or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. find out how american express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open.com. good evening, rachel. >> i have some fisherman lozen guesses talked in my drawer. >> i might. >> thank you. in 1952 we've got some great images of this. 1952 iraq's king, 1952 iraq's teenage king came to visit the united states. he loved baseball. he met jackie robinson. also met the u.s. secretary of state. he met president truman. he had been king since he was a little kid technically speaking

but he came to the u.s. at age 17. he he became an adult the following year so from 1959 the more or less worldly teenage king of iraq. he assumed his position as the ruler of his country. it didn't last. he was only 23 years old when a coup was launched against him in july 1958. in that coup he was murdered along with much of his family. in 1958 the monarchy was taken over. you know what, that didn't last either. about five years after they killed the king and the military took over, the military was overthrown as well. or at least the faction of them that had been in charge. by then it was 1963, february 1963 and the group that took over iraq then and ruled it for

40 years thereafter, that was the baath party. we think of saddam hussein as the personification of the baath party. he, in fact, took over iraq in 1979. he ruled iraq in the name of the baath party for more than two decades but the baath party itself, they took over iraq all the way back in 1963. which was basically the exact same time that the baath party also took over next door in syria. the baath party mounted their coup in baghdad on the 8th of february 1963. by the eighth of march 1963, one month later they mounted their coup in damascus as well in syria. the baath party took over in iraq in february. they took over in syria in march. and in syria as in iraq, thereafter they had a few different stops and starts in terms of what their new governance would look like in terms of what nir new leadership would be like. they had a couple more upheavals

in terms of their leadership in syria. but by 1970 in syria, they had their leader for life. his name was al assad. hafez al assad. h-a-f-e-z. he took over in 1970 and he never gave up power. in iraq saddam ruled for a long time, 24 years. saddam's rule in iraq only ended when the united states military invaded iraq and overthrew him and the occupy iraq government overthrew him. next door, hafez al assad held on until he died on his own terms. he had a heart attack in the summer of 2000. syria technically is not supposed to be a kingdom, so they did hold an election to pick a successor to hafez al assad. in the quote, election, to pick his successor, there was only

one candidate on the ballot, hafez al assad's son. it was illegal for anyone to run against him so he got 99.7% of the vote in that year 2000. that's how he got power. that's how we got bashar al assad as the not quite king of syria. it's basically a dynstic dictatorship. he inherited the dictatorship after his father took over in a military coup 30 years earlier. at the start of bashar al assad's second decade in power e in 2011 when demonstrators around the arab world started dmoen straighting in the streets for relief from corruption, from real democracy, for reform ag n agenda that was different but

relief from darin when the arab spring started sparking in 2010, 2011, 2012, every country handled it differently. in syria, bashar al assad decided to deal with it with force, with massive force. and the opposition that started with peaceful street protests in 2011 in syria, it quickly ee involved from not just a protest movement, a street movement, it evolved into an armed resistance. it evolved into an armed opposition movement. since then, syria has spent two, three, four, five, now six years sliding deeper and deeper and deeper into increasingly impossible, increasingly complex, catastrophic civil war. a half million people killed. 5 million people flung out of

syria, fleeing for their lives, trying to save themselves and their family by taking refuge anywhere else in the world. and bashar al assad still in power. and russia's propping him up. the iranians are propping him up. the majority population of syria is sunni. the majority sunni population will never be okay with being ruled by a non-sunni dictator who inherited the gig from his dad and then spent his own second decade in power slaughtering syrians by the hundreds of thousands. the solution to this is not rocket science. the solution to this is way more complicated than rocket science. do you think our current administration is going to be the administration that comes up with the genius solution to this? that comes up with the answer? the new administration in our country released what they want

to be seen as a situation room type photo from last night. what they're going for, obviously here, is that i think they want this to be their version of this iconic shot from the situation room at the white house during the bin laden raid. what we got last night from the white house, though, from this white house, was a little different because the administration last night was not headquartered at the white house in washington. they were, of course, at the president's paid membership resort in south florida. so, their situation room photo, which they released, it sort of looks like a situation room photo, but if you look more closely at it you see, well, it's -- it's not really the same thing. for one, it was taken at a function room in mar-a-lago where we're told the president and his advisers were seated on chairs that had been set asaid for wedding receptions. have you seen this today? see how the chairs are kind of

