welcome to "morning joe." with us we have the president, council on foreign relations author of the book, "world in disarray" and is it, richard haass. i need to wake up my daughter. john heilemann. >> you want john to wake up your daughter. >> no, just the alarm. political reporter. i would never want john to wake up my daughter. >> "new york times" reporter michael schmidt, also starring in the daily. >> yes. >> michael, i've just got to ask you. we talked to you and you're like this. you're michael schmidt, the guy we know. do you hear him on the daily? >> of course. >> on the daily.

>> he sounds like crackling. >> grizzled. >> grizzled -- >> so michael says, did you put it in the paper. well, i wouldn't put it in the paper if it wasn't true. we like it. can you talk like that on our show. >> pretend you're on the show. >> my father gave me a hard time about that. he said i sounded too flip. i told hill it's harder than it looks sometimes. >> you tell your dad wen you're in kinko's and the guy is yelling at you to get off the phone because he's got to order a pizza, it's hard doing the podcast. >> it was hard. it was the only land line i could find. have you to have a land line to call into the podcasts. >> an interesting point. we're going to jump. we have a billion things to do. >> oh, my gosh. >> one of the things, so fascinating, telling the story how james comey worked overtime,

bent over backwards to not be seen close to presidents. when barack obama asked him to play basketball and he said no. the last thing he wanted to do was go meet with trump. explain that. >> comey, when he first came into office back in 2013, 2014, i was talking to him in an interview and said obama wants to play basketball with you. he immediately kind of recoiled. he's like, i would never play basketball with obama. i said, what do you mean, obama comes to the fbi, plays at the court on the weekends. he said i would never want to play basketball with the president, because the appearance of it would be too much, and it would look too much like i was favoring him. >> said something else that is so true as it relates to donald trump demanding three times loyalty. say what you will about james comey, this ain't nobody's guy.

he's an independent son of a pitch in all the right ways. he doesn't care who the president is, doesn't care who appointed him, doesn't care what party they are, he's going to go after them if he thinks he's got you. >> i was talking to one of comey's friends over the last few days, he said with every hope and fiber of my body, i hope there are tapes. i want there to be tapes. i will take james comey over donald trump on tapes any day. it will be really interesting to see what he had to say. >> on that note "wall street journal" poll shows 29% of persons approve of the president's firing of james comey, 38% disapprove. opinions are sharply divided along partisan lines with 58% of republicans approving, 60% disapproving. most independents have no opinion, more approve than

disapprove when voters asked when they care to investigate russia's involvement in the presidential election, 15% picked congress, 78% support an independent commission or special prosecutor. >> john heilemann, congress is out this week, or the house has been out. they have got to be hearing this back in the district. 78 -- 8 out of 10 people don't trust congress to handle this investigation anymore. they are not going to be able to just continue doing business as usual, especially in the house. >> so many cross-cutting pressures pushing towards the notion of a special prosecutor just because there's all this controversy, reasons you want this to try to depoliticize it. there is this question. that's where the rubber kind of meets the road. democrats want it for one set of reasons. some republicans want it for another set of reasons but a lot of congress people are going to

be hearing at home, guys, we don't trust you to do this right. for so many of them, there's going to be an easy way to say, let's get this out of our hair. >> approval ratings, quinnipiac has him at 35, 36, gallop, 39 yesterday, dropped down to 39. nbc "wall street journal" poll has him at 39%, 54% disapprove. his numbers are even worse as it pertains to russia. i don't know how scared paul ryan is going to continue to be. i don't know how petrified he's going to be of his own shadow. i don't know when he's going to become the paul ryan i once knew. those senators that have to get elected statewide, they see fumbles like that, and they are going to have to do the right thing. >> congress is in bad order with the country in general. it's no surprise they aren't being trusted to run this. i do think for paul ryan more than the house or senate, the senate is more insulated because

of the map. the house can go -- can flip in a wave. i think if these things -- if people actually sense there is a moment where the institution and democracy are under assault or threatened, there is a moment there for democrats to come back and threaten the husband, you know, agenda and everything else. >> you la at the numbers, 16, latest ballot test, which is a historical gap. this week clapper goods on tv and talks but how institutions are under attack internally. fareed zakaria, that filters through. that 16 for democrats becomes plus 20 if house republicans didn't wake up soon.

>> that would fundamentally change politics of the country. democrats controlling branches of conditioning they are able to do investigations they want against this president up until 2020 on. using the phrase independent prosecutor and independent commission interchangeably, seems it me different. independent would put the focus on intelligence investigation, what was happening by russians. independent prosecutor, the legal action of the white house. >> the latest on the fired fbi director james comey. president trump insists he did not ask the man investigating his administration to pledge loyalty to him but it d not be out of bounds if he did. >> apparently "the new york times" is selling that you asked comey whether or not you had his loyalty was possibly inappropriate. could you see -- >> i read that article. i don't think it's inappropriate. >> did you ask that question? >> no.

no, i didn't. i don't think it would be a bad question to ask. i think loyalty to the country, loyalty to the united states is important. it depends how you define loyalty, number one. number two, i don't know how that got there, because i didn't ask that question. >> key members of president trump's cabinet got in line behind him this weekend. >> the firing of fbi director comey shake your concern about whether how much independence the president will give you? >> not at all, chuck. -of- great relationship with the president. i understand what his objectives are. when i'm not clear what his objectives are we talk about it. i am devoted to helping the president achieve his objectives, helping him be successful. i understand i have to earn his confidence every day with how i go about those affairs. >> the president is the ceo of the country. he can hire and fire whoever he wants. that's his right. whether you're agree with it or

not, it's the truth. what he's trying to do is find his own team, figure out how he's going to do it. were there better ways he could have done that? that's for everybody else to decide. >> anonymous reports, buzzing about the staff's confidence as well as the president's state of mind. one gop figure close to the white house mused privately pout whether trump was, quote, in the grip of some kind of paranoid delusion. we've heard reporting on this on several levels, pacing around, screaming, watching television. >> i've been hearing it all weekend. this is, richard haass, the only parallel, you good back to nixon in '74. all the reports i've been hearing of the white house is the president is running around screaming at television sets, he's increasingly isolated, basically wanting to fire

everybody, but kushner, had is also shooting at the staff members. >> behind the firing of director comey reportedly. >> now kushner and trump aligned against everybody else, plaming everybody else of the firing of comey when it was trump that fired comey and kushner who supported firing comey. he's even at his club -- reports at his club he's going off detached, almost detached from reality. then you have the ambassador of the united nations calling him the ceo of the company. fundamentally ignorant, fundamentally ignorant of our constitutional republic and the constitution, system that's been put in place. rex tillerson cowering like he's a caddy saying he's, quote, devoted to the president. cowering like a poor,

pathetic -- i can't say caddy because most caddies will talk back to you. i don't know what word i'm looking for but it's sad and pathetic that the secretary of state feels like he has to say that he's, quote, devoted to a president who is, again, shredding democratic norms. >> we need to get to clapper. >> every day. >> there's so many things about this weekend. first of all, it's awfully early for a president and his staff to be circling the wagons. the idea we may be on the cusp of 2.0. what's interesting about that, there's no one to blame. in a funny way after a new team, if things do not get better, then what? the constant, the president and one or two staffers like jared kushner. in an ironic way puts more pressure to get it right 2.0. if it doesn't work second time

around, then what do you want to do? >> michael, the remarkable thing, donald trump is screaming at staff members for things he has done unilaterally. forget exactly who wrote this, maybe the "times" or the post, but a pilot decides to turn towards turbulence and then blames the crew for passengers being -- >> bumped around. >> bumped around. what's fascinating again, profoundly ignorant by the president of the united states. again, none of these people actually have any understanding of its constitutional, public works. the president saying he would have no problem ordering a loyalty oath from an fbi director. that is the talk of an autocrat. >> what are you hearing? did he do that? >> yeah. basically he clearly didn't understand comey, because if he saw what comey did before the election, he had to understand that comey really didn't care what a lot of people thought about him. so if the president was going to

come to him and say, hey, do you want loyalty, of course comey wasn't going to go along with that. he comes back to it and comes back to it. i think that really colored the way both of them saw each other in the months that came forward. but the idea that their relationship was going to work, like it was never going to work. comey was never, ever going to do the things trump wanted him to do. the thing i don't understand is why does trump fire comey in the fashion that he did. if there's nothing to hide on the russia investigation, all this does is just ratchet up the pressure and attention and raise questions, why did he do this, especially in the fashion he did. >> he did it because he knew he was going to expand the investigation and figured he'd take the hit, as bad as that hit was fog to be, than have this independent actor in there. he's trying to get elected republican officials to replace him at the fbi. an idea so preposterous even lindsey graham said no. >> we've seen on various issues

on trump if the past, you can say things about how he makes decisions, sometimes impetuous but on things like his tax returns, for instance, he clearly over the course of a year made a highly rational calculation. the political pain i will suffer in not releasing my tax returns is obviously less than the pain i would suffer if i release them because there's bad stuff in them. >> same thing here. >> it's the same thing going on here. he's taking a lot of incoming now. whatever people say about him being detached from reality, he recognizes -- he knew he was going to take a lot of heat for this but he clearly has decided that the heat he's taking now is less than what would happen than a full bore investigation of james comey asking for resources, former prosecutors, trying to get to the bottom of what this russian connection is. that's the one place where we can't dismiss trump as being wholly irrational. he's making decisions. >> i agree with john. i don't think that was an irrational decision. everybody, why did he do it?

