museum today with students from washington, d.c. and the goal is to highlight the importance of young women pursuing education and careers in science, technology, engineering and math which, of course, missed me. i wasn't close to that stuff. that's a wrap for us. "morning joe" starts right now. they want you to quit the investigation. you're not going to do that. >> i'm sure the democrats do want me to quit because they know i'm quite effective at getting to the bottom -- >> well, let's hope so. >> quite effective at what? finishing a sentence? i don't think so. >> i try and do that every day. growing calls for intel committee chairman devin nunes to recall himself from the russia probe. we'll speak with two democratic members of the committee, jim himes and eric swalwell. >> i don't think republicans are exactly thrilled with this guy's performance. >> i can't imagine. it's really a cluster. >> how obvious was it when he said, oh, i have intel

information? i remember saying on the show, yeah, he got his information from the white house! then he held a press conference and then he went down to the white house so he could hold another press conference and blow this into a huge story. you know why? chances are very good he got his, quote, information from a panicked white house. he played pr rep from trump. >> that was before what we're about to report. >> that was to show you how forward thinking -- that was a tweet from 1967. 1967, right after sergeant pepper came out. i was feeling good that day. i tweeted that. can you believe that, nick? i predicted it? >> i believe it. >> you were humming, too. you never heard them before -- >> these things are not that hard to predict. >> sean spicer was very insulted

the next day. >> why would anybody come to the white house to tell us something that we already knew? because you think we're a lot dumber than we actually are. we're not the dumb ones. that's all i'll say. >> pause. >> you add the next two words there. mika is going to start the show today right now. >> right. >> this first awkward 2:05 brought to you by devin nunes and the stupidity that as epitomized the house intel committee. >> before you start the show, let me ask you a question, how closely does devin nunes in your mind resemble peter sellers in "bean" there? >> i think that's an insulted to the character of chauncey gardner who would say things you could actually read into.

you can't. devin gives you no space. >> i'm trying to wish my dad happy birthday. you think i can do that. >> right now. >> it's tuesday, march 28. that means it's my dad's birthday. he's 89. he's amazing. with us onset, veteran columnist and msnbc contributor mike barnicle. political writer for "the new york times," nicholas, columnist for time meg zen eddy cloud, junior, and in washington columnist and associate editor for "the washington post" david ignatius. >> let's ask a question, mika, that needs to be asked at the top before we get into this news, who decided devin nunes was qualified to be the house intel chair because from everybody i've spoken to who have worked with him, republicans, democrats, they say he is not up to that task. >> he has completely proven

that. so i don't really -- leading up to it, if some people thought he should be chair, that's fine. he became chair, that's fine. he has completely undermined himself. it's proven ten times over, and this isn't us. this is just reality. >> david ignatius, nuke gingrich when he was speaker of the house, a lot of people in the press didn't like newt. they beat the hell out of him. newt gingrich was known as being a really rough and tough part son customer. he would never put somebody -- i can say this as somebody that helped run newt out of the house, he would never put somebody like devin nunes, nuvez, whatever his name is, in as intel chair. i've never seen anything like this before. >> joe, during newt's time, that committee unfortunately was sharply divided, had some tough years. then something amazing happened.

republican mike rogers, ex-fbi agent came in as republican chairman, put there by john boehner, and he made a deal with his democratic ranking member who was dutch rupers berger, a former prosecutor from maryland. they basically said i've got your back. i'm going to make sure we don't get divided and set ourselves up for attack. for the first time in a long while that committee worked. they passed authorization every year. they got important legislation out. they did oversight. i tell you, the country misses people like mike rogers and dutch. i think adam schiff, a lot of the members of that committee are doing an outstanding job. it is splintered, almost shattered after what nunes has done. it's going to be hard for republicans on the committee, fen ooen if they want to do the right thing to operate in a bipartisan way so long as nunes

is there really in effect leading the president's defense. >> that's the question everyone is asking. should congressman devin nunes recuse himself from leading the house russia investigation, as if it's a question. intelligence committee chairman revealed yesterday he was on white house grounds when he received the information behind his charge that trump transition officials were monitored. according to reports, nunes was on his way to an event in washington late tuesday when the evening's plans abruptly changed. after taking a brief phone call, nunes swapped cars and slipped away from his staff. claiming he used the unaccounted for stretch of time to review classified intelligence files brought to his attention by sources he says he will not name. nunes told broom berg view his source was not a white house staffer but an intelligence official. in interviews last night, said he was open about his visit and defended his use of a secure reading compartment known by the

acronym sciff at the white house. >> why not use a skiff up on the house side and the senate side on capitol hill? >> well, that is a very good question. here is the problem. the congress has not been given this information, these documents, and that's the problem. because this is executive branch, it was distributed widely through the executive branch. this was from november, december and january. these rereports -- let me reiterate, this has nothing to do with russia or the russia investigation -- there's no way for the folks i've been working with to bring this forward to light. there was no way i could view that because they couldn't get it to the house intelligence committee. >> i wasn't sneaking on. it wasn't at night. it was in the middle of the -- the sun was out and i actually stopped and talked to several people along the way, many foreign dignitaries, i said hello, had conversations.

nobody was sneaking around. if i really wanted to, i could have snuck onto the grounds late at night and probably nobody would have seen me, but i wasn't trying to hide. >> mika, he wasn't trying to hide because he held a press conference on capitol hill when he was acting as the president's public relations expert and claimed he had information on the hill before he went to the white house and the great lie was, i have this information, i'm going now to the white house to brief the president, and all of trump's supporters were saying where have we gotten to in a world where a house intel chairman can't go talk to the president of the united states? oh, the indignity. then we find out, he's going over there to get the information. it chokes me up. it chokes me up. >> it's not funny. >> i'm not saying it's funny.

prepostero preposterous. >> here is white house press secretary sean spicer last week downplaying the idea that the white house was in any way connected to nunes' claims? >> can you rule out that the white house or anyone in the trump administration gave chairman nunes that information? >> i don't know what he actually briefed the president on. i don't know why he would brief the president on something that we gave him. i'm not aware of it but it doesn't really pass the smell test. >> actually, yes, it does. it does pass the smell test. it smells because he holds the press conference on capitol hill saying i've got these great revelations which he doesn't even have. he gets them at the white house. then he holds another press conference at the white house. >> it's going to be a real problem for the house and investigation and their role in oversight which is solemn and sacred. i think what's going to happen now is the senate investigations will move to center stage and the house investigation is going

to be -- become less credible. >> the house investigation is over. >> it's over. >> eddy, don't you agree? how can you have a house investigation when the american people are lied to, the whole thing set up to make it seem like, i've got this information. i found out one, two, three, four, when he heard it from the white house. he didn't even have the documents which he claimed he was taking down to the white house. then he goes to the white house and they gave him information at the white house. by the way, let me just say, the same information that the white house had been trying to leak to all of us for three weeks. >> ironically after complaining vigorously about leaks. >> about leaks. >> and then saying he was going to reveal the information on friday to his colleagues. that never was revealed. we were already kind of questioning whether or not he could be objective given that he served on the trump transition team. now he's doing the pr work for the trump administration. >> one of the questions that

ought to be answered is who signed him in to the white house? >> and who briefed him? >> you've got to be signed in. you can't just walk onto the grounds of the white house. >> there's a constellation of folks that i think inform what we have, a general environment of a politics that we're engaged in without trust. this is the latest incident. >> that environment, i brought this up with josh earnest yesterday, that environment started on day one when the press secretary held a bogus press briefing. it hasn't gotten better. i don't know if they even understand the seriousness of the cavity, the crack being developed between the white house, the press spokesman who is supposed to be the spokesman for the people and the american people. david ignatius, is sean spicer credible? >> well, we've had some bitter relationships between white

house press secretaries and the press. >> that's fine, but is he credible? >> i don't think he answers questions in a way ha the press corps as a group takes as in any way adequate or responsive. this latest is an example. let me focus for a minute on the nunes white house part of the story. if you take nunes on what he said, he has gone to the white house to meet a source clearly from the intelligence community who is giving him information that the heads of the agencies, the nsa and the fbi decided not to give in their testimony, in their appearance before the committee. in other words, it has not come up through official channels. there's some other group in these agencies that's decided to take most sensitive information, by his account these appear to be intercepts that have been unmagsinged or partially

unmasked and shown him the intercepts in the white house in some sort of secret context. he goes and talks to the president about this evidence, won't share it with the committee. it raises the question about whether there's a group in these agencies that is so convinced that the president is being done wrong, that this is partisan, that they've taken it upon themselves to take action. i think that's an issue people need to pay a little more attention to. >> by the way, david, and then holds a press conference after talking to the president with information that has not been shared with congress. you know what? i think there's a lot of smoke here more so than fire. i think if they had information that was damning to the obama administration, it would be in your newspaper by now. i think they're bluffing. i think they're trying to keep

attention off the main headlines. >> i think this is like a classic trump move, a counterclaim, a countersuit. i think they have evidence that will back up the countersuit. we'll see more of it. they will say there was collection, incidental collection, not illegal, not under those improper -- there's incidental collection that got people in the trump transition team and then it was unmasked and shared. they'll go through a whole list of things and try to make that the issue. >> mike? >> well, david, we keep hearing there's another issue, at least in speaking with members of congress on both sides of the aisle, an umbrella issue hanging over all of this, and it's competence. the competence of this young administration. 65, 66 days into the administration, everything they've touched thus far has had a level of incompetence to it including intel. >> the competence question where

the president, according to these gallup polls, approval le level lowest in memory, last week with the defeat of the health care bill and the seeming decision to go to trump 2.0, you thought maybe people are saying we aren't getting this right, we have to rethink how we do this. there's some evidence of that in a number of areas, some evidence of foreign policy, certainly some evidence in the legislative strategy, but not on this issue of the investigation. >> as you saw, the president's approval rating, another headline this morning, 36%. meanwhile, the senate intelligence committee is planning to question president trump's son-in-law and key adviser jared kushner. he's set to testify as part of an ongoing congressional investigation into possible ties between the trump campaign and russia. the "wall street journal" reports kushner met during the

white house transition with sergei gorokhov, the head of a bank on a sanctions list. the meeting came at the suggestion of sergey kislyak. an official said kushner didn't know the bank was under sanction and wasn't there to discuss business. white house press secretary sean spicer said kushner volunteered to be interviewed. richard burr and mark warner released a joint statement saying in part, from the beginning of this investigation we have committed to follow the facts wherever they lead us. mr. kushner will certainly not be the last person the committee calls to give testimony. so far no date has been set for kushner's appearance. >> as we showed you the latest gallup poll has trump at 36%

approval. 56% disapprove. that's below the all-time lows of barack obama, bill clinton and gerald ford. obama hit his all-time low in 2011, three years into office. back in '11 trump tweet ed obam has a record low. why so high. donald trump has a 36% approval gallup rating. why so high? nick, the numbers are just -- again, considering that this is happening the first two months of the administration, pretty shocking. we've got to remember, ronald reagan was down to 35. in 1982 he was at the low point of his presidency, considered an absolute failure. two years later he wins 49 states and it's morning in america again. so this is not -- >> polls change.

