national security cabinet are in the loop. >> it is the president's solemn duty to protect the american people, and with this order, president trump is exercising his rightful authority to keep our people safe. >> this executive order responsibly provides a needed pause so we can carefully review how we scrutinize people coming here from these countries of concern. >> unregulated unvetted travel is not a universal privilege, especially when national security is at stake. >> explosive charges. the president unleashing a storm of controversy accusing president obama of tapping the phones at trump tower before the election but providing no evidence to support that claim. now fbi director james comey wants the justice department to clear his agency of wiretapping mr. trump. the nation's top spy at the time tells chuck todd it didn't

happen. >> there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time or as a candidate or against his campaign. >> the president of the united states put his own reputation, the reputation of his predecessor and the reputation of this nation at risk to get at least a draw out of the next 24 hours of news. and oval office temper tantrum, behind the president's explosion of anger revealing a state of chaos inside the west wing. >> you have some digesting news, pushing out information, suggestions and allegations, getting angrier and angrier that he feels he's under siege, according to more than a dozen people we spoke to. >> good day everyone. i'm andrea mitchell in washington with breaking news of that new executive order removing iraq from the countries on the travel ban lais is being overshadowed by unprecedented

eavesdropping allegations by president trump leveled against former president obama in 140 characters starting at 6:35 a.m. on saturday. including comparisons to mccarthyism and watergate adding fuel to the fire. senior u.s. official fbi director james comey aed t justice department to publicly knock down president trump's claim. the fbi and justice department both declining comment but former top intelligence officials are providing their own reality check. >> if you take literally what the president tweeted the plumbing doesn't work that way. if something happened it could not have happened the way the president said it. my gut is i think the president forgot for a moment in the morning saturday that he was actually president. >> joining me now are nbc national correspondent peter alexander at the white house and nbc justice correspondent pete william. first pete let's break down the new travel ban. peter also, the two petes. let's talk about the way it was

rolled out, but more importantly i guess the substance of it. pete williams, what is the big difference, the big differences which we're showing up there on the board as well? >> right, it's six countries now, not seven. doesn't include iraq. the government says that iraq now has given assurances that it can provide the kind of information needed to vet visa applicants. it takes effect march 16th, not the day the president signs it so it gives people a chance to get ready for it and the government hopes it will not create the chaos at airports. it says that the people who don't have a visa that was valid as of the day the first executive order was signed on january 27th, they're the ones who won't be able to come in. anybody who had a valid visa as of then can still enter the country. so it doesn't cancel existing visas. no blanket ban on syrian refugees. there will be a pause on allowing all refugees in but after that, syrian refugees presumably could come in. doesn't apply toreen cardholders which was a bring

problem the first one there was ambiguity about it, something the courts were concerned about and no longer contains a preference for certain refugees based on religion, in terms of the legal challenges it explicitly resinds the earlier order so all the legal challenges have been based on the president's order signed january 27th. the hold on enforcement of executive order was based on that original one. it's now gone, so presumably the court orders stopping enforcement are also gone, so we're going to be in this interim period. the new one won't take effect until march 16th. undoubtedly the people who challenge the old order will go back to court and say, hey, this is just so much like the old one, you should issue a new order so there will be some time i think to work out the legal challenges before this new one goes into effect. >> and peter alexander at the white house, such a change the last time this order was signed, the president was doing it in the oval office. >> yes.

>> this time we just see only a picture taken by that photojournalist sean spicer, the press secretary is the only way that we know that this actually happened, a picture from the oval of president trump signing the order. no press coverage, no questions could be permitted as you saw the cabinet secretaries who this time were involved. last time they were pretty much blind sided on the final versions of this order and it had come out of a small white house group and instead this time they were engaged, they made the point they had briefed the press earlier this morning. we were all on a conference call with them, they briefed members of congress, but again, no questions asked on camera. for viewers and ul all the others watching what we're doing. >> reporter: the contrast is particularly compelling here, given the fact that six weeks now separate the original signing of that immigration executive order to much fanfare, the president showed it off to reporters to the oval office on that day, and on this occasion

