go long. qun ," i'm ari melle er melber. #thepoint or e-mail at nbcari.com. i'll answer some e-mails next week. meanwhile, joy reid is up next. have a great night. in this country, every famous, powerful or wealthy person is a target. i'm a target. any time somebody could come out and sue us, attack us, go to the press or anything like that. >> last year when fox news host bill o'reilly broke out his tiny violin to play a sad sox for a wealthy man accused of repeatedly sexual harassing

women he was talking about roger ailes. fast forward, o'reilly is playing of the wealthy and powerful man, himself, after a "the new york times" investigation uncovered $13 million of payouts by fox news and o'reilly to five women to settle claims he'd sexually harassed them. o'reilly who denies the merits of the claims released a statement saying "just like other prominent and controversial people, i'm vulnerable to lawsuits from individuals who want me to pay them to avoid negative public y publicity. the worst part of my job is being a target for those who would harm me and my employer, fox news channel." since the report advertisers have been dropping the show like it's hot. so far, more than 50 companies have pulled their ads from the "o'reilly factor" and by count, o'reilly's thursday night show had just seven national advertisers. down from 31 the night before. and from 55 at the beginning of the week. however, where advertisers have abandoned him, many fans have o'reilly's books have remained loyal. his latest "old school" is a defense of traditional values that is currently topping the

bestseller list and "the new york times," on amazon and barnes & noble. given this week's news about the sexual harassment payouts it could be number one on a list of most ironic books because among the words of wisdom that o'reilly dishes out in the book is advice on how men should treat women with respect. joining me now is the host of msnbc's "the last wodrd" lawrene o'donnell. lawrence o'donnell, thanks for being here. >> joy, i can hear you. you don't have to up the volume. >> we'll do it live. we'll do it live. >> that's where it's coming from. >> so, lawrence, it's interesting because bill o'reilly says being a wealthy and powerful man means you're a target for sexual harassment lawsuits. i know a few wealthy and powerful men. i don't know any who are being sued -- >> i am not -- i for one am not wealthy and powerful enough to have a stack of lawsuits against me like bill o'reilly does, so here's two words to counter that. sean hannity. now, fox news is a cesspool of

sexual harassment. and abuse of women as they've discovered in their own investigation. sean hannity's name never, ever, ever comes up. no one has ever sued him for sexual harassment. tucker carlson, who hasn't been there as long. >> right. >> steve doocy. i rattle off the names who you've never heard of this happening and there's that guy, o'reilly, saying, oh, it happens to all of us. >> all the time. >> the endless stream of much more famous, much richer people than o'reilly in show business, who've never been sued. >> yep. >> people from the zuckerbergs in business, never, ever been sued for this. and so, you know, that is -- there's just no basis in that particular defense of it happens to all of us. when he was sitting on that talk show, he's the only one that it happened to, he was sitting behind a famous guy who was rich, too. hadn't happened to him. >> so you issued a tweet this week, and essentially he's been

threatening to sue anyone who believes one of these accusers, wendy walsh. you said, "go ahead and sue me." have you yet been sued by bill o'reilly? >> here's the thing. his lawyer a week ago when this story came out, his lawyer threatened wendy walsh because she was the woman in the article who had not sued bill o'reilly. >> right. >> she was the one who was able to speak completely freely because she had not entered a settlement agreement that includes her silence. for the rest of her life about bill o'reilly. so she told the full story. so immediately what those thug lawyers do is they threaten someone like that and say we're going to see you for defamation. >> right. >> now, you have to -- to be defamed in the area of sexual harassment, you would have had to have no record in the area of sexual harassment. bill o'reilly is not de-famable in this territory. i wanted to leap out as quickly as possible and take that punk