he said he did it because he understood that comey was onto something. i'm not going to proceed the end of billions for anybody -- >> please don't. >> the rast scene, axelrod talks about pulling a string. guess what, the fbi has started pulling that string. >> and trump is helping. >> and they are stell pulling that string. >> by running his mouth. >> wherever it leads, not an election issue, a criminal issue, and trump knows that. >> i'm not sure. i would say that there's some evidence that it was a miscalculation. you recall when the firing came out, they had press releases kind of ready to go with quotes from democrats saying how bad comey was, as if that would be this big pivotal thing. >> they clearly misunderstood. it wasn't like it was calculated. >> let's also be clear, we're not trying to say it was not a miscalculation, they obviously

misread democrats in congress. trump, the reason he did this is not because he's out of his mind. he did this, as you said joe, looked over, this guy james comey came to the white house, asked him if he believed this story, if he would give me his loyalty. investigating since rast july, taking daily briefings on this matter rather than weekly, asking for more prosecors. donald trump knows what's at the heart of this. i n't ow what that is, but he does. he's saying this guy knows, too. >> another scene from the end of billions. i know what that string is. i'm going to pull on that string. >>ion what it is. >> i don't know but i'm going to find out. >> for the people who have seen "billions" but there is this final scene where he says i don't know what the string is but you do, and i'm going to find it. here is the rub, with the fbi, they have already found the string and they are pulling on it based on my contacts inside the fbi and they are starting to

tug on that string. >> and they are going to keep tugging, keeping going. >> and it's accelerated because of the way he fired comey. and he knows it. >> big picture, there's a lot of damage done to our country. it's not going to be okay anymore. >> nobody is saying it's going to be okay, mika. in fact, this is a constitutional crisis. in fact, we said this is a constitutional crisis. >> separate power, separation institutions, independent power in the government and out of the government, that's what checks and balances are about. what you sense is an administration viscerally have problems with that. they want concentrated power. there's a friction getting stronger and stronger between their world view and america's political tradition. >> this is a guy who ran a small family company his entire life. he thinks that's the way the country should run and it's not. >> nikki haley, u.n. ambassador of the government thinks he's just a ceo of business.

how ignorant -- she served in government how long, mika? she thinks the president is the same as a ceo. how completely ignorant can you be of our constitution, history, of our are public. >> trump kruted former director of national intelligence james clapper to dismiss collusion between campaign and russia. when clapper and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt says when does it end? the president referring to former director saying on march 8th he was not aware of evidence showing truch campaign's collusion with russia. a statement predates james comey revealing fbi investigation was under way on march 20th. >> it's not surprising or out of -- 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 know if there's evidence of collusion or not, nor should i have in this particular context. i think in many ways our institutions are under assault both externally, and that's the big news here, russian interference in our election system. i think as well our systems are under assault internally. >> internally from the president? >> exactly. >> this is, michael, i'll ask you from the reporting you've been doing, can you back up what james clapper just said? a lot of people feel the way our government is set up, institutions check and balance each other. we're going to be okay. we're going to survive trump. my instincts tell me they are under assault. the institutions of our government are under assault because of this president and he could do some damage, if not put

under control or contained in some way. >> yeah. look, in terms of the way that it's happened, obviously this very small bet that the russians put on the investment of investing in these hackers doing what they did to this country has had an enormous payoff. but what i don't understand about clapper, clapper says he didn't know there was an fbi investigation. imagine if there was a major terrorist attack and the head of national intelligence said, well, i didn't know there was an fbi investigation going on that was related to this. it seems like within the government there's some real stove piping going on in the days up to the election about who knew what when. i don't understand why that's not getting more attention. >> there was even going back to last summer, you actually had the cia believing, john heilemann, that the russians were trying to interfere with the election, and the fbi believing they did not.

actually tried to change the outcome of the election. i don't understand clapper's statements either, because this was an active debate last summer. >> well, yes. it's a fascinating question. again, take just the political context. we now know the fbi was investigating simultaneously hillary clinton and donald trump for much of last summer and into the fall. the fact that comey came out and revealed the clinton investigation, didn't reveal the trump investigation is a subject of great frustration in the democratic party and particularly people around the clintons. it's interesting around clapper, why didn't that leak if the fbi was investigating trump? we believe they were. how -- as michael suggested, how contained was it? how big an investigation was it through that period? you would have thought if the white house had known, democratic -- more politically inclined democrats with the administration had known, they might have leaked that to

counter-balance the clinton news but it didn't leak. we didn't know about it officially until well into the trump administration. it seems as though comey had really walled that investigation off, maybe in keeping with his desire to maintain that scrupulous independence of the fbi. this is a really big deal. i'm not going to let this out of the silo to the point people like clapper would know about it. that's what clapper is suggesting. he had no idea the investigation was under way at the fbi last year. >> still ahead on "morning joe," donald trump cycled through three campaign managers on the way to the white house. does the same fate await his white house staff? break down new reporting on a possible major shake-up in the west wing. plus former nato commander. >> can i ask, has don mcgahn gotten anything right? i've never seen -- anything he touches. >> supreme court. >> former nato commander james stavridis joins us and reacts to

north korea's missile test. the president of the fbi agents association, tomorrows o'connor on his group's endorsement to replace james comey and philip rucker, the crisis florida starts and stops with the president. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. you're going to be hanging out in here. so if you need anything, text me. do you play? ♪ ♪ use the chase mobile app to send money in just a tap, to friends at more banks then ever before. you got next? chase. helping you master what's now and what's next.

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why is everyone saying he's about to fire you and replace you with sarah. >> bless your heart, this is the first i'm hearing of that. >> get out. i've got to find trump. the press interview is over. >> mr. trump, i need to talk to you. they say you're going to replace me with sarah. >> sean, i wouldn't do that.

she doesn't have your spice, your special salt and sugar. do you like when do i that? >> no. it particular else a little. >> sean, kiss me. >> i'm famous, it's okay. >> is this like godfather, you kiss me and no one ever sees me again? >> yes. >> oh, my god. just -- >> the first part, have you ever made me come out live and say something that's not true. only since you started working for me. >> expressed frustration with surrogates and could again be talking about staff overhaul. friends and advisers of the president say he's considering a huge reboot that could clear out top west wing staff. at risk chief of staff reince priebus, strategist steve bannon, do not mcgahn and press secretary sean spicer.

reports, president trump kept him out of the loop dismissing james comey until the last possible moment because he feared leaks from the communication staff. "times" reports raised idea of fox news host kimberly guilfoyle as a possible replacement. dissatisfaction with communications staff is for the what's driving tweeted desire to cancel press briefings. >> 200 years we've been doing it. you can't put an action to that? >> higher ratings on those press conferences -- >> would you seriously consider stopping press conferences? >> we'd do it in a different way. >> how. >> piece of paper with perfectly accurate beautiful answer. >> in writing. >> 100 questions or 50 questions or 20 questions and they get one out of 50.

just a little bit off, 5%, 10%, 20%. the next day it's a front page story. you see the ratings, they are blowing away everything -- just about everything on television. what i love to do is stop them. it's not fair to the people. i'll give you -- look, i am a reactive person. i have a lot of very positive things going on right up here for this country. it's impossible for a person or two people or three people w who -- every aspect of what i'm doing. it's unfair. >> when do you make that decision? >> next couple of weeks. i'll tell you what, they will be unhappy because the ratings are so high, i don't know what these networks are going to do. they are going to start to cry. they get free ratings because of me and yet they don't treat us well. >> i don't know where to begin.

where do i begin. john heilemann, what was that about? >> sounds like spicer is safe as long as ratings are high. >> he's frustrated, clearly frustrated. i keep thinking about what would happen if these reports are true. >> what? >> the ones about doing wholesale reboot of west wing and firing all these people who have been suffering through the early part of this administration. a lot have been thrown under the bus by him. a lot made to look like liars or fools. if trump does not like the leaking that goes on in the first 110 days of his administration, imagine what it will be like if he fires reince priebus, sean spicer, all these people. if they are cut loose and have no reason to be loyal about what happened in the last 100 days. >> seems like bannon is slowly backing away.

>> yeah. >> what happened the last week or so, bannon let it be known he was not -- he was not -- he was concerned about the firing of james comey, the timing. >> i think priebus is safe in one sense, he does not have traditional job chief of staff, not equals, not many people would want that job, take that job under conditions. sean spicer is apparently safe if the ratings are high. >> let's bring in political reporter for axis, reporting shake-up could happen but no time line on it? >> no. the time line is always hard to gather with donald trump because events and events and he seeks people's counsel and says he's going to do something and sure enough two weeks pass and it hasn't happened. >> looking -- if you look at some of the conversations we've had over the past few weeks,

these are the people we are concerned can't contain him. could be a positive change. >> that's obviously the irony here, nobody can contain him. donald trump appears to be enraged at decisions donald trump himself made. >> yeah. >> yeah. and it's sort of an irony because, of course, he doesn't want to be contained. someone described to me the oval office as a rolling craps game. they are in there and people come in, ivanka comes in and he's holding court. it reminded of the early days of president clinton, not organized white house. it was this scene in there without much structure or discipline. >> michael schmidt, it appears, though, from the reports, at

least i've been hearing the last three, four, five days, he's becoming increasingly isolated, increasingly agitated. we had "the washington post" quote that he had possibly some neurosis. he's not sleeping, according to reports. it's basically him alone in the white house now thrashing out. >> look how that paranoia undermined him. because of that he didn't want to be sharing news he was firing comey with the communications staff. this is the most sensitive decision you can make as president when there's an ongoing investigation. he only gives him an hour's time to come up with a way to sell this to the public. then when they go out to do that, they do it in a way that's inaccurate and he ultimately undercuts them. it seems to have this circular nature to it, where it starts with the paranoia and ends with a disastrous product for him.