as you noted there's a sippingu photo tweeted out, we do not know whether sean spicer took it but it was put on hiswitter page of a sense of what happened, just him signing his name. no opportunity to ask questions of the president or those cabinet secretaries as you noted and what's striking today just in terms of the differences in the unveilings here is that no opportunities to throw questions at the president as it were on this occasion. reporters won't have an opportunity to see the president. all of his meetings to take place at the white house are going to take place behind closed doors without what we call sprays where reporters and cameras are quickly invited into the oval office and even sean spicer's press conference today his briefing will take place off camera in what they refer to as a gaggle here at the white house. >> peter, stay with me and pete as well, because we want to go to a story that is 30er7b8ly

bigger, what the president did on saturday morning. let's go through the time line of all of this. it started thursday evening, conservative radio host mark levine's claim of sur violence by the ohe bama administration. by friday morning the president expressing frustration, donald trump according to one aide reading the senior staff the riot act furious attorney general jeff sessions was forced in the president's view to recuse himself from any investigation of russian meddling. by friday afternoon cameras caught first of all rush limbaugh also joining into the collusion between the obama administration and russians to justify wire taps and illegal leaks. friday evening breitbart publish ing levip's claims and saturday the president's tweets but there was also that very animated conversation that was witnessed by the cer in the oval office.

you can see steve bannon of breitbart, before the president left for florida, peter, what from your reporting happened in the oval office? >> well, two things. first that conspiratorial rant, what is important there it basically started in conservative media outlets. it's not clear even in our conversations with white house officials here that the president has any better information than the information he has read about those claims. separately as to that conversation as it was described to me, a heated discussion behind closed doors in the oval office, just moments before the president left for marine one, where it appears his own grandchildren, his young grandchildren ivanka trump's children were in the oval office, moments later they we saw them exiting the oval office. he was reading the riot act to senior staff about the decision-making process that ultimately allowed the administration to move forward and let the attorney general jeff sessions recuse himself from any investigations into russian meddling in the 2016

election. remember, only 24 hours earlier when he was at newport news, virginia, where he was hoping to have a big commander in chief moment, the president was pressed by reporters about the sessions situation and he said, i don't think he should or that he needs to recuse himself. there was frustration that this undermined the statement the president had already made publicly. motivating this anger, this frustration, he was fuming as it was described to me by this aide, was the sense that these leaks continue to come out and ultimately are undermining his administration. andrea? >> pete williams, what about the fbi director reporting that we've confirmed that james comey wants the justice department to deny that there was any wire tapping or i guess wire tapping isn't technically what would take place but electronic surveillance on the president or his aides at trump tower, and that so far at least the justice department is not doing that.

>> reporter: correct. we confirmed saturday nobody seemed to know what the president was talking about here. there were explicit denials this happened and you heard the public denials on sunday on "meet the press" from the former director of national intelligence. so on two tracks here we're being told what the president alleges happened as far as anyone we've talked to seems no, they didn't and secondly, you had this request from the fbi director of the justice say something, so far the justice department isn't commenting. >> pete williamand peter alexander, thank you both so very much. few if any republican congress members have jumped to the president's defense in the last three days with the exception of house oversight chairman jason chaffetz in part. >> it's a very serious allegation. the president has at his fingertips tens of billions of dollars in intelligence apparatus. i got to believe, i think he

might have something there, but if not, we're going to find out. >> how do you feel about the president of the united states making this accusation on twitter on a saturday morning without any backing evidence? >> well, i think it's pretty mature to say there's no backing evidence. >> adam schiff the top democrat on the house intelligence committee and joins me now. as a member of the house intelligence committee you would be read in aek chuck schumer, the top congressional leaders in each party would be read in and they have not come forward with any evidence this took place. do you have any evidence there was eavesdropping by president obama on president-elect trump or trump the candidate? >> no, and i think it's p preposterous claim. if it were true a federal judge had found probable cause to believe trump or his associates were engaged in a crime, or that

a fisa court judge found they were acting as agents of a foreign power. this is what the president is suggesting when he says he was wire tapped. it was a preposterous claim, he's trying to distract but more troubling conclusion this is a president who cannot separate fact from fantasy, and as a commander in chief doesn't know right from wrong, and the most disturbing conclusion we ultimately reach from this. >> he demanded that the intelligence committee look into this. are you going to support your chairman nunez and have you spoken to him about the president's demand? >> i haven't had a chance to speak with the chairman about it yet. look, we hope to get a full briefing from the director of the fbi, he's going to come back into the gang of eight the next few days, i certainly hope so. the president can put this to rest in a heart january beat.