lawyer working for bill o'reilly and prove what a fraud he was. he's as fraudulent as bill o'reil o'reilly. and say, look, i believe wendy walsh. sue me, too, because i believe her and i'm going to say it on television which i've said many times. >> yeah. >> okay. i believe that bill o'reilly sexually harassed wendy walsh. i believe wibill o'reilly is a sexual harasser. now, according to o'reilly's thug lawyer,sueable right now. go ahead. come and sue me, bill o'reilly, i dare you. >> i spr a feeling -- >> there's a thousand reasons why he won't, including he's actually guilty of these things. that's the biggest reason. the other reason is he wouldn't dare put himself in a situation where i get to put him under oath in a deposition asking him questions about wendy walsh. >> yeah. the discovery would be brutal. you know, i think one of the reasons that a lot of people are having schadenfreude about bill

o'reilly's current situation, part of what he does on the show, moralizing, quite frankly moralizing at people of color, women, talking down to people that he's this moral arbiter. i'm old enough to remember back in 2002 when he decided to go after pepsi for having rapper ludicroewudacris as a spokesper. let's play that. he got pepsi to drop them by moralizing about it. take a look. >> it was irresponsible of pepsi cola, company made trillions of dollars in the united states, to hire a man to pitch their product who is, in my opinion, subverting the values of the united states. >> not only do they need to rethink ludacris, all of corporate america needs to rethink their responsibility to the country. >> how is it a guy that has this many accusations of serial harassment, serial as you said, sexual harasser, is the chief moralizer at fox news? >> is there a familiar structure to this? i've been says for a week now bill o'reilly needs his --

that's what he doesn't have, the difference between bill cosby and bill o'reilly is hannibal burris. everything hannibal burris said in his standup routine about bill o'reilly was known. hannibal burris didn't create any new public information. he used all the public information and he put it in his standup routine. it went viral online. and people -- it framed bill cosby in a way that he hadn't been framed before. and we need the standup to do that. there's a unique power to that approach to this kind of -- see, when i do it, people just think, oh, that's another cable news guy on another network who's in a, you know, competitive environment with that network and all that. and that's true. i can't deny that that competitive environment kpistex so i will never have the power that hannibal burris had with bill cosby. even though the audience he was speaking to was much smaller

than the audience that i speak to. and so we need that hannibal burris character to step forward on o'reilly. my fear is that he will eventually get normalized again because bill o'reilly is a constant recurring guest on all of the late night comedy shows. >> yes. >> the reason he is, he's good for ratings. the "daily show" had him for years. they all have him. this week they did jokes about him. my question is what does bill o'reilly have to do to make the late-night hosts so uncomfortable that they cannot sit beside him on their set in order to edge out the other guy tonight with maybe, you know, 50,000 of o'reilly's viewers. >> yeah. one, you know, set of comedians who did take on o'reilly this week is, of course, "saturday night live." in which alec baldwin played both o'reilly and donald trump. i want to talk to you about that on the other side because there is some interesting nexus there as well. >> oh, they're the same guy.

it's o'reilly as president. >> here they are last night. >> thank you, mr. president. thank you for coming to my defense last week. even though no one asked you to. you even went as far as saying, "bill o'reilly did nothing wrong." >> that's correct. >> that's based upon? >> hunch, just a loose hunch. >> so you're not familiar with the facts of the case. >> i mean, i'm more familiar with this case than i am with, say, health care, but i didn't really look into it much, no. >> roger ailes, bill o'reilly, donald trump. three people with something very unique in common in this idea of them being sexually harassing toward women. just the general attitude toward women. have we reached an era where we are the upsidedown version of the age of the woman? this is what's runs the country. this ethos, this attitude is pref dent a prevalent and clearly running through the dna at fox. >> yeah, interesting report in "the new york times" yesterday about fox o'reilly viewers, a

woman -- and women, plural -- who watch the show and continue to watch the show. you know, one of the perverse things that happens whenever sexual harassment charges come out at bill o'reilly as they have for many years now is the ratings go up and the ratings go up because they want to see what is bill o'reilly going to say? his ratings went up this week because they were waiting to see what he would say. of course, this time he is desperately afraid, running scared, not saying a word. >> yeah. >> he has been terrified into abject silence and so those ratings will flatten out and -- flatten up meaning they'll go back to their regular very high plateau. but the -- the dynamic of audience support is something you just can't break because people watch fox news. there's a lesson to this. there's been a lesson all along in this business which is it's not so much that they're watching the individual hosts. they're not. you -- you know, megyn kelly leaves, tucker carlson comes in, nothing happens to the ratings except that they go up. >> right. >> which means they weren't

