>> the dinner arranged, he want today stay on as the fbi head, and i said i will consider, we'll see what happens, but we had a very nice dinner and he told me you're not under investigati investigation, which i new. >> and standing by your man, president trump continues to defend former advisor mike flynn. s he is a very good person. and i don't think you hear from someonyou d't even know and immediately run out and fire a general. >> why is the president ignoring all of the warnings about his

former advisor and top campaign aide. i'm andrea mitchielmitchell. the criticism for what president trump said to lester holt, about why he fired the fbi director hit home. the president now responding with a tweet storm that including this stunning message, james comey better hope there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press. lester holt joining us now in new york. what an extraordinary interview. i wanted to play a number of segments, but first, your take away coming out of this interview, from the president who is now reacting very defensively and lashing out at the media, and saying his own aides can't be held accountable.

he is telling a very different story from the white house secretary and his substitute spokeswoman. >> the day before the interview, the white house was still reacting to the reaction. i don't think they expected the up roar. the president was fired up to really own the firing of james comey. they called for his firing and criticisms in the past. he said i made the decision beforehand, and he was fired up. at that point he was saying we are owning this, we fired him because he was doing a bad job. >> i want today play one of the most important exchanges about that now controversial dinner with james comey. >> i had a dinner with him, he

want today have dinner because he wanted to stay on. >> dinner was arranged, i think he asked for the dinner. and i said, you know, i will consider, we'll see what happens, but we had a very nice dinner and at that time h said you're not under investigation, which i knew anyway. >> so what is your take away? he was putting it out there that on two occasions they talked about how he was not under investigation. he said i asked if it was okay if i ask if i'm under investigation and he says you're

not, and others are disputing th that. >> and there are questions of propriety, and the president's lawyer's releasing a letter saying that the tax returns don't reflect income of any type from russian sources with a few exceptions, and that is a big flashing red liegtt for some people. do you and your businesses have any loans or dealings with any businesses. and we talked about the ms. universe he was involved in. what the other exceptions are are not clear. >> let me show you another exchange. part of this is him calling the russia investigation a hoax.

>> what you about the investigation, you tweet it'd is a total hoax, a taxpayer charade. >> it was set up absolutely by the democrats, lester. it was a way, an excuse for them losing. there was no collusion, and i think everybody said there was no collusion between me and my campaign and the russians. the other thing is the russians did not affect the vote. and everybody seems to think that. >> andrea on this subject, it is important obviously what message is being access to the next fbi direor. ishe message -- i asked is it that i'm going to layoff. he believes the investigation will go on and he will support it. >> an extraordinary interview that made headlines around the world. you know every here at nbc and

msnbc is incredibly proud to work with you. make sure you watch. >> president trump's push back on the russian investigations this morning continuing including this tweet, when james clapper himself, and everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt say there's is no collusion, when does it end? james clapper who was director of national intelligence to president obama joining me now exclusively. you were ahead of all of the intelligence agencies until i guess january 20th. >> exactly. >> and that concluded more than half a century of intelligence work for the u.s. government and afterwards. >> the president is now again today using you to defend him and to say that this sf a witch hunt, that you say there was no collusion from anyone, from the trump campaign. you testified to that. i want to give you a chance to

explain because there was an explanation in your testimony, but that is not what you're looking at. >> let me first explain the unique position that the fbi occupies for law enforcement. my practice for the 6 1/2 years of dni was to defer to the director of the fbi director bob muller or jim comey on whether when and what to tell me about a counter intelligence investigation. when the possibility was there that it could devolve into a criminal investigation. it was the practice that i followed here and it was consistent with what i did for 6 1/2 years. it is not surprising or abnormal that i would not have known