>> we hear about nixon and kissinger getting down on their knees praying at the end. trump doesn't even have a kissinger. trump has no one that will stand up to him and speak truth to power. we saw rex tillerson saying he was hopelessly devoted to trump. he had to earn his job every day. nikki haley confusing a business with a constitutional republic, a 240-year-old republic. >> i think she was trying to do a metaphor. >> i'm just saying donald trump has so intimidated everybody around him that no one will tell him the truth. >> staff is there and process there to protect the president from himself. the problem is presidents often get what they want rather than what they need. what presidents need is formal process. what you have here is almost institutionalization of this. that's dangerous, a man who doesn't come from government, little experience, and used to

making decisions by himself. staff and process -- beaurocracy is a real protection and donald trump is governing without that protection. >> let's underline it one more time, john heilemann, we showed 20 minutes ago donald trump say he believed president of the united states to demand loyalty oath from the fbi director. >> he truly admits he had the fbi director over and three times asked him whether he was under investigation. just that in and of itself, well short of loyalty, the president asking the fbi director am i personally under investigation, can you tell me if i am is the kind of thing inconceivable in the barack obama, george w. bush. >> inappropriate. >> whatever you think -- the fbi is a complicated thing. it's independent but part of the justice department, the justice department part of the administration. exactly how those lines get drawn is a question, gray.

not so gray it's okay for the president of the united states to be asking fbi director to confirm or deny whether he's under investigation or not. >> or the president of the united states and his white house admitting on television that the fbi director was fired to end an investigation against the president and all the president's men. it's exactly what happened. i'm not being hyperbolic when i say if there are articles of impeachment of drawn up, the first article of impeachment drawn up against donald trump will be the first article of impeachment drawn against richard nixon and that is obstruction of justice, because i could find you 1,000 republican criminal defense raurs across amerilawyers coulds to the level of obstruction of justice. >> normally one of these scandals would take months and months to uncover and he went out and said it on national tv.

that's why i fired him, came to close to me, so i canned him. >> what about sarah huckabee sanders, what did she say? >> we want to bring this russian investigation to a conclusion. we believe firing comey would bring it to conclusion. >> the fbi director swears and oath to the constitution not the president. >> he debate do the loyal job who apparently everybody else who is about to get fired did. >> but to the president who wants to fire his whole staff. his whole staff cooked up this terrible explanation it was all about the memo from the deputy and the president himself goes out and cuts this legs off at the knees the next day and says, no, the problem is russia. the problem is at the top. >> jonathan swann, thank you. michael schmidt, thank you as well. >> tell your dad we think you're doing great.

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coming up, are conservatives more interested in dogging democrats than protecting their principals, charlie sikes thinks so and he's pointing to rush limbaugh from last week. >> he fires comey yesterday. who does he meet with today? he's meeting with the soviet and russian foreign minister. sergey lavrov. i mean, what an epic troll this is. the democrat party is going bananas, completely, totally in hun hinged on their own to literal in sanity. >> "morning joe" coming right back.

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joining us now -- >> talking about atlantic city. >> atlantic city is an interesting place in the days to come. >> a lot of interesting stuff happens there. >> and has happened this. >> shady. >> shady dealings. >> back a couple decades. >> might there be a russian connection? >> of course -- >> it all comes back to get you. >> this is going to be jersey. >> joining us now -- >> by the way, you two, the tour last night? >> kicked off friday night. >> friday night. >> 30th anniversary, first time they have done whole album start to finish in vancouver. >> joining us now former nato supreme commander, james

stavridis. >> ironically we bring them up because the first four songs. it was tough. >> seriously. >> doesn't have to work again. >> admiral stavridis testified before the senate armed service committee pout cybabout cyber a of course this massive worldwide attack. given everything that happened within the white house, we have james clapper talking about the threat to our institutions from within as well as -- what worries you the most as we move forward with the chaos in our administration and yet these massive attacks happening? >> i think any time you see disturbances in the force internationally like this cyber attack, have you to think what's the impact domestically and how does it play out. i'm less concerned about that in this case than i am what it tells us about how fragile. >> what does it tell us?

when you look at the national health system impacted in britain, operations had to be delayed. >> shut down. >> you go across the globe. whoever attacked a lot of sites that you wouldn't have think would have been vulnerable. >> the numbers are staggering. 150 countries that have been impacted. hundreds of thousands of devices. rolling wave that continues. you have to think about it as a pandemic. this is like an infectious disease. so you need the same tools to address it. you need international cooperation. you need interagencies working together, which we're not particularly good at. and you need private/public cooperation. >> richard, disturbing news this weekend about another missile test launch in north korea. the president's only response was, boy, i bet russia's mad. >> what this shows is that north korea is not slowing the pace. if any, thiet the might be

accelerating it, maybe to get stuff under the wire in case there's a negotiation or limit. there's an odd welcome to the new south korean president who wants to reach out to north korea. instead he get ace slap in the face. it underscores that this is going to be the national security challenge facing this administration soon. we're moving to when it becomes a when, not if, issue. this is -- north korea is doing nothing to slow down. if anything, they are accelerating. >> this is big casino. richard is exactly right. when those two streams cross, nuclear weapons with the ability to deliver them at close range, you don't want those streams to cross. a, it's going to be a distraction, perhaps a welcomed one, for the white house. and, secondly, it's a serious national security concern. >> what do we do? >> what do we do? drive back toward some kind of

negotiation. president moon is a good force in that. >> seemed emboldened. >> they lied to clinton. they lied to bush. they've lied to everybody. >> i agree. it's a discouraging proposition. so, what's different now? china has a greater vested interest in doing this than they ever have before. >> you're exactly right. that was one of mar-a-lago. now that we face a direct threat to ourselves now. whether the chinese will put nust heat on the north koreans, whether that would do the deal, none of us knows. we're going to try that. the alternatives are really inattractive, going to war, all that could mean, or living with a north korea that has us under threat. no one likes those two situations. >> what's our situation with

turk sni. >> problematic. our institutions are under stress here. take a look what's happening in turkey, where hundreds of thousands of people are being jailed, investigated. media shut down completely. the courts packed. this is a nation that is walking away from its democratic ideals. that's very dangerous. at some point, their nato membership card comes into question. we're not quite there yet but headed in that direction. >> we shouldn't be inviting this guy to the white house. >> why is he coming to the white house? >> he comes tomorrow. >> complicating our policy in syria, more journalists jailed in turkey than any other country in europe. let's not kid ourselves. they are not a partner. >> why is he coming to the white house? >> really good question. that's what people are asking, that he ought not come to the white house. or if he comes we ought to be pushing back what he's doing at home and at syria. this president can't do it. >> he can't. >> this president is not

positioned nor is he inclined to hammer turkey for what it's doing. >>s intellectually capable handling the complexities of the relationship? >> the answer yes on that, but when's inclined to do it simply because turkey is another example of a strong man. >> not just simply. it's a strong man, as in manila, where he has business interests. >> exactly. i was saying to richard, the only worst invitation we have float sd to duterte, who makes erdogan look like a libertarian. >> he has a huge property in manila, huge property in turkey. >> and has made money fist over fist. >> and two thugs that -- >> he has a building there that they touted with ivanka on a poster. this is bad. admiral james stavridis, thank you very much. >> always a pleasure.

the president has a chance to clean up the mess that he mostly created. he really, i think, did his staff a disservice by changing the explanations. >> nbc's peter alexander joins us with the latest reporting from the white house. plus, former white house press secretary, josh earnest, doing away with daily press briefings. "morning joe" is back in a moment. in these turbulent times, do you focus on today's headwinds? or plan for tomorrow? at kpmg, we believe success requires both. with our broad range of services and industry expertise, kpmg can help you anticipate tomorrow and deliver today. kpmg.

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what about that there might be tape recordings? >> i won't talk about that. i just hope that comey will be honest and i'm sure he will be. i hope. >> are there recording devices in the oval office or residence? >> as i said for the third time, there's nothing further to add on that. >> does he think it's appropriate to threaten someone like mr. comey not to speak? >> i don't think that's a threat. he simply stated a fact. i'm moving on. >> the white house is neither confirming nor denying president trump's warning to james comey that cryptic tweet on friday. >> it's not a threat? >> it is a threat. >> the president threatened a former fbi director when he says james comey better hope there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press. >> this, as "the wall street journal" quotes three long-time

aides witness trump tape phone calls in trump tower before he was president. according to the report, trump had one or more recording devices that he used to tape his phone calls from his office, said three people, apparently. all are former high-level employees who worked for trump over a span of three decades. they said they saw devices in use when recording calls. a fourth person said he knew that trump had recorded a phone conversation with him because it was later entered into evidence in a lawsuit. in a statement, trump's attorney, michael cohen, said in the decade i work for the record mr. trump i have never seen a recording device attached to his phone, nor am i aware of any occasion where he tape aid conversation. >> okay. john heilman, first of all, whatever. >> my god. >> whatever. >> this is going to spiral even more. >> you have republicans on the hill, demanding if there are any tapes, they must be turned over. >> what i said at the very end of the show when he sent these

tweets out and we made the point, it's strange for a president being compared to richard nixon all throughout the week because of the saturday night massacre parallels, to be comparing with the darkest elements of richard nixon. either there is a tape recording system and the president is engaged in a truly nixonian act. >> tape recording phone calls. >> tape recording phone calls. or the other possibility is that he made this all up. >> all possible. >> in which the president of the united states is not just threatening a former direct fbi level but at some level, making personal threats against a now individual, private citizen, something i don't think i've ever seen from any president in our lifetime. >> this is a president -- >> it is a threat. so he's being a thug. he's either being a thug who possibly illegally recorded an fbi director while he was fbi director, or he's just being a

thug with a baseless threat. >> or he's talking big and there is no system. >> also to point out, depends what state the people on the other end of the phone line are in. but in a lot of states, it would be illegal for the president to record a phone call with somebody from the white house because you have to have two-party consensus. >> just to be clear, in washington, d.c. you only need one party to have consent in washington, d.c. >> what about new york city? >> i don't know about new york city. in this case, i believe legally speaking -- we looked at this on friday. one-party consent in washington, d.c. that, itself, would not be a crime. though in in instance because of the fact he could be using the tapes to intimidate a potential witness against him in a future proceeding, that, itself, would be illegal. >> okay. so, joining the conversation, chief white house correspondent to the "new york times," peter baker. former white house press

secretary to president obama, john earnest, john heilman, richard haas. >> i'm sure you've heard much what i've heard that donald trump is increasingly isolated, wail ago way at his staff, screaming at tv sets, whether in the white house or whether he's even at his clubs. the situation seems to be deteriorating by the day. >> he doesn't have someone around him to manage him or help him find the path forward. the fact that he didn't talk to a lot of his staff produces the obvious outcome. it doesn't go very well. at least it's not communicated very well. as you say, the portrait of a president sort of watching that 60-inch television in his dining room and going through tapes of