really watching megyn kelly, they were watching fox news. you can replace anybody there and the ratings stay the way they are. o'reilly, it seems, as far as i can tell in that constellation, has a unique hold on his audience. he's the one who i believe has the strongest hold on the audience. that's why they book him on other shows all the time. "the view" and these other places. they believe he has a hold on his audience and the book business shows that he has a hold on his audience that is different from everybody else at fox. >> yeah. >> and these conditions show that he has a hold that's pretty strong. when this stuff comes out, completely continue tick lly co everything in his new book, everything about what he preaches and they hang in there with limb and that's, you know, that's somethings that he's developed with that audience over a loonng period of time. it's also because every night he's saying exactly what they want to thahear about everythin >> the question becomes what is the tolerance of fox tuesday for

an ad-free environment? >> the tolerance is very simple, check the ratings. i remember when the first time the accusations came out against him, i had a friend who was very high-level position in that company and the day of, that first crisis, you know, where they had audiotape of him on the phone, where he was apparently -- >> the loofah. >> i said this is a ratings question, right? he said, yeah. meaning when o'reilly goes back on the air. we're going to watch what happens to the ratings. if they go down, he's gone. if they don't, he's not. he went back on the air, the ratings did not go down. in fact, they went up because there's more interest in what is this guy to say? it's as simple as that. if you -- if the ratings went down then, you know, that would be the end of o'reilly. that would be the end of this whole thing. in the meantime, we're awaiting hannibal burris. >> we're waiting for hannibal burris and waiting for him to go

down to just promos. he only has seven advertisers. that will be interesting, too. thank you, lawrence o'donnell, coming in on the weekend. coming up next, rex tillerson finally has to make eye contact with america. don't go away. you 'bout the birds the bees ♪ ♪ and the flowers and the trees♪ ♪ and the moon up above ♪ ♪ and a thing called love. ♪ ♪ let me tell you 'bout the stars in the sk♪, ♪ a girl and a guy♪ ♪ and the way they could kiss on a night like this ♪ life's as big as you make it. introducing the all-new seven seater volkswagen atlas ♪ and a thing called love. getting heartburn doesn't mean i means i take rolaids®. rolaids® goes to work instantly neutralizing 44% more acid than tums® for fast, powerful relief of your worst heartburn. i trust my rolaids®. r-o-l-a-i-d-s spells relief.

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russia should ask themselves what are we doing here? why are we supporting this murderous regime that is committing vast murder of its own population and using the most heinous weapons available? >> we are hearing new word from the trump administration today including national security adviser h.r. mcmaster on the trump foreign policy doctrine or lack thereof. joining me now, cornell belcher, democratic pollster, author of "black man in the white house." kerstin hagland. michael medved, nationally syndicated talk radio host. thank few for being here. looking forward to this panel. i'm going to go to you, michael,

you're at a disadvantage not being a t the table with us. have you been able to just observing the trump administration over the last week come to some understanding of what is their foreign policy doctri doctrine? what is trump's doctrine? >> they don't have one yet. it's in formation but i'm very, very encouraged because this is beginning to look more like a normal presidency. it's abnormal that they posted that big picture of president trump reaching that decision. and it was at mar-a-lago. it wasn't in the situation room in the white house. but this generally -- i mean, people who have talked for a long, long time about trying to move forward, to try to resolve this horrible syrian conflict, this all of a sudden is beginning to look serious. and also the word being that steve bannon in the white house was opposed to this very limited even military strike and that there may be a white house staff shakeup, that's very encouraging to a lot of people who would like to see a more mainstream conservative republican presidency. >> kristen, it is interesting because, you know, this week my