about the investigation. even more importantly the content of that investigation. so i don't know if there was collusion or not. i don't know if there was evidence of collusion or not nor should i have in this particular context. and if i may, one more point is what we were focused on and certainly what i was focused on, in the mad cap environment of the end of my time as dni, was the intelligence community assessment that we put together on russian interference in our election, which by the way, is the issue that we ought to be focusing on, i think, as a nation. and what we were very concerned about, and i say we, this was the three directors whose agencies participated in this, the nsa, fbi, and the cia, was the confidence lack of evidences

that we want to sustain before we publish that ica. and in that -- >> the intelligence community assessment. >> right, exactly. there was no evidence that rose to that level at that time that found it's way in to the intelligence community assessment that we had pretty high confidence in. that's not to say there wasn't evidence. but not that met that threshold. and and you're not attempting to clear or convict anyone of collusion, it is just out of your scope. >> correct. >> do you think the russian investigation is fake news or a witch hunt as the president keeps tweeting and saying. >> i don't believe it is, but that is kind of irrelevant. i think what needs to happen here is to clear this cloud. the cloud that is hanging overa house, and it would be in

everyone's best interest to get to the bottom of this and for the country. otherwise, this is going to continue to ling every as a dark cloud over, in my opinion, over this administration. >> the president actually taped your testimony from earlier this week, played it back for "time" magazine reporters, and said that you were choking on your testimony, do you want to respond to that? >> well, i read, i heard about that tweet. i don't know what he meant by that. i certainly knew what i wanted to say and i attempted to certainly clear up this misunderstanding about what i meant, particularly on the interview with chuck todd on "meet the press." >> do i want to ask you about james comey.

you know him well, the president suggested today that there could even be a tape, he tweeted out that tapes of his private conversation with comey might exist and comey should watch out for what he leaks, supposedly. what do you know about that dinner? you were with him the day of the dinner. >> i was, the 27th of january, and the fbi, jim, hosted a wonderful farewell ceremony for me that i will never forget. and jim and i spoke briefly before the ceremony and he mentioned he had been invited to the white house to have dinner with the president, and he was uneasy wf that because of the optics, the appearance of independence, not only of him, but of the fbi. >> but he was going that very night to the dinner. do you know why he felt he had to go? >> i think anyone who is serving

officer in the government, and you're asked by the president for dinner, i think it it professional courtesy. you're in after difficult position to refuse to go, but i do know he was uneasy with it. for just for the appearance of compromising the independence of the fbi which is a hollowed tenant in our system. >> what we're hearing from the fbi in our reporting contradicts what the president told lester holt. he says that he was appealing for his job and the president said am i under investigation and he said three times, twice on the phone and once at the dinner, no, i can assure you you're not. knowing jim comey, most people who know him well, say that he never said tha t him, he would not have said that to him.

>> i wasn't apt tt the dinner, don't know what was said, but i find that very inconsistent. more over, anyone in a position subject to senate confirmation, his it, mine was, understands that you serve at the pleasure of. and it would really be i think inappropriate and certainly in gym's case out of character to ask to stay on. one other note, i would like to add, is on the issue of the moral of the fbi. i know the bureau pretty well. i have been around it the last three jobs i had, the last 16 years, and particularly in the last one i had a lot of dealings with the fbi.

also performed a function for me as my representative in domestic context. so i visited all of these places. had a lot of interaction with fbi people. here and overseas, i had people assigned to me on detail, and the legal interactions overseas, it is over difficult when you're assessing the moral from a large complex institution, but from my vantage, the moral in the fbi was very high, and i can attest because of the high esteem and respect that people in the fbi had and still have for jim comey. sure some people probably didn't like some things he did, but i think overall as far as his stature as a public servant, a consummate public servant in my view he was tremendous.