hearings and picking out specific moments, as reported by "time" magazine this week is a pretty alarming and pretty strike i striking of a president who is not in control of his white house. >> this weekend the washington post quoting a republican close to the white house, close to trump, saying he seems to be in a state of delusion. others across the white house saying he is not well. >> james comey has declined an invitation to testify. according to "the new york times" he is willing to testify but wants it to be public. here is senator lindsey graham yesterday on "meet the press." >> we need comey to come before the judiciary committee and clear the air. did the president ever say anything to the director of the

fbi that would be construed to impede the investigation? the president called me about the firing. and he referenced the comey testimony last week and the jou judiciary committee, about how bad it was. that's all i know. it's time to call the fbi director before the country at large and explain what happened at that dinner. >> that dinner is also significant, considering five days after then acting attorney general sally yates warned the white house that national adviser michael flynn was being dishonored about his relationship with the russian ambassador and might be compromised. and president trump's certified letter sent to senator graham, who is looking into trump's business ties to russia. the letter was said to be in response to james clapper's testimony last week. but the letter was written and dated march 8th. two months earlier. so, what was the original intent of that letter? >> it's a good question, richard

haas, but all of this, again, it's baffling. this is the president who fires an fbi director, his people lie and say it was all because the deputy attorney general's recommendation. the president the next day goes on lester holt and says no, actually, i was going to fire him no matter what. i fired him because of the russian investigation. it wasn't right. that's the same thing that you then have the white house spokesperson go out and say -- and then you just keep going through the woek. he talks about a loyalty oath being appropriate. again, he's admitting -- for an fbi director. he's admitting all of this on national television. >> what it is, here we are. we've been here for an hour. what's stunning -- not just us, but the country. we're not talking about health care. >> infrastructure. >> tax, infrastructure. the entire policy agenda is being pushed off. >> everything he wanted to do. >> it's not clear how much actually happen this is year.

and that means you could be going into 2018 elections without a solid record of accomplishment. and this becomes the lead story coming out of this administration. can't see how that -- >> i spy with my little eye nancy pelosi as speaker of the house. that's coming up in 2018. >> we're going to show some poll numbers. he's in freefall. the public has turned against the republicans investigating him in the house, 78%. and you have the ballot test, the worst it's ever been for republican. >> ever. >> all those are ugly in terms for members. one little data point you will enjoy. the law firm that trump uses for his tax -- >> i like this. >> that wrote the letter. >> very reputable. >> i understand they got the award for the greatest law firm. >> yes. >> russian law firm of the year. >> exactly. >> russia law firm of the year award in 2016. >> no!

>> yes. >> can't make it up. >> if you go to their website it will tell you that they not only celebrated their russia law firm of the year award but talk about their 40 lawyers and staff in their moscow office and have deep ties. >> got it. >> sounds like just the right law firm for the president. >> got it. >> do we really believe this? >> it's hard to believe. >> can't make this stuff up. >> i went over the course of everything. last week also, you can't make this up. he fires james comey, says it's because he wants to kill the russian investigation. sarah huckabee sanders says it's to kill the russian investigation. who goes into the white house next day? >> the russian foreign minister. >> laughing. >> laughing. >> practically giving them the middle finger. >> no american press there. >> high five. >> but he takes the russian press in there. and, of course, intel experts are horrified they're allowing

russian equipment in there. and why does he allow them in there? as a favor -- i'm not making it up. >> oh, my gosh. please stop. >> as a favor to vladimir putin. >> this is not funny. >> i'm not sure about you but on days that i'm confident -- fire the fbi director, threaten him publicly because of the investigation into russia. it's a great way of showing you're not worried about the investigation at all. >> this is not a very smart -- >> russian law firm. >> it's fantastic. the website says they're well known, law firm is well known in the russian market and have a deep familiarity with the legislation, particularly adept at advising clients on, quote, sanction matter. >> helpful. >> the perfect firm. >> credible. >> can i ask, do they have a branch also in atlantic city where they say they can help with very extensive -- >> yes. one of the partners is the

chicken man. >> seriously, atlantic city. atlantic city. >> hold on. >> can you write it down? >> you've got a string. >> pull. >> don't pull on that thread. >> not too far. >> by the way, nbc news wall street journal poll shows 29% of americans approve the firing of james comey. 38% disapprove. 58% of republicans proving, 66 of most democrats disapproving. most independents, no opinion but more disapprove. when voters were asked if they prefer to investigate russia's involvement in the presidential election just 15% picked congress. 78% support an independent commission or special prosecutor. >> talk about the pressure, john, on republicans. >> trump's at 39%, which is bad. >> he is at 39%. >> i wanted to define it for those who don't understand. >> 39% in gallup.

for those who have been circling the wagons for trump, do you think somehow they can survive this coming tsunami, this coming storm? 78% of americans say they don't trust the republicans to investigate, that there needs to be an independent investigation. >> anti-courage on this issue. there's not been many people who have been willing to come out and cross the white house. paul ryan, talk about some other folks in this context. but the politics of this, and the cross currents here, the public wanting independent investigation, increasingly, the public losing faith in the ability to conduct this investigation and the president's steadily eroding poll numbers as we get closer and closer to 2018, i think the pressure in the coming months, if these trends continue, it will be very hard to resist -- for congress to say take this off my plate. i don't want any more part of

this. let's get it over to an independent commission, as richard pointed out earlier, there's confusion among a lot of people in the public about whether a commission or prosecutor but congress will want to wash its hands of this pretty quick. >> you talked about months. you look at the crazed, erratic, neurotic behavior of the white house. i think months become weeks. >> on a far different scenario, but you guys certainly, in 2009, when you had the obamacare fights and you had scott brown winning a special election, going into 2010. you guys could feel the wave moving. here we are, not even 125 days into this administration. and republicans already have to be wondering.

how nancy pelosi as speaker will treat them next yoear. >> they do have to be wondering. at least if you were a democratic member of congress at that time, at least you're going back home, making an argument about something you cared about. democrats have been campaigning for years on trying to bring about health care reform. democrats obviously spent a lot of time to talk about what could be done to strengthen economy in the aftermath of a financial crisis. you have congressional republicans in 2017, republicans talking about things they would rather not talk b they would love to talk about tax reform, infrastructure and health care but that's not what they're talking about. they're talking about james comey that does absolutely nothing for the republicans. >> absolutely nothing. we're moving toward june. the only piece of legislation significant piece of legislation, the house of representatives has actually gotten through the chamber by a couple of votes is an extraordinarily unpopular health

care law that only one in five americans support, according to this latest nbc news/wall street journal poll. >> that's right. and if you're a republican senator and the president of the united states is asking you to take a chance on his bill, if the president is telling you, hey, this will be a good thing for you politically, you look at that twice now. obviously, you see the tumult of the last week. there's no benefit to you for being too close to a president who seems to be, you know, on the defensive on so many things. he took the momentum that he had riding out of that house vote and completely threw it away with this firing of james comey and then the seeming threat on twitter that followed. and the intimation of tapes. how you were going to get a bill through the senate was already going to be very, very tough. this was a complicated bill, complicated political environment. he took a few things that he had

as an advantage to him and has lost that. >> even replacing the fbi director, you already have lindsey graham saying no, it's not going to be cornyn or an elected official. >> or should not be. >> you have republicans. i'm sure two, three, four republicans are going to say no to any lackey donald trump wants to put in there. i'm not saying cornyn would be a lackey. there will have to be such an extraordinarily independent person. there may be mccabe that republicans are not going to rubber stamp donald trump's selection. >> no. >> as josh was saying, they don't want to talk about comey. they would like to move on to legislation. not only will they they not be able to move on to legislation, they'll be fighting over the fbi selection. >> enough will want to fight over it, feen many do even if m. you'll have an independent st. the administration stepping on

its own progress, such as it was, the lack of discipline. and there's a thread to a lot of this. lack of discipline about this administration, how it organizes itself, if it does have an agenda, how it will match up its goals against a calendar. you've lost the first 100 plus days and there's not much to point to, other than gorsuch on the supreme court. if i wanted donald trump to succeed i would be fundamentally concerned by what -- it doesn't seem to be coming together. >> josh earnest, we want your take on these comments about the president's desire to cancel press briefings. take a look. >> 100 years we've been doing it. you can't put an end to that. >> there's never been acts like this. we're getting higher ratings on those press conferences -- >> would you seriously consider stopping these press sessions? >> we do it in a different way. >> how? >> through a piece of paper with

a perfectly accurate, beautiful answer. >> in writing? >> they're asked 100 or 50 questions, 20 questions. and they get one out of 50. just a little bit off, 5%, 10%, 20%. the next day it's a front page on every newspaper. >> so he wants to shape his answers, josh, to be perfectly beautiful. >> yeah. >> and it sounds to me like -- >> how about true? >> getting closer and closer to some sort of authoritarian, some sort of dictatorship. does he know what he's saying, do you think? >> no. >> i think he does. the real challenge for trump is that the press briefing sets up a scenario where you have on one hand the president's staff extolling his virtues to a large television audience, something that he likes almost more than anything else. on the other hand you have the mainstream media holding his

administration accountable for its words and its action. >> he doesn't like the way that's going. >> he doesn't like that at all. you have the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other as he tries to make this decision. he will keep the press briefing. setting up a false choice here. we, as americans, shouldn't have to choose between no answers to questions and false answers to questions. >> right. >> why not just empower a spokesperson to figure out the truth, why not just tell the truth to that spokesperson, send that person out there to answer questions? that doesn't mean that it's easy. it doesn't mean that that person is going to get it 100% right but they're going to get the important things right. that's the problem here with the briefings thus far. the most important questions being asked in the briefing room right now of president trump's spokespeople are not getting answers or are getting answers that, within 24 hours, are proved demonstrably false.

