announcer: get on your feet for the nastiest bull in the state of texas. ♪ ♪ hello everyone. i'm gigi stone woods. a very busy saturday. we start with some breaking news at the white house. involving the u.s. attorneys who

were asked to resign late yesterday. we now know the fate of one of those federal prosecutors and for more or less let's go to kelly o'donnell what are we hearing? >> reporter: this is a development that has to do with the widespread dismissal of u.s. attorneys from around the country. they are political appointees and one of the most prominent from the southern district of new york preet ba hara has just tweeted that he did not resign. he was fired. that district in new york has some of the most high profile cases and he's a very prominent individual and back in november had said the president intended to keep him in his position. now what this means is that political appointees when a new administration comes to town typically do move on about half of the u.s. attorneys have in fact done so, those appointed by president obama, but 46 remained and late yesterday the justice department asked that all of them submit their resignations

and then career prosecutors who work inside the justice department would continue the cases that they have, that were coming from jeff sessions the attorney general but in this case preet burglar burglar decid -- he did not want to resign. apparently resulted in his firing today. i've reached out to the white house and the department of justice. neither is commenting specifically on the case of bahara which is a prominent attorney in new york. part of the change and opposition. new u.s. attorneys to be nominated and confirmed by the senate naen place before those who are in the positions currently or had been under the obama years leave their job. so it could have been done in a way that had kind of a handoff. this much more abrupt. certainly within the rights of the trump administration but it suggested a kind of -- a rollout of a policy idea that appeared

bumpy and raised questions about why now and why so sweeping when in many of these jurisdictions there are ongoing cases that will now have to be handled by career prosecutors who are not appointed by the president or any administration. >> do we think the story is particularly significant because this is the area he covers in new york. >> reporter: i'm in no position to guess about the areas where this u.s. attorney was working. we don't have any reports or credible evidence that there's any investigation going on. so that is something that's being talked about but that's not something that we're reporting here. he is prominent. he handles big cases and in new york you also have a lot of corruption or terrorism related cases that tend to go through that court so that's what made him high profile and being new york there's always a bigger light shining on some of the officials there and that's why this stands out so much. >> that raises a lot of

questions. thank you. earlier today, vice president mike pence hitting the road. we're going to talk about the art of the deal. in louisville kentucky, the white house began selling the republican plan to replace obamacare. listen. >> the obamacare nightmare is about to end. obamacare has failed the people of kentucky. it's failed the people of america and obamacare must go. how republicans unveiled their plan monday among other things, it drops the employer and individual mandates, adds tax credits in place of certain subsidies and freezes obama's medicare expansion. greg fisher released a statement. he called on the white house and congress to slow down and get it right. live in louisville with more on the president's speech. what happened? >> reporter: so gigi vice president mike pence urging small business owners in

louisville we're talking a local florist, tanning salon, poppa john urging them to support him in repealing and replacing obamacare here in kentucky and to get behind what some are calling trump care. the vice president detailing what in his views are the flaws of obamacare in a speech in this facility behind me today. let's listen to a part of it. >> kentucky is a textbook example of obamacare's failures. premiums skyrocketed. next year humana headquartered right here in louisville is pulling out of kentucky's obamacare exchange. >> reporter: some representatives from humana were in attendance at the event. we spoke to some of them and they said they agreed with mike pence. obamacare has become too expensive for insurance

companies. however they said that the new program success will depend on the numbers and we don't have that information yet. interestingly, it was really president trump who was supposed to come to louisville today. those were the rum blingz earlier in the week. instead he sends in mike pence who has become the administration's point person in selling this plan. this was mike pence's third visit of this kind in a month across the country. the others in ohio and wisconsin. here in kentucky it is a hard sell. we saw hundreds of protesterers outside this event today saying they are happy with obamacare and they want to keep it. remember that kentucky's health care exchange kynect was considered one of the success stories and it cut the states uninsured population by more than half. >> symbolically interesting state to try to sell this plan.