gilt. they're wedding reception chairs at mar-a-lago. the first obvious caption when you're looking at this photo is lesson one in how jared stays the favorite. look at this. look at what everybody else in the photo is doing. everybody else in the photo is staring to the left side while jared gazes intently at his father-in-law. you want there to be a new job in the united states as crown prince? this is how you will that job into existence. it's also -- it's also a notable photo. the mar-a-lago situation room is notable for who's there. in the real situation room photo, in the bin laden situation room photo there's the vice president, the defense secretary, the director of national intelligence, the cia chief, the chairman of the joint

chiefs. you recognize these people up. know what their job titles are. in the mar-a-lago photo, some of those same people with those same titles are there but also there's jared, the president's son-in-law. also the top economic adviser to the president. there's the white house spokesman back there. there's some other people we don't know at all. sort of right next to the president there's the treasury secretary and the secretary of commerce. why are they there? we are told this is the situation room photo. this is the critical military briefing on a possible u.s. military strike in syria. why is -- why is the commerce secretary there? i don't know why wilbur ross is there. but wilbur ross does appear to have no idea what was going on around him at that moment. i have a little tape, not on camera, a reporter asked commerce secretary wilbur ross what it was like to be right there next to the president, in the mar-a-lago makeshift

situation room , they asked him what he -- we know he was there. but it's not clear to us as observers why he would have been there and he's making clear that he -- well, he -- he seems to have misunderstood some key details about what was going on around him in that key moment. listen. >> in terms of the strikes themselves, it's my understanding they took out 20% of the entire syrian air force, so it was huge not just in term of number of planes but relative to the scale of their air force. >> commerce secretary wilbur ross under the impression 20% of the entire syrian air force was destroyed last night on this one strike in a tertiary airfield.

i don't think that's what happened. all right, rex tillerson tried to clarify, it wasn't 20% of the air force. 20% of one wing. maybe it was 20 planes that were destroyed. maybe it was 20% of some economic figure that was relevant to this military strike, which would explain why the commerce secretary and treasury secretary were there in the first place. i don't know. but at least wilbur ross was right there at the president's side to help make this call, even if he doesn't really know what the call was, even afterwards. what has changed in terms of u.s. military involvement in the terrible intractable syrian civil war last night is a pretty specific thing. last night was not the first time that the u.s. military has shot tomahawk missiles into syria from u.s. navy ships. this is from 2014 when president obama ordered that 47 tomahawk

missiles should be fired at fighters thought to be aligned with al qaeda. the united states led a coalition of manned bombing raids in 2014. the united states alone and along with other countries has continued bombing raids in syria for years now, both with drones and with manned planes. those air strikes have been tar getting isis. those u.s. attacks inside syria continued right through the end of the obama administration and into the start of the new administration, too. none of that is new in terms of our u.s. military involvement in the syrian civil war. what is new last night is now we're bombing both sides in that war. previous u.s. air strikes and bombing raids and even the occasional commando raid targeted isis or al qaeda affiliated fighters. now the new administration has

made a mow men to us decision to also target the syrian government as well. the syrian military. the forces of bashar al assad. whether you like this turn of events or not, it's truly not clear why the u.s. government has made this change. bashar al assad undoubtedly is a butcher with the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on his hands as well as the ultimate responsibility for what has been the wholesale destruction of his own country. but bashar al assad has been a butcher all this time. there are hundreds of thousands of those available in the war. they are operating a prison system that appears to be an industrialized human atrocities on the death camps we thought had been left behind in the last century. that has been true all along. that has been true for years. it does appear bashar al assad may have used chemical weapons against his own civilian population again this week.