>> polls change. we have no idea -- he could be at 55 two months from now. >> it's true. but to go back to something we talked about after his inauguration, his speech that was aimed at that 36% and just them, i think we're seeing a consequence of this, that if you govern for your base for a third of the country, only a third of the country will support you. the problem is if you try to do complicated things in congress liking tax reform that require you to have some political capital and some strength and some ability to bully if you have to, it's hard to do that if you're a third of the country. it's very hard to do. >> certainly his attacks on the press, on the courts, his attacks on just about everybody, yes, it plays to his, quote, base. his base is 35%, 36%. there are about 10% of americans who voted for him because he is not hillary clinton. his base is 35%, 36%.

that's what he's boiled down to because he has simply refused to listen to everybody that has told him you need to reach out and be more inclusive. >> what's interesting about that poll data, when you drill down, you see 11% decrease in support among independent voters. white voters are dropping under 50%. when you look at white voters without a college degree, it fell from 48% to 42%. he's losing ground in areas he can't lose ground. >> one of the great misread dings, and i've said it all along, so it's not like i'm looking at this poll and saying this. one of the great misreadings, barn kuala lumpur, of donald trump's victory is that this represents a new moment in american political history. and the undervaluing constantly. we do this all the time. we look at the last poll result and say this is where america is, yea, america.

hillary clinton's ridiculously bad presidential campaign never gets factored into the equation when people are putting on sackcloth and ashes and talking about how horrible america is. this is trump's base, 35, 36%. again, about 10% of the people said, okay, trump lies and he's corrupt. hillary lies and he's corrupt. yes voted for them before and we think she's corrupt and we think they've made $200 million cashing in on access. let's try this other guy. he may be crazy as hell, but he's not a bush or a clinton. so let's try this. people have so discounted that including, and especially --

>> the press. >> -- the press, the president and our favorite player of the week, steve bannon. oh, they're going to want me to be vladimir lennon and tear down the government because 65% of americans are against us. what idiots. >> joe, every four or eight years when this country votes for president of the united states, they're accorded some sense of genius by the media. james carville and paul begala, they were geniuses. >> they were geniuses for about two months. everybody said get the idiots out of the white house. of course, they're not idiots. you're never as smart as people say you are. you're never as dumb as people say you are. >> like a baseball team, that's exactly right. >> the larger point here, back to competence, this is a very

young administration, i don't want to embroider what's going on here with 67 days into this presidency. a lot can change. a lot has already happened. on the 100th day of his presidency, i believe it's april 28th, the congress is either going to default on the nation's debtor go forward as we've been going forward. >> by the way, anybody who thinks it gets easier -- >> what's going to happen here, this is going to be a turning point. trump is going to find out once again he's not going to have the votes of republicans to do this, i refuse to raise the debt limit to $4 trillion back in '95, '96. i'm not knocking them. he's going to have to deal with democrats. if he wants to get his 36 to 56, he's going to have to fire steve bannon and anybody else who calls themselves a lennonist who wants to destroy the american republic and government and start working with republicans

and democrats and doing what 78% of americans told nbc news a couple weeks ago they want their leaders to compromise and work with the other side and make washington work again. >> not only that, given who he is, given who you know who he is and who he has always been his entire life -- >> personally a charming guy. >> absolutely. >> and you have to know because of his background, because of his nature, he's sitting there today alone, isolated, knowing that what he needs is a win. >> he needs a win and he has people around him that don't know how to deliver that win. he loves tom brady and he loves the patriots. maybe this will help him understand. he is tom brady playing on a lousy team with the worst coaches in football. and even tom brady can't win a football game when you've got the lousiest coaches on the football game. >> unless you deflate the balls.

>> it's fourth and 17. >> maybe you cheat. >> that's what he's got right now. we'll see what happens. but it's pretty simple. get rid of steve bannon. find somebody who actually knows what's happening on capitol hill. >> try not to lie. >> stop tweeting which even his supporters want him to stop tweeting. pass a tax reform bill with the help of democrats and pass an infrastructure bill and take a deep breath and look back and see your 36% is suddenly 45% and you're not the laughing stock of the world. >> okay. on that note, still ahead on "morning joe," more on whether devin nunes should lose his top spot -- >> why are we still asking this question? we answered that. >> people actually are asking that. >> another poll, should we put our hands on hot stoves? you can answer that along with the de vin nunes.

>> republican congressman raul labrador who went head-to-head over health care. also coming up, ann romney is onset. we first go to bill karins -- >> at least 10% of the people would put their hands on the stove. >> i do. >> listen, when are we going to get good weather in the northeast? >> wednesday. >> is it going to last? >> no. but wednesday will be nice. we're headed into april showers at the end of march. severe weather is the big story. yesterday we tracked the severe storms into mississippi, tennessee and kentucky. this is ashland, mississippi. that was enough to knock the windshield and cause a lot of damage to a lot of cars there. look at the dent in the roof. today it's going to be similar. we'll see a lot of big hail and wind. we're adding in the tornado threat. that's what's different the next two days and we're returning to oklahoma and texas.

this is the heart of the severe weather area. areas most at risk today, 14 million people, and then into wednesday we shift this into areas of the mississippi river valley, little rock, shreveport, alexandria, shreveport all at risk. the next two days are the most dangerous ones when we add in the tornado threat. even into thursday, the storm system will linger into the southeast. it's a dreary morning from boston to new york all the way down through areas of the mid atlantic. it will clear out later this afternoon. as i mentioned, we'll have a beautiful wednesday for a lot of the people in the east that have been waiting for a beautiful sunny warm day. washington, d.c., you're warm but showers throughout the day today. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. knowing where you stand. it's never been easier. except when it comes to your retirement plan. but at fidelity, we're making retirement planning clearer.

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the president has made really good poimtds, acted

decisively on areas that are very important, particularly on the regulatory side. he hasn't shifted to being president in the way that people are used to, and i think that's the problem the strength is he's acted in a good way and lifted spirits in the terms of economic growth. he's a distraction by creating all these through twitter and other -- >> should he stop tweeting? >> he should stop saying things that aren't true, that are distractions from the task at hand. >> he's got a lot of work to do. and some of these things, the wiretapping and all this stuff is a complete distraction and makes it harder to accomplish the things i know he wants to do. i hope he learns it's one thing to do it as a candidate where you're garnering huge following on twitter and people go to massive rallies where people

clearly love him. the other thing is when you're the president, your words have consequences that go way beyond that. >> after the big loss on health care, the president turns to tax reform where he says his heart truly was, and now a new report suggests he may try to do that at the same time as infrastructure t. "washington post," eugene robinson and weekly standards bill kristol join the conversation. >> smile, bill. >> coming up. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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first. i think we have an opportunity to marry that together with infrastructure, in essence in one big reform package. i think we may have a real opportunity. >> i think it's easier to send to a bipartisan coalition -- >> every bod si for pork, charlie. >> i understand. >> we sent so many signals that maybe a police we could work together is on the issue of infrastructure. >> the first thing they ought to do is open up the whole issue of infrastructu infrastructure. you can get at least half of the democratic party to work with you to pass an infrastructure

bill, start to build a trul majority bigger than the republican majority. >> a wide range of voices yesterday calling for infrastructure to be front and center of the agenda. jonathan swan reports the white house is considering doing both tax reform and infrastructure at the same time. >> by the way, axis is doing -- they're our friends, obviously, but doing well. i get like 80,000 e-mails a day, i look at theirs and say, i've got to read. what's the top ten? >> the administration indicated it's rethinking how to get legislation through congress including working with democrats. last night the president tweeted, the republican house freedom caucus was able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. after so many bad years they were ready for a win. later, the democrats will make a deal with me on health care as soon as obamacare folds. not long. don't worry. we're in very good shape.

i'm sorry i put that voice on it. i couldn't help myself. sad, sad. >> listen, that's okay. that's not attacking meryl streep. >> maybe i should read them straight. >> joining us in washington, pulitzer prize winning columnist and associate editor of "the washington post" and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson. >> and editor at large for the weekly standard bill kristol. >> your focus on this nun necessary thing, which we all shaub focused on, because it doesn't add up, does it? >> it's a white house scandal more than a nunes scandal. you can't walk onto the grounds. who let him into the skiff, the sensitive room where you can look at classified information. who logged him onto the computer? you can't walk in and say harks, i think i'll use the computer.

he said he couldn't get the documents on liss legislative computer. when i was in the white house you the chairman of the house intelligence committee in and you don't tell you boss about it? how do we know this guy wasn't told to let nunes in by a very senior white house staffer. >> by the way, can you guys have my tweet i put up a couple weeks ago about this, a week or so ago. just like i know this -- i put up this tweet a couple weeks ago, and it says obviously, you know why? chances are very good he got his information from panicked white house, played pr rep for trump when the question was asked why he developed that -- >> it was so obvious that was happening. >> obvious at the time. gene robinson, i only put that up as evidence. i would say just as i was certain then he got his evidence from the white house, i am certain today that in my opinion, because his thug lawyer

always tweets and says, i'm going to sue you, i'm going to sue you, you better have evidence i'm going to sue you because it's, like, russia. i don't have hefd. i've got a gut. i'm sure this started at the top with trump. trump was freaking out because of his ratings. that's how that white house works. he freaks out, tells somebody to get nunes down there. there is no way in hell nunes was at the white house without trump knowing he was coming to the white house. no way. >> i don't see how there could be. certainly, as bill kristol said, you cannot just walk onto the white house grounds without being logged in. you have to be logged in by somebody who works there, and you have to be logged on to the computers. so clearly this was approved at a much higher level than one rogue staffer.

and i think it's pretty likely that we're going to learn. we're going to find out who it was, find out that it goes up the chain. so why do this. why do this when it's going to come out . this white house is so reactive in the moment. they panic and go nuts. >> joining us from capitol hill, member of the house permanent select committee on intelligence, eric swalwell of california, the ranking member of the subcommittee of the cia. >> congressman, your job just got easier. you can take up golfing now because there's sure not going to be an investigation in the house. >> it's time for devin nunes leave this investigation, let alone lead it. he should be gone. what we saw was, going over to the white house he went to receive information that you know, joe, we can receive at the capital. we have our own security. if this was done the proper way, they could have brought it over,

shared it with members of both parties of the committee. this is done because the white house wanted it to be done. this is what a coverup to a crime looks like. we're watching it play out right now. >> congressman, has this house investigation been so badly damaged that even if nunes recuses himself and is off the committee, is the investigation over on the house side? >> it's been compromised. that's why elijah cummings and i have written legislation. we thought that was the most comprehensive way to get to the bottom of what happened. it's an insurance policy. >> congressman, it's nick come sorry. i'm curious if you have heard from republicans in the last 24 hours, if they're concerned about this behavior? >> a lot of them have said we don't need an independent commission because we're doing the work in the house committee, on the intelligence committee, so that's always been the out for not having an independent

commission. i've heard frustration that they don't have that out anymore. so where do we go now? there's a lot of pressure on speaker ryan to have the chair recuse himself. we were going down this investigative road together until last week. and then our chair took an exit and has driven toward the white house and hasn't come back. that's a problem for people counting on us to get to the bottom of it. >> it would be pretty crooked if he were able to keep this position as of now. assuming he goes, who would take his place? >> the problem is trey gowdy is next in line. the problem, i've always respected trey gowdy, but his questioning a couple weeks ago was absolutely beyond the pale when he didn't want to hear anything about russia, he was obsessing on leaks. you want to take it to that guy? >> who is fair? >> mccain's got it right, the republicans in the senate have

got it right. >> bill, they're going to have to have a select committee, right? >> you'd think they have to. in trump's washington, things we think have to happen don't happen. i'm so obsessed with the white house side of this because i think it's a white house scandal more than one member of congress. when you go to the white house, you have to get cleared in. >> absolutely. >> a staffer clears you in and escorts you when you're there? >> it's not an internet cafe. you can't walk in and receive classified information. >> you can't go on a classified computer when you're there. >> someone is always with you. >> when you've dealt with them, don't you have the impression that if you're meeting maybe a junior staffer that he tells his bosses he's meeting with a congressman. this isn't something people randomly do, it gets reported up the chain presumably. there has to be coordination of these things. >> one branch, bill, going over to visit another branch. everyone in the building knows that you're there in the building.