thanks for joining us. and the white house today facing new questions about when the president's team knew of former national security adviser mike flynn's lobbying on the behalf of the turkish government. he was attending secret intelligence briefings while being paid for the lobbying activities. sean spicer defended the trump's administration handling of the matter. joining me to discuss this media report from politico is our panel. thanks for joining us. >> the focus right now is on two phone calls, flynn's attorneys allegedly made to the incoming white house legal team what do we know? >> whether or not the white house and the campaign the trump campaign before it knew that mr. flynn was doing this work on behalf of the turkish government. at first they basically sort of stonewalled and said we don't

know, talk to flynn. we weren't aware of his activities. now we're hearing that, in fact, there was a phone call placed to the trump's operation both before the campaign and after the campaign to that campaign council to let them know of this work. so there was some evidence that flynn did actually reach out to try to alert everyone about the fact that he was working on behalf of this government. on the other hand, the question remains, why would he then be part of even the discussion about whether or not to go forward in a role like the one he got when he was being paid and influenced by another country, one turkey which obviously we are is in a political crisis at the moment, not considered friendly to the united states and yet would influence his view on what is going on with that country as he is speaking with the president-elect and later the president. that remains a fact even if he did -- we now know he did go ahead and take the steps to alert them about the fact that

he had been considering registering as a foreign agent. >> if we know at least two people in the white house knew about flynn's dealings, presumably it's possible, mike pence himself even knew even though says that he didn't. why would the white house go ahead and decide to appoint flynn for such an important position? >> this white house makes a lot of strang personnel decisions. we've seen with a number of appointments that the white house -- donald trump has somebody that he wants and they choose the person and then later a problem may arise that they should have known about in advance but they didn't. you had this nominees for the secretary of army and secretary of the navy. they had to withdraw those names. they were not suitable ways to resolve financial conflicts of interest. you had a labor secretary who was taken down. right after donald trump won the election, he fired chris christie who was running his transition, put nem weeks behind in the staffing process and even now we're seeing all sort of infighting and the white house

knocks the names down often for no reason. it's part of a broader pattern that this white house is not good at personnel matters and some who had a conflict like this was going to be both stan actively could be put in the position any way. >> when they decided to let flynn go, although this does affirm their decision to let him go. i want to ask you about the new news about the u.s. attorneys and preet bahara's latest updates about his firing. >> for those of us who were in new york and very familiar with preet and he's somebody that trump knows well, we also know that preet bahara had been with trump during the transition, assured he was going to keep his job so this comes obviously as a bit of surprise. the u.s. attorneys were asked to resign yesterday. he let it be known that he did not plan to be resigned.

he would have to be fired. we now learned that that's exactly what happened. he's involved in several very high profile cases here in new york. he's doing investigation into fox news. he's investigating associates of governor andrew cuomo, the political campaign of bill deblazzio. he's very plugged into a lot of high profile things in new york. it takes on a bit more intrigue than perhaps some of the rest of these firings. >> it really does beg a lot of questions there. does the speed at which this decision raise any flags for you? >> well, a lot of sources in the department of justice and elsewhere have been speaking to the media and saying that this does raise flags with how quickly it happened. there have been reports that some of these attorneys didn't even get the phone calls themselves. they read about it in the media before they got the phone calls notifying them to resign hine quickly it's all going through. it's natural for administration's too switch over these attorneys but usually from

what i understand it's done over a longer period of time so the impression that this is giving at least politically is that they're completely wiping out these people and putting in new ones without the sort of natural and slightly slower transition between two types of administrations. >> so what do we make of the rush? in previous administrations they've given the u.s. attorneys a little bit of time to train their deputies and create new contacts unroll some of the work they've been doing. why did it have to be so immediate? >> well, i don't have any specific reporting back that, however, there has been a lot of concerns coming straight from the president and others in the administration about these obama holdovers and a lot of their supporters, if you look at some of the right wing media, these deep state people. these are people that some in the administration believe are leaking to the media and are some sort of way working against their goals, the trump administration goals. now a lot of these, yes, they were politically appointed but

