight years when the russians have been exactly the same, putin has been

anathema, he has been screwing us in the middle east, to put it plainly, he's ben interfering in -- >> everything is blunt talk now. >> thank you very much, donald. but honestly speaking, the part of this is this is partisanship. if we could have a normal discussion about russia with obama and trump? fair enough. >> take partisanship away from it and put it to a special prosecutor then and take politics out of it. >> a special prosecutor doesn't fix it either. the problem we have at the moment is if you did what trump said and he put it all out there, there would still behalf of the country that didn't believe it was true and we have no faith in the public institutions. >> how do we restore the faith and how does congress do it? >> special prosecutor is not a good idea. their goal is to get someone in the end and they will follow any rabbit hole that they can go until they're not investigating the thing that they began with. >> you do believe congress and the commission? >> think maybe we are at a point where you need a rob silverman

type commission that we had in iraq intelligence that is bipartisan. i don't know what kind of powers would have, congress would have to decide that, but i neutral arbitrator because we need to know if there was wiretapping going on. >> just for the record, some of us took russia very seriously. during the last eight years. just to put that -- >> not in the white house. >> i'm not talking about the white house. >> some of us in the press. my point and what worries me is this, government moves at the speed of trust, and right now there is so little trust. we have a completely polarized environment and somehow we have got to restore that because i don't see how the president will be able to solve any of these big issues, immigration, debt, health care at the level of polarization that we have right now. >> i think we've exemplified it here a little bit. we'll pause the conversation and pick it up, i have a feeling on the other side of the half hour, but coming up is a man who may know more than anyone about russia's efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. it's james clapper.

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welcome back. welcome back. earlier this week "the new york times" reported that in the dying days of the obama presidency white house officials took steps to spread information about russia's attempt to undermine the presidential election. why?

one reason give was to make it easier for government investigators, in particular congress, to uncover that truth. james clapper, a career intelligence officer was the director of national intelligence for more than six years under president obama. he spearheaded the report that was released in january that concluded that the russians hacked the democratic national committee e-mails and interfered with the 2016 election. and mr. clapper joins me now. welcome, sir, to "meet the press". >> thanks, chuck, for having me. >> let me start with the president's tweets that maybe president obama ordered an illegal wiretap of his offices and if something like that happened would this be something that you would be aware of? >> i would certainly hope so. obviously, i can't speak officially anymore, but i will say that for the part of the national security apparatus that i oversaw as dni, there was no wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time or as a candidate or against his campaign. i can't speak for other title

3-authorized entities in the government or a state or local -- >> i was just going to say, if the fbi had a fisa court order for surveillance, would that be information that you would know or not know? >> yes. >> you would be told this. >> i would know this. >> if there was a fisa court order. >> something like this absolutely. >> at this point you can't confirm or deny whether that exists. >> i can deny it. >> there is no fisa court order. >> not to my knowledge. >> of anything at trump tower. >> no. >> that's an important revelation at this point. >> let me ask you this, does intelligence exist that can definitively answer the following question, whether there were improper contacts between the trump campaign and russian officials? >> we did not include evidence in our report and that's nsa, fbi and cia with my office, the director of national intelligence that had anything -- that had any reflection of collusion between members of the trump campaign or

the russians, there was no evidence of that in our report. >> i understand that, but does it exist? >> not to my knowledge. >> if it existed it would have been in the report? >> this could have unfolded or become available in the time since i left the government. >> at the time, we had no evidence of collusion. >> there's a lot of smoke, but there hasn't been that smoking gun yet. at what point should the public start to wonder this is all just smoke? >> well, that's a good question. i don't know. >> i do think, though, it is in everyone's interest. in the current president's interest, in the republicans' interest in the democrats intere interest, in the country's interest to get to the bottom of all of this because it's such a distraction and certainly the russians have to be churdling about the success of their efforts to dissension in this country. >> so you feel your report does not -- you admit that your report doesn't get to the bottom of this?

>> it got to the bottom of the evidence to the extent of the evidence we had at the time. whether there's more evidence that's become available since then or there are ongoing investigations will be revelatory. i don't know. ? there was a conclusion that said that it's clear that the russians did so and in an attempt to help donald trump? do you believe that? >> yes, i do. >> what's not proven is the idea of collusion? >> that's correct. >> when you see this parade of officials associated with the trump campaign and first they deny any conversations and now we're hearing more. does that add to suspicion or do you think some of this is circumstantial? >> well, i can't say what the nature of those conversations and dialogues were, for the most part. again, i think it would be very healthy to completely clear the air on this subject, and i think it would be in everyone's interest to have that done.