can he simply ask the acting attorney general or the attorney general from the eastern district who has been appointed because i think sessions has to recuse himself from this to tell the country whether there was ever a wiretap. we already heard from director clapper that there was no fisa tap directed at the trump at donald trump or his campaign and the attorney general designate now that he recused himself it put this to rest for good. we don't need this investigation to tell us what the attorney general can simply, but of course this is all giving the president way too much credit that there's really any reality behind this, and it was embarrassing to see his deputy press secretary or jason chaffetz or any of these folks try to give lip service to this because it's an absurd claim. >> and at the same time, you're also, you've put out a statement criticizing the revised travel ban saying that besides

eliminating iraq from the countries, it doesn't do very much, what about the improvement it doesn't take place immediately, that people won't be caught mid travel, you won't have the chaos, that they have briefed the key cabinet secreta secretaries. is that an improvement and they rescinded the previous order. >> superficially there have been changes made, but the same fundamental flaws still exist, and that is the choice of these now six countries is again completely arbitrary and the idea that iraq has now been taken off the list because they've given some kind of assurances, that is the most transparent window dressing. what really happened with respect to iraq is it was becoming untenable for prime minister abadi to work with u.s. government, engaged in a pitch battle, u.s. and iraqi forces against isis, if if we were banning iraqis from coming to the united states, so let's not delude ourselves into thinking we somehow got magic assurances we couldn't haveten six

weeks ago from iraq. we have the fundamental problem, the choice of these six is very arbitrary, and i would think in the litigation that will follow, it's going to be very hard to demonstrate that there was any sound reason behind the choice of these countries. i've asked for a hearing before the intelligence committee of the intelligence arm of dhs. i want to make sure they're not being pressured to reach a conclusion that contradicts that draft report that i think was quite accurate that countries of origin is simply not a reliable way to determine who in the future might commit an act of terror. if it was, you would have pakistan on that list and of course pakistan is nowhere to be found. >> i also want to draw your attention to something that the president tweeted out january 30th, three days after that other very controversial initial executive order. he tweeted if were announced with one week's notice, it would give warning to all the bad guys

out there, and there are a lot of bad dudes out there. now they're giving until march 16th, giving, you know, more than ten days notice. >> of course they are, and again, you know, we fall victim to actually crediting what the president says but unfortunately all too often we can't do that. they waited i think extra time because they wanted the state of the union address to get the maximum benefit and then they were distracted by yet another controversy with the president's tweets. so now we have this rolled out with no explanation by the secretaries, no q&a and i think that ought to tell us something if they're not willing to stand and answer questions and defend it, but yes, there's obviously no sense of urgency anymore. what this is truly about is the president trying to meet his campaign promise to ban muslims and to do it in a way that won't be struck down in the courts. that's really as simple as this is. this is not going to improve our

security and indeed the same experience in iraq we're going to still have with the muslim world, the world views this as a muslim ban. they're not going to want to work with us in the fight against terror if they think we are prejudiced against an entire faith and that's the faith that most of the arab world subscribes to. so it's going to be counterproductive. it already is arbitrary, and i think for those reasons, suffers from the same underlying flaws as the original. >> and finally, north korea more launches of test missiles. to we know anything more about the range and the viability of these tests and whether or not we've been able to slow down their missile development? we see reports from david sanger and other as the "new york times" that we've actually used our computer, our cyber technology to try to slow down their development of this program. >> well, i can't comment on that

report, but i can say that we certainly haven't been able to slow down their ballistic missile program to the degree we would need to, to bring it to a halt and over a matter of time and very possibly within this president's first term, north korea may be able to miniaturize a nuclear device, may be able to perfect the technology for an intercontinental ballistic missile and marry the two and that would pose a substantial threat to the money. when you consider the damage the president is doing to his own reputation making these outlandish claims because should north korea get to that point, should the president conclude he has to do something about it, will the country believe him when he talks about these issues? will they believe him if he says that force is the last resort, but we've come to the last resort, and he is so undermining his credibility that in the crisis that may very well come with north korea, we already have a weakened president. >> adam schiff, thank you very