>> wow. >> david ignatius, i'm curioucu david, do you agree what bill has said several times, this is far more a scandal or a crisis involving one congressman, but this is a white house issue at this point, this visit and this sharing of intel breaking basically all the rules and the norms of intel sharing? >> i do think bill is right. for weeks president trump has been doubling down on his initial tweets, accusing the obama administration of essentially political collection of intelligence about him, about the trump transition team. he said it again and again. he has backed down. people say it didn't happen, didn't happen. this is the latest chapter in that in which nunes goes up, meets with this mysterious source and comes out and says

i've seen disturbing evidence that there was incidental collection. but it's all about the same issue, political collection within the white house. i think this has been an issue for the president driving it, again and again. it's going to keep going. i want to ask the congressman if we have a second, whether his committee will look at all at who nunes' mysterious source was, who authorized that person to share the most valuable intelligence with him? >> we asked him for the sources and he says he doesn't share sources. the problem with that answer is we're all on the same team, we've always been on the same team up until now. he told us last week we'd have the information by thursday. we haven't seen it. we had a meeting yesterday, we're told nothing has been sent over. the agencies, they don't even know what he's referring to. >> was it steve bannon? >> by the way, that's why -- >> who would call him? >> that's what i was saying

before, it's such nonsense. the justice department doesn't have this information, the agencies don't have this information. they're doing what they do. they're deflecting. this is a far more elaborate version of trump's sunday morning tweet. you have the head of the intel committee hold a press conference on capitol hill. the press flocks to it. and you have him go to the white house and then he comes out of the white house and the press flocks to it. if you follow what he says, he's contradicted himself, bill, about 27 times. i've got evidence that the president was right about the obama tweet. then the next interview he's on with jake. no, of course, there's no evidence that the president -- and then -- i wish i could use the word, they're just making stuff up. >> trying to have a discussion about the appropriate level of unmasking which is a fairly

technical issue of how much you should circulate this stuff and how much you conceal the u.s. persons that are captured in conversations between foreign diplomat and his home office or whatever. but there's no evidence that's been a huge problem. had there been a ton of leaks, non-russia related leaks about trump personnel dealing with other governments? no. if there was an obama plot to unmask, they haven't unmasked anyone. so what are we talking about? >> mike, maybe it's there. maybe there's something there. maybe they unproperly unmasked u.s. citizens. maybe it's there. nunes doesn't know. right now he doesn't know. >> two keys to this, who signed him in. >> and who called him? >> no, the computer code. logging on to the computer. >> congressman eric swalwell, thank you so much. >> eric, are you going to take up golf or tennis?

you'll have free time on your hands. >> this is what the president's wiretapping tweet would look like if he had unlimited characters. >> exactly. >> pretty good. that and the internet cafe. he's swinging this morning. thank you very much. ahead we're going to read from gene's new piece, trump could learn from his mistakes. >> that's good. >> he won't. >> that's bad. >> that's exactly the case. >> we don't know yet. come on, don't kill hamlet in the first half. >> 36%. >> you've got to keep watching our show. also coming up, senator joe manchin joins the conversation as the president looks to bring back the coal industry in apalacha with his latest executive order. good luck with that.

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now, president trump didn't take any responsibility for the

health care bill being pulled but did say he is working on books based on his experience. >> really? >> yeah, yeah, how to lose friends and influence no one. next is the giving up tree. then there's to kill a health care bill. and, finally, oh, the places you'll golf. there you go. seemed like good books. i would read them. coming up u.s. interior secretary ahead of today's executive order that could take aim at president obama's environmental legacy. also with us, democratic senator joe manchin of west virginia and ann romney will join us on set. we'll be back with much more "morning joe." kevin, meet your father. kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin

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i, and i know chairman burr, we don't know what mr. nunes is talking about. we queried the intel community. they don't know what he's talking about. it seems more than suspicious that he is somehow going to the white house. anybody knows in the white house complex, the eisenhower building or white house itself you have to be escorted. who is he meeting with, a source or somebody from the administration? >> i don't know what he actually briefed the president on, but i don't know why he would come up to brief the president on something that we gave him.

i can't say 100% i know anything he briefed him on. i'm not aware of it. it doesn't really pass the smell test. anything is possible. >> no, that's not good. >> can we get -- >> he's not credible. no, it's not funny. he's not credible. >> can i tell you what's really not funny? >> okay. >> the most shocking development of the day. you know exactly what i'm talking about. and i'm sure, gene, you will, too. the las vegas raiders. >> oh. >> i hear gene. gene, gene. >> yeah. >> you got blanda. you got stabler. you got tatum. >> i know. >> atkinson, madden. you got -- with oakland, the most horrifyingly dangerous, beautiful fan base on earth. >> yeah. >> the oakland raiders are the nfl. you don't take them to los angeles.

you just don't. >> you mean to las vegas? >> las vegas. >> los angeles was bad enough. los angeles was bad enough. you take that team to vegas? >> and there's no way. there's no way -- frank, las vegas is great. >> we are vegas. >> i just don't see the fan base in las vegas being the oakland raider fan base, which is kind of like the hell's angels of fan bases, right? they're unique. >> silver and gold in las vegas. >> silver and black. >> it's the top of the hour, too. >> jets/raiders games. >> welcome back, everybody. good lord. it's tuesday, march 28th. happy birthday, dad. >> chiefs and the raiders in the early '70s, one of the greatest rivalries of all time. >> steelers and raiders. >> you don't remember this. >> he wasn't born them. >> football was football. >> he was watching british soccer premiere league.

"new york times," not allowed to watch football. too violent. >> ten minutes. >> soccer. >> is this directed at me? >> subtle indirect. it's a subtle indirect. >> you can like both, okay? with us, political writer for "the new york times," nicholas. >> soccer fan. >> princeton university. >> steelers fan. >> editor at large for the standard, bill crystal. >> harvard hockey, going to the final four. >> and columnist for the washington post, david ignacius, as well as gene -- >> david, do you have a team? >> i have to stick with my poor old redskins. sorry. >> good for you. >> gene, your game? >> redskins. i've been living here a long time. >> what? okay. latest gallup tracking poll has president trump at a 36% approval rating.

57% disapprove of the job he's doing. that's below the all-time lows of barack obama, which he mocked, bill clinton and gerald ford. he mocked barack obama for having a low approval rating and his is just as low. and it didn't take three years to get there. >> no, it's not. it's lower. >> it took just a few days. >> in 2011, trump tweeted barack obama has a record low 39% gallup approval rating to which twitter user brian clause wrote donald trump has a record low 36% gallup approval rating. why so high? >> gene, you write in the washington post trump could learn from his mistakes. he won't. you say the president let himself be convinced by paul ryan that health care would be an easy win. that should make him wary of going down another garden path with a speaker who can't even marshall his own chamber, let alone produce important

legislation with a chance of making it through the senate. yet trump seems ready to make the same mistake with tax reform. note to president, if ryan says trust me on this one, don't. during the campaign trump was nothing if not headstrong yet in office he has let others lead and is getting nowhere. he could still change course. he could get rid of sycophantic aides who spend so much time blaming each other. he could focus on parts of his agenda, such as infrastructure. that popular support, including among democrats. don't hold your breath. >> he's not getting anywhere right now. and i think the lesson i really hope he learns or i would advise him to learn from this experience is he let everybody lead him down this path and he kept asking, according to the

wonderful story in the washington post, is this really a good bill, is this really a good bill? you know, if you've got to ask again and again if this is a good bill, it's not a good bill. it's not working. and this is supposed to be the take-charge guy who was going to lead in his populist direction. it's not going that direction. >> what's the problem? >> he doesn't tell the truth and his spokesperson is losing credibility by the day and started out with a bogus press conference and hasn't gotten better. it really just doesn't work. that's the problem. >> what's the problem, bill? why is he at 36%? >> because he got 46% of the vote. so 10% of that has deserted, quarter of his supporters have decided it was probably a mistake. >> people don't believe him. yeah. >> eddie? >> people catching hell out in the country are realizing he's not going to deliver. >> and they feel it. you can't help but to not feel

this completely. >> i think the chaos. >> the chaos is sad. >> i talked to nonpolitical types and less political type, reluctant trump voters. the enthusiasts are still with him but the reluctant voters are deserting. they do want some stability and reliability in their president. >> presidentiality. >> he lost the people who gambled on him who said this guy is not my cup of tea but washington has to change and maybe, hopefully, will he blow it up and make it better. he's losing those people. >> david ignacius, a year, year and a half ago i talked about friends up from florida sitting around the table, having pizza, because i only serve my guests the best pizza. as we were going through the domino's pizza, i said you're from florida. >> had to say it. >> product placement there. >> who are you going to vote for, jeb? are you going to vote for marco?

and they said, professionals, we're voting for trump. we're sick and tired of jeb. marco's not ready. this whole system stinks. we voted traditionally for republicans. every nominee our entire life. we're voting for trump. this past weekend i said how are you doing with trump? and they said just what you said. somebody said this. we took a chance on him. and he made fools out of us. and now they're at the -- anybody but trump because he made them look stupid in front of their friends because they were willing to take a chance on this guy. >> there's a lot of buyer's remorse in the country now. the poll numbers show you that. we're just into the first months of the new administration. can't say that this is the end. the question is whether he learns anything from his mistakes. in the first two months, he governed in headlines, in executive orders. bam, bam, bam.