they are professionals so that might have something to do with it. this is all happened very quickly, i'm sure we'll hear more about why they decided to do it in this matter. >> we know sean hannity was calling to get rid of some of these u.s. attorneys and asking trump to, where do you think the information got their advice on doing this? >> i think broadly the administration has been expressing great frustration with the idea that the bureaucracy and the people that remained in the administration from the obama administration are acting against their agenda and frankly they're not always wrong about that. i think a lot of the leaking we're seeing from the white house is coming from trump's own top aids but i think there is a lot of leaking that is coming from career bureaucrats and people who are obama administration holdovers. it is normal for an administration to want its own political appointees pursuing their agenda in the justice department and they don't always take their time replacing the u.s. attorneys. bill clinton fired them very rapidly similarly to this. the only thing that i think is

weird about this is that trump had asked preet to stay on already. it's not normal to ask them to stay and then change your mind. he's a close associate of new york senator chuck schumer because it is such a powerful u.s. attorney shift, you would normally expect the president to want their own political ally in that position. trump makes a lot of these decisions impulse civil. >> we want to turn to the phone. on the phone with me now is nbc news investigative reporter tom winter. tom, what do you know about the recent news about preet bahara? >> i think -- just to take a quick step back on this. it is completely normal for a new administration to ask for u.s. attorneys to step down and for them to put in u.s. attorneys of the various districts around the country that they want to appoint and

that they want to install, so that's completely normal. as a matter of fact, a number of u.s. attorneys had already departed. many others had planned on resigning. yesterday's announcement came as a surprise in just how quickly the trump administration wanted some of these u.s. attorneys to leave and the bigger surprise was the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, preet bahara because as you were just discussing, he met with the trump administration, this is going back several months ago and actually met with the president at trump tower when he was then president-elect. after that meeting, preet came out and spoke to reporters and said, we've had a good discussion and i've agreed to stay on. so it had just been assumed that bahara was going to be appointed and stay on. the southern district of new york is a district that is

largely unlike nearly any other. it's a district that handles the vast majority of wall street cases. it's a district that handles very many high profile terror cases. this is an office and a prosecutor who was investigating the mayor of new york city, the governor of new york and like i said many high profile cases. it was a surprise to all, bahara told his office and told his staff this morning we're now told that he wasn't going to resign. he had no plans on leaving and was going to be at the office on monday morning. that was what law enforcement officials had been briefed on and had been told in multiple sources both in law enforcement and out of law enforcement confirmed that information to us throughout the day. and then as you know and as you've been reporting, preet bahara tweeted that he had been fired for refusing to fire.

a bit of a surprise as to how all this went down. not a surprise that the trump administration wants to put in its own u.s. attorneys. that's something that happened with nearly every changeover in administrations. just a bit of a surprise on how today happened in somebody who believed was staying around is out. >> and he was clearly surprised himself, so high profile district, close relationship with senator schumer, what do you make of what tom winter just told us? >> that it was a surprise and it was a surprise to preet and it will be fascinating to find out the reasons why the decision -- how the decision was made. yes, he was one of 46 but he was unique in the role that he plays and the role that he has and the high level cases that he handles. there was clearly an effort to oust him that was more aggressive than simply waiting it out and hoping he would resign on his own. >> and investigating a lot of high profile wall street cases, some of donald trump's business

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we are following breaking developments involving the firing of 46 u.s. attorneys. preet bhara the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york has been fired from his post. preet bhara tweeting moments ago. i did not resign. moments ago i was fired. being the u.s. attorney in the southern district of new york will forever be the greatest honor of my professional life. joining me now is liz smith a democratic strategist and robert train yum and former bush senior adviser. thanks for joining us. liz, you know new york well and you know bhara well and his business dealings in this area

looking into wall street, deblasio, the mayor of new york city and other high profile cases. what do you make of his firing? do you think this was politically motivated? >> of course. it was -- look, let's establish up front that the president is common for the president to sort of shuttle out the past administration's political appointees, but the way that this was done was certainly unconventional and especially after donald trump and preet bhara that he was going to stay on as u.s. attorney and he has earned of the title the most feared in u.s. politics for a reason. couple years ago i'm going to go after the three men in the room, the speaker of the house and the governor so he's someone that really struck a bipartisan tone and earned respect from both sides of the aisle because he was equally opportunity in who he went out both democrats and republicans and really was seen as a good government