much, congressman, thanks for being with us. >> thanks, andrea. today at the supreme court in a blow to advocates of transgender rights the supreme court said it would not hear the appeal of transgender student gavin grimm suing his school district over bathroom access. the supreme court ordered the lower court to reconsider the case after the trump administration changed the federal government's position leaving it up to states to decide if students can use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. this was gavin grimm on our show the day the trump administration announced that change. >> i definitely feel like this conversation is one that's happening across the nation at a greater degree than it ever has before and that's a positive thing but right now transgender students are probably feeling alone and probably feeling afraid because their government has just basically said that the protections they do have they don't feel those are deserving of still being there. >> today's supreme court order came with no noted dissents. coming up next, president

trump's friend and ceo of conservative media outlet newsmax spoke to the president after his sent those tweets about the wire tap allegations on saturday, he's joining us right here. stay with us. here... here... or here. today, there's another option. drug-free aleve direct therapy. a tens device with high intensity power that uses technology once only available in doctors' offices. its wireless remote lets you control the intensity, and helps you get back to things like this... this... or this. and back to being yourself. aleve direct therapy. find yours in the pain relief aisle.

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our goal, without a doubt, is that all customers are satisfied before they leave. ♪ on saturday morning, following the president's tweet storm he saw a friend on the golf course, later saturday night, also at dinner. kris cover ruddy, ceo of newsmax media, a conservative media outlet, joins me now from new

york. we want to talk to an original source now, someone who actually talked to president trump on saturday, a consequential day. tell me how he was reacting to all of the above, the recusal of the attorney general, his tweets, what context can you help us with? >> andrea, i saw him twice on saturday, once at the lunch hour and then again at dinner, and i would describe him as national being a happy camper. he was pretty upset. i hadn't seen him this, with this level of anger about something in a long time, and i think a lot of it involved the fact that he felt he was targeted by president obama or the obama administration, and he again reiterated what he said in the tweets, this is watergate level stuff. this is mccarthyism, it was very bad, and he seemed very confident about the information he had. he shared with me a little bit about how the process with the fisa court had worked, and he

was a little concerned, if the media was even covering the story. remember he had just come off the golf course when i charttte with him. i said it was widespread in the news and he feels he's been targeted in that president obama and some of his supporters have been organizing in an effort to undermine him. >> but he's the president of the united states. he's the commander in chief. he has all the tools within the executive branch to find out what the facts are. >> i'm assuming he knows what the facts are. you know, i want to make clear i don't speak for him and i don't speak for the white house. i'm an independent media person. i was just reporting what he shared with me but i think there's actually a fairly throw threshold or president trump to be proven right or largely right here. i've talked to people in the trump campaign and i think there is about 100% consensus among a lot of people that worked in that campaign that they were surveiled by federal authorities.

and i spoke to a trump white house person last night, and they said if you look at all the denials, most of them are parsing words, mincing their words, that on msnbc and other networks there's flat-out denials to what president trump tweeted out. actually that's not true. what they're denying is that president obama ordered the wiretaps for the surveillance, or that they targeted narrowly trump tower, and it indicates and that suggests that there was some level of intelligence surveillance of the campaign, which is a serious, serious matter. >> but with all due respect, what the president tweeted was that president obama did this, and president obama would not have the authority to do this. it would be a judge, a fisa judge or someone in the fbi. >> i totally agree. the president doesn't have the legal authority. the idea, you've been around washington a long time, you would know that it would be beyond bief that president obama would not be aware of

this. lo, we had a situation where the obama white house targeted conservative groups through the irs, the leader of that unit, the irs, was over at obama's white house 24 times a more. she used the fifth amendment. they deleted and destroyed evidence and emails, and yet there was never any complaint by anyone in the media about this, and they -- >> there was a lot of coverage about that. >> why was that irs official constantly going over when she was in charge of political 501c3s, they were clearly targeting. i don't think there was any question. i think when you look at this, president trump looks at this situation and says here i have high level conversations that are top secret with heads of state. i don't think you can get more secret than that, and within hours of those conversations, the transcripts of those secret conversations are leaked out by obama holdovers in his administration, and no one in the press is making an issue.

that's a federal crime, and so when he sees this type of behavior that this targeting has been going on, i think he's acting with some emotion here, and he obviously likes to do it by tweet. i'm not so sure that's the best way for him to communicate very serious issues like this, but i do think that he feels passionate about it. >> now i do think that what the obama spokesperson said was that neither president obama nor any white house official ever ordered surveillance on any u.s. citizen. is there they're not legally allow fod do that. >> correct. >> but the question when did he know it, and they're not denying that surveillance took place. >> certainly -- >> the fbi denial, we don't even know what the fbi is denying. >> but general, former general clapper, the head of the nsa, the dni rather, the director of national intelligence, who is in charge of 17 agencies, he on camera denied it to chuck "today" on "meet the press."