>> so for him to be disparaged the way the president did -- >> for him to be disparaged as a show boat as the president told lester. thas not how iould characterize him. >> everyone has their own view, but that is dprobably the last description that i would assign to jim comey. >> mike flin, controversial, he was fired, we knew him as an esteem esteem esteemed intelligence officer, and you were the one that had to fire him. >> yeah, he was a tremendous officer. an architect of the find, finish, fix that is a standard

conviction in the military. it was a efficient in his ceremony when we promoted him to lieutenant general, three stars. he worked for me for 11 months. the job that i had in the early 90. and for lots of reasons here it didn't work out. at the time we managed a graceful exit for him. we say that we, myself, and mike vickers -- >> do you understand why the president keeps praising him now? >> well, you know, all of that history, that i just recounted, is to some extent irrelevant.

the key thing is what is the trust between president and a national security advisor. i didn't think mike had the skill set to be a national security advisor. i worked for three national security advisors. it matched what i saw as required for national security advisor. >> the president blamed president obama for not giving him the security clearance that was renewed last year as a retired military officer and f not knowing about his other entanglements. was that up to president obama or the incoming team to vet him properly? >> i can't comment because i don't know on whatever vetting procedures this white house used, but he should have been vetted intensively before he

became national security advisor. >> the practice was in the past for me and any other political appointees or anyone in the white house that there are very invasive, there have been, invasive procedures at the white house itself that they operate with to vet and check the backgrounds and suitability of people to work in the white house nap is a particularly sensitive place. obviously. normally the checks are done by the fbi and they're quite thorough. i don't know, because i don't have access to it, what is in the investigatory file if mike's investigation was done, i can't say, but i just think it is a tad disingenuous to equate that, the standard clearance, that depends quite a bit on what individual applicants or those that are going to be cleared say -- >> they have to disclose these

foreign payments. >> and finally i know how tur d curre concerned you are about russia, would you have let the task forecaster in his gear into the oval office. >> are you surprised by them and the show that went on there? >> i hope that some how there was some kind of screening done before, particularly the photographers were allowed in the confines of the oval office. i just find that, you know, a bother some security practice if they didn't do that. if they did, then maybe that minimizing the risk. >> thank you for your service. joining us now, chuck todd, host of "mtp daily."

you know that general clapper wanted to clear up that remark from "meet the press." he was very careful not to ask the fbi directo or his predecessor what is going on in these counter intelligence investigations. >> i assume there is a point you know you access to the investigation unt information until you don't have the access to the investigatifot it is hard to say anything applies to that today anyway on that front. this is the can of worms that the president opened up. by going directly at director comey like this, making it personal now, levels on twitter what appeared to be a threat with putting the word tapes in quotes, i'm not surprised if the national intelligence community,

the more he goes after him, the more they will defense the integrity of what they do in the beginning. >>. >> interesting. >> it is, and this will be the conundrum. you talk to anyone, even qucrits of jim comey, at the time the director believed he was doing whatever it took to protect the independence of the fbi. i think in hindsight he opened a door he wished he had not stepped through. but nobody ever said that he is

someone that plays politics. you can make a case that the reason he was the director today, he refused to essentially play ball back during the bush administration when he stepped in there. he informs a hospital room when it had to do with a fisa court thing. so the point is you can't describe his career as anything that is anyone other than his own political standing on that front. >> i know you a lot more on mtp daily and "meet the press" on sunday. chuck is also doing a lot of reporting from the fallout on mike pence. it has now been proved false, and lindsey graham will be on there.

>> as well as chuck schumer. >> thank you, chuck, that's great. coming up, we'll break down that interview with james clapper including this -- >> it was not abnormal that i would not have known about the investigation, or even more importantly the content of that investigation, so i don't know if there was collusion or not, i don't fknow if there was evidene of collusion or not. would you like to overcome sluggishness? trubiotics can help you feel lighter, more energetic, by naturally supporting your digestive and immune health. trubiotics, a daily probiotic that helps restore the balance of good bacteria. trubiotics, from one a day. you're going to be hanging out in here. so if you need anything, text me. do you play? ♪ ♪