>> kellyanne conway was on yesterday, lecturing the media about telling the truth. we're going to have a greatest hits package of kellyanne conway, coming up, to see whether she really is the best -- >> arbiter of -- >> telling people what the truth is and is not. as josh earnest says they go out and the next day they're proven to be liars. peter baker, interesting development this weekend. i've been monitoring conservative media to see when the dam will break and when conservatives are concerned about conservative values again. this weekend, very interesting. charlie sikes, "the new york times" about the conservative movement says right now the movement mirrors donald trump himself because, at its core, there are no fixed values, no respect for constitutional government or ideas of personal character, only a free float in

anilism and he was talking about the anti-anti-trump faction that has taken over the conservative media. jenna goldberg writing a powerful piece talking about how too many of the conservative movement have sold their soul. >> attacking trump. rather than say okay i think the president is handling this right or that right, they look at all the mainstream media piling on him and resent it. they think it's a bunch of elites on the coast out to get the guy that represents them. that's one thing really holding up his numbers right now among republican conservatives in particular, because all this criticism seems so, to them, to be a function of establishment

reaction. and, you know, that's enough to hold him for the moment but it's not a very positive force going forward. and it doesn't stick around forever. with george w. bush we saw -- joe, you obviously were part of that conversation back then, when we saw that conservatives began to run away from him on iraq. it wasn't simply enough to say whether the other guys were wrong. so, you know, it's a negative force rather than a positive force. we'll see if he can turn that around and make it more of a positive pro-trump thing rather than an anti-anti-trump thing. >> mika, we've been through this before with george w. bush. it took two, three years. i remember, i wrote a book in 2004, blasting bush as a big spender, having wilsonian polic

policy. peggy noonan criticized the bush white house. everybody started calling her a lefty. everybody started calling her a liberal. i was called a rhino because we were attacking bush for spending too much and his wilsonian policy. republicans, who swore if they got back in power again, would not repeat the same mistakes rrks now repeating the same mistakes, but even worse. not only are they supporting a guy that's going to bring the federal debt to $30 trillion, they're supporting a guy that's shredding constitutional norms after they've been going around for 30 blanking years with the constitution, look, it's right here. i believe in this. look, it's right -- everywhere i went. they all carried -- look, and they would shove it in your face. open it up and read it and stop worshipping power and read that constitution you've been carrying around in your pocket

for 30 years. because this is even worse than the you did for george w. bush. still ahead, we'll talk to the head of the fbi agent association as the president start his new search for a director. and peter alexander reports on how the white house is trying to contain the damage. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. at fidelity, trades are now just $4.95.

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stealing. >> if you want to know what's going on in washington you need to see "idiocracy." >> on my list. there you go. peter alexander, trump administration officials spent the weekend trying to contain the fallout over this comey firing. we've heard an awful lot spinning around there. sounds like chaos. what are you hearing this morning on the administration's next step and their attempt to contain this crisis? >> reporter: bottom line, you're right talking about a lot of the potential for a shakeup, frustrations, paranoia, even concerns within this white house. conversations i've been having with people over the course of the weekend with this president, something felt a little bit different about what we're hearing over the course of the last 72 hours. there's a suspicion that a lot of the new reporting is coming from those allied with jared kushner, ivanka trump's husband, who is as close to the president as anybody, which gives them a real concern that this time it

may be real when they talk about potential firings, shakeups. i was talking about the conversations you had with josh erchest, floating the idea of canceling the press briefings, suggesting that his surrogates can't be perfectly accurate, saying we'll put out a written statement. it's notable. when they first announced comey's firing, it came out via a written statement that was also inaccurate and said it was clearly based on the recommendations of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general, a point they had to try to clear up a short time later as the story continued to evolve. the president is getting backup from one of his top surrogates. that's the u.n. ambassador, nikki haley. >> the president is the ceo of the country. he can hire and fire whoever he wants. that's his right. whether you agree with it or not, it's the truth. and what he's trying to do is find his own team, figure out how he's going to do it. were there better ways that he could have done that? that's for everybody else to

decide. >> as we focus on who the next fbi director is going to be, the president suggesting it will be a fast decision, senior administration official telling us he wasn't involved in any of the interviews that have taken place so far, and will meet with a small group of finalists, as he described it. the president could make that decision before he leaves for his first foreign trip this friday. joe? >> peter, thank you. >> thanks so much. as i was saying before, counselor to the president, kellyanne conway, had advice for the press corps. stick to the facts. >> what do you make of some of this language that has really ratcheted up in covering this admittedly important story? >> it's irresponsible and it's conjecture and it's opinion. it's people passing themselves off as news reporter when they're expressing their opinions. >> she went on, talking about they should just state the facts and tell the truth. well, i wonder whether kellyanne

should hold herself to the same standards. >> uh-oh. >> you did not answer the question of why the president asked the white house press secretary to come out in front of the podium for the first time and utter a falsehood. >> you're saying it's a falsehood. and they're giving sean spicer, our press secretary gave alternative facts. general flynn does enjoy the full confidence of the president. after two iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and were the masterminds behind the bowling green massacre. >> do you know whether trump tower was wiretapped? >> what i can say is there are many ways to surveil each other now unfortunately. >> do you believe that -- >> there was an article this week about how you can surveil someone through their phones,

certainly through their television sets, any number of different ways, and microwaves that turn into cameras, et cetera. >> you want this to be about russia when this is about, quote, restoring confidence and integrity of the fbi. >> alternative facts. >> you know, you can actually -- here is our problem. we don't have 300 people. if we did, that could go on longer than stairway to heaven. >> could do the whole show. >> "hey jude," "stairway to heaven," "american pie." we still would not have enough space. john heilman, you have to admit, the best part of all of that was

the austin powers/burt backarat music. >> i enjoyed that very much. >> there's nothing good about that. i cannot believe she was put on the air for such a long time yesterday. like it is -- >> never challenged. never once challenged. >> -- pathetic. >> never once challenged yesterday. >> just laid out there to sort of slather in lies. >> with the evidence out there that she goes out and lies and makes misstatements. never once challenged yesterday. nick, i have a feeling -- >> supposed to curate for facts. >> nick, i have a feeling this entire era is going to be defined by her phrase "alternative facts." >> it already is. facts and world views and ideas,

we've lost the ability to agree on what reality is. the president often seems to be in his own reality on these issues. it's the biggest threat to a functioning democracy. if we can't actually agree that the sky is blue, how can we agree on health care? it's impossible and it bothers me a lot. >> it's global, actually. it's consistent with the guy in the british government who said we've had enough of experts in the brexit debate. we don't at care what the facts are. we just want our opinion. >> this is a woman who would come on the show during the campaign in extensive fashion and then she would get off the air, the camera would be turn off, the microphone would be turned off and she would say, blah, i need to take a shower, because she disliked her

candidate so much. >> it was also said that this is just like my summer in europe. this is just my -- >> i'm just doing this for the money. >> i'll be off this soon. i don't know that she ever said i'm doing this for money. she said this is my summer vacation, my summer in europe and i'm basically going to get through this. >> but first i have to take a shower because it feels so dirty to be saying what i'm saying. i guess she's just used to it now. >> i thought it was interesting after the "access hollywood" tape came out. that's when she started referring to donald trump as her client. >> my client. >> separating. i don't believe in this guy. he's just my client. it's just a paycheck. president trump says he has no current business dealings in russia. but the senate isn't taking his word for it. and we wonder whether the fbi is taking his word for it and does

current really matter as much to the fbi as, i don't know, strings they may pull and pull and pull. >> atlantic city. first, the head of fbi agents associates explaining what he wants from the next fbi director. "morning joe" back in a moment with real news. got it. rumor confirmed. they're playing. -what? -we gotta go. -where? -san francisco. -when? -friday. we gotta go. [ tires screech ] any airline. any hotel. any time.

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eight candidates were interviewed over the weekend by the justice department to replace james comey, including acting director andrew mccabe, senator john cornyn of texas and former house senate intelligence chairman mike rogers. very good to have you on the show this morning. >> thanks for having me. >> first of all, i'm wondering what the morale at the fbi is. what are you hearing? >> obviously, the agent population was stunned by the dismissal of director comey. but, you know, the fbi agents were working cases prior to director comey being dismissed. we'll be working cases forward. it doesn't change the work ethic. as joe talked about the

constitution, our job is to uphold that constitution, defend it, enemies public from foreign and domestic. we continue to do that. that's our job. but director comey enjoyed quite a bit of positive reflection from the members of our agents association and across the bureau, in general. he was very well respected and his leadership was very highly thought of. >> given that director comey was so well respected, what will be required, do you think, in order to replace him in a way that is effective and seamless and doesn't cause further problems? >> right. so we went through a group of principles that we wanted to see our next director and we actually did this back when director muller was getting ready for his tenure to be over. and the main principles that we came up with were it's somebody who understands the fbi agent and someone who understands the work that fbi agents do on a

daily basis. and i think that mike rogers is someone that our executive board, after meeting on saturday, we came out and said -- took a vote and it was unanimous, that we would support mike rogers for this position. he is a fmer fbi agent. he obviously knows what it is to be an fbi agent, to work the streets, to work cases. he then became a congressman and was in charge of the house intelligence committee. and in that position, he had access to counter intelligence information, counterterrorism information. with his background as a criminal investigator and those two pieces that also fall into that, we think that he would support the agents. he's someone we've worked with over the years. he helped us with several pieces of legislation, helping us guide through that process. one of them being the sam hicks bill, which was designed -- if an fbi agent is killed in the

line of duty, up until this bill was passed, his or her family had to pay for their last move back to their home state, which is really ridiculous. and now if an agent is killed in the line of duty -- actually, any federal agent is killed in the line of duty, their families are moved back to their location where they want to be, to have their support system. just by doing that type of think, mike rogers understands the agent population, understands what it is to be an agent. >> let's move around. other people have some questions. >> mike confessore. a white house press secretary -- >> easy for to you say. >> -- said she heard from countless people at the fbi that they wanted comey to be pushed out. does that sound right to you? >> i'm not going to get into

anything that the white house said or not said. >> just based on your speaking with members, though. >> i am the president of the fbi agents association. i have very good contact with the agent population. and the vast majority of those agents were very supportive of director comey and his leadership. it's been something that we were very happy to have him as our director. we met regularly with director comey. he listened to us. e of the -- >> he visited mos of the field offices, too, didn't he? >> all o them. >> i think he visited almost all the field offices. i think one big point with director comey, and we hope that mike rogers would continue this type of behavior as director of the fbi. for about nine years, we were trying to get agents who died in the line of duty for -- during 9/11 exposures, during that response to 9/11. we were having quite a bit of

trouble getting those names recognized as line of duty deaths. first time we met with director comey, he took it upon himself to assign people at very high levels to start working this issue. to see if it actually is something that we needed to do. and in july he signed those names. we have seven names that are now on the hall of honor in the fbi building. and tomorrow -- actually, this morning, we'll be putting those names on to the national wall in d.c. >> there you go. >> that is about recognizing something and director comey was helping us move forward with the department of labor to have those families recognized and helped. >> fbi special agent thomas o'connor, thank you very much. >> thank you, sir. >> the president threatened yams comey with the release of secret tapes. now comey says he will talk to congress, if in public.