but this president was emphatic after a much larger chemical weapons attack on syrian civilians just a few years ago but he was emphatic that that was no reason for the united states to get militarily involved whatsoever in the syrian civil war. i mean, if -- if you didn't want to get involved, if you screamed and yelled and occasionally went to all caps emphasis, if you screamed and yelled about how stupid it would be for the u.s. military to get involved in syria after bashar al assad killed 1400 people with chemical weapons not that long ago, why would bashar al assad killing 70 people with gas this week result in the new administration instantaneously reversing its position on this war and getting in? and not just reversing its position from what the president had said when he was a private citizen in 2013, they have reversed their position. they are taking the exact

opposite position from their own public foreign policy position on this subject just last week. >> irngs the status and longer term status of president assad will be determined by the syrian people. >> assad's role in the future is unclear and with acts he has taken, it would seem there would be no role for him to govern the syrian people. >> first clip was rex tillerson last week, second clip was rex tillerson, secretary of state, this week, 180-degree change. whether you like the new policy or the old one, we need to now try to figure out as americans what the cause was of that change. was it just an impulsive thing, was it an impressive thing? was he secretly inclined to intervene in the syrian civil

war all this time and he just campaigned on the opposite position and maintained the opposite position until a few days ago with some stealth move? was it possible he was just ignorant about the syrian civil war before even though he was taking public positions on them? now that he's president and learning what the syrian civil war is, he's finding that now that he gets it, his instincts are actually to start shooting at missiles at things that seem bad to him. things that seem bad to him now but he never really noticed before. in the last few days the new administration has threatened the united states will take unilateral action against north korea. secretary of state putting out a strange, threatening statement a few days ago that said, quote, the united states has spoken enough about north korea. we have no further comment. before the national security adviser got fired, there was also his vague, strange threat against iran.

>> as of today we are officially putting iran on notice. >> it's still not at all clear what that meant, what that was about. is the notice still active now that michael flynn has been re could he deliver iran their notice through turkey since he was on the turkish government payroll? but there will be no more speaking when it comes to north korea. iran is unnoticed. the navy s.e.a.l. rate on yemen the president approved first week in office, that was apparently approved after no deliberate process within the administration at all. that raid was a disaster, resulted in many civilian deaths and in the death of a u.s. navy s.e.a.l. and injuries to four other navy s.e.a.l.s. we think about that raid as a disaster, which it was, but it also represented a significant escalation in u.s. military involvement in yemen by the new administration. without a process to deliberate over that really at all, the new president apparently approved that raid and that major

escalation in yemen at a dinner meeting that included jared, his son-in-law. this new presidency is also where we got what appears to have been a truly disastrous air raid in mosul, iraq. an air raid that may have killed 200 civilians after u.s. and allied forces specifically told civilians in those neighborhoods they should not leave, stay in their homes, right before u.s. planes then bombed those homes. and now the new administration has launched 59 tomahawk missiles at the other side in the syrian war that we weren't yet fighting. at the syrian military. why were steve mnuchin and jared kushner and the chief of the economic council and wilbur ross, why were they all in the room while that decision was being made? what military action decision

requires the chief of the economic advisers to be there or wilbur ross? the u.s. military has been involved in the syrian civil war before. we have never before deliberately taken a combatant role against the syrian military. who knows what will happen in response. if anything. i mean, is the united states going to pursue a military strategy that's aimed at regime change in syria now? the administration would have said that was nuts a week ago but today, who knows. and next week, who wants to bet, we don't understand how it is that the policy changed 180 degrees from last week, how will we know whether it's going to change 180 degrees to next week? the founders of our country tried to invest the power to make war in the united states congress instead of in the presidency. and they did that for a reason. it is hard to get a legislature full of hundreds of elected

officials from all over the country to vote to start a war. congress wouldn't even take a vote on president obama's request to them to authorize u.s. military force in syria in 2013. congress is structurally disinclined toward war and the founders knew they would be. they knew that a deliberative body would be less likely to wage war recklessly as compared to one person who could make that kind of decision alone. over these past couple of generations, we have let that constitutional imperative slip. and now we've got, in power, a person with the war-making powers of a modern american president who is also a person that is the subject of a counterintelligence investigation by the fbi because of the possibility that he colluded with a foreign power in order to become president. he also appears to have no moring whatsoever in the day-to-day basics of foreign policy.

but he has just gotten the first good press of his young presidency. and he got it by turning on a dime, doing something completely contrary to his stated foreign policy and deciding what the heck, let's bomb something. whether or not you think that was a good decision, how do you think about his decision-making process coming to it because the incentives here are about to get very, very per verse. more ahead. to do the best for your pet, you should know more about the food you choose. with beyond, you have a natural pet food that goes beyond telling ingredients to showing where they come from. beyond assuming the source is safe... to knowing it is. beyond asking for trust... to earning it. because, honestly, our pets deserve it. beyond. natural pet food.