see, i'm doing it. but it's come down to actual legislation, actually implementing real policies like removal and replacement of obamacare, signature issue for him, he didn't have it. he didn't know how to do it. i have the same fear about tax reform. there are so many different versions of it out there and no evidence yet that the president has figured out how he's going to craft together that piece of legislation. your friends may be saying the same thing but louder in another couple of months. >> bill, the problem is, we don't expect our president, especially if he has been in business his entire life, to walk into the white house and understand how it works. it's extraordinarily complicated. but we do expect him to put people around him that know how the hill works, that knows how the executive branch works, that knows how the government works. and he refuses to do that. and everybody around him is

arrogant enough to believe -- >> they know better. >> -- that they don't need to know how washington works. that's just like hiring a brain surgeon who has never done brain surgery before. >> with all due respect to the people that we know well, this includes his family. >> yeah. >> and, again, all good, able people in their own way. >> really good. >> nobody knows how washington works there. and they think that's a good idea. it's a horrible idea. >> and normally if you're a little uncertain about how things work and you have a new presidency who got 46% of the vote you might start with bite-sized things that you can do that are reasonably popular and put together a majority for what you can do. paul ryan does bear some of the burden here. he talked himself into an extremely ambitious agenda. we control the presidency, we control the congress, huge tax overhaul in six months. it never happened that way. obamacare took 16 months to go through. reagan took six, seven months to

get his tax cuts through. he could do some things. he wants the defense spending increase. there's a continuing resolution coming up in a month. he could say i want that $20 billion in the military. i want it now. he wants to build a wall. i'm not crazy about the wall but fine. he could say i want the money for the wall. health care the obvious thing to do is the pricing of drugs. but if you're willing to take bite-sized things, you could actually do them. i don't know why i'm giving trump advice. >> call elijah cummings. say come over. >> totally. >> we couldn't do health care reform. let's take this on and get this done and set an example for the rest of congress. >> if your goal is to deconstruct the administrative state you begin with the assumption you don't really know what -- >> therein lies one of the problems. steve bannon said he as a

lennonist and wants to destroy the american state. donald trump doesn't want to destroy the american state. he wants to do deals. >> i'm from the south, joe. if you want to break down an engine, if you want to break an engine down, you need to know how that engine is put together. if you're going to try to destruct the administrative state and you have no idea how the state functions, you end up with this chaos. >> some people are benefiting from the destruction of the administrative state. it's not the core voters, unfortunately. >> nothing in it for his supporters yet. where the jobs, jobs, jobs? where's the you'll get tired of winning? that's not happening. if he doesn't put some numbers up on the scoreboard soon, i fear that even that core support, that 36% or 33%, whatever it is, is going to

become disillusioned, say nothing of the people who have already fled. amid all the investigations around the influence of russia on the election, the president tweeted from the white house around 9:30 last night that the clintons should be investigated for their links to russia. quote, why isn't the house intelligence committee looking at the bill and hillary deal that allowed big uranium to go to russia? russian speech money to bill, the hillary russian reset, praise of russia by hillary or podesta russian company. trump russia story is a hoax, attaching the make america great again hashtag. >> a wonderful tweet from the washington post after subtweeting that, i cannot wait for this election to be over. >> joining us from the white house, nbc news -- >> he has not figured out, mika, you can't point at hillary anymore. he got the 306 electoral votes. he's in charge. the responsibility is on his

shoulders. >> this doesn't even need translation from political minds. this is deflection on a very low-base level that people can see right through. joining us now, nbc news national correspondent peter alexander. peter, the senate intelligence committee is planning to question president trump's son-in-law and key adviser, jared kushner. what's the story here? >> reporter: mika, that's exactly right. what's notable about this, jared kushner will be the highest ranking member of president trump's team, in effect, to be testifying before the senate intelligence committee and the first member of this white house to be testifying as well. we're told by white house aides, aides close to the president that kushner himself volunteered to come before this committee. no date has been set. jared has nothing to hide here. the committee is zeroing in on some of his ties during the campaign, during the transition. his contact specifically with the russian ambassador to the

u.s., sergey kislyak. and state-owned development bank that is now under sanctions by, effectively, the obama administration. that's what they want to review here. official confirmed those meeting s took place but basically they all took place, they say, as part of his official role for the transition and the campaign. senate intelligence committee has been getting a lot of praise, by comparison, to the house intelligence committee and the disarray, disorder. from the beginning of this investigation we have committed to follow the facts wherever they lead us. mr. kushner will certainly not be the last person the committee calls to give testimony. no specific date set for that. we do know jared kushner will be speaking, as he has volunteered,

to that senate committee. >> greatly appreciate it. i've known jared, known him for a while. spent time with him during the transition, reporting on the administration. he spoke -- i don't know about these meetings. maybe they sat there and said how do we take over the midwest. i don't know. he was sort of trump's de facto secretary of state and spoke to hundreds and hundreds of foreign leaders during the conduit between trump and the rest of the world. just to put a little perspective on jared talking to some people versus, say, the attorney general who was not the de facto go between. >> i know him, too. and this is the only problem with not understanding washington and standards and what appears to be appropriate and inappropriate. >> right. >> i agree. i don't see any huge red flag here. at the same time, you don't know

what you don't know. if you don't know it, you end up in a situation like this. you may, by mistake, end up anyway worse situation. >> i must say you work in the white house. you understand you don't get on phone with people without being double and triple checked. and that's one of the things we saw in donald trump's call with taiwan. they didn't know until he was about to get on the phone with them that the chinese were going to go as crazy as they went. i'm not saying this is a mitigating factor. i'm saying you need people around you that know how washington works that say don't make that call. >> it's somewhat natural. however if there's a guy that runs a russian bank and is under sanctions you probably want to take someone else into the meeting with you from the state department, treasury department who knows the background here and make sure you're not indicating something you shouldn't be indicating.

protocols for dealing with foreign leaders, foreign entities. >> if this were steve bannon, we would be going crazy, just for the record. >> they don't trust anybody in the state department, justice department or anywhere to go in with them. that's their mindset. and that was what we saw with the executive order. it got them in trouble before. the paranoia is getting them in trouble. the paranoia gets the intel community, paranoia against the state department community. 89% of the people there are professionals that give their best to democrats and republicans and they always have. >> what's striking, though, is "the new york times" reporting on this, they say in some ways the white house was caught off guard by this notion. because as they were debating and dealing with the michael flynn issue, jared kushner did not mention his meeting with the

russian folks. >> yeah. hey, let's go right now to david ignatius. big day today. very big day today. the bthe big brzenski turns 89. the camp david accords and the first time i met him, calling me stunningly superficial. >> i put that first. >> mika's favorite moment. >> probably everybody's favorite moment. >> come on. that's how americans were reintroduced to him, his deadly accurate description of me. talk about the place that dr. brzezinski -- i don't want to embarrass mika here. >> happy birthday, dad. and he's watching, david. >> where he fits in u.s. foreign policy over the last 40, 50

years. >> one of the most effective national security advisers we've had in modern times. he is a brilliant man, to this day speaks in perfect sentences and paragraphs. i was lucky enough as a journalist to work with him and brent, another of the great national security advisers on a book that was bipartisan into what foreign policy should be published in 2008 before the presidential election. i listened as big talked about what was going on in the world, how to deal with it and came away after every session amazed by his brilliance. mika, he is a treasure for the whole country. i say that as a person who covers foreign policy, also as his friend and send him birthday wishes and also to you as his daughter. >> he and i are going to columbia this weekend to celebrate his career there. so i'll see if he thinks that

your words today were appropriate. >> will he will grade them. bill, so many people look at him through looking glass of israel, which you and i would disagree with many things that he says about israel. also the iraq war. he was very critical at the beginning of the iraq war. ended up being proven right. people forget one part of -- the main part of his career, actually. he was the hawk. he was the person that kept telling people like cy vance and others that wanted to go weak on the soviet union. he didn't use the words evil empire, but might as well have. he was so tough on the soviet union. people don't know this, but bob casey worked with him quietly to continue to have an impact on eastern europe to find dissidents in eastern europe that would fight against that evil empire. >> he saw that in poland, obviously, a country he knew

well and also afghanistan. he doesn't get enough credit for that. the arming of the insurgents, christmas of '79 most people thought the soviet union are so much more powerful than this tiny little country, they'll swoop it up. he saw there was a chance to do damage to the soviet union and help the afghans. that was the beginning of the end of the soviet union. that was a policy that reagan continued but he began that very quickly, didn't he, in '79 and '80? >> all right. happy birthday. still ahead on "morning joe," the president is set to roll back climate change policies in the name of fostering business. can it help to bring back the coal industry and jobs? senator joe manchin of west virginia joins us. we'll ask him about that. >> in 2010 one of our next guests signed a letter to

president obama comprehensive clean energy jobs and climate change legislation. ryan zinke is now in the trump cabinet and could play a major role in undoing the action he once advocated for. he joins us for a live view. and congressman jim himes joins us next, calling on devon nunes to recuse himself in ongoing russian investigation. >> he wants you to quit the investigation. you're not going to do that? >> i'm sure that the democrats do want me to quit, because they know that i'm quite effective at getting to the bottom of things. >> let hope so. ♪ nah. what else? what if we hire more sales reps? ♪ nah. what else? what if we digitize the whole supply chain? so people can customize their bike before they buy it.

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this is something i had been working on a very long time. i was concerned about americans identities not being masked properly or being unmasked in intelligence reports. this actually goes back to

before mr. trump's -- president trump's famous tweet, as you know, about putting -- whether or not he was wiretapped at trump tower. i had been working this a long time with many different sources and needed a place that i could actually finally go, because i knew what i was looking for and i could actually get access to what i needed to see. >> this is just -- >> you know, today's word salad has been brought to you by paul newman's salad dressing. >> or bs session. house intelligence devin nunes. word salad is a compliment. >> wait a minute. he's saying nothing. >> he's getting around not saying something, which is another way of saying he's not being truthful. >> he's saying nothing. >> does anyone disagree? >> i don't know. what did he just say there? >> he had been working a very long time on the surveillance information, that he could only obtain at the white house. >> but that's not true. >> joining us from capitol hill, member of the select committee

on intelligence, democratic congressman jim himes of connecticut. >> jim himes, how are you doing? >> doing well. how are you guys? >>concerned with the traffic patterns. tear down the bridges and make it eight lanes. >> it's an historic high hey. >> i don't care if they're historic. i've become a fossil, sitting there every day. >> yeah? >> every day. what are you going to do? it's your district, himes! i want to go -- sorry. >> take 95. come on. >> everybody is laughing here. >> talking about infrastructure. >> everybody is laughing here. >> exactly, infrastructure. >> 95 is the worst stretch of road in america zblin fra structure, joe. >> i pine for the day when we could talk about that famous trillion dollar infrastructure plan we've been hearing about from the white house. >> i pine for that day as well, congressman. for now we have to talk about

the very thick lug, my words, not yours, who is running the house intel committee. >> what the heck? what is going on? >> what is nunes saying? have you gotten your ovaltine decoder and figured out exactly what he's saying? >> does he realize how badly he's messed up or is he somewhere lost in it? >> when you extract whatever meaning from that, it doesn't make any sense. if this is about improper unmasking of incidentally collected u.s. information, he did exactly the wrong thing. look, the committee, the oversight committee exists to watch over the intelligence agencies, to make sure they don't do improper unmasking. if, in fact, what he just said is true the right thing to have done would be come back to the committee and say hey, we see evidence of some kind of abuse or malfeasance. to go to the white house, not tell any of your fellow republicans, much less democrats, to not tell staff, that looks like something very

different, like an attempt to keep attention off the hearing last week. it looks like an attempt to shut down the overall investigation, which, let's face it, was not going in a direction that was particularly happy for the white house. >> actually, i do think at the end of the day we may be able to look back and say they did this intentionally to shut down an investigation that wasn't going well. we can report this morning that press secretary for member of congress in the house intel committee has confirmed that nunes has scrapped all meetings for the committee. >> that's the right thing to do. >> for this week. >> i can confirm that for you. we are ordinarily -- and many years i've been on the committee, first day back, which was yesterday, we have a 5:00 meeting to review the events of the previous week. meeting canceled. open meeting tomorrow. canceled. meeting thursday to go over something totally separate. canceled. not only is this investigation sort of had a shadow cast on it, but the committee has been put into suspended animation.