>> can the senate intelligence committee -- what are we going to learn from their investigation, do you think, that will move beyond what you were able to do? >> well, i think they can look at this from a broader context than we could, and at this point i do have confidence in the senate intelligence committee and their effort. it is under way in contrast to the house intelligence committee and we just last week agreed on their charter and importantly in the case of the senate intelligence committee this appears to me to be truly a bipartisan effort, and so i think that needs to play out. if, for some reason, that proves not to be satisfactory in the minds of those who make those decisions then move on to a special prosecutor. >> the new york times earlier this week, and as i was introducing you, this idea that they sort of left a trail, maybe lowered classification -- can you walk us through how that would work? did they lower levels of classification?

was that a fair read of what was done in the last few weeks of the administration? >> actually not because of the sensitivity of much of the information in this report our actual effort was to protect it, and not to spread it around and certainly not to dumb it down, if i can use that phrase, in order to disseminate it more widely. we were under a preservation order from both our oversight committees to preserve and protect all of the information related to that report in any event. >> let me ask you one other final question in the infamous dossier that was put together by this former british operative named christopher steel. why did you feel the need to brief the president on that at the time? >> we felt that it was important that he know about it, that it was out there, and without respect to the veracity of the contents of the dossier, that's why it was not included as a part of our report because much

of it could not be corroborated, and importantly, some of the sources that mr. steel drew on, second and third order assets, we could not validate or corroborate. so for that reason, at least in my view, the important thing was to warn the president that this thing was out there. the russians have a term, an acronym called kompelat that either they will generate, if it's truthful or contrived, and it's important, we felt, that he knew of the existence of the dossier. >> have you done this with other presidents? have you had to brief them about unverified intelligence? >> yes. i had occasion in the six and a half years i was dn ito tell president obama certain things and we could not validate or corroborate, but we thought he ought to know it was out there.

>> james clapper, i have a feel on -- do you expect to testify on capitol hill about these things? >> i don't think there's any doubt. we'll see you on tv some time soon and thank you for coming on and sharing your views? >> thank you very much, sir. when we've come back, we've seen almost weekly demonstrations against president trump, will they translate into democratic votes or will they turn to the left? we'll get that answer a lot sooner than you think. that's next. ♪

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election victories for democrats this year? well, there are three special elections coming up. two of which may help us answer that question. the montana at-large congressional district vacated by the new secretary ryan inky zinke and the georgia 6th congressional district that includes the northern suburbs of atlanta with tom price. let's take a look at montana, a state that's very rural, in other words, this should be trump country. those are all groups that they did well in november. this is a seat republicans have held since 1997. thing is montana isn't like other places and while they hold the senate seats, the democrats doold the her senate seats and the governor was elected with donald trump on the ballot. the democrats can win here. might give them hope for other rural places. if the republicans win maybe that the trump army is still with them. the story in georgia's 6th

congressional district is different. it's more diverse, higher educated and well-to-do, and it's been trending more and more blue over time. john mccain and mitt romney each won the district by double digits over barack obama in 2008 and 2012. donald trump only beat hillary clinton by 1% in 2016 even though price won his reelection by 23 points. so it is the kind of place that it might be showing signs that it is slipping away from trump's version of the republican party. so if the democrats win there it will say something, but if they can't win there, then it starts to raise questions about whether they have any hope at all in 2018. but guess what? if they win one or both they will suggest they have real momentum going into next year's midterms and i can tell you this, house republicans will start panicking this year if they see those results come in badly for them. when we come back, the story the white house hoped everyone would be talking about this sunday morning. k through your allergie. introducing flonase sensimist. more complete allergy relief in a gentle mist

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back now with the panel and we have been going over the jim clapper interview just now, and here's the specific transcript that everybody here on the fisa court order. i asked him at this point can you confirm or deny if this fisa court order exists. he says i can deny it. there is no fisa court order, clapper, not to my knowledge of anything at trump tower. no. how big of a deal? >> i think him denying that there was a fisa order is a big deal, but why are we talking about this? we're talking about this because trump tweeted it out in pretty much the same breath that he tweeted about arnold schwarzenegger. >> which by the -- >> say no more. >> don't let us get distracted by that, as well.

>> yes. >> but i have to ask myself, would we be talking about this at all if at all if he had not tweeted that out? >> we'd talk about the russia angle. >> talking about sessions. >> right. but he actually made two pieces of news here this morning, not just he said there's no court order and assuming he was not careful with the words, it sounded fairly categorical to me, but the other one that was there is simply no evidence of collusion, at least while he was there, which was until very recently between the trump campaign and russians. what we talking about for the last three weeks? >> so this is waking up at 6:00 a.m. in the morning, tweeting out one of the most damming accusations one president could make after another, and then talking about arnold schwarzenegger. that is not -- >> and then 18 holes. >> nonpresidential, nonadult

behavior. that is juvenile. the fact we have a president engaging in that is deeply disturbing. he's going to have to go to europe very soon and interact with other european leaders, world leaders, what do you think if you're a world leader in the meeting -- what do i say? what would he say about this meeting? he's everywhere we look. we talked about this before. i quoted my friend, there's a difference between formal and moral authority. this president has formal authority, but no moral authority. that's going to hurt. >> it's like like you have to wonder, is he playing us? right? we spend all this time talking about this, and it's like, you know, is he really bait and switch? is he die baht call in the way he plays this? it's hard to think sort of this was not thought out, so is he playing the american public? >> by the way, though, we have reporting, so tuesday night went well for him. >> right. >> wednesday went well. >> right.