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so, this is the time in the show when i thought we were about to be join the live by nbc chief foreign correspondent richard engel. richard is live on the turkish side of the border between turkey and syria. just right now in the commercial break we have been told turkish

authorities have told richard to take down his live shot. so, even though he's there, as far as i know, we cannot put him on camera. i believe, richard, we've been able to get you by phone. richard engel, are we with you? >> reporter: you are. i'm very sorry about this. we were up, ready to go, lights were on and then the police -- or intelligence services and chased us away. not because i was going to come on and talk to you about syria but because the situation is a little tense. there's a referendum coming up in this country that's a very important, very politically sensitive so they're very nervous about journalists talking about anything these days. i wanted to be part of your show because it's an incredibly important subject you were listening. i was listening to your intro and crying to myself if they were going to take me away and i couldn't contribute to this conversation. its so important people realize,

we are -- you were suggesting, do we have a policy on syria? can this team guide us through incredibly treacherous waters and i wanted to discuss that with you. >> richard, in terms of what's different here, i think it's important to be specific that the fact there has been various types of u.s. military engagements in syria. there have been tomahawk sometimes before, there have been bomb -- >> reporter: as you said, we're bombing both sides so how does that end well. we've been bombing extremist groups there. first we were arming groups that became extremist groups. then we started bombing those groups. now we're bombing the government that is bombing those groups because that did an atrocity and did it on television. i think that was the key here. they did it on television and president trump saw it and decided to act either for

emotional reasons or if you're a cynical person, for political reasons. i was told that the optics of it were also part of it. he did want to -- that times have changed, that he's been trusted to use the military at his discretion when he wants to. >> richard, do you think particularly in light of that sort of disturbing person that may have been something not for strategic reasons or political effect, do you think the united states government and the u.s. military should be expecting there will be a different kind of response to this strike targeting the syrian military than there has been to the other kinds of involvement we've had on the other sides of this war? >> so far there hasn't been any catastrophic reaction to this because it was small, because there is a meeting coming up between rex tillerson, putin and

moscow. the russians don't want to rock the boat right now. i don't think the russians will forget about it. the syrian government, while as you said they are running what has been described as a concentration camp system, today we're baffled, we said, what side is the u.s. on? we had an interview with someone close to assad's office saying, are you helping the terrorist? maybe that's what they call the extremist groups there. whose side are you on and to a point, to a degree, they have a point because it's not clear whose side they're on. >> richard joins us from the syrian border in turkey. i'm glad to get you in on this broadcast by phone. thank you. >> as you said, what's coming next week. so, this time there was this

strike, maybe not consequences because it was limited but who knows where it's going. this is really delicate stuff. >> richard engel, stay safe, my friend, especially in the middle of nowhere in turkey. i want to bring into the consideration, courtney kubie joining us from the pentagon. you've been doing absolutely yeoman's work and really, really good reporting. you've been ahead of the curve in terms of anticipating these things and describing them. i want to congratulate you and thank you for helping us report this over the last 24 hours. >> thank you. >> one of the things we've had conflicting reports about, courtney, is how much damage was done. we got some sort of hard to read, hard to assess reports from the ground in syria saying not too much damage was done. certainly functioning as an air base. airplanes taking off today. we got counterveiling information saying, no, no, no. the amount of damage and type of

damage that was done was exactly what we intended and this worked perfectly. can you thread that for us in terms of giving us an assessment? >> the base itself, the majority of the to the base itself was infrastructure. these strikes were very targeted. they didn't take out the syrian air force as some were calling for yesterday. what they were trying to do was send a clear message, clear signal that the specific assets that were used for this chemical attack earlier this week on civilians near idlib, those were what were targeted. they went after about 20 syrian aircraft, they went after several hardened aircraft hangars, some fuel depose, the places they refuel the aircraft on the base, they went after the air defenses. they believe they disabled the air defenses at that base, which was relatively minor. it was a radar. it was a russian-made syrian