>> he denied his agencies which did not include the fbi. this is the same clapper that went before congress and testified under oath -- >> it does include the fbi. he is aware of fbi counter intel swrens. he was asked that in a follow-up >> andrea, you covered the story, he testified there was no massive data collection of phone records of millions of americans and it was out and out perjury, and he later had to admit that he had not told the congress the truth. this is the guy they're hanging their hat on? >> it was not perjury. >> i think president trump is right. there needs to be an investigation into the matter. i'm not saying he's right or wrong. i'm just reporting who he told me, but also when you look i think, clapper himself says there was no evidence of collusion between the russians and the trump campaign. i think that's pretty significant. >> and how angry was he at his own staff for the way they handled the sessions matter? >> well, we didn't get into that. i saw the president in the oval office wednesday and he reiterated how great a job he

thought reince priebus was doing. lot of fake news. reince wasn't down with the president. i asked reince if he was coming down, we family obligations and wouldn't be down in florida this weeked and i think you've seen reince did a fantastic job, you saw his fingerprints all over that joint session of congress which the president won very high praise for, so i have been critical of reince in the past but i think he's really stepping up the game in the past several weeks and i think there's a lot of media spin and oftentimes false leaks coming out. so i wouldn't believe everything you hear and the president himself told me he had full quali confidence in him. >> thank you for your unique perspective. coming up next one of the writers of the "new york times" op-ed how our strategy against terrorism gave us trump. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. if you have medicare

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and last hour secretary of state rex tillerson announced the updated travel ban. one of the few times we've heard him speak publicly since he was sworn in. joining me is jon finer, former chief of staff for secretary of state john kerry and author of "how our strategy against terrorism gave us trump."

thanks very much for joining us, jon. >> thank you. >> first of all, your argument in the "new york times," which is that donald trump's comments during the campaign and since, including the first speech to congress really helped create the trump victory. >> yes, so the point we're trying to make in the piece is not that counterterrorism is not a critically important tool of our national security and not that we shouldn't be spending a lot of time and energy developing that and employing it. i and my coauthor worked extensively on counterterrorism related issues during the previous administration. the question is one of balance and what you're seeing really in the last couple days is some good examples of what we were describing. yesterday north korea tested a missile, you had someone on your program just in the last segment who described the fact that north korea may be well on their way to miniaturizing a warhead, marrying the warhead to a missile that could hit united states territory.

that is a significant threat all of us should be concerned about. it gets a fraction of the attention in the media and fronkly among policymakers that the threat of terrorism gets. are we getting the balance right regard to our foreign policy? >> you raised the issue of north korea nely 15 years of bipartisan foreign policy and security policy and intelligence gathering has failed the u.s., has failed the new president in terms of north korea. president obama said they are told to incoming president trump north korea is the biggest threat. >> that's right. former president obama did tell president trump that on his way out of office. at the end of obama administration we did ratchet up the pressure on north korea through the first two successful u.n. security council resolutions that put a lot of pressure on north korea's

economy and laid a legal predicate for us increasing the pressure through sanctions and other things. what i think this new administration should do is continue to build on that approach. we haven't heard that much from the new administration about what their approach to north korea is. they gave, the president gave a short statement in the aftermath of a test that took place a few weeks ago. haven't heard much since the test yesterday. there's not much of astrategy to assess, that's a big problem across the board on some of their policy. >> part of that is the absence of the voice coming from secretary of state. we have the human rights report, the annual report which has been presented with an opening statement criticizing these toe tollitarian regimes around the world by the secretary of state, republican and democratic. what is your take what's happening at the state department? >> they'll start briefing soon from the podium a spokesperson from the state department which hasn't taken place since january