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jim and i spoke briefly before the ceremony and he mentioned that he had been invited to the white house by the president, and that he was uneasy with that because of the appearance of -- >> we heard about the leadership test and the keyword is loyalty. our next guest, retired navy admir admiral, commander of the joint

operations command, he is now the chance life-support at the university of texas. he joins me now, thank you for being with us. >> good to be with you. >> first i want your reaction to what is going on with the president and the russian investigation and the collusion, and the fighting back and the comments about general clapper. and the players. i have great erespect for jim clapper. 52 plus years serving the government. he has a level of integrity that is unsurpassed. i was able to listen, and i will tell you i thought his take on everything was spot on,

particularly jim comey. i don't know him well, but our paths have crossed several times and again a man of great honor, integri integrity, and i can tell you as jim clapper said, i spent a lot of time with the folks in the fbi with my time in uniform and since i have retired, and moral in the fbi was high because of jim comey. i think he sets the standard very high and everyone enjoyed working for him. >> what are the people, the people that you lead, you ud toead the young people, you're now educating, the voters across america to think about this direct conflict between the president of the united states, the commander in cheer, aief, a fired director of the fbi, there

is such a gap between these two accounts. >> i can't talk specifically about the two accounts, because i don't know what fbi has been investigating, and i don't know what goes on behind closed doors, but leadership at the top is important. you and i have talked before, and i made the comment about in the military, many times the private in the fox hole sees the leader, and the general sees the four star general, but at the end of the day, it starts with a commander and chief. i can tell you in my time having worked for president bush and president obama, while i didn't agree with their positions on every issue, they were men of

great integrity. i can pass that on to the officer blow me that would pass it on to the officer below them, and frankly all of the way down to the young private in the fox hole. so i think it is important for the president, any president, this president or others to build that trust and that relationship between himself and the military, which i think president trump is certainly trying to do, but also with the institutions that support this great nation, the fbi, the intelligence community, the military, the judicial system. this relationship between the president or a commander in chief, in particular, vis-a-vis the military, is incredibly important. >> we have seen attacks tweeting fake media, fake media working overtime today. these are other institutions that are very important to the functioning of democracy. >> well, they are, and certainly as a journalism major, as i was,

i have taken a prettyd stand on this sentimenthathe media is the enemy of the people. i don't think anything could be further from the truth. the fact of the mat seter is th media is an essential part of this democracy. as a person that has been raked over the coals many times, i still greatly respect the men and women of the media. the job they do is absolutely essential to make sure that those in power are kept on the straight and narrow. and so again, i think these -- i would hope the president would continue to kind of try to build the bridges back to these institutions, and realize they are essential not only for the success of his presidency, but the success of this democracy. >> are you troubled with the fact that mike flynn as national security advisor had not disclosed he was working secretly for turkey and according to the evidence that the congress has been given did

not in a timely way disclose his payments to rusrussia? >> mike was a great army intelligence officer. he and i spent a lot of time overseas together, and frankly, i had a chance to work with him for a little while, but i have not spent time with mike since he retired. so the mike flynn that i have seen on tv, over the last year, a little different than the great officer that i knew in the military. >> i do want to ask you about the book "make your bed." the message that you're conveying to a younger generation, and to all of us, about these important lessons, the small things that we can all do to try to improve our lives, communities, and the world at large. >> it is based on a speech i

gave at the university of texas in may of 2014. i talked about the ten lessons i learned in seal training. some didn't seem profound, but they resonated with the students and to a broader audience. first was "make your bed." why is that the first lesson? it is was first lesson i learned going through seal training. every morning we had to make your bed a have a uniform inspection. i didn't understand, i came here to be a battle hardened seal, but it's the first traffask of day, it's important, if do you it well, the rest will follow, and the little things matter, if you can do little things well, big things will be done well. >> admiral, thank you so much, thank you for being with us today. >> my pleasure, thank you. >> good to see you, guess who is coming to dinner, fact checking