radar. so, they weren't intending to stop the syrian air force's capability throughout the country. frankly, they didn't even stop their capability at that base. they still have the ability to fly jets and to fly helicopters in and out of that base today. >> courtney, one other specific thing to ask you about is we got this dramatic photo released by the white house today showing the makeshift situation room they set up at the president's resort in south florida. it was a dramatic picture but an unusual cast of characters. the president's top economic adviser is there, the commerce secretary is there, the treasury secretary is there, not to mention the white house spokesman, the president's son-in-law. is it clear nermz of the white house decision-making part of this, all these people were involved in this process? do we know what the chain of of decision-making was here? >> it was a relatively quick decision-making process. so, earlier in the week on april 5th, president trump asked secretary mattis for specific

plans, for options to strike back at the syrian regime specifically again because of this chemical attack they bestowed on their people april 4th. that day there were plans at the white house and then it goes back and forth. the military and white house likes to call it inner process. they go back and forth, talk through their options. by the next day on april 6th, yesterday, a proposal was sent forward to secretary -- by secretary mattis to president trump down at mar-a-lago. we don't know exactly whether exact representation by he secretary mattis or a variation of several options that came forward. we don't know. he did make the call at 4:30 yesterday afternoon. president trump said go forward with the strikes. i want it to be targeted. i want it to be specifically against any assets involved in this chemical weapons attack earlier this week. that's what the military did.

think about that. 4:30 p.m. eastern time, president trump gave the order. there was a tank meeting at the exact same time i watched the chiefs walk into the office yesterday afternoon and less about three hours later those tomahawks started firing off the coast in the eastern med. >> courtney kube who hasn't slept in the last 24 hours. thank you for helping us understand the process here. really appreciate it. >> thank you. we got much more ahead tonight. stay with us. ication. 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. can make any occasion feel more special.ie

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there is a twitter account for the badlands national park. but there's also a bad hombre lands national park twitter account. bad hombre lands is not a national park. obviously the national park service itself also has a twitter account, but there is also a nasty women of the national park service twitter account. they call it, quote, the unofficial resistances team of nasty lady rangers that your elected officials warned you about. here's another one. this one's pretty blunt, not at all e.p.a. since president trump took office, one of the things that's happened online is dozens of parody accounts have popped up. they're usually pretty open about the fact they're alternative accounts. a lot of them put it in their handles. the alt department of energy on

the alt department of labor, or the alt library of congress. that's also one account called alt immigration. it's the alternative account for the agency called the u.s. citizenship and immigration service. this account has been particularly critical of the muslim ban and the president's proposed wall, the border of mexico. that parody was not well received by the trump administration. on march 14th, the u.s. customs and border patrol, the real one, sent a summons to twitter, to the company twitter, asking for, quote, all records regarding the twitter account including user names, account login, phone numbers and ip addresses. it is real border patrol faxed that summons to twitter on march 14th. unfortunately, they asked twitter to comply with the summons by march 13th, the day before they sent it. which in itself is mind-bending.

twitter sued. twitter sued everyone involved in issuing this strange summons. they filed a case against the department of homeland security, u.s. customs and border protection, john kelly, as well as a bunch of officials from the agency. the lawsuit said customs and border patrol didn't have grounds to even issue a summons like this. i know that sounds like weird legalese until you see that, in fact, the u.s. code u.s. customs and border patrol cited when they issued this summons, when they demanded information about this parody twitter account, what they cited is a part of the u.s. code that relates to, quote, inquiries relating to the importation of merchandise. tweets are not merchandise nor are they imported, but nice try. did you try to get them for parking, too? i don't know who the trump

administration has working at the legal office of customs and bored patrol but we can tell for sure two things. one, they don't have a sense of humor. two, they're not that awesome when it comes to the legal stuff. well, after twitter sued them yesterday, today customs and boarder patrol tried to make the whole thing go away. they rescinded the summons, dropped their request for this mean parody twitter account, they withdrew it, want it all to go away so twitter has dropped their lawsuit in response. but under the trump administration, that's your tax dollars at work. hey richard, check out this fresh roasted flavor. looks delicious, huh? -yeah. -richard, try to control yourself. -i can't help it. -and how about that aroma? -love that aroma! umph! -craveability, approved! -oh, can i have some now?! -sure! help yourself. -wait, what?