anticorruption guy. total rock star. so it's a shocking turn of events but i think it could be a good launching pad for him. >> of course he has the same backyard at donald trump himself. what do you know about the history of their relationship, if anything? >> honestly, i don't. i don't know much about their personal relationship. but it was telling that they had that early -- that meeting early on. and historical footnote here in when nixon became president, he tried to do a similar thing with robert morgan thaw who was the attorney. he refused to resign and nixon had to fire him. that sort of served as a launching pad for morgan thaw to be one of the greats and served as decades as a d.a. in new york. >> i want to bring in robert

because this is not unusual as we have discussed. other past administrations have punched u.s. attorneys and some have done so very quickly as in the clinton administration. so what do you think is so remarkable here? >> i think what's remarkable is that it appears that bhara actually met with the president-elect and it appeared they had a personal maybe hand shake that he would stay on, so something happened. either the president made a very snap decision over the last 24 to 48 hours or perhaps bhara did something behind the scenes that really tripped up the preds and that's okay because, again, these are political appointees. what's not okay is the process in terms of how it was done. that's where i think a lot of people are scratching their heads. usually it's the president will very respectively for you to resign on january 20th. a lot of people say, of course

that's the president prerogative. i serve at the will of him for it to be done so publicly and almost vin dic actively, that tells me there's another story here so i think the other shoe is about to drop and we'll see what that is. >> so what happens now? he's sort of this mythical figure in the southern district of new york. where do we go from here? with all of these high profile cases he's worked on, investigating the mayor of the city, potentially the governor, a lot of high profile wall street cases, insider trading cases which he has made his name for. what's going to happen? how is this going to unfold? >> is that a question for me? >> sure, robtd. tell me what you think and i'll go to you liz. >> what i believe is going to happen is the attorney general will have to make some recommendations as to whether or not -- i'm not an attorney, either he'll have to recommend those cases are closed if, in fact, there's no type of ongoing

investigation but i would suspect that if if the case is wide open, an investigations have already happened, that those cases at least need to be reappointed or reopened rather with a new appointee. i assume that. now the question then becomes what does bhara do here and i suspect he's doing to go to the press or write a book or write a column or do something to make his side of the case public in some way shape or form unless he has political aspirations on his own which i would not be surpd for. maybe he primaries mayor deblasio. there's some rumor about hillary clinton. perhaps maybe he runs for another office. we shall see. >> waiting for the other shoe to drop. democratic strategist liz smith and robert trainium thank you both for joining us. on the phone with me now is msnbc's chief legal correspondent ari melber.

what can you tell us about these latest developments? we've been talking about preet bhara and all of the important cases and work he has done. what do we make about this very political firing and what's turning into a sort of public feud? >> this is a significant development without question. for starters let's state the law, the president has the authority to hire and fire u.s. attorneys. so he is within his legal rights. having said that there are several things that make this more significant. number one, then president-elect trump met with u.s. attorney during the transition, itself somewhat unusual and seemed to relay reportedly that he wanted him to stay on. number two, this is not just any office, this is the prosecutorial office of new york which means it could theoretically being involved in decisions regarding any potential federal crimes that occur in new york which includes obviously trump tower which is

reportedly the subject of some ininquiries on going regarding russian connections. noub three, this is a highly involved office in a lot of other political cases including the investigations of members of both parties in the state of new york. so of all the different places in the country for there to be a dispute or hot controversy over a prosecutors tenure this is one of the hottest. >> so is there possibly a conspiracy theory here? do you agree with robert who is basically saying bhara is going to come out with more information about all of this and it is expected to be intriguing. do you think bhara will write a book? >> he has distinguished himself for being very aggressive both legally and publicly in terms of his approach to cases including

explicitly a lot of corruption cases which relate to politics. we know that he very recently started an online social media account on march 3rd. he is not like other politicians or senators who would typically have those. he's more limited in what he can say but he did start that recently this month which suggests some potential awareness a change in his public profile. he is not considered press shy. he has done some interviews in print and television particularly when he wants to tell certain stories. he did an exclusive with us here at msnbc two years ago when he wanted to make the case against democratic senate leader that he had indicted on corruption charges. he was very aggressive, well within his rights to make his case but aggressive about using public for yums to do that. if the question -- is this the last we've heard from preet bhara? i think the answer is definitely not and that separate from