>> hi apparently is angry that sessions rescued himself. this is the part of donald trump now that never gives an inch. >> he can't look at the reaction of the speech and understand how much it helped him to stay on script and sometimes -- >> and not tweet about schwarzenegger. >> put down the twitter account. there were polls after the speech, 82% who watched it thought he looked presidential, and the words in it, i mean, it was -- it was uplifting. it was a good speech laying out the policy agenda, putting the burden on democrats to work with him and get some of his agenda done, and then, yet, we're talking about twitter again. >> no discipline. it's got to drive people in the white house crazy. coming out of that -- >> it does. >> both presidents would roll in into momentum. >> for the week. >> you talked about districts that are up, you can't beat something with nothing, and unless the democrats have c

candidates, i believe, for pro-growth, patriotic, and want to build the country one community at a time, there's no reason to believe they're going to take huge political advantage. >> john wrote a good column here getting at this. he said this, just in general about the democratic party, because democrats and liberals opposed every appointment, every policy, every word from the trump administration, they damaged their effectiveness as a political force against it, in danger of limiting the ability to bring the stock trump voters they need to grow us illusioned by the side. do you believe that? >> absolutely. they are doing themselves damage by constantly calling on everybody to resign. they go to death con 5. >> house republicans did it all the time. ridiculous then, right? >> it is ridiculous on the part of all of them. congress needs to be taken seriously. congress just needs to start passing bills. congress doesn't actually need to play a game. this is where i don't get chuck schumer or nancy pelosi. don't, you know, vote against every nominee. don't go against everything the president says. why not try to work with the

american people to pass an agenda and get reelected? >> this is where i put the political hat head on, not the serious grownup hat. the political hat. you know, you can make the same argument about the tea party and what republicans did, but they were crazy like foxes. you have to generate energy among your base for fundraising, but also this, the problem in midterm elections is not just the presidential election voters changing minds, but the problem with midterms is there are different electorates. there's different turnout in midterm elections. if democrats shrink and give energy to the base, it's a good thing. >> i have to pause it here and sneak in a break. president trump calling for an end to trivial fights right before starting a trivial fight. we'll be right back. coming up, "meet the press" end game brought to you by boeing, working to build something better.

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if you can't afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. yet up 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let's do more. add one a day women's complete with key nutrients we may need. plus it supports bone health with calcium and vitamin d. one a day women's in gummies and tablets. "meet the press" endgame is brought to you by boeing, always working to build something better. >> back now with "endgame" i teased it. let's hear from the president on tuesday night. it was something that's back now with "end game," and i tuesdeased it. let's hear from the president tuesday night. something quoted a lot in the last 24 hours. >> the time for small thinking is over. the time for trivial fights is behind us. >> and then, of course, after president trump accused president obama of wiretapping him, he did, as you pointed out,

threw in schwarzenegger, he's note voluntarily leaving the apprentice, but fired by pathetic ratings, not by me. sad end to a great show. the only thing missing was #sad. >> right. >> you brought it up, it's -- you do, shake your head at it. >> you do. the president doesn't have message discipline. that's what was said. we talked about the democrats before. when you talk about wanting to win again in the midterm, they need to do something that's going to appeal to those people who voted for donald trump. talking about russia, calling on people to resign is not going to appeal to them, anger, i think, you'll agree with this, anger doesn't actually win elections. >> doesn't anger work in midterms? >> cornell put on the political hack hat. is that the only reason democrats are in washington? to win and have power? by the way -- >> what? >> no, no, no, they've been -- look, they have promised their voters some things that they would like to get done, and, by

the way, who better to work with than donald trump who loves to make a deal? by the way, this guy is one of the least ideological presidents ever in the white house. >> you know, chuck, a few more mornings of 6:00 a.m. tweets, and people will take away his football, and i mean, the nuclear codes. >> yeah. >> mitch mcconnell said my job is to make sure that the president obama is a one-term president. they are there for the power. that's not a good thing, but both sides play it. >> of course, no, i'm not suggesting otherwise, but if you did care about policy goals, you got an opportunity in donald trump. >> and power in anything. >> and i have to turn off the cameras, but you can keep debating. that's all we have for today. once again, three hour show packed in one hour. back next week, i promise, if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." okay, continue. go ahead. you can see more end game and post game on the mtp facebook page.

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