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back more claims of wiretapping. >> you can call it anything you want. the unmasking, the spying, to me that is the big story right now. that is a veteran, very, very b. >> whoever the director is, i want him to do the right thing. >> the president on the fbi director and loyalty. in a much different account, we have confirmed in a white house dinner earlier, james comey was pressed by the president several times if he had his loyalty. the pushback against the account of the dinner and the other communications with jim comey. >> just to be clear, this comes not from comey himself, we have not heard from him since his

firing. but it comes from people that heard about the dinner at the time like general clapper and others he spoke to afterwards. these are all people outside of the fbi that talked about it. they tell us the same thing. number one, he did not ask for the dinner, he was invited to the white house. who calls the white and says can i come over for dinner? and second, the president said can i have your loyalty? according to these people, comey said i can't pledge my loyalty, but my honest loyalty. >> this from those who know the way the president operated in business, he was very keen on loyalty. he has people sign nondisclosure

statements, but the jim comey that people know is not one that would say three times, let me assure you, you not under investigation for a lot of reasons. >> we'll have to wait and hear about that. we heard from one, i assume we will hear from the other. i was struck when i went to the defense department, one of the first things people would say is i can pledge to you my loyalty. that is a big deal, but the fbi direct sere difference. there is a ten-year term, but also congress debated a four-year term, and they said no, we have to insulate it from the comings and goings of

elections. so the question, am i under investigation. by the way, everything that we know seems to be that he is not under investigation, he, donald trump is not under investigation, from everything that we know, if comey said that, who knows. >> and there is every indication that the testimony from the subpoenas, and their contacts with russia, and they have subpoenaed their records. >> there is no question that one of the subjects would say are any trump campaign people, that much we know. clearly the campaign were under investigation.

nothing indicates that the president himself was. the question himself remains did mr. comey tell him that. >> back in the ancient times, you were a spokesperson at the pentagon. so you know the importance of the credibility from that podium. the white house more importantly, that issue is in play for the differing account i s. >> as a government spokesperson, you're only as good as what you're told. they have an obligation to not just take what was handed to you, but i have to have an

intern internal gyroscope, does it make sense to me, am i okay with it? >> and last night, when she was the white house spokesperson for george w. bush, she never would have gone out and intentionally lied. the other classic example is back in the early years of the clinton administration, the republican administrations, saying your job is to tell the truth slowly. >> and of course we don't know in terms of the white house. there is nothing to indicate as far as i know something that wasn't true. the question is, i think, did they know enough? >> pete williams, always tries to find out, thank you very much. coming up, the company line on

tracking shifting stories from the white house over the comey firing with people with experience. andrea mitchell reports on msnbc. >> it is time for the "your business" entrepreneurs of the week. the owners of five string furniture, now that nate returned, they're growing faster than ever. . >> brought to you by american express open. ideas to help grow your business.

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president trump this morning defending a series of confli conflicting acts on james comey's firing saying as a very active president with lots of things happening, it is not possible for them to stand at podium with perfect accuracy. maybed best thing to do would be to cancel also future press briefings and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy. >> joining me now, elise jordan, and jorsh ernest. the whole notion of channelling the white house press briefings, whether or not they should be on camera or not, it is not the whole press briefing, and some people thought that political folks thought that was a better idea for the white house, but cancelling all press briefings?

what about the disconnect between the whole role out of the firing of jim commy aey and setting up a false choice. we shouldn't have to choose between giving false answers at a press briefing or not answering at all. as americans, we can demand accountability and accuracy from people speaking at the white house. and here's the thing, that's hard. i'm not suggesting that's easy. it certainly wasn't easy when i was there. but what it does require is a president who cares about being honest, who cares about being held accountable. and it requires him to hire and empower spokes people and aides who care about that, too. ky tell you when we were dealing with complicated issues when i was a spokesperson for the white house and i was going to talk about something the president kard about, i would talk to the president to make sure i understood his point of view, so i could count on him giving me