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back to james comey. your staff have been insinuating you no i didn't. i thought he's investigating russia. >> and you're just admitting that. >> oh. >> but that's obstruction of justice. >> sure. okay. >> wait, so did i get him? is this all over? >> no, i didn't. nothing matters. absolutely nothing matters. >> that's right. nothing is going to stop me because i've got the republicans in the palm of my hand. look at this. >> you called more ice cream sir. he's two scoops. >> paul ryan? >> yes, sir. i am so excited to be working with president trump on an agenda that benefits --

>> beat it, nerd. just get out of here. >> whatever you say, mr. trump, he feeds me dog food. >> right now. soccer analyst, back here. now he's going to get filthy. that's good to see. >> so to go, joe. in the premier league season. how are you feeling? you can barely constrain yourself. >> liverpool has been so up and down all season, we should be very excited they're playing the worst team. if they win, they're in europe. >> that's true. >> and arson is fire. first time arsenal does get in the top fire. >> you're breaking news. chelsea football club. >> speaking of russian ol. >> a huge chelsea fan. does not mind.

believes that chelsea football club is a vast money laundering outfit. >> 83rd minute. this guy who scored has been a full season. $43 million news. not scored in 15 games, but here scores a winner which wins the league title. it's like coming off the bench in 2003 acl. >> don't bring it up. >> and immediately look at this guy. within is in his dna. it's scarier. in the country for old men. >> chelsea, two out. >> can you believe it. that's what you were getting. last year was such a cluster. >> it's amazing. it was hard after. wait a second, they've won two out of three titles.

in may, he's at the top of the world. he's the greatest ever. fired in december, but i mean, what he has done this year with the team that was hopelessly lost, direction is pretty incredible. >> amazing leadership. evil always wins. john henry. red sox. phenomen phenomen phenomenal feat. west ham. football season close to trump university football. look at that guy. on the sideline. i mean, it has been for you. you felt you could win it all times this season. at times you've been barely hanging on. this is champions league.

>> it's really unbelievable. they have played so well at times. you look at them and say there's flashes of brilliance. they could win it all. other times they lose to the worst clubs in the league. >> with a win next weekend, they will make champions league football. final week of action. ten matches. >> on sunday. >> so if liverpool wins, arsenal doesn't make the top for the first time since actually goes to arsenal. do they fire him. >> you got to look in the drank and say that. >> wenger out. >> you heard it. >> hear you say those words. >> wenger out. still ahead. whether you agree with the decision to fire james comey, may depend on political party. just everyone thinks there's ought to be a special council to investigate. new numbers in nbc poll. plus president says there's

nothing wrong with asking staff to pledge loyalty just as two members of the administration appear to be falling in line. nbc steve kor knacky joins us. plus "the washington post," with the inside reporting on the comey firing. >> as we get a break, the new things. >> just moments away for the republican party. when this bell rings... ...it starts a chain reaction... ...that's heard throughout the connected business world. at&t network security helps protect business, from the largest financial markets to the smallest transactions, by sensing cyber-attacks in near real time and automatically deploying countermeasures. keeping the world of business connected and protected. that's the power of and. then there are moments it become♪ clear, together always was, and always will be,

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"new york times" nick and washington "new york times" reporter michael schmit. we start with new poll that shows 29% of americans approve of the president's firing of james comey. 38% disapprove. opinions are sharply divided along partisan lines. 58% of republicans approving. 66% of democrats disapproving. most independents have no opinion of the firing. more disapprove than approve. now, when voters were asked if they prefer to investigate russia's involvement in the presidential election. 15% in congress, 78% support an

independent commission or this week. >> they've got to be hearing this back in the districts. 78, eight out of ten people, don't trust congress to handle this investigation. maybe more. they're not going to be able to just continue doing business as usual and especially in the house. i think the pressure. there's so many cost cutting pressing towards. just because there's all this controversy reasons that you want this to try to depoliticize it. rm one set of reasons republicans want it for a different set of reasons. a lot of people are going to be hearing at home, guys, we don't trust you to do this right. for so many of them this is going to be an easy way to say get it out of our hair. >> you look at approval ratings.

gallop has him at 39. yesterday dropped down to 39. nbc news wall street journal has him at 39%. 54 pktd disapprove. numbers are worse as it pertains to russia. i don't know how scared paul ryan is going to continu to be. i don't know how petrified he's going to be of his own shadow. i don't know when he's going to be the paul ryan i once knew. those senators who have to get elected statewide, they see numbers like that and they're going to have to do the right thing. >> congress bad order for the country in general. no surprise there. i do think for paul ryan more than the house, the senate is more insulated because of the math. the house can go, can flip in a way that and i think if these keep building. if people sense there is a moment where the institution of democracy are under assault, or threatened, there's a moment

there for democratics to come back and threaten the house. agenda on taxes and regulation and everything else. >> you look at the numbers. the republicans are minus 16 in the latest test. that is historical gap. this weekend james clapper goes on tv and talks about democratic institutions are under attack. internally. on tv talking about democratic institutions under attack internally. that filters through to the american public and may be why that plus 16 for democrats becomes a plus 20 if the house republicans don't wake up soon. >> that would fundamentally change the politics of this country if the democrats controlling within of the branches of congress in the poo position to do whatever they want against the president. interesting people are using the phrase independent prosecutor

and indpentindependently. what was happening by the russians. independent prosecutor. much more reaction from the white house. he did not ask the man. >> whether or not you had his loyalty loyalty, but i don't think i can handle the question. l loyalty to the united states is important. i mean, it depends on how you define loyalty. number one, number two, i don't know how that got there. because i didn't ask that

question. >> key members to the president trump's cabinet got in line. behind him this weekend. >> the firing of fbi director comey shape your concern about whether how much independence the president will give you. >> not at all, chuck. i have a great relationship with the president. i understand what his objectives are when i'm not clear what his objectives are, we talk about it. helping the president achieve his things. and earn his compliments every day with how i go back to those affairs. >> the president is the ceo of the country. he can hire and fire whoever he wants. that's his write. whether you agree with it or not, it's the truth. what he's trying to do is find his own team. figure out how he's the going to do it. with r there better ways to do, that's for everyone else to decide. >> across washington, trump's

allies have been buzzing about the staff's competence as well as the president's state of mind. one gop figure asked if trump was in the grip of paranoid delusion. terms of him pacing around, screaming, watching television. >> i've been hearing it all weekend. this is richard haas, the only parallel, you go back to nixon in 74. all the reports i've been hearing of the white house is the president is running around screaming at television sets. increasingly isolated. basically wanting to fire everybody, but kushner who is also now shooting at all the staff members. >> who is behind the firing of comey reportedly. >> kushner and trump are aligned against everyone else blaming everyone else for the firing of

comey when it was trump that fired comey. kushneported firg comey. he's even at his club reports at his club that he's going off detached. almost detached from reality. then you have ambassador of the united nations calling him the ceo of the country, fundamentally ig fornt. fundamentally ignorant of constitution of republic and the constitution the system that's been put in place. rex tillerson ycowerin. i don't know what word i'm looking for, but it's sad and pathetic the secretary of state feels like he has to say that he's, quote, devoted.

to a president who is sledding democratic norms every day. >> it's awfully early for a president and staff to be circling the wagons like this. interesting about that, no one left to blame. 125 days if you have entirely new team and things don't get better. then what? one constant will be the president and one or two staffers like jared kushner. pushes for him to get it right on 2.0. doesn't work the second time around, what do you do. >> remarkable thing is donald trump is screaming at staff members for things he has done unilaterally. forget who wrote this. maybe it was in the times or the post. it's like a pilot that decides

to turn towards tush lance and then blames the crew for passengers being bumped around. what i found fascinating again profoundly ignorant by the president of the united states the president saying he would have no problem ordering a loyalty oath from an fbi director, that is the talk of an auto kat. >> he had to understand that comey didn't really care what people thought about him. if the president was going to come to him and say, do you want a loyalty, of course comey wasn't going to go along with that. comes back to it and comes back to it. really colored the way both of them saw each other in the months that came forward. the idea their relationship was

going to work, like it was never going to work. was never going to do the things trump wanted him to do. the thing i don't understand is why does trump fire comey in the fashion he did. if there's nothing to hide are the russian investigation, all this does is ratchet up the pressure and intention and raises questions why did he do this and especial in the fashion he did. >> still ahead, morning joe, conservative morning radio hosts. political correspondent, steve kor knacky.