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shouldn't be filled until we have a new president. that was february 2016. that was the very start of the presidency primary season. president obama still had almost a full year left in office but the republicans in the senate declared as far as they were concerned he wasn't really president at all. president obama had no right to make a supreme court nomination and then they tried to persuade everyone else this was somehow true. >> justice scalia served for 30 years so this clearly extends far beyond president obama's term of office. it's that important. >> justice scalia served 30 years so what gives this president the right to try to go ahead and replace him? after president obama nevertheless nominated someone, merritt garland to fill the seat, even republicans who wholeheartedly praised judge garland, those republicans refused to meet with him. they refused to even schedule a hearing for him.

they pretended the nomination didn't even exist. it's an unprecedented thing on the republicans part what they did to merrick garland. and further they started arguing if hillary clinton ended up winning the presidency, they would never fill that seat. they would hold it open for the entire time she was president. judge garland waited for 293 days for a senate hearing. the longest any supreme court nominee has ever had to wait. until his nomination ended without him ever getting a hearing. it stayed open for 14 months so republicans could wait until a republican was in place and they could get a republican candidate in that seat. we've never ever gone through a process like that before in this country. we've never filled a supreme court seat like this in this way. ever since justice scalia died, since the day he passed away, the process of filling this seat has never been normal. today we found out who will fill that seat. republicans got rid of senate

rules that have been there forever in order to get neil gorsuch confirmed to that seat. it's done. he will be sworn in on monday. there's nothing anybody can do about it. but the way it happened was so radical, so completely inhistorical, in some way it's occluded any view of what neil gorsuch is expected to be. if somehow democrats win back senate next year, unlikely, but theatrically, would this then be the new normal? is this now the way we're going to do it from here on out where the president from an opposing party never gets to put anybody on the supreme court and seats are held open? if another supreme court justice retired or died on the bench and there was another opening on the supreme court, if democrats were in charge of the senate, would they just not allow trump to nominate anyone? is that what we're going to do from here on out? is there any remedy at this point, given what we just went

through? joining us with us dalia. great to see you on the first day of this new order. >> i feel like it's been 14 months of us talking about this the theoretically and here we are. >> and that's sort of been our lives in this new political era. we talk about how amazing and strange and per verdict to the course of american history it would be if "x" happens and then "x" happens and we have to figure out what to do the next day. this is the way it goes and we don't know what happens next? or do you feel like we have a sort of tale foretold in terms of what happens now. >> i think this happens forever. something fundamental broke and you put. perfectly, what we learned and we learned when mitch mcconnell said that obstructing garland was one of the proudest moments of his career, that this is

about power now. it's not about senate norms that suggest that supreme court justices are different. now it's just about power. it's about winning elections. it's about putting the most extreme person you can put up knowing that you just need 51 votes to confirm them. i don't see this unrolling. and i think the other thing i'd add, rachel, 84, anthony kennedy, 78, steve briere. this is not a theoretical question either. >> if you could wave a magic wand that was not retrospective -- retro active. if you could wave your magic wind. you could just determine what people were going to -- how people were going to deal with these matters going forward. is there any fix that you could even imagine, that you could invent that would get us out of that very dire description thaw just gave us >> the depressing fix, rachel, is i think this is a situation where democrats have been awfully moderate and temperate

over the last few decades. and so that when, you know, john roberts was put up, sam alito, right to quite far right republican nominees, we saw people who were center left. i think in one sense, retro actively, i would say just keep putting up brennans and marshalls, put up people who are counterweights because what we've seen over the years is the court become progressively more and more right. the center of the court is now anthony kennedy, one of the most conservative jurists in supreme court history. so i think soim kind of parody of passion and force and enthusiasm, i think that's might the only thing that fix this. >> do you subsubscribe to the common view now that judge gorsuch will be to the right of every justice on the court? >> whether he's to the right of