an accurate answer. >> elise jordan, from your perspective, from having worked in the white house and the national security field, can you recall being told to come out and deliver inaccurate information? >> absolutely not. and that was something that the bush administration did not -- wanted to keep credibility. you do not want you surrogates given inaccurate information. because when you nee credibility, you just don't have it. really i have been shocked watching how these events, particularly over the last couple of days, have unfolded. and the level of concern that i've seen rise among republicans also, just because president trump is just completely flying solo and has no communication strategy, he has no crisis management strategy. and so we're really just watching him basically beg democrats to start impeachment proceedings. >> well, a lot of people are

really concerned about what the differing explanations, the, you know, miscommunication, i don't know how you can miscommunicate whether it was about russia or hillary clinton. but just on the face of it, josh, for him sto have praised the comey handling of hillary clinton, for him to use that as an excuse for firing him, that firing the fbi director is a big deal. >> the thing these raised everybody's attention is the faulty process that was used, the idea that the attorney general who should have been recused from these discussions was weighing in with the recommendation. and in the ever-changing and in some cases hard-to-believe or impossible-to-believe explanation from the white house didn't hold water. but here's what ends up being a problem, this is a self-inflicted crisis from the white house. what's going to happen when there's an international crisis? when there are situations where the american people and even the

world are going to be relying on the credibility of the white house to tell them what to do to protect them selves. i can tell you when i was in the white house talking about ebola, people were looking to the white house briefing and to federal employees to give them advice about what to do to protect themselves. and the international community was looking to the white house to describe what the united states was going to do to stop the outbreak in west africa of ebola from expanding. and it depended on the united states being able to say this is what we're going do and people believing the united states was going to follow through and they were going to keep their word. what's going to happen when we face a crisis and people look to the white house and the white house say this is what we're going to do, a lot of people won't believe them. >> this week the russian visit. the white house seemed completely blindsided by the russians taking advantage and bringing in a photographer from tass who may or may not have been planting bugs, we don't

know. just going through a magnatometer doesn't mean they looked through that screen. the white house seemed almost frozen in place not putting out any of their official pictures, at least for 24 hours. how could they not have anticipated that the russians would try to do something like that? >> you know, this would never have happened in the obama white house or the bush white house, because foreign press would not have been given preferential treatment over the white house press pool. but how could they not have imagined this would have happened? this is just a small example of why we do need an investigation into any potential collusion with the trump campaign and russia, just because it was -- they were almost approaching this as just complete innocence, letting the russian delegation bring in their own photographers without screening or considering

the potential after effects. i can only imagine how the secret service had to be having constant palpitations over this white house not being careful enough about basic security protocol. >> and senator grassley, i understand has just tweeted that cancelling the white house briefings would be wrong. you're hearing from a senator, the chairman of the judiciary committee saying the senate follows the briefings. everyone in this town as well as around the world follows what is said from that podium. thanks to you, josh, and elise. two people who have been there and understand what's at stake. more ahead. but first, a sneak peek, this weekend melissa mccarthy will host "saturday night live" for the sixth time. this morning she was spotted in full shawn spicer gear driving down 58th street in midtown manhattan on a motorized white house podium. unbelievable. and in just a few minutes, the

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that does it for us. have a great weekend, happy mother's day to all of you out there. remember, follow the show onl e online, facebook and twitter.

craig melvin is up next. >> hey, droandrea, enjoy the weekend. craig melvin here in new york. a live look now at the white house briefing room. there it is. any moment we expect to see sean spicer return to the podium there. his deputy had been filling in while he was on navy reserve duty. mr. spicer will return to an onslaught of likely uncomfortable questions, beginning with that series of bizarre tweets from this morning from president donald trump. the president suggesting that he might actually cancel all future white house meetings. he also delivered a warning. some have characterized it as a wa threat to james comey, may have been recorded. already there are conflicting stories about what happened that the dinner. president trump's exclusive terview with lester holt will comeup, as well. while we wait for mr. spicer,