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of the which hunt says there was no collusion. the president was saying the former director of intelligence that he was not aware of evidence showing the trump campaign collusion with russia. a statement which clapper says predates james comey revealing an fbi investigation was underway on march 20. >> it's not surprising or out of or abnormal, but i would not have known about the investigation. even more importantly, the content of the 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. >> i think in many ways our institutions are under assault externally and that's the big news here. russian interference in election system. i think as well our institutions are underassault from the

president. >> >> i'll ask you from the reporting you've been doing. the checks and balance saying we're going to be okay. my instincts tell me they are under assault. the institutions of the government are under assault because of this president and he could do damage if not put under control or contained in some way. >> look, in terms of the way things happen. small debt on the investment of investigating in these hackers doing what they did to this country has had an enormous payoff. what i don't understand about clapper. he says they don't know there was an fbi investigation. imagine if there was a major terrorist attack. the head of national

intelligence said i don't know if there was an fbi investigation going on that was related to this. i don't understand why that's not getting more attention. >> you know, there was even going back the last summer, you actually had the cia believing that the russians were trying to interfere with the intersectiel the fbi believing they did not. actually tried to change the outcome of the election. i don't understand clapper's statements either. this was an active debate last summer. take the political context. we now know that the fbi was investigating simultaneously hillary clinton and donald trump. for much of last summer and into the fall.

the fact comey came out and revealed the clinton administration and not the trump is frustrating. it is interesting in the context of clapper to wonder why didn't that leak, if the fbi was investigating trump, you believe that they were, but how as michael just suggested. how big of a containment was it. you would have thought if the white house had known it. more politically inclined democrats within the administration. counter balance the hillary clinton news. it didn't leak. we didn't know about it until officially well into the trump administration. it seems as though comey had really lulled that investigation off. maybe his desire to maintain independence of the company. even out of the silo to the point where clapper would know about it. clapper's suggestion. the fbi last year. >> coming up on morning joe, is

the white house inner circle about to look a whole lot different. a major shakeup could be coming. involving some very notable names. the new reporting for axios strait ahead on morning joe e.

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oh, my first part. think about say something that's not the truth. >> only since you started working. >> on friday, the president expressed some frustration with the surrogates and could again with facing about a fastball. axios reports friends and advisers of the president is considering a huge reboot that could clear out the top west wing staff. reince priebus strategist steve bannon and press secretary sean spicer. "new york times" reports that president trump had spicer out of the loop in dismissing james comey until the last possible because he feared leaks from the communication staff. the times reports trump has raised the idea of fox news host as a possible press secretary replacement. in an interview this weekend,

president trump said dissatisfaction with his communications staff is not what's driving his tweeted desire to cancel press briefings. >> 100 years we've been doing it. can't put an end to that. >> there's never been action like this. this is crazy. >> higher ratings on those press conferences. >> would you seriously consider stopping these press sessions. >> no. we do it in a different way. >> how. >> we do it through a piece of paper with a perfectly accurate beautiful answer. give you an example. >> in writing. >> they're asked 100 questions or 50 questions or 20 questions. they get one out of 50 just a little bit off, 5%, 10%. 20%. it's the next day it's a front page story in every newspaper. >> you see the ratings. blowing away everything on daytime television. what i would love to do is stop them. it's not fair to the people. i'll give you -- look.

i am a very active person. i have a lot of very positive things going on right up here for this country. it's impossible for a person or two people or three people who are press people to cover every aspect of what i'm thinking and what i'm doing. i think it's unfair. >> when will you make that decision. >> over the next couple of weeks. i tell you what. they'll be very unhappy. the ratings are so high. that i don't know what networks are going to do. start to cry. >> i don't know where to begin. where do i begin? what was that all about? >> what the heck? >> it sounds like spicer is safe as long as the ratings are high. >> he's frustrated clearly frustrated and i just keep thinking about what might happen if these reports are true and all of these -- the ones about him doing a wholesale reboot of

the west wing and firing all these people, who have been suffering in a lot of ways through this early part of the administration, a lot of them have been thrown under the bus by him. a lot of them as david said in the story cited there, made to look like liars or fools throughout. if trump does not like the leaking that's going on in the first 110 days of administration. just imagine what it will be like if he fires reince priebus, sean spicer, all people suddenly cut loose and have no reason to be loyal to the administration. >> in the last 100 days. >> slowly backing away. bannon let it be known, he was not -- he was not for -- he was concerned about the firing of james comey at the time. >> i think reince priebus is safe. not a lot of people would take

that job. sean spicer is safe if the ratings are high. >> coming up on morning joe. left wing moon bats to ridicule. msnbc contributor has a smart piece on the tams. focus and trolling liberals giving president trump a free pass. that's straight ahead on morning joe. i didn't know where i was from ethnically. so we sent that sample off to ancestry. my ancestry dna results are that i am 26% nigerian.

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clear the air. this tweet has to be answered. i would advise the president not to tweet or comment about the investigation as we duoforward. the russians did interfere in election. i don't think they changed the outcome. have no evidence of collusion, but the president needs to back off here and let the investigation go forward. >> so they aren't scheduling flashy news conference about it, but there are real tangible

signs that republicans are beginning to break with president trump in an effort to build their own agenda and protect their political prospects. as the "new york times" frames it, republican senator simply have a lot less fear of him. some of the examples they're working on their own health care bill with a little input from the white house. they're slamming a budget request to slash funding for the national trump control office. they're bucking the president on sanctions and rejecting call to change filibuster rules. comey and the claims that he secretly recorded their conversations. so joining us now author and conservative commentator had a great piece in the "new york times" about the so-called anti-trumpism. also with us white house bureau chief. here onset, political correspondent for nbc news and msnbc steve kornacki and staff writer at the nigher. adam davidson.

new piece on the senate beginning to investigate trump's businesses. >> that's not really good. >> not good for trump. that is. let's start with phillip. a lot of intrigue this weekend about what is actually going to happen in the white house. all the stories coming out of the white house and west wing are not good. take us inside there. >> well, what you have is a president who is just fuming. he's very angry with the news coverage over the last few weeks. views the comey situation as a public relations problem for him. he's been doing a lot of post mortum interviews with aides to try to figure out what's behind negative headlines. >> he's calling in staff members and interviewing them when they went out. >> skrindividually and actuallyd what they told him -- did what they were told to do and then he goes and lester holt and just blabbers completely different story. >> exactly right. the president seems to think that the system failed him in the white house, that his staff failed him. he's actually the one picking

which buttons to choose in every single instance. he decided what the talking points would be. he decided the timing of the firing and decided everything up to lester holt interview. the staff is sort of be wildered and perplexed and trying to hang on hit. >> he's increasingly isolated and republicans on capitol hill are starting to obviously be far more concerned. practically more than publically. even publically in the senate starting to look into trump's businesses. very bad news for trump. >> for me, the biggest news of last week, the news that i think dramatically shifts the course of history was even more than comey, the fact that richard burr, republican and mark warner, democratic, who have decided to partner on the senate intel committee, ask the treasuries financial crimes enforcement network to start

zr searching for information about trump's businesses. the network basically hoovering up all sorts of data about money laundering. works like a google machine. where they just type in trump and they start mapping out. >> like to say, trump atlantic city. >> trump atlantic city. >> russians. >> very beginning of trump atlantic city from 1990 when it opened after first bankruptcy in 1991. >> how hard is it to track down? let's say -- i'm just saying. i'm just making up a fact pattern here. let's say that when trump was in financial trouble, the russians helped him money launder through atlantic city. just wild. pulled that out of thin air. let's say that actually happened back in 90s when trump was bankrupt. how hard would something like that be to track down. >> what happens is casinos, banks, other financial institutions. i have to clear. that is just -- i just pulled that out of thin air.

>> here's what we do know for sure. for its entire existence, from 1990 to 2015, the trump atlantic city casino was in violation of anti-money laundering laws per sis tenthly as one expert said.. ultimately $10 million. largest ever fine. we know for sure money was being laundered through trump's atlantic casino. >> we don't know if it was coming from russia. >> that's what the investigation is. >> we do know every penny that trump got in that -- money laundering happening through real estate and through casinos and through development of hotels. those are the three major tools. those are trump's three major businesses. that data is out there in these financial crime enforce. network data dumps. >> you write in the "new york times" in part this, as the right doubles down on

anti-trumpism, it will find itself goated into defending and rationalizing ever more outrageous conduct just as long as it ignores cnn in the left. mirrors donald trump himself. at its core, there are no fixed values. no respect for constitutional government or ideas of personal character. only a free floating nihilism cloaked in insult, mockery, and bombast. needless to say this is not a form of conservatism that edwin burke or gary would have recognized. >> barry gold waert would be an interesting reference considering it was barry go goldwater who went to nixon and said it's time to go.

for many people in the conservative right, it's less important to defend any specific principal or defend a trump action as opposed to having liberals heads explode or sarah palin said. exploded heads keep exploding. >> it's a calculation charlie that they know that they're base, what's red meat. they know they're niche markets. conservative commentators and also the niche markets that jerry republicans and jerry misunderstandered sees. they want red meat. it's much more dangerous for hem though break with trump. talking about the republicans.

the level of intimidation is incredible on the right. the safe space is to not defend trump, but to attack the media. attack hypocrite cal democrats. attack over the top liberals or play the game of what about. what about obama, what about hillary. that formula has worked so far. >> its niche marketing. >> yes. >> very few people like charlie or goldburg who writes this. the smart every mind honorable response from the conservatives to all of this should be the jerry ma gunfire response. conservatives should be doing everything they can to convince trump he's his on worst enemy. mike pence, himself, his party and his country a favor by telling donald trump, if you humiliate me like that again, i will resign and run against you in 2020. unfortunately right now, that is not happening.