whether he has sprit job plans or political plans within his rights there's certain things former prosecutors still can't say but there's plenty he could say if he wanted to. we're dealing with an unusual president. many supporters of the president thinks that esa good thing. it was unusual for the president before he even moved forward with his attorney general nominee to do that meeting and he clearly said things that according to preet bhara are no longer true, in other words, president-elect trump wrote a check he couldn't cash if he said he was going to keep on this proper, made a show of it and now removed him. i want to reiterate what i said at the top, even if that looks unusual, it is still well within the president's lawful authority. >> we will be following this closely. thanks for your input. chief legal correspondent ari melber. we will continue to follow these developments but after this break we're going to take a closer look into wikileaks and

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welcome back to msnbc. a massive manhunt is now underway of the cia as the intelligence community combs for what is responsible in what is fast becoming one of the largest u.s. leaks in history are. wikileaks made a bomb shell releasing nearly 9,000 pages containing cia's arsenal. there are potentially more revelations to come. claiming the documents released makeup just 1% of what they've been able to steal from the cia. so today new questions on that breach and what, if any, role russia may have played in all of

this. >> the timing is relevant because this scandal didn't just drop from the clear blue skies. the intelligence community has been pushing back on russian interference in our election and many people inside the intelligence community believe this may be russia's revehicle. its effort to basically embarrass the intelligence community just when they're calling russia on the carpet. >> joining us for more on all of this is chris samson for the terror asymmetric project and the coauthor of "hacking isis." could wikileaks given people a blue print to get into people's homes? >> they haven't given them the blue print but what they did is leak a knowledge base which is a wick can i pedia style form that goes into this exploits. we have a list of vulnerabilities that are for

cell phones and for smart tvs and for networks and for operating systems. what it will allow them to do is see the way in which the organization approaches those vulnerabilities. >> it does not have a leak in the code itself. >> assange is such a polarizing figure. what does this mean for u.s. intelligence to have this information come out? >> it shows the way in which they're looking at the gadgets that you and i would use but i want to makeup a little bit and look at the timing in which these leaks came out. we were talking about whether or not the united states president was wiretapped by his predecessor and two days later we were not talking about that the same way. we were then talking about the arsenal of the cia. this is the same pattern we've seen for the last several months when it comes to these leaks. next thing is we have to say, did we really just learn all of the skills of the cia?

that's what wikileaks has said. i don't know if we've seen the entire hacking arsenal of the cia because if this was it, then that's really not enough to scare me. these are areas that basically cyber industry people would already be looking at. we already look to see what are the vulnerabilities of phones, gadgets, operating systems in a way this is a scare tactic. this is a way to make sure the people are riled up. >> and a way to change the subject. >> indeed. >> contractor was spreading the docs around on line. is this hacking and selling of hacking tools routine? is this a unique instance? >> there are three ways in which we can look at this. was it an employee, a contractor or a partner? very unlikely that it was a partner, which would mean germany intelligence, british intelligence or other firms. the second would be the employees. i don't really believe that based on what has been released and what we can can see written

by wikileaks that we're looking at an employee in the agency. i think instead we are looking at the various contractors. in the last couple years we have not only edward snowed den and the releases in 2013 but we also have the releases last year that came out that were being referenced by a group that was called the shadow brokers and they were basically peddling exploits that they say came from the agency on the dark web. the leak that came out in the middle of last year -- it wasn't really a leak -- it was a case with harold martin the third i believe does not resemble the case of edward snowden and we have no evidence that the information he had is what we're looking at now. if anything we're looking at the shadow brokers leak which was a bunch of tools that came out of the tao group or tailored access operations group which is run out of ft. mead.