"daily beast" column was essentially basically donald trump became george w. bush this week. his policies are looking for like bush. that is causing a lot of consternation among the bannon-ite wing, breitbart wing of the party. are you hearing the same thing? are people in the base of the party saying, wait, this is george w. bush? >> well, the base of the party shoo came out for bush where they haven't before, yes, a lot of their view was let's focus on america first, get our own house in order before we do this. the cultures of the right, people on the alt-right running all those websites and commenta commentary, they feel completely betrayed. of course you see senator john mccain this morning coming out, him and lindsey graham, as well as democrats being very, very supportive of this. this looks good for the establishment wing. the reince priebus wing of the republican party that has really been looking for this shift. >> well, good, unless you're concerned we're going to end up in a quagmire in the middle east with another regime change.

on "face the nation" earlier this morning, i think what people are worried about whether you're a democrat or whether you are this base of the republican party. take a listen. >> as i said again, taking this action, i support and was important but we've got to have a strategy and a plan to follow through. just a one-time deal is not going to be productive. and saying we are only going after chemical weapons areas ignores the enormity of the problem. >> so, steve, i think what a lot of people are concerned about is sthat part in the mid- just a one-time deal is not going to be productive. you have deno cons saying, great, looks like we're going back to war. >> this is great. this is the question about donald trump, what is the leadership approach? where is the decisionmaking approach? where do you stand saying stay out of syria.

criticizing obama. the easiest thing in the world. the fear i have about president donald trump, he wakes up, looks at a picture as if those pictures of those children who were killed and everyone else who were gassed, killed, whatever, means that were used by assad in syria, as if that were not happening for years. he has no information, no intel. no insight, no emotional intelligence to acknowledge the fact that he doesn't have any grounding and doesn't even explain this change. my fear, bottom line, is that day-to-day, we, week-to-week, w don't know where we're going to be. that's scary. >> cornell, one of the reasons there is a sense of incoherence, the people that supposedly speak for this president on foreign policy don't seem to agree with each other. i want to quickly play nicky hailly who nikki haley, who's on one side of things. ambassador of the u.n., on "meet the press" earlier today. >> you know the interesting thing, chuck, is when this well call weapons murder happened to so many people, russia's reaction was, not, oh

how horrible, or how could they do this to innocent children or how awful is that? their initial reaction was, assad didn't do it. the syrian government didn't do it. why were they that defensive that quick? the idea of the casualties came after. the first priority for them was to cover for assad. >> very tough on russia and she has been the whole time. tillerson has been a little bit more all over the place. and the two of them have often not been on the same page. >> actually if you listened to tillerson this morning, he almost sounds like john kerry. there's this pullback of nation building, a slippery slope into nation building here. beyond sort of the missiles today, to your point, senator rand paul has a point, we need to have a debate of the slippery slope of presidential power. we now have a president who can see that picture on television and decide i'm going to launch $100 million worth of missiles, right?

i think it's fair to say the founders didn't have that in mind when they gave the deliberate body of congress the power here. so i think there should be, you know, broadly speaking for the americans moving forward, there should be a debate in congress object whether or not this is the sort of action that a president has the ultimate power to do. >> yeah. >> here's my reaction. i agree with just about everything you said except i'm glad that donald trump does have some empathy. i'm glad that he does feel and he looks at those pictures and has a visceral reaction. my fear, and i'm repeating it again, we don't know what the heck he was looking at for four years before that. he's so devoid of intellectual curiosity, again, emotional intelligence. that all of a sudden he acts like he came up with this, he just realized how health care was complicated. that's the problem. >> he was banning the same exact children from the united states. >> don't come in. >> michael medved, one of the other concerns on the congressional side is we see this knee-jerk partisan reaction when it's our guy in the white

house, congress doesn't seem that interested in weighing in on whether we go to war in syria. they're willing to give donald trump a free hand whether he's on one side of the coin or the other. sense we don't have a check and balance mechanism in congress, does it concern you that donald trump is so easily swayed by whatever is happening, whoever's whispering in his ear at the moment? >> look, everything does concern me about donald trump. he's president of the united states. one thing this latest episode should suggest is the alleged bromance between donald trump and vladimir putin is over. they're splitsville. i mean, and i even have heard conspiracy on the left suggesting this is all a show to hide the fact that putin and trump are still hand in glove. but very, very clearly, there is further distance now in all elements of the trump administration. between the russia of vladimir putin and the america of donald trump. do i agree with everything that's been said here that we need to find a way, we need a coherent policy, we need a trump