we saw it with rosenstein. seen it with mike pence. saw it with staff people. cabinet officials. going out and humiliating themselves. >> i love what charlie wrote. gets to a bigger issue in politics. that's how politics have become triable. it's like red and blue don't rep pa represent parties anymore. >> trump is not a member of the tribe. he just wondered in a couple of years o after being in the other tribe for 68 years. i think i'm going to take over this tribe. >> i think what he did and i think this is why i love. he makes the people in the blue try furious in a way that very few people and very few forces in our culture do. it become this is thing. charlie hits on it here. becomes this thing where all of these people are so worked up about trump on the blue side. if you're on the red side, maybe you don't want to defend actions per se. to criteria sides him is to

align yourself with forces you don't like. >> charlie, i was in washington in 1990s. the parallels with bill clinton, remarkab remarkable. they would laugh and say he's lying. he gets away with everything. he is a dog. and it was actually very funny to them because he would always get the best of newt beginning rich. you would also get the best of gingrich now republicans who are so shocked and stunned and deeply saddened at the immorality of democrats doing that celebrating a liar are doing the same thing in 2017. >> it's not as -- >> the stakes are even higher. >> charlie, would you like to comment. >> yes, so you basically have

boot camps. we got donald trump in part because of what happened with bill clinton. it's this triablism. the red and blue are no longer about ideas. they're no longer about principals. switch sides on a dime. it has become so triable. y tribal. isn't the difference that bill clinton actually got policy through that you all worked together. there was resemblance of a government running. right now it's sheer chaos and it appears that at the top, the person at the top isn't even smart enough to really kind of push through to follow his lies. get anything done. he's just melting down. >> actually no guardrails.

i've heard people saying that actually chased after richard nixon for years. it's not even fair to compare trump to nixon or clinton because at least they were bound by certain rules. >> they governed. >> and they governed. they governed effectively in their own way. i would also say they had an instinct for self preservation. maybe nixon had too much of an instinct for self preservation that ultimately destroyed him. what we see in trump. it's unusual and hard to make a comparison. potential criminality is so out in the open. it's so naked. he has four years -- he said on cnbc in 2012, the only way to do business in another country is to bribe foreign officials. that tells me as a business reporter, i got to find where he bribed foreign officials since he already told me he did it. >> maybe you want to go south to

atlantic city. >> add and he admitted on tv. i fired the fbi director to kill the investigation against me. >> you're talking about firing, right? >> i want to talk to phil about firing. your piece which was extraordinary over the weekend has a lot of incredibly juicy details in them. one of them is the notion donald trump thinking about firing a lot of people conceivably. how serious do you think it is. prospect of large scale west wing shakeup in the near future. >> it's possible, but it's important to remember this is something that trump thinks about and talks about all the time. from when he first got in the office. hallmark of campaign and of his businesses. he cycled through three different leadership teams on his campaign in 16 months. might be a shakeup. i don't think we'll see anything until after he returns from foreign trip coming up. high stakes trip.

not taking ownership of his problems himself. >> he shoots himself in the foot and wants to blame the pos sise the q poll has republicans down 16 points and generic ballot test. 78% don't trust americans to run. >> you're like a numbers machine. incredible. >> you start adding all of that up and these are historically low numbers. you start adding that up. at some point even republicans on the hill may break. >> this is the thing. when you start looking at 2018. all of those negative numbers right there are going to attach themselves to republicans running in the 2018 midterms. what's missing from the republican standpoint in 2018: you talk about the effect trump has on tribalism and how that maybe works to his benefit. riles up the left. brings the right mibehind him.

he's not going to be on the ballot in 2018. in 2016, that's gone in 2016. republicans are going to be left to fend for themselves. they're kind of attached to trump. won't have trump on the ballot bringing voters around to him in the end. raises the nature of midterm election so much it's about buyer's remorse. about voters saying maybe we gave the president a little too much power the last time. take it back. that is going to be out in full force. >> actually riling people up brings people to polls. >> i want to ask you this question. what's the breaking point right. where does trump's number have to drop to? we've seen incredible republican solidarity ichb all this chaos. given trump in the high 30s. no one has broken away. >> there's a different breaking point. >> i'll agree with that.

>> republicans aren't on the hill right now. you boil down trump support at the end of the day. it's 33, 34%. they were another 10, 11, 12% that voted against hillary clinton. right now lost about six or 7% of those. 5% of those sort of swing voters are still saying okay, i'm going to give him a little more time. you start getting 35, 34, 33%. they'll bail on him like they bail eed on bush in the 2000s. good morning. we are following potential more fallout from massive cyber attack. far reaching over the weekend. more than 150 countries affected. businesses government agencies, hospitals and more. and companies are bracing for potentially to get worse this morning. just to review, we are talking about a ransom ware attack that targets a microsoft

vulnerability. it's called wanna cry. it infects your computer and users are sent ran sosoms where they're forced to pay 300-600 dollars in bitcoin. the untraceable digital currency. this goes across the globe. fedex in the u.s. hitachi. car company in france forced to close factories. russian banks, chinese gas stations. there's clearly a global man hunt for this right now. microsoft says the tool came from code stolen from the nsa and said it was a wakeup alert for government agencies for weap weaponizing its software and letting hackers steal it. beyond that i want to mention an interesting partnership. lyft is now teaching up with wamo. the driverless car unit of google's alphabet. way mmo has the ability to driv

cars. you will see waymo being tested more from the lift system. two take aways. one driverless cars are coming closer. increasingly being looked at for ride sharing application. two, this is another blow to uber. big competitor gotten in a fight with skplilyft and waymo. >> we'll be reading adam davidson, your reporting in the new yorker. thank you very much for being on. as the president goes from crisis to crisis, can he deliver on any of his campaign promises? keep it right here on morning joe. i realize that ah, that $100k is not exactly a fortune. well, a 103 yeah, 103. well, let me ask you guys.

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looks at trump's america, asking the question, can a president bring jobs back to the industrial midwest and you look at where he made promises, right. >> right. so he made -- trump was sort of talking about move a play to new mexico. after the election, ford said we're not going to build a plant in mexico and add 700 jobs to this one manufacturing plant and we're going to keep another plant open. and so i went to the industrial midwest i went to deerborn, the suburbs to see how the promise of those jobs is affecting those communities. >> and how does it look? >> in flat rock things look really good. 700 jobs turns out to be a lot of jobs in a really small town and what economists say is that one manufacturing job has a multiplier effect between five and seven. so one person on the line gets you fast food workers, hotel clerks, gas station workers, you

know -- >> so it's working there? >> it's working in a very micro way. >> yeah. >> so the question is, what do you learn from that or how do you extrapolate from that and what does that mean about nafta. >> the flat rock and -- >> i spoke to the mayors of each town and interviewed people who live in each town. flat rock is prosperous. it's coming up. the population is growing, they're building new houses, a new big box store. it looks like norman rockwell. i went to the little league parade and the lugnuts and hot rods were walking down the street with their moms and dads and it was really idyllic. wayne is a totally different story and wayne is sort of a victim of these huge forces that have been affecting american manufacturing over the last 25 years. global trade, recession, automation, competition, and, you know, they can't pay their bills in wayne. >> do they feel the president

can solve their problems? >> i think they are hoping so. i mean flat rock voted for trump. wayne did not. but, you know, where they're living it's really not about politics so much as it is about jobs. >> getting by. >> and health insurance. >> john heilemann. >> as you just having spent not about the specific stories of the economic policies related to these towns but how people are generally looking at washington, right, are -- these -- the economically strapped places looking at all this going on that has nothing to do with them about jobs, about their incomes, what are you hearing from people, what they see when comey, russia, all this stuff is dominating the news. >> i have to say i was astonished at the way it was not political. you know, my conversations were really personal and people are really concerned about their paychecks and their health insurance and what's going to happen to their kids and this kind of sense of motivation, like how do we get young people

interested in these kinds of industrial jobs when this way of life is disappearing. and, you know, michigan splits the ticket more than most states in the country. they're pretty nuanced in their ability to look at what's good for them and what's not good for them politically. >> steve kornacki. >> in terms of lessons for our politics if democrats are looking at michigan, a state they want to win back, pennsylvania, wisconsin, where did they go wrong and from being out there, what would a strategy be for democrats out there? >> i think, you know, a big union leader said to me, you know, when -- in the first presidential debate we've been over this, donald trump said nafta is the worst trade deal that's ever -- worse thing that's ever happened to this country and hillary clinton said that's your opinion. the union leaders all felt just -- the quote in the story is our hearts went through our chests. in michigan, people aren't thinking about the specifics of

nafta, so much as what nafta has meant to them and their way of life. it's like a stand-in for all of these forces that have destroyed a way of life over the last 25 years. >> lisa miller, thank you. we will read your piece in the new issue of "new york "magazine. lisa laid out beautifully in her piece what working-class americans are looking for. what they're hoping for. what they need. >> yeah. >> does this presidency even come close to addressing that? >> well, that's a great -- >> how would you characterize -- >> that's a great tragedy. donald trump was going to address john heilemann, deindustrialization, globalization, automation, all the things that lisa was talking about. but he can't -- he can't get past the day-to-day controversy and they're all self-inflicted. so this is such a tragedy for working-class americans who trusted this guy who knows whether trump's solutions to these, if they would have had a real effect or not.

it's clear at this phase, these core elements of his campaign, are totally being ignored and being swallowed up by the larger controversies. i can't help but think as we get close to the midterm elections the frustration is going to mount. >> can you imagine if he made infrastructure a priority at the start of this. every week he was at a ribbon cutting for a big project, here's the jobs we're creating here, going from town to town in the rust belt. >> go to the towns and you're hearing it, health care. you have a health care plan that actually is -- donald trump didn't believe in it. he just adopted anything so he could have a ribbon cutting ceremony at the white house and it leaves these people behind. and gives $800 billion in tax cuts to the 1%. >> bigger issue, what clapper said. that's the bigger issue. >> it is a bigger issue. >> the question, is -- are we being challenged and -- >> democracy under assault. >> democracy under assault and

the question is, does congress specifically do republicans in the senate and house, do they rise up and put country ahead, not even of their party, because donald trump's not even a republican or a conservative, do they put it ahead of trumpism? that's the question. and that does it for us today. >> yes. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> thanks, joe, mika. good morning. i'm stephanie ruhle. this morning much to cover, hiring and firing, administration interviewing eight candidates for fbi director. >> we can make a fast decision. >> before saturday? >> these are outstanding people that are very well known. >> as the president considers a massive shakeup of his west wing staff. who could be on the way out? tale of the tapes, the president plays coy. >> you said that there might be tape recordings. >> well, that i can't talk