it's a knowledge base, not the actual tools. >> certainly troubling. new revelations and the timing is questionable. chris samson from the terror project. thank you for joining us and giving you your insight. >> thank you for your time. >> we're going to go back to the breaking news involving u.s. attorney preet bhara. he was fired today after attorney general jeff sessions asked 46 federal prosecutors to tender their letter of resignation late yesterday. joining me on the phone now is jonathan deents. he's the chief executive reporter for w nbc tv here in new york. you know new york like the back of your hand. you've broken a lot of stories here. what happened in this case in your estimation? >> i think the u.s. attorney preet bhara thought that he had an offer and a deal with donald trump and attorney general sessions after the election that he would be kept on donald trump appraised the work that he had done in terms of fighting corruption and exposing the corruption both in politics and

on wall street and that he was expecting to stay on and then i believe he was caught off guard on friday, yesterday when he was received the call asking for his resignation along with the other u.s. attorneys and he was surprised and he thought he might be able to get through this weekend speaking to the trump white house and doj that he would be able to stay on and that did not take place and so he did not submit the letter of resignation and so the department of justice today fired him and he announced that on twitter this afternoon, that he is not resigning, that he was going to stay on and the department of justice fired him. >> it was a surprise to everyone and preet bhara himself. was there any indication from president trump or attorney general jeff sessions in the past few days that this was coming? >> there was no indication that this was coming, but if you look at the some of the politics that is going on, you have to remember preet bhara served in

the senate as a council to the senate committee under senator schumer, senator schumer's been extremely critical of donald trump so perhaps as some of the tension has increased over the past few weeks between the democrats and the trump white house that perhaps there's been some suspicion or decision that we just want our own guys in the various u.s. attorneys office which is the right of every president to appoint who they want, but again, this firing does come as a surprise because it appeared that a deal was reached after the election that mr. trump was going to keep preet bhara in his place. remember, the u.s. attorney's office in the southern district has been extremely aggressive if we use the trump language of draining the swamp. that office has prosecuted democrats and republicans for

corruption across new york and beyond and they have been quite aggressive in holding political leaders to honest government, so that was one of the bhara's claim to fame so under that background or that backdrop it was expected that after trump said he was going to keep him on that that deal would have been kept obviously something changed over the last fee weeks and preet bhara today is out. >> trump himself he is very committed to draining the swamp. do you feel like this is an attack specifically on preet bhara or is this part of a bigger plan here? >> i'm an outsider looking in. it appears to me that this is donald trump and jeff sessions deciding that they want to put their own people in place in these u.s. attorney's offices across the country. we've seen this done in the past with other presidents. they asked for their resignations. what is most surprising is the

lack of warning, the lack of heads up to all of these offices that, for example, we were told that paul fisher u.s. attorney in new jersey was literally in the air traveling when he got the message that he was asked to resign and his office along with the eastern district of new york, they put out statements accepting their resignation but bhara dug in his heels thinking that he could work something out with the white house given the deal that they had reached earlier. he was hoping that something could be worked out over this weekend. apparently that was not in the cards and so he decided that, i'm not going to resign. if they want to get rid of me, they can fire me and that's exactly what they did. >> i think what's most interesting here is bhara's high profile cases. and there are some other things that he's looking in to that will have far reaching implications like bill deblasio.

what is going to happen to his cases? >> those cases will go forward at deputy june kim will continue to lead that office. you're right. it was the leadership of preet bhara in that office where he went after corruption where he saw. you saw the assembly speaker democratic sheldon silver indicted. you saw the republicans head of the senate in new york indicted. you saw him go after the multiple insider trading cases in new york. he is currently heading up the fund-raising investigation at city hall in the new york as well as the anthony weiner whether he sexted inappropriately with a minor, that investigation is ongoing. so there are numerous high profile cases he and his office stepped forward and took on. we expect those will continue and we wait to hear from preet. he did put out a tweet today announcing that he had been fired but we've not heard from

him. perhaps he will step forward and speak in the next 24-48 hours to answer some questions or provide additional clarity as to what happened here. >> clarity would be helpful and a lot of significant legal cases hanging in the balance. chief investigative reporter for wnbc here in new york. thank you for that information. we will have much more on preet bhara's firing throughout the day but next, february's strong jobs report. how much credit should president trump get for that and what is the report mean for interest rates ahead of the feds meaning this up coming week. stephanie gosk will be with you on the next hour. she'll have much more on the immigration ban which is set to take effect five days from now. stay with us.