>> that's not recusal, by the way. >> has any member of the committee seen the information he's talking about? >> no member of the committee has. i was with my fellow democrats yesterday at 5:00. no member of the committee, republican or democrat, has seen after a full week this stuff that caused nunes to make himself famous nationally. not a single member of the committee. i don't even think anybody on his own staff has any idea what caused him to do this sort of musical chairs thing with the white house. >> do you have the capacity as a member of the intelligence committee, as member of congress, to seek and/or receive as to who signed congressman nunes into the white house? >> we do. remember, we're constrained as the minority party. we can't issue subpoenas by ourselves. we can make inquiries.

there's a whole hullabalu over logs at the white house and at mar-a-lago. chairman nunes for all the controversy he has caused, he has still promised us that he will share this with us. of course, each day that goes by in which he hasn't done so is a day which he gets increasingly famous and people get increasingly concerned about the investigatio investigation. >> david ignatius? >> there's the appearance that your committee chairman has hijacked your committee. i'm wondering what recourse the members have. not just the democrats but the republicans. what can you do so it meets again, discusses these issues and prevents this monopolization of the agenda by the chairman? >> at this point one thing needs

to happen to rescue this investigation. and that is that chairman nunes needs to recuse himself. for two reasons. number one, if sentiment of the public matters, and it does, i can't imagine how chairman nunes stands next to the ranking member foov months from now and says here is our work product. trust me on this. something that people aren't thinking too much about, an investigation relies on people coming forward, taking some risks. maybe it's a whistleblower, intelligence officer coming forward and saying here is what i know. now every one of those people will say to himself, wait a minute. i remember a couple of weeks ago when the chairman, bizarrely, after seeing something, ran to the white house. we don't know what he did. he wouldn't share it with anybody. he shut down the committee. do you think people will can come forward and take professional risks if they are prayed that the chairman of the investigation may be improperly running to the white house? i say this with sadness because

i consider him a friend but unless he recuses himself from the investigation it's hard to see how it can go forward. >> congressman, two words. bullet train. need a bullet train. >> oh, my lord. >> i think he's got bigger issues. >> there is no bigger issue than transportation infrastructure. >> good. let's come back and hopefully talk about that. >> i hope so. coming up, a new book claims that president richard nixon's sins extended far beyond watergate. we'll dig into that exclusive reporting. first the man who runs one-fifth of the nation and rode a horse on his first day of work. secretary of the interior ryan zinke joins the white house as they look to roll back obama environmental regulations.

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is the president-elect right? is climate change a hoax? >> i don't think there's a hoax. man has influence. where there is debate is what is that influence and what can we do about it? >> that was then congressman ryan zinke, during his

confirmation hearing as secretary of the interior. greenhouse gas emissions. joining us from capitol hill secretary of the u.s. department of the interior, ryan zinke. >> good morning. >> good to have you on board. >> mr. secretary, good to have you here. we'll get to that in one second. let's talk about the important things first. >> doggy days at work. >> you rode a horse to the first day at work and mika keyed in on this, doggy days at work. is that what you're doing at the interior? >> it's great to be the steward of one-fifth of our lands, majestic parks under our interior, great opportunity. i made a point, rough riders met interior and dog friendly, i think it's time. >> let's ask about this executive order. the president is talking about an executive order today on --

assigning one on energy independence. tell us about that and what the plan is. >> clearly it's in our best interest to move on energy. producing energy domestically and reasonable regulation is far better than watching it being produced overseas with no regulation. 63 countries in my lifetime. i can see and tell you the catastrophe in some of the places, in africa, in the middle east, of how energy is exported. if we do have energy here produced, i'll tell you, it makes us a lot stronger overseas and a strategic play as well. look at russia. russia is in the news every day. how do you combat russia? economically. we export liquid natural gas to eastern europe, replace a lot of what they're providing with eastern europe. iran, the same thing. if we want to put pressure on

iran economically, we do that by supplanting their exports in crude. and we have to do that by our energy independence as well as infrastructure. >> lot of concerns about some obama-era regulations being rolled back that might be harmful to the environment. what do you say to those critics? >> we're going to do it right. it's better to produce energy here under reasonable regulation. as an example, the methane rule. everyone should realize my position on methane is that it's a waste to vent methane but we need to have the injection systems in place. but if you don't have a pipeline, you can't build collection systems you end up isolating assets. we, as a country, all the above energy policy is prudent. we can do it right, hold industry accountable. but also jobs matter and there's a social cost of not having jobs

in this country. >> mr. secretary, you mentioned the country. and i suspect strongly that a lot of people in this country have fallen in love with the idea of clean air, clean water. you also mention coal as part of our program. what do you think it will realistically play? i don't want joe manchin throwing anything at me. >> joe's coming at you. >> what do you think is there as far as coal goes? >> as far as btu, coal has an enormous -- you see other technologies. we're looking at technologies in battery storage, which could supplant coal in the future. right now we're all of the above. i think the market will dictate -- coal is under pressure from a lot.

some of it is regulatory. some of it is market. i don't think the government should be in the business of picking winners and losers. having cleaner energy, more efficient. look at our grid system. we need to work on the infrastructure. i'm a huge infrastructure guy. at the end of the day, investing in infrastructure now will be good for this country. investing in technology, investing in research so we can make our energy portfolio cleaner over time is the right and prudent path. >> all right. >> secretary of the interior, ryan zinke, thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. secretary. still ahead on "morning joe" -- >> my administration wants to work with members of both parties to make child care accessible, affordable, to help ensure new parents that they have paid family leave. >> republican congressman raul labrador told "new york times"

magazine that one of the addresses of the president where he didn't applaud. quote, that's not even close to what my party stands for. he joins us ahead. "morning joe" is coming right back. knowing where you stand has never been easier.

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so i say to you on this occasion, we leave, we leave proud of the people who have stood by us and worked for us and served this country. we want you to be proud of what you've done. we want you to continue to serve in government, if that is your wish. always give your best. never get discouraged. never be petty. always remember others may hate

you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. and then you destroy yourself. >> that is president richard nixon as he left the white house for the final time as president. with us now, award-winning author and journalist. richard nixon the life is out today. any politician in the post-war that defined politics more than nixon from '45 to the turn of the century? >> i don't think so. >> got more votes than anybody inmer american history. >> that's right. and same as george washington in the unanimity and dominated an entire generation's politics whether you loved him or hated him. >> what drove nixon? what drove him when he came back from the war?

>> two things. the classic young kid from the sticks, american story as bryce harlow once said, clawing his way up life. he had a miserable childhood, leaving him with a deep feeling of interiority. he could never be happy with his own successes. >> sounds a lot like a guy from queens who came from manhattan. i'm not be glib here. donald trump even after elected president of the united states, he's fighting old battles about -- you know, from the campaign. he's still doing that. do nixon and trump share that trait in common? >> they do. they share in the campaigning what i call in the book the politics of grievance. they both have an ability to reach out and tap people's fears, uncertainties and turn it into an anger or into a political drive that results in them going and voting sometimes against their best own economic interest. >> richard nixon, though, would

be insulted, would he not, if someone were to compare him to donald trump? >> yeah. yeah. >> i think nixon spent his entire life immersed in policy. >> i think he's looking up at us and saying, you know, i read books. >> i read books. i write books. i'm consumed by policy. yeah. one of the more troubling aspects that you've uncovered in the book is the ploy, for lack of a better phrase, in 1968, during the course of the campaign, to sort of neuter any vietnam peace talks that were going on then. more young men were killed in vietnam post-richard nixon's inauguration in 1969 than had died in the war prior to 1969. it's very troubling. >> one of the things you have to reach conclusions on when you do a book on nixon is you have to put watergate in its place and

put vietnam in its place. and that episode where nixon interceded with a foreign country in the middle of an election to tilt it towards his party, i think, was far more troubling because of what happened not just the american boys but kam body, yeah the invasion of cambodia, a million vietnamese people. a lot of people died because of that. not to say there couldn't be peace in '68, but to take that upon yourself to throw a monkey wrench, the word he used, into those peace talks, i thought that was the worst thing. >> but can you connect cambodia a khmere rouge back? >> the war did go on and as a biographer i have to look at what drives people and the moral decisions they make. and to me that was, by far, far worse than watergate.