19th, the day before the inauguration. i think people in the united states underestimate the degree to which public diplomacy, the face of the secretary of state explaining the policies of the united states to the world is a critical way in which the world understands what the united states is up to, and given the major changes president trump is signaling he's going to make and frankly president trump may not be the best voice for explaining sop of the changes outside the united states to people in the world, there a lot of people hoping that secretary tillerson would be the one to provide this context and explanation and give public remarks, answer questions and i saw you aggressively and appropriately trying to ask him some of these questions just the other day. we haven't seen it yet and i think it would be good for the country if we did see that soon. >> they now say it was postponed until tomorrow, because of all of the activity today on the new executive order, so one hopes. >> yes, but ironically today would be exactly the day where you should have an explanation from the state department about how this is going to be

implemented, what we're telling the rest of the world about this new development. delaying it 24 hours i don't see how that serves anything. >> and just one more point to bring that home. we are the only foreign ministry around the world that has a reputation, that has a policy of briefing every day, going back to the 1950s to the eisenhower administration, and it's one of the things we tell people in iraq and in afghanistan and other parts of the world, as they are just beginning after their first elections to have a free press or try to have a free press, and it's been a model for the world, and we no longer have that. >> andrea a big part of our influence in the world, a big part of our ability to try to promote a culture of american and western values around the world is being able to live those value s ourselves, almos unparalleled condition of

championing a free press here in the united states. i totally agree with how you characterized it and hope they start to restore some of this very soon. >> jon finer, thanks for being with us. >> thank you. coming up next, more on the president's unsubstantiated wire tap claims right here on "andrea mitchell reports," only on msnbc. ll you? tom! name it tom! studies show that toms have the highest average earning potential over their professional lifetime. see? uh, it's a girl. congratulations! two of my girls are toms. i work for ally, finances are my thing. you know, i'm gonna go give birth real quick and then we'll talk, ok? nice baby. let's go. here comes tom #5! nothing, stops us from doing right by our customers. ally. do it right. whoo! look out. hi, i'm frank. ally. do it right. i take movantik for oic, opioid-induced constipation. had a bad back injury, my doctor prescribed opioids which helped with the chronic pain, but backed me up big-time. tried prunes, laxatives, still constipated...

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found ourselves in a situation where you have a saturday tweet, a series of tweets from the president of the united states making allegations against a former president that are as yet completely unsubstantiated. >> yes, andrea. i will admit i was somewhat looking forward to a relatively quiet saturday morning, and woke up to find that. the pace at which the news, donald trump, his twitter feed, his white house moves is certainly unprecedented, and it's not an exaggeration to say we've not seen anything like the allegations he made, the white house, the formal white house largely silent after those allegations. serious allegations that the former president of the united states, while in office, used the arm, the intelligence community to pursue tapping wire tapping of donald trump's presidential campaign -- i mean these are the things on which you add gate to the end of if it they're true.

the problem is, everyone who seems to know from director of national intelligence clapper to james comey to lots and lots of great reporters suggest that it's not true, which makes it, you ow, a very dangerous claim, frankly. this is the sort of thing that erodes significant confidence in how government operates and should operate. >> do you think that this is a distraction strategy? >> well, i will say this. donald trump held a press conference on february 16th, andrea, that very infamous gsh famous press conference where he lashed out at the media, went on for a very long time, came after some russia allegations. this comes on the heels of jeff sessions acknowledging that he met with two, met twice excuse me with the russian ambassador. so you know, coincidence doesn't necessarily mean yes that's what's causing these things but it is i think worth noting at

this point the coincidence at least of timing in that regard. >> chris cillizza, thank you so much. >> thank you. coming up more on all of this with ned price, former cia analyst, who also served as the national security council spokesman in the obama white house. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. american express open cards can help you take on a new job, or fill a big order or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. find out how american express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open.com. more "doing chores for dad" per roll find out how american express cards and services

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with the kohl back. president trump's tweet storm saturday morning accusing president obama of tapping his phones without providing any evidence is raising a lot of questions about what does it take to execute a wire tap or eav eavesdropping? joining me is ned price, national security council spokesman in the obama white house. thank you very much for joining us. >> good to be here. >> am i correct that at the very least a fisa judge in the case of someone like the candidate or the president-elect trump, a fisa judge would have to have issued a warrant to approve something this extraordinary. >> well, andrea, let me start by stipulating as someone who worked in the obama white house, i wouldn't be in a position to know whether the president's tweets had any truth to them. >> sure. >> there are two people who would know, one is director clapper who clearly stated on