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welcome back to msnbc. the first full month employment figures of the trump administration were stronger than expected. the economy adding 235,000 jobs

last month an employment fell to 4.7%. the president celebrated the numbers but he of course called previously data that was similar phoney so joining us now to talk about this is peter marysesy of the maryland business school and gerald bernstein. so dnc chair tom perez released this statement. trump inherited an economy from barack obama with the longest streak of private sector job growth in history. so do we think jared that he has a point? >> thomas perez has a point and you really can't assign this jobs report to anything trump has done. he hasn't really legislated anything yet. let's be clear, every president takes credit for a good jobs report and tries to say it's somebody else fault in it's a bad job report. if donald trump wanted to take credit for an economic indicator. i would say the stock market.

it does have some expectation about job market, no. perez is right. it is on a solid trend of around $200,000 month and that's what we saw in february. >> it's really incredibly early to know as well. here is the president talking about previous jobs report. this is fund. >> don't believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5% unemployment. the numbers probably 28, 29, as high as 35. the worst jobs report in 1/2 years, 38,000 jobs -- it's going to wrong way, folks. 5% figure is one of the biggest hoaxes. >> the end of last week they came out with an anemic jobs report, terrible jobs report. >> so how can he embrace this new report if he thinks they're all phony, peter? >> well, reality -- there was some good news in the jobs report with regard to more

people coming into the labor force and still the unemployment rate falling. people until now sitting on the bench so to speak, neither looking for work nor looking for work were coming into the labor market. how much thof can he take credit for? well, this is one of half obama/half trump jobs report. certainly mr. obama left the economy in a position it continues to grow 2, 2 1/2%. that's good news. he created a lot of optimism that you see in the stock market. that also lets employers be more confident than perhaps more willing to hire. you know, this is an improvement, but it's 23409 a dramatic improvement. he's going to have to do a lot better than this is the bottom line and he has to legislate as jared said if he'll do appreciably better than mr. obama did, 190,000 a month over eight years. to get up around 250, he has to have legislation that makes a difference. we'll see if he can get that done. >> you talked about the labor participation rate growing. how promising a trend is this?

and are we going to possibly see wages growth as well? >> well, wages -- >> sorry. >> wages are growing. wages are growing. the question is whether this increase in the labor force participation will continue. jared? >> yeah, no. it is exactly right. we got a little tiny bit of an acceleration in wages. they were up 2.8% year over year. go back a year, they're growing 2.5%. so that's a little bit of a bump and that's why the federal reserve is talking about a rate hike when they meet next week. so, you know, it's a little hard to say that we shall be pushing the economy harder when you have a federal reserve that's saying, hold on, we're about to tap the brakes. >> jared, do you think this interest rate hike is going to be more than expected? is the economy strong enough to with stand that? how do you see the year playing out? >> it's a good and important question. first of all, it's widely expected. at this point it would be a surprise if they didn't raise the rate and it's only a quarter of a percentage point. that's what everyone expects.

i don't think that's enough of a brake tap to really slow things down. if i were the federal reserve, i would let this jobs market, this jobs market recovery, the wagings continue so people who left behind can make up some lost ground. >> yes and close the income disparity. >> right. >> thanks. thank you both for joining us. we will be right back. >> thank you. [bullfighting music]

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you're watching msnbc. we continue to follow breaking news this hour. federal prosecutor preet bharara says he has been fired after refusing to step down as the u.s. attorney of the southern district of new york. on friday, jeff sessions asked for 40 u.s. attorneys appointed by the obama administration to resign. president trump asked ba rar ra to stay on during a trump tower meeting last november. that is all for me this hour. thanks for joining us.

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call usaa today to talk about your insurance needs. ♪ good afternoon, i'm stephanie gosk at msnbc world headquarters in new york. we start with breaking news. president trump has fired u.s. attorney preet bharara of new york's famed southern district. known as one of the nation's toughest prosecutors, bharara refused to step down after the president ordered 46 of the remaining u.s. attorneys appointed under barack obama to step down on friday. but the context here is very important. back in november, the president personally invited bharara to trump tower and asked him to stay on. bharara accepted. this is bharara after that november meeting -- >> president-elect asked presumably because he's a new yorker and is aware of the great work that our office has done over the past seven years asked me tosc