doctrine? we clearly do, but i believe that that's evolving and certainly when you have people like general mcmaster who is outstanding and lime general mattis at the pentagon, i think we will in days ahead have a much more clearer articulation of what the administration means and plans to do. >> michael, to the point you just made, it is interesting because you had the putin-ites seem to be been marginalized. they're now out. basically subject to being called by congress. the people left in seem to be the more traditional republicans. i want you to listen to rex tillerson, friend of vladimir putin. this is how he sounds now talking about putin and assad. >> president putin called what happened on thursday a significant blow to the relationship of the united states. >> well, i guess i'm not too surprised that russia might make that statement. i will tell you, i'm disappointed because i think the

real failure here has been russia's failure to live up to its commitments under the chemical weapons agreements that were entered into in 2013. so the failure related to the recent strike and the recent terrible chemical weapons attack in large measure is a failure of russia's part to achieve its commitment to the international community. >> i want to quickly go around the table starting with kisten, what are the implications to put it in michael medved terms, if the bromance is over between the united states and russia? >> well, a regional if not global conflict. the good thing, multilateral there has been support for our allies for this strike. i think we should also remember for the people on the ground, syrians on the ground, there was a great "the new york times" article this morning about the sigh of cautious relief that has been breathed by these people who have for years wanted america, someone to take some leadership and respond to this.

they need a plan going forward. that is the bottom line because if they just say this is a one and done, bashar al assad and russia say, okay, that's a one and done, we can go up to this line and all we'll get is a strike that doesn't really cripple our air force. >> that's what the reports are. planes are still taking off from the air base and assad is still attacking these people. >> right. we haven't solved the problem. we've got a commander in chief who has launched missiles and there will be a rally effect around him but we have not fundamentally solved the problem. we either nation build or pull back. >> my final point, i sound like a broken record. i would like the mt. president to be more disciplined, stop the tweeting because it moves him and sees a picture. more thoughtful. surround himself with people who are going to challenge him. get the intelligence. come to a decision when you have the information. don't react viscerally o ll lly

out of whatever part of your body. that's what scares the hell out of me when it comes to trump. >> put down your phone. medved, last word. >> this is the first jgenuinely bipartisan approval president trump has gotten for anything, even from hillary clinton. basically who advocated for trump authorized the strike, precisely that kind of maneuver. and i would suggest that president trump is very glad right now that he didn't lock her up, lock her up. >> you know, the thing that scares a lot of people, michael medved, one thing you can get republicans and democrats to agree on is a war and that's something a lot of americans are quite uncomfortable with. love this panel. going to have to reassemble you again. cornell and kirsten are sticking around. thank you, steve, and michael medved, also my friend. up next, louis c.k.'s no holds barred "saturday night live" performance. stay with us.

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>> i said i gave it to your depart and i was promised -- like it's in the constitution that you get your laundry -- i was promised i'd have it in 24 hours and it's been longer. she said what do you want me to do about it? i got really mad, i said, listen, ma'am, first of all, you can hear in my voice that i'm white. by the way, i'll defend that right now. i will defend that because, look, it's wrong that white people get preferential treatment, it's wrong. as long as they do, what's going on with this hotel? i'm supposed to get the best because i'm white which is awful and wrong. >> and, of course, alec baldwin reprieved his role as donald trump. >> i just had an amazing week folks, i met with leaders from china, egypt and jordan. gorsuch was confirmed. the media is saying nice things and no one is talking about russia.