alito or thomas, i think those are the questions we're asking. i think he is pretty consistently where scalia, thomas, alito are. certainly not to the left of any of them. >> senior editor, legal correspondent for for slate and teller of hard truths. dahlia, thank you very much. >> thanks, rachel. per roll more "doing chores for dad" per roll more "earning something you love" per roll bounty is more absorbent, so the roll can last 50% longer than the leading ordinary brand. so you get more "life" per roll. bounty, the quicker picker upper and you're about in to hit 'send all' on some embarrassing gas. hey, you bought gas-x®! unlike antacids, gas-x ® relieves pressure and bloating fast. huh, crisis averted.

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i know what you happen. he know what you've been thinking. you have been sitting there all

night and go to the show, yes, yes, this is all fine. but man, i wish there were some new creepier details regarding alabama's handsome 74-year-old governor. it's friday. i will not let you down. dirty text messages, open threats, including something rustling in the bushes. also something about a command to bow to the throne. and that's a quote. put the kids to bed. maybe clear the room of anything you don't want to up chuck on. because it's about to get little weird. it's our final story of the night. thank you, alabama. that's next. you might have mi. you seriously can't tell the difference between a bird and a plane? like that time gwen and blake got a little too flirty. that's so inappropriate to talk about us hooking up. xfinity watchathon week ends april 9. the greatest collection of shows free with xfinity on demand.

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at letsmakeaplan.org. cfp. work with the highest standard. for the past year, alabama's republican governor robert bentley has been under three separate investigations as the state has tried to figure out whether he used taxpayer funds to carry on and then cover up an affair with a top staffer. well, on wednesday this week we reported that the state ethics commission had referred the governor for prosecution. well, today the alabama house impeachment committee released their investigative report on the scandal, and oh my. the report says the governor refused to cooperate with the investigation in any meaningful sense, which they say is itself grounds for impeachment. but despite his lack of cooperation, they're able to detail things like the governor dispatching alabama law enforcement officials to break up with his alleged girlfriend on his behalf. he also allegedly directed law enforcement officials to drive all over the state to confront people he thought might have sexy recordings of him and his

alleged mistress. the report also details significant sums of money paid to his alleged mistress. and that part doesn't even cover the salacious stuff like the text messages discovered by the governor's wife because he didn't realize his cell phone was synced to his ipad, and she had access to the ipad. messages where he talks with his alleged mistress about wanting to touch her body and wishing she could be sleeping next to him. and they say things like bless our hearts and other parts, to which he responds magnetic. on top of all that -- sorry. i want to rescind my facial expression. i take it back. recall. there are new revelations about the culture of fear and intimidation the governor established once he knew he was in trouble, including allegations of multiple threats against his then wife's chief of

staff who helped set up the recording device that caught the governor red-not exactly handed, the governor apparently cornering her in the governor's mansion telling her you'll never work in the state of alabama again if you tell anybody about the affair and again reportedly confronted her in a parking lot warning her to watch herself because she didn know what she was getting into. he also told her, allegedly, because he was the governor, quote, people bow to the throne. the wife's chief of staff says somebody threw a rock through her window and scrawled death threats on her car. even before the report came out at 5:00 today, the leaders of the house and state senate, both of them republicans urged the governor to resign, but the governor said nope, he is staying. this afternoon a judge granted the governor's request for a temporary restraining order on impeachment proceedings. so no impeachment proceedings for now.

the court says the governor deserves time to respond to the report. i tell you, i kind of can't wait the see how he responds. i hope none of it is by text. that does it for us tonight. we will see you again on monday. have an excellent weekend. now it's time for "the last word msnbc live is next. good morning, everyone. i'm dara. it is 7:00 a.m. in the east, 4:00 a.m. out in the west. here is what's happening. air strike fallout. new reports today on the consequences of the u.s. military action in syria. could it lead to a bigger conflict with russia? new reaction from congress on the trump administration's syria policy. the big question from both sides of the aisle, what's next? inside the white house, reports of a power struggle and possible shake up. the administration says it's not true. but what is behind the talk of a clash between chief strategist steve b