national television they weren't true and director comey who made the same point. suspend disbelief and give the president's tweet some credibility just for a thought experiment. if he were indeed under surveillance i judge of the fisc could have been presented with evidence by the department of justice, that president trump or someone in his orsit was acting as an agent of a foreign power. alternatively the department of justice could have presented an article three court with evidence suggesting that president trump or someone in his network was engaged in criminal activity. either way it's something that would certainly not be a welcome development. >> so by suggesting this on twitter, if such a warrant had been approved, either by the special fisa judge o another judge, that would mean that a judge, a federal court judge, had decided there was probable cause of either criminal activity or that somebody in that circle was acting as a

foreign agent? >> that's exactly right and it's worth underscoring that this is not something that the president of the united states could himself order. this is a post watergate reform that ensures that these applications that are ultimately presented by professionals within the department of justice are based on information either from the law enforcement or intelligence community or sometimes both. there is absolutely no political interference in this process for a very good reason, and we saw that reason during the watergate scand scandal. >> to give president trump his tu is it possible something was done illegally and ordered by the president and breaking all of these post watergate reforms at the tail end of his administration? >> no. >> not by any stretch of the imagination? >> no. >> what is the impact of this? >> it does a couple things. i think it clearly diminishes the reputation of the oval office. this is the president of the united states, and everything

that he says, whether it's on twitter, whether it's in person, whether it's behind closed doors, should carry the full authority of the united states government, and reflect his capacity of as commander in chief, and i don't think this twitter tirade on saturday, and let's not forget it was quickly followed by a shot at arnold schwarzenegger, i don't think that is befitting of the presidents of the united states in america. it in some ways makes us a laughing stock. the russian government, which we know aided the trump campaign during the 2016 election, is probably looking on fleefullygls they watch the issues. not in our wildest dreams did we think we would be in this position today some 45 days into the trump administration. >> speaking of twitter there was a roger stone tweet on saturday i believe, which revived his claim that he had been in conversation or connected in some way with julian assange on wikileaks. that was then led. >> that's exactly right.

think we have to ask ourselves why it is that presint trump made these claims saturday morning, and as one of our previous guests said this certainly follows a pot tern where we see negative news stories followed by outrageous and baseless claims from the president himself, and i think there is certainly an argument to be made that the tweet on saturday was to distract from the gathering plume of smoke connecting this administration to the russian government, and just hours after the president tweeted this on saturday morning one of his close advisers as you said, roger stone, tweeted and then deleted the fact that during the 2016 campaign, he had a back channel with julian assange in wikileaks and we know from the declassified intelligence community report of january of this year that wikileaks served as a cutout for russian intelligence during the 2016 election. this is a startling development and just the latest in a series of data points connecting this administration in yet unexplained ways to the russian government. >> why did you resign from the

cia? >> look, i was an analyst with the intelligence community, and i had served there for about 11 years, including the past few in the white house. this is an administration that did not seem to give any due deference or regard to unbiased, unvarnished intelligence assessments and that's really the bread and but theer of analysts with the central intelligence agency or any other member of the intelligence community. i thought i could continue to hold my job as an analyst and accrue a healthy government paycheck at the expense of american taxpayers or find another way to serve the american people outside of government, and ultimately i decided to take the latter course. >> ned price, thank you very much. thanks for being with us today. >> thank you. and much more ahead. we'll be right back. choose. with beyond, you have a natural pet food that goes beyond telling ingredients to showing where they come from. beyond assuming the source is safe... to knowing it is.

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and for those of you wondering why white house correspondent kristen welker isn't front and center in our reporting on all of these weekend explosive charges from the president, kristen and her new husband john hughes were married this weekend in our hem town of philadelphia. it was a tribute to both of them that this is a relationship that survived the 2016 campaign travel, which means they are now guaranteed a lifetime of happiness. that does it for us. best wishes to all. this is a very busy edition but a little happy news never hurts. tomorrow on the show former cia director and national security adviser michael hayden and the latest on the marine corps investigation into sexual abuse. follow us on facebook and

twitcher. kate e y tur is up next. >> back to the news this afternoon. good afternoon, i'm filling in for craig melvin. lots of stories we're following. travel ban take two. the trump administration rolls out a revised version of its controversial executive order on immigration. will it withstand legal scrutiny? factor fiction, the trump administration doubling down on claims that president obama wire tapped trump tower during the election but is there any evidence? and nude photo scandal, the pentagon investigating disturbing allegations that hundreds of marines distributed nude photos of female colleagues on a social media network. let's start with the new travel ban and specifically what is missing. today's announcement by the secretary of state, secretary of homeland security, and attorney general revokes the old ban and a far cry from the attention the