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kind of look like donald trump. joining me now is ezra levin, executive director of the "invisible project" one of the organizers of the march, back is cornell and kirstin and charlie sykes. what's the point of the rallies, do you really honestly think that rallies are going to make donald trump show his tax returns? >> you know, first of all, thanks so much for having me. the rallies are great. the rallies are showing members of congress that they need to do their jobs. these rallies are happening, like you said, in 120 communities all across the country in addition to washington, d.c. and, you know, here's the bottom line. i don't know whether or not donald trump is engaging in a big cover-up of his business dealings or relationship with russia. what we do know, members of congress have the unilateral ability to find out and they're not using that power. so the timing of these marches -- it's great because of tax day but it's also great

because it falls smack dab in the middle of congressional recess. two weeks of, quote/unquote, recess, members of congress go back tohome to their home district, home states and listen to their constituents. what they're going to hear from their constituents is we want to see your tax returns. >> you mean go home and be tormented. that's what recess is for members of congress when they go home and yet yelled at by their constituents because nobody likes them. let's be honest, republicans in congress are essentially rubber stamping anything donald trump does as long as he signs the tax cuts and whatever else paul ryan wants. do you think they can be shamed, shocked or tormented into actually going back and legislating he turned these over? i mean, congress can subpoena them in theory. i've seen no willingness that at least anecdotally they're willing to do that. >> congress has an approval rating on par with fungus for a

reason. do they really care about constituents think for seven years, republicans have been promising to repeal obamacare, their number one legislative priority was implementing trumpcare to take away health insurance from 24 million americans and yet they didn't do it. they couldn't even have the vote. and the reason was because people in every single congressional district over the last congressional recess in february were telling their members of congress i will be dead or bankrupt without the affordable care act. and they changed their tune. now, we know that 74% of americans want to see donald trump's tax returns. we know that members of congress are responsive to their constituents and they're going to hear that this coming saturday. >> yeah, let's play your video before we bring in the rest of the panel. this is the panel from indivisible about the tax day marches. >> this fight, getting donald trump to release his taxes. why is this a big deal? imagine you're watching a football game and you find out that the ref owns one of the teams. you think he'll make fair decisions? until trump releases his tax

returns, you don't know whose side he's on. russia, his golf courses, mar-a-largo? >> charlie sykes, do you think that's going to work? donald trump owns the hotel down the street from the white house. the lpga is going to play their big tournament on a golf course owned by donald trump. he seems have gotten away with all sorts of emolument clauses. do you think this is going to work on him? >> no, they're not going to force him to. on the other hand, look, there's a reason why he hasn't released those returns. he has something to hide. we don't know what it is, in terms of the conflicts of interest, he obviously believes that the rules and the norms do not apply to him or to members of his family. so, you know, at some point the whole issue of the cleping icl is going to become an issue again. i actually think the real impact is going to be on tax reform. re cans want to reform the tax code, they want to cut taxes.

unfortunately, donald trump is going to be the poster child r for, you know, the dysfunction of the tax system and i think that's going to make their job which is already tough, it's going to make it much tougher. >> i wish i had a pollster right now. i do. cornell, tell us whether or not this ends up being a salient issue. charlie makes a great point, they're coming up on their athem to do a big tax cut. does the donald trump tax return wind up being a factor for voters? >> i think it's a factor for midterm. i think what they're doing with these marches, organizing and keeping this group of people energized and mobilized, you know the problem, joy, is midterms you have big drop-offs of democrats. you have big drop-offs of young people, big drop-offs of minorities. this sort of thing brings into question whether or not you're going to have those drop-offs. if these marches continue to go on and get this energy or engagement, i think republicans are looking at not the 2010 electorate or the 2014 midterm

electorate but electorate that looks a lot more like a presidential electorate. i think democrats gerrymandered. >> kirsten, the big factor in that, you have democrats looking at suburban republican districts, whether they might be able to knock off some of these republican house members. but, you know, i think the big question for a lot of people is whether or not there will be softness in republican support. do you see any evidence? i haven't seen it in the polling numbers yet. is there evidence there might be softening of suburben -- >> the moderates, middle of the road. right now, everyone is watching and quote/unquote giving trump that chance, right, up to the first 100 days but there's been a lot of growing disappointment about his inability to get a lot of the promises, legislation, through. republicans did want health care. they really do want tax reform. infrastructure plan. as they start to get agitated with the fact he doesn't seem like he can push these things through, then they will become much more vulnerable for republicans and possibly democrats. so this tax issue is big. also it speaks to his drive to