>> this past sunday we lost sifl rights icon. what is nixon's enduring legacy around race? for the country? >> i stopped the narrative in the book several times to examine that question because i think it reveals nixon more than anything else. he was very expedient. in the 1950s he was martin luther king's beth friend. martin luther king wrote to a friend and said, if richard nixon is not sincere in his color blindness, then he's the most dangerous man in america. in 1960 in the middle of the campaign martin luther king gets arrested and nixon tries to intercede and then issues a no comment. to ward off ronald reagan he makes a deal called the southern strategy with strom thurman. one of the things i found in a delightful little memo that haldeman -- bob haldeman, his chief of staff, is dispatched to talk to the southern delegations at republican convention and

promised if nixon is elected, we will cut out the pro-negro crap. he did a lot of good things for civil rights as president. the southern schools were desegregated, but the white house and civil rights, which have been joined together, the moral authority of the white house joined together in the civil rights movement was lost. >> isn't that fascinating? in 1957 you had lbj attacking richard nixon for being too progressive on race. >> on civil rights, yes. >> and jfk, too, ducking the really tough votes at the same time that nixon was presiding over the senate and making rulings that would have hurt him. >> david ignatius, he made his boss, dwight eisenhower, a little uncomfortable. >> indeed. let me just ask if by some miracle richard nixon were to come back to earth today, what would he tell donald trump about

dealing with scandal and investigation? >> well, i'm -- i don't want to leap to a conclusion, but if you look at the way the actors in the trump white house are acting right now, they're acting like nixon's aides did during watergate. they're acting guilty. i'm sorry, that's -- it's just so clear, the pattern is repeated over and over again. i think nixon would tell him, first of all, to improve his own staff. nixon had a very good staff. very -- halderman was almost like a robot or computer in moving things efficiently and quickly. the biggest thing that i think a lot of americans looking at trump are right now, is he competent? is his staff competent? can they do the job after all these reversals in the first -- >> but did nixon have anybody around him that could go say, no, stop? >> that could say no to him? >> yeah. >> no. >> all of them? >> especially kissinger. it was always, mr. president, you're a wonderful man. yeah, that was a constant flattery because that's what

nixon wanted. >> that's not exactly what kissinger would say when he was out of nixon's company, was it? >> no, no. one thing about henry kissinger is he wrote an amazing memoir. he's a fantastic writer. >> i cannot wait to dig into this. thank you so much. greatly appreciate it. nice party last night. >> yes, joel and lisa benenson. i got to meet tina brown and sir evans and it was a great time. >> very good. the book is "richard nixon: the life." john farrell, thank you so much. greatly appreciate it. still ahead, congressman raul labrador joins us. he called on jeff sessions to recuse himself from the investigation into russia's election meddling. also ahead, republicans are hoping to get the supreme court nominee approved without the drama of a filibuster. they'll need eight democrats to

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except when it comes to retirement. at fidelity, you get a retirement score in just 60 seconds. and we'll help you make decisions for your plan... to keep you on track. it's your retirement. know where you stand. investigation. you're not going to do that? >> i'm sure the democrats do want me to quit because they they know i'm quite effective at getting to the bottom.

>> let's hope so. >>. >> it's tuesday, march 28th. that means it's my dad's birthday. he's 89. he's amazing. >> with us on set we have veteran columnist mike barnicle, political writer for the "new york times," nicholas confessore, columnist for time mag eddie glaud jr. and in washington, editor for "the washington post," david ignatius. >> let's ask the question, mika, that needs to be asked at the top before we get into this news. from everybody i've spoken to that worked with him, republicans, democrats, they say he's not up to that task. >> look. he has completely proven that. i don't really -- leading up to

it, if some people thought he should be chair, that's fine. he has completely undermined himself. it is proven ten times over. this isn't us. this is just reality. >> and, david ignatius, newt gingrich when he was speaker of the house, a lot of people in the press consistedidn't like h. they beat the hell out of him. newt is known as a rough and tough partisan customer. he would never put somebody -- i can say this as somebody who helped run newt out of the house. he would never put somebody like devin nunes, whatever his name is, in as intel chair. i've never seen anything like this before. >> you know, joe, during newt's time at committee, unfortunately, was sharply divided. it had some tough years. then something amazing happened. a republican, mike rogers, ex-fbi agent, came in as

republican chairman, put there john boehner, made a deal with a former prosecutor from maryland and said, i've got your back. i'm going to make sure we don't get divided and set ourselves up for attack. and for the first time in a long while, that committee really worked. they passed an authorization every year. they got important legislation out. they did oversight. i tell you, the country misses people like mike rogers and dutch. adam schiff, a lot of members on the committee are koog doing an outstanding job but it's splintered, almost shattered. it will hard for republicans on the committee, even if they want to do the right thing, to operate in a bipartisan way as long as nunes is there, in effect, leading the president's defense. >> that's the question everyone is asking.

should congressman devin nunes recuse himself. as if it's a question. >> yes. >> the intelligence committee chairman revealed yesterday that he was on white house grounds when he received the information behind his charge that trump transition officials were monitored. according to reports, nunes was on his way to an event in washington late tuesday when the evening's plans abruptly changed. after taking a brief phone call, nunes swapped cars and slipped away from his staff. congressional officials told "the washington post," claiming that he he used that unaccounted for stretch of time to review classified intelligence files brought to his attention by sources he says he will not name. nunes told bloomberg view that his source was not a white house staffer but an intelligence official. in interviews last night, said he was open about his visit and defended his use of a secure reading compartment known by the acronym skiff at the white house. >> did you use that skiff on the white house grounds? why not use a skiff, you have

plenty of them, on the house side and senate side on capitol hill? >> that's a very good question. here's the problem. the congress has not been given this information, these documents. that's the problem. so, because this is executive branch, it was distributed widely through the executive branch. this was from november, december, and january. niece are reports, let me reiterate. this had nothing to do with russia. nothing to do with the russian investigation. there's no way for the folks that i have been working with to actually -- to bring this forward to light. there was no way i could view that because they couldn't get it to the house intelligence committee. i wasn't sneaking on, it wasn't at night. it was in the -- it was in the middle of the -- you know, the sun was out. i stopped and talked to several people on along the way. many foreign dignitaries were there. some i said hello, had conversations with them. nobody was sneaking around. look,fy really wanted to, i could have snuck onto the grounds late at night and

probably nobody would have seen me, but i wasn't trying to hide. >> now, mika, he wasn't trying to hide because he held a press conference on capitol hill when he was acting as the president's public relations expert and claimed that he had information on the hill before he went to the white house. and the great lie was, i have this information. i am going now to the white house to brief the president. and all trump supporters were saying, where have we gotten to in a world where a house intel chairman can't go talk to the president of the united states? oh, the indignant. then we find out he's going over there to get the information. it's enough -- it chokes me up. it chokes me up. >> no, its not funny, actually. >> i'm not saying it's funny. >> it would be funny if it wasn't so serious.

here's sean spicer last week downplaying the idea the white house was in any way connected to nunes' claim? >> why would it be? >> would you allow the white house or anyone in the trump administration give chairman nunes that information? >> i don't know what he actually briefed the president o but i don't know why he would brief the president on something we gave him. i'm not aware of it but it doesn't pass the smell test. >> you know what -- >> actually, it does. >> it does pass the smell test. it smells. it smells because he holds a press conference on capitol hill saying i've got these great revelations, which he doesn't even have. he gets them at the white house. then he holds another press conference at the white house. >> you know, it's going to be a real problem for the house investigation and for the oversight, which is solemn and secret. i think what will happen now is a senate investigation will kind of move to center stage and house investigation is going to be just -- not credible.

>> i mean, it's over. >> dow donn't you agree? how can you have a house investigation when the american people are lied to. the whole thing is set up to as i got this information, i found out one, two, three, four, when he heard it from the white house. he didn't even have the documents which he claimed he was taking down to the white house. then he goes down to the white house and then they give him information at the white house. by the way, let me just say, the same information that the white house have been trying to leak to all of us for three weeks. >> ironically, after complaining vigorously about leaks. >> about leaks. >> then saying he was going to reveal the information on friday to his colleagues. that never was revealed. we were already questioning whether or not he could be objective given he served on the trump transition team and now he's doing the pr work for the trump administration. >> one of the questions that ought to be answered is who signed him into the white house? >> exactly. >> who signed him in? >> and who briefed him?

>> gout to be signed in. you can't just walk onto the grounds of the white house. >> there's a constellation of folks that, i think, inform what we have -- a general environment of a politics we're engaged in without trust. this is just the latest. >> that environment, i brought this up with josh earnest yesterday, that environment started on day one when the press secretary held a bogus press briefing. >> the lying press conference. >> it hasn't gotten better. i don't know if they even understand, like, the seriousness of the cavity, the crack, being developed between the white house, the press spokesman, who's supposed to be the spokesman for the people, the american people. david ignatius, is sean spicer credible? >> well, we've had some bitter relationships between white house press secretaries and the press. that kind of goes with the territory. >> that's fine. but is he credible? >> i don't think he answers questions in a way that the

press corps as a group takes as in any way as adequate or responsive. this latest is an example. let me focus for a minute on the nunes white house part of this story. if you take nunes on what he said, he has gone to the white house to meet a source, clearly from the intelligence community, who is giving him information that the heads of the agency, the nsa and fbi, decided not to give in their testimony, in their appearance before the committee. in other words, it is not come up through official channels. so, there's some other group in these agencies that's decided to take the most sensitive information, and by his account these appear to be intercepts that have either been unmasked or partially unmasked so he thinks he knows who's being talked about. then shown him the intercepts in the white house in some sort of secret context. he then goes and talks to the

president about this evidence, won't share it with the committee. it raises the question about whether there's a group in these agencies that is so convinced that the president is being done wrong, that this is partisan, that they've taken it upon themselves to take action. and i think that's an issue people need to pay a little more attention to. >> by the way -- >> some separate group. >> by the way, then holds a press conference after talking with the president with information that has not been shared with congress. and, you know what, i think there's a lot of smoke here more so than fire. i don't think they have -- i think if they had information that was damning to the obama administration, it would be in your newspaper by now. i think they're bluffing. i think they're trying to keep attention off of the main headlines. >> i think this is like a

classic trump move pipts a counterclaim, countersuit. i think they have evidence to back up the countersuit. we'll see more of it. they'll say there was incidental collection, not illegal, not improper, but incidental collection that got people in the trump transition team. then it was unmasked and shared. they'll go through a whole list of things and try to make that the issue. still ahead on "morning joe," from bad to worse. the president's approval levels hit lows. it took barack obama three years to reach. in just a few minutes, senator joe manchin joins us live. here's bill karins with a check on the forecast and another night of some severe storms. >> yesterday we were in kentucky, tennessee, mississippi, northern alabama. hail was the culprit. one tornado, no damage with that. we had a lot of this marble or pea-sized hail coming down. did have a few spots with bigger hail in mississippi. let me take you to today's concern. we have a new storm system heading into the central plains.

this will bring with it the threat of tornadoes. the last two days we only had two. today we could have half a dozen. greatest risk, oklahoma city, abilene. now, into wednesday, this is a multiday event. this storm system will linger. on wednesday we have 19 million at risk from little rock to shreveport. wednesday we keep the severe threat into southeast. memphis to greenville to jacksonville to tupelo. we could have a multithree-day outbreak with tornadoes and maybe a few strong tornadoes, especially tomorrow afternoon. we'll keep you posted on that along with a soggy forecast in the northeast today. rain about to arrive in d.c., later this afternoon new york city. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ♪ fly by night ( ♪ ) it just feels like anything is possible here in upstate new york. ( ♪ )

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welcome back. as we talked about earlier this morning, the latest gallup tracking poll has president trump at 36% approval rating. 57% disapprove of the job he is doing. >> that is below the all-time lows of barack obama, bill clinton, and gerald ford. obama hit his all-time low in 2011, three years into office, back in '11. trump tweeted, barack obama has a record low 39% gallup approval rating. why so high? one twitter user brian wrote yesterday, donald trump has record low of 36% gallup approval rating. why so high? the numbers -- again, this is happening the first two months of the administration, pretty shocking. we have to remember, ronald reagan was down to 35% in 1982.