have more transparency in government and drain the swamp. >> sure. >> that -- people loved that message. they really did, right? it's something republicans and democrats, americans generally have always said, fight the elites, fight that, you know? we want equality in this country. he really could do a service to himself and his campaign if right up to the 2018 or 2020 election, just like he did with that statement about president obama and believing he wasn't born in kenya. he left it to the very last minute when it gave him the biggest political punch so that could be potentially they're using it in that way. >> ezra, do you take the tax day marches and can you turn them against this idea of the giant, enormous, super huge tax cut we know is coming because paul ryan exists and that's what he exists to do? >> i think fundamentally people are concerned about these conflicts of interest. we don't know when he's proposing tax reforms. whether he's proposing to consult his own taxes. we just have no idea. i think this is why you're going to see people coming out to get a better understanding of what

is donald trump working for, what is he trying to get cone? every single american president in history has chosen to release their tax returns for a reason so we can understand they're acting in the interest of the american people. this is why people are going to be coming out. they're going to go to taxmarch.org, go to the indivisible website, type in their zip code, find a tax march near them and find out what exactly donald trump is trying to get done. >> we don't know, charlie sykes, he's going to cut his taxes, and don jr. and ivanka's, that's what he's going to do. en. >> it's important for donald trump to get a legislative win on something, republicans. their failure on health care makes the tax bill much, much, much tougher. ultimately, the 2018 election is going to be determined by what is the state of the economy? is the economy growing, is if booming? are people back to work? if they don't do anything, they have a real problem. >> i'm going to give you the last word, cornell. you're heading on out. >> i don't think he's going to release his taxes. >> no. >> democrats also have a problem with this because american

people actually think cutting taxes is good for the economy. democrats have to put forth the argument of why cutting taxes here isn't fair in this way and it's not necessarily good for them. >> yeah, they got to mitt romney-ize the debate. >> that's right. >> that's what they managed to do in 2012. thank you very much, ezra levin and cornell. we're making kirsten and charlie stick around. we won't let them leave. coming up, the headlines you'll be talks about next week. ♪ "the birds and the bees" by dean martin ♪ ♪ let me tell you 'bout the birds the bees ♪ ♪ and the flowers and the trees♪ ♪ and the moon up above ♪

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it is time to find out what will be the next big headlines. jason, what will be the big headline next week? >> sex, wiki lies and russia-gate. wikileaks just released a new batch of documents yesterday, claiming that guccifer was not involved in the hack and that it involved the clinton -- this is the kind of right wing nonsense that wikileaks has been promoting for a long time, that president trump will probably repeat next week, all in a shameful discussion of the death of a man last year, rather than focusing on the connections between this president and the russians. >> i think wikileaks is so discredited at this point. it is clear what they are doing and what they are that hopefully they impact the things they release becomes less and less over time. they're pretty transparent. there is an election taking place in the country giving him safe harbor in that embassy. and i think that might be what this is about. they're worried he might get

extradited and stand trial for the rape allegations. interesting things going on. what do you think will be the big headlines? >> we have a post bannon white house and will jared run the world? this is a consequential issue. steve bannon has been the alt-right, america first nationalist, populist voice in the white house. why would this matter? donald trump is a man with no fixed principles who often is influenced by the person who has his ear, who he's speaking to. if steve bannon is gone, that may be a change in the administration, and, of course, we have jared, jared kushner who apparently is being put in charge of absolutely everything. so this will also, you know, i think shine the spotlight again on this family business and the possible conflicts of interest and is jared up to this job? >> and it is interesting, charlie, also rumors you can see reince priebus replaced with gary cone, a lot of -- that the