he was at the low point of his presidency, considered an absolute failure. two years later he wins 49 states. so, you know, this is -- this s is -- >> polls change. >> polls change. so, we have no idea -- he could be at 55% two months from now. >> it's true. but to go about something we talked about after his inauguration, his speech, that was aimed at that 36% and just them, i think we're seeing a consequence of this. if you govern for your base, a third of the country, then only a third of the country support you. if you do complicated things in congress, like tax reform, that require to you have some political capital and some strength and some ability to bully, if you have to, it's hard to do that if you're at a third of the country. it's very hard to do. >> certainly his attacks on the press, his attacks on the courts, his attacks on -- well,

on just about everybody, yes, it plays to his, quote, base. his base is 35%, 36%. there are about 10% of americans that voted for him because he was not hillary clinton. >> right. >> his base is 35% or 36%. and that's what he has boiled it down to because he's simply refused to listen to everybody that has told him, you need to reach out and be more inclusive. >> what's important about that poll data, when you drill down, you see 11% increase among independent voters. then for the physician time white voters are dropping under 50% in terms of his support. when you look at white voters without a college degree, it fell from 48% to 42%. >> i mean -- >> he's losing ground in areas he can't lose ground. >> one of the great misreadings, and have said it all along so it's not like i'm looking at this poll and seeing this. one of the great misreadings, mike barnicle, of donald trump's

victory, is that this represents a new moment in american political history and the undervaluing constantly -- we do this all the time. we look at the last poll and say, this is where america is. yea, america, or however -- hillary clinton's ridiculously bad presidential campaign never gets factored into the equation when people are putting on sack cloths and ashes and talking about how horrible america is. this is trump's base. it's 35% or 36%. again, about 10% of the people just said, okay, trump lies and he's corrupt. hillary lies and she's corrupt. okay, we voted for them before and we think she's corrupt and

we think she made $200 million cashing in on access. let's try this other guy. he's crazy as hell but he's not a clinton or bush. let's try this. people have so discounted this, including, especially the press. >> the press and the president. >> the president and our favorite player of the week, steve bannon. oh, they're going to want me to be vladimir lenin and tear down the government because 65% of americans are against us. what idiots. >> joe, every four or eight years when this country does the last thing it does, perhaps, communally, vote for president of the united states, the winner and the staffs are always accorded some sense of genius by the media. james carville and paul begla, they were geniuses. >> they were geniuses for about two months and everybody said, get the idiots out of the white

house. you're never as smart as people say you are and you're never as dumb as people say you are. >> it's like a baseball team. that's exactly right. the but the larger point here, again, back to competence, and this is a very young administration. i don't want to embroider what's going on here with 66, 67 days into this presidency. a lot can change. a lot has already happened. on the 100th day of his presidency, i believe it's april 28th, the congress is either going to default on the nation's debt or go forward as we've been going forward. >> by the way, anybody who thinks -- >> well, there you go. >> -- it gets easier. let me tell you, what's going to happen here, this is going to be a turning point. trump's going to find out once again he won't have votes from republicans to do this. i'm not knocking republicans. i refused to raise the debt limit to $4 trillion in '94 or '96. i'm not knocking him.

he's going to have to deal with democrats. if he wants to get his 36 to 56, he'll have to fine steve bannon or anybody else who wants to call themselves a leninist, start working with republicans and democrats and what americans told nbc news a week ago, they want their leaders to work with each other, compromise, and make washington work again. >> and not only that, given who he is, who he's always been his entire life -- >> personally, a charming guy. >> absolutely. you have to know because of his background, because of his nature, he's sitting there today alone, isolated, knowing that what he knows is a win. when we continue, the president went back to twitter last night, tweeting the republican house free calm caucus was able to snap a jaws.

raul labrador, freedom caucus member, tells us what that's like. "morning joe" is back after this. what powers the digital world? communication. like centurylink's broadband network that gives 35,000 fans a cutting edge game experience. or the network that keeps a leading hotel chain's guests connected at work, and at play. or the it platform that powers millions of ecards every day for one of the largest greeting card companies. businesses count on communication, and communication counts on centurylink.

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after health care didn't work the white house said they were moving onto other issues. they released trump's april schedule. >> coming up for president trump, on april 1st, trump will vow to spend the weekend and yell april fools and jet off to mar-a-lago. then he'll blame the democrats for failing to pass a kidney stone. on april 27th, trump will be called to testify in the russia investigation. on april 28th trump will panic and try to flee to mexico but panic when he can't get past his own law. >> there's that. joining us, columnist, jeff greenfield along with mike, eddie and me. he's at 36%. given the investigation's happening right now and the question surrounding the intelligence committee, how would you characterize the state of this presidency, before 100

days has even happened? >> incomplete. as kind teachers would do. the one thing about those numbers eight yooergsz years ago at this point we were told the massive obama for america operation was going to keep congressional losses down to single digits in the house for democrats and they lost 62 seats, more or less. it is clearly off to as bad a start as you can imagine. what i think is the root of this, my favorite book about washington is "the emperor's new clothes" where nobody says what is. one of the fundamental facts hurting this administration is donald trump does not understand the most minimal aspects of policy. if you had brought him on this show, as somebody came on and said, what's in this health care plan, he would have sounded like ralph kramden on "the honeymooners," and if that's at the root of the president, how does he deal with all the issues

coming up? i think that's what's coming out here. >> john made the point earlier, it's not the president's job to know everything, but it is his job to hire people who can assist him in a way that is credible, reliable, perhaps even making him better, challenging him. sean spicer, is he credible at this point? he is a credible spokesperson? i'm curious. you're a journalist of years, historian. i've asked this question before and even some of our greatest guests didn't want to answer it. i just want to know, because i don't think he is. i will put it on the table. >> but i think -- i have a great deefl sympathy for him. >> i have sympathy for him but that's not the question. >> i understand. so, who do you replace him with? if the president says to the new press secretary, i want you to go out argue i had the biggest inaugural crowds. >> i'm not calling for his replacement. i'm asking for, number one, since day one, has this press spokesman come off as credible

in any way, shape, or form? number two, is the president asking him -- the president is not asking for anybody to come back at him and give him honest advice. i think there are five or six, seven circumstances where mr. spicer should have said, mr. president, no. >> you're at the heart of the issue. you said does anybody. i did a piece about this, you know, when clark clifford told lyndon johnson your vietnam policy is not working, this very stubborn main changed course. when george w. bush was told, your iraq policy is not working, this guy changed course. is there anybody around donald trump with the capacity to say, you are going on the wrong direction, you're mistaken, you have to change, because that quality, the ability to say, i better change my mind, to me, is the most single important quality of a president. and its lack is the most dangerous. >> and the people around him need credibility. let's bring in from capitol hill a member of the house freedom caucus, republican congressman

raul labrador of idaho. so, thank you. welcome to the show. i guess i'll start off where asking you what you have against paid family leave at this point since you seem to be against it. >> well, i just don't think it's the government's role to give businesses more things to do and to pay for. that's something that a business should decide. and it's not for the government to be telling people that. >> we're at the point, though, where it does not exist. and you don't think at this point -- i mean, do you -- do you think you'd like to have paid family leave in your family? do you think that would be important for your family moving forward in the best way possible? >> it should be up to the business. i owned a business for ten years. i paid for my -- for the insurance for the people that worked for me. i gave them leave whenever they needed leave and i helped them

out. it should be up to the individual business person to decide that. i just think -- >> you think paid family leave in your company? >> i gave leave. >> you gave leave but not paid? >> no, yes, i paid for it, i just didn't have -- don't know what your definition of paid family leave -- >> that is you take leigh and you're paid. >> whenever they had a family issue, we pay for them. they have vacation, they had sick days, they had a bunch of things. those things cost me money and i did it willingly. i don't think the government should be forcing that. i know you want the government to force more spending, but i don't. >> so, your company gave paid family leave? >> we gave paid vacations -- >> paid vacations, that's different. >> we gave paid insurance, we gave addition we gave a lot of benefits. it should be up to the businesses to decide whether to do that. >> you didn't think it was a responsibility of your company to give paid family leave? >> you know, mika, you and i

disagree on this and we can go around and around and i don't think that's what i came to the show to do, to talk about this issue. that's not what you invited me on the show for. >> i think it's very pertinent to the health care bill and to everything we're talking about. >> it has nothing to do with the health care bill. >> paid family leave is, many americans would say, is something we really need to focus on, especially women who work. >> i think most americans -- >> i'm curious. >> okay. >> it's not something that you feel is the responsibility for your employees? >> for you to give them? >> mika, i'm not going to talk to you about this. this isn't what i came on the show for. i thought we were going to talk about the haeshg bill aealth ca >> what is the role of the government when it comes to providing insurance for american citizens? >> i don't think it's the

government to pay for health care. it's to look at the vulnerable and those that can't fend for themselves. that's why we have a program like medicaid and medicare in some instances that take care of people that are vulnerable. that should be a responsibility and we should make sure we strengthen those programs to the vulnerable can be taken care of. >> do you think the bill that went under last thursday or friday took care of the poor, the ill and the elderly? >> i think that was one of the issues i had with the bill. in essence, the bill became more of a bill that was about tax reform than about health care reform. it was a bill where we were going to give a lot of tax breaks to people and not really fix the fundamental problems we have with health insurance and health care business. we have to figure out how we can benefit the most people through the health care industry. i believe we do that by requiring more freedoms in the health care industry, by making sure there's not as many

regulation, requirements. so the cost of health insurance and health care goes down and more people can afford to take care of themselves. that was our goal as the freedom caucus. and i think that was one of the areas where this bill fundamentally failed. >> congress marngs it's jeff greenfield. the administration has a great deal of power in the coming months over the affordable care act, the aca, which is still in place. do you want the administration in terms of lessening subsidies, making it tougher for people to get on, do you want this administration to do all it can to ensure that obamacare fails? >> no. i actually think we have a response. i know the administration said that they have moved on from this. it's okay for the administration to move on. it's not okay for the house and senate to move on. it's our responsibility to make sure this bill passes. that we sit in a room with conservatives, moderates, independents in the party, that we all sit in a room and instead of talking past each other, that

we actually sit in a room and figure out how we can do a health care bill that reduces the cost of health care, reduces the cost of health insurance, that helps most americans possible. and i think we can do that. that's -- that was the problem with the process with in bill. about three weeks ago we were told this was a bill that we had a binary choice. you either take it or leave it. i chose -- since i only had a binary choice, i chose to leave it. i don't think that's the end of the health care debate. i think this is just the beginning. i think in the next month or so, it's incouple on us as house members, especially as republicans in the house to come up with an alternative solution that all republicans can vote for. we know there has to be a republican bill because we're working through the reconciliation process. but i also want to invite democrats to come to the table and give us their ideas. we might not agree with them but we can hear some ideas and maybe they have a perspective we haven't thought of and we can work with. >> representative labrador,