new york democrats are taking over. if that happens if you see this preponderance of goldman sachs democrats take over the white house, what happens in the republican base? >> that's fascinating. the trump world -- we're seeing the first divisions in trump world we have seen since the election. clearly there are folks breaking with trump on what he did in syria, but that transition, keep in mind that steve bannon has that whole troll universe out there, that whole -- that whole media empire, and they're going to be extremely unhappy. so this will be the first time you've seen some really significant fissures in the base. >> we're hearing katie mcfar land, one of the last of the general michael flynn acolytes out now as deputy national security adviser, sending her off to an ambassadorship overseas. interesting move. what do you think? >> very interesting. this is the shake-up in the national security council. mcmaster has come in, he's trying to assemble his team. remember, that was one of the

sticking points when considering bringing him on. he said, i want to -- i want to bring my own staff, get my own people. because in a role like that, which is so supremely important, as we have seen this week with syria, you've got to have the people that you want and you trust by your side. that shake-up is going to be indicative of what charlie just mentioned, the shake-up this week as far as -- >> you think that's the big headline, the shake-up? >> the shake-up and the fallout from syria and what is the trump doctrine? this has implications not just for the region, but negotiations that are going on right now in china, with the response in north korea, as well as iran. remember, there is an iran deal that president trump supposedly wants to renegotiate as well. so the implications in the fallout from this i think since congress is on recess, you're not going to be hearing as much about the legislative battles, you'll hear what is the trump doctrine. >> out to the panel, suddenly policy front and center, attacks in egypt overnight, that killed many, many people. and these were attacks on a holy

day on coptic christian churches. do we wind up now talking foreign policy and does -- is that convenient for donald trump? it gets russia-gate off the headlines? >> i don't think -- i don't necessarily think it gets donald trump off the hook. it puts more focus on him, because why is foreign policy being negotiated by his son-in-law? what kind of people are in position to do this? this is not scout camp. this is not a chance for oil executives and people who want to do play time with foreign policy. there are lives at risk, american security at stake, and this actually puts a greater focus on what isn't happening in the trump administration which is serious focus on how to keep america safe. >> people make the joke about the kids, but there are strong man dictatorships where you have a family running the can country rather than one person. that's what we seem to have here. >> i don't want to go to the uday thing with this. but this gives donald trump a chance to look strong and decisive which he has not looked in the first 100 days so far.

that's a plus for him. on the other hand, he doesn't have a foreign policy and the trump doctrine is incoherent at this point. but it will be fascinating to see what he does because what he has said in the past what he ran on may be very, very different from what he's inclined to do now. i have no idea what the trump doctrine is or what the next step is and i don't think anybody else does either. >> who is running this government? >> a collaboration of individuals. obviously a lot of people said jared kushner is running the government. but it is donald trump is the figure head and all the rest of that is, you know, up to people that are white house insiders. but i will say that the american people don't necessarily have the will to go to war right now. and i think that's something we need to remember. that's something congress knows as well. we have been embroiled for so long. the other thing about this is we have to -- this is part of the refugee conversation as well. >> absolutely. >> syria is where, yes, where the refugees are coming from. whatever we can do to help that is very important.

>> this conversation is not over. excellent panel. that's our show for today. thank you for joining us and be sure to join us next weekend for more "a.m. joy." keep it here on msnbc for the rest of the day. the customer app will be live monday. can we at least analyze customer traffic? can we push the offer online? brian, i just had a quick question. brian? brian... legacy technology can handcuff any company. but "yes" is here. you're saying the new app will go live monday?! yeah. with help from hpe, we can finally work the way we want to. with the right mix of hybrid it, everything computes. ito treat your toughy nasal allergies... ...listen up. unlike pills that don't treat congestion, clarispray covers 100 percent of your nasal allergy symptoms. clarispray. from the makers of claritin. adult 7+ promotes alertness and mental sharpness in dogs

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and we'll stop at... nothing to make sure you get it. one, two... and we mean nothing. ♪ ♪ chemical attack prompts outrage around the world and a u.s. military response.o >> tonight i ordered a targetedd military strike on the airfield in syria from where the chemical attack was launched. >> this morning we have the story covered from all of the angles. u.s. ambassador nikki hailey. >> the united states took a very measured step last night and we're prepared to do more. >> frequent republicane critic f president trump, senator lindsey graham. >> it was a wonderful signal to send that needs to be followed up. >> senator tim kaine.>>er