given what we just experienced with the health care bill, how do you respond to the claim that the freedom caucus exhibited a kind of kulty, i cold-heartedness, vis-a-vis the most vulnerable, the concessions made to appease the freedom caucus, removing maternity and newborn care, outpatient services, a range of things that suggested the bottom line commitments you hold are reflecttive of a kind of cold-heartedness. how would you respond to that claim? >> that's completely false. what we wanted to do was reduce the cost of health insurance for everybody. >> by gutting these -- >> can i please answer the question? >> sure. >> every health care expert understands that about 67% of the increases of health insurance are based on essential health benefits and this title i that provided more regulations in the health care industry. we can get rid of those things and reduce the cost of health insurance for most americans,

but we also, if you remember, the bill did have a really good part which is, we had a pot of money of $100 billion where we would take care of the vulnerable. we were doing -- we could look at medicaid and see how we could work the medicaid system to help more people. there are other areas where we can help the vulnerable. but what we know for a fact and every health insurance expert will tell you, the cost of health insurance has gone up tremendously because of these essential benefit requirements in the law. we can take care of these people in the high-risk pools that were created bit bill. that was one of the things i liked about the bill. there were $100 billion in the high-risk bill to take care of the vulnerable and others that needed health insurance. i think we can do this by making sure every middle class american receives a lower cost of health care and that we take care of the vulnerable through some of the subsidies that we were providing for in the health care

bill. >> congressman raul labrador, thank you for being on the show this morning. >> it's my pleasure. >> thank you. joining us now from capitol hill, a member of the select committee on intelligence, democratic senator joe manchin of west virginia. good to have you on board this morning. . >> good to be with you. >> a lot to talk about. >> tell your dad happy birthday. >> oh, thank you. i will. i appreciate that. first of all, should congressman nunes step down? >> you know, no member of the senate wants to tell a member of the house or the house tell the senate how to operate. i can tell you only you about the senate. thank god that would never happen here. if it did happen, that person should step down. we've got two -- we've got a chairman, richard burr is doing a great job him and mark warner, ranking member, are working well together. i don't see that happening here. but to have credibility, don't know how you could have one member of that team going rogue on you and then think they're going to set down and be an

honest broker. just doesn't work that way. >> are there are a lot of different questions of what he was saying and why he said it. >> doesn't make sense. >> doesn't make any sense at all. let's talk about what's going on in your state. is it -- is it fair to say bringing coal mining jobs back is not the solution to the problem? maybe part of it temporarily, but there may be some other things that need to be done to help transition your state? >> mika -- >> where do you see the focus to be? >> first of all, people have to understand, we need an all in energy mix up. need what we call base load fuel. that's fuel you can depend on on to run your electricity turbines basically 24/7, rain or shine. coal has been a staple of that for a long, long, long time. it's planned to be a part of that mix clear up through 2040, even with or without the clean power act. we think in west virginia we can do it much better and much cleaner if we have some help.

basically, developing the new technology. the clean power plan put basically standards that technology hadn't been proven to meet. so, i'm saying, how can you ask us to meet a moving target? i'll give you one example. we have a plant in west virginia, on the west virginia/pennsylvania border that was closed down. it was a 1500 mega watt super critical plant which means it had all of the parameters for clean, basically, emissions. the person who ran that coal plant said basic kept telling his stockholders, what does it cost to meet these new regulations? every stockholder meeting he said this, that, and it was a moving target. finally they said, how much would it cost to close it? i can give you a definite how it would cost to close it but i can't tell you how much it would cost to keep it open. we lost hundreds and hundreds of jobs. the supreme court rule is you

have to take the economic impact and human impact. no one seems to care about leaving people behind. there's a simple way. i've told the president obama at the time, don't you think you ought to have your tax plans -- if you want to go to a clean energy and more turbines, as far as wind turbines and solar panels, we can do that in west virgin virginia. give us a chance to make sure people given these credits are using them who have lost their jobs. if you want to do it, let's help. >> what do we think moving from coal in the supreme court, where are you on neil gorsuch? >> judge gorsuch, you know, i'm going to meet with judge gorsuch, joe, and make my final decision. i haven't done that yet. i want to sit down with him because i've heard his testimony. i read through all of his transcripts. there are some things we want to talk about, his rulings and thought process on individual rights and labor rights and on and on. with that being said, everything you see about this man is a fine individual. an upstanding individual. moral values, a family person. so, with that, we have to look

and see what we can do. i want to protect the 60-vote rule. i've been very clear about that. i was against what harry reid did, joe, you know the nuclear option. we should have never gone there. we should be able to have -- come to an agreement on a 60 -- if we think the filibuster -- >> so, will you vote for cloture? >> that's what we're working on now. i want to make sure in talking to my colleagues and make sure we can prevent from going from a blowup, if you will, the nuclear option. i'll be working with them in the next few days. i'll talk to him first today. make my decision and then work with my colleagues. >> all right. thank you so much, joe manchin. >> thank you, joe. >> greatly appreciate it. >> thank you, all. always good to be with you. >> all right. roll tide. quizzical look on your face, jeff greenfield. >> yes. let's say the democrats say, okay, gorsuch, we're not going to bloshgs he's not going change the balance of the court, but next time. when president trump puts up his

next nominee, which might change the balance of the court, why don't they think mitch mcconnell will blow up the filibuster then? i don't see how being calm with gorsuch -- >> because gorsuch has been about as effective in front of the committee as judge roberts was. your next person may not be that way. you may lose a susan collins or -- you won't lose a single republican here. and if they -- i just think they're not going to change the balance of power here. the next justice would change the balance of power there. and they know they'll lose this battle. there's a chance they get one or two republicans, who knows, maybe trump's at 25% then, if they hold their fire. we disagree. i personally think it will be a terrible mistake for them -- i know why they're doing, it because of their base. but to basically go to war against this guy when he's going to pass regardless when they have at least an outside shot at

stopping the next person. do you agree? >> no. much to my surprise, i'm reasonable. >> you? okay. >> just for the record, you don't want the government to have paid family leave and you don't actually operate in your business, then are you against paid family leave. is that fair? >> yes. >> okay. >> absolutely. >> just saying. >> he was defining it very differently. >> okay. i didn't want to put him on the spot, but i do think it has everything to do with health. you're either for it or against it. jeff greenfield, thank you very much. >> thanks, jeff. up next -- >> more reasonable than usual. >> coming up, it's hard to forget spending time with ann romney. one of our favorites was in 2008, flipping pancakes with her on the campaign trail during mitt romney's first run for president. ann romney joins us live just ahead. you're watching "morning joe." i no longer live with

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i read somewhere that mitt and i have a storybook marriage. well let me tell you something in the storybooks i read, there never were long, long, rainy winter afternoons in a house with five boys screaming at once and those storybooks never seemed to have a chapter called "ms" or "breasts cancer." a storybook marriage, nope, not at all. what mitt romney and i have is a real marriage. >> ann romney was last in the limelight when her husband mitt became the republican nominee for president in 2012 and she joins the table next with her latest project. keep it right here on "morning joe." say hello to at&t's best, unlimited data deal ever. it's a total game-changer. so now the whole family can binge,...

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getting out of bed. >> is rough. >> is a monumental task. >> it's rough. those days are in the past for me and i never thought i would have another good day ever in my life. >> wow. >> can you explain that to people right now are in bed and feel like there is no future. >> and that's why i wrote the book. it's for hope and, you know, we all have to hang on to some kind of hope. the medicines we keep improving on, we keep getting better. people have tried a medication and it hasn't worked for them and it hasn't been five years, don't do that. go back to your doctor. we have all these new medications. there's a new medication for progressive ms we're working on in our center. so there's all sorts of things that are happening out there. >> what was the low point for you? >> the lowest point was after the diagnosis, and after treatment, and i still wasn't better. >> yeah. >> and, you know, it's like, this is my life and i'm 80 years old even though i'm just turning 50 and i am never going to have

another good moment. >> talk about the depression that sets in when you're lying in bed thinking, i'm never going to be able to live a normal day again. >> well, it's overwhelming and it's -- i mean, i don't want to say i was suicidal because i never really was, but i never -- i didn't want to live. >> right. right. >> life had lost -- >> right. >> everything for me. >> and what was the moment where the sun peeked through the window and said, i'm going to beat this? >> honestly, i have to say, and i do it in the book, is getting on a horse and saying, i have to go back and find some joy. >> and in your case literally. >> literally getting on a horse. >> and it was like, oh, i can do this. >> right. >> and i feel good and i forget i was sick and i can -- it gave me a little energy for five minutes. >> the future, treatment? >> treatment is -- >> recovery, discoveries. >> exciting. >> talk about brigham women's

hospital? >> we have partnered with them. the ann romney for neurologic disease, we will be studying with 250 scientists and rereceivers, multiple sclerosis, parkinson's, brain tumors, coming out this year, experimental treatment, human trials with the nasal vaccine for alzheimer's. this year coming out with human trials, treatment first time for als. >> oh, my gosh. >> a treatment for brain tumors that have been inoperable in the past. there's so many things that are happening. brain research is the new frontier and i will say the other thing that i'm very interested in, is women's brain health, women have a much higher incidence of alzheimer's, much higher incidence of multiple sclerosis but in the past have not been studies, enough at least, study wide. why do women have more suseptibility and it's not as simple as estrogen. >> really quick.

>> 48th anniversary? >> yes. >> 24 grand kids. >> in this together. >> what are you doing now? we hear the work here. what else are you doing? >> mitt and i still have this extraordinary marriage and we live for our grandchildren. i tell people that it would really be a good idea to totally skip parenting and just go straight to grandparenting. it's really the best way. and mitt and i are loving life and we have five extraordinary sons, they have good marriages too, so we're in a very, very good place. >> because it seems like the perfect family, will you please tell us that parenting is hard, even for you two. >> it was hard. >> good. >> in my book i confess to a few really, really bad parenting moments. >> thank god. thank you, ann. thank you. >> what we want to do is we want at some point to go up to the ann romney center. >> i would love that. >> it's personal for me. my mom has been fighting dementia for a long time. personal for all of us, friends with als, which has been a death

sentence in the past. >> it is a death sentence and a horrible way to die and we are -- we are really, really hopeful with this new drug that is going into human trials this year. >> fantastic. >> so exciting. >> ann romney, it's so great to see you again. >> thank you. >> you look beautiful. the paperback edition of ann's book "in this together" is out today. all the proceeds are going to the ann romney center for neurologic diseases. ann, thank you so much. by the way, bernie sanders is on the show tomorrow, so tune in to "morning joe" tomorrow. that does it for us for now. craig melvin picks up the coverage right now. >> hey there, mika, joe. craig melvin in for stephanie ruhle. step aside, growing calls for the republican leading the investigation. >> russia to recuse himself. >> i think it would be best if he would step aside. >> at issue, a secret meeting at the white house a day before his bombshell that the trump team may have been spied on. >> i'm sure that the democrats do want me to quit because they ha