tv Andrea Mitchell Reports MSNBC June 19, 2017 9:00am-10:01am PDT
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#velshiruhle. >> right now on andr"andrea mitl reports" word games, the president's surrogates making the rounds. >> let me be really clear here as it has been since the beginning, the president is not and has not been under investigation for obstruction. >> but wait until you hear how he muddled that message just minutes later. and a van plowing into a crowd outside a mosque in monday. as the uk suffers it's fourth terror attack in as many months. >> terrorism is terrorism, it doesn't matter whether you're inspired by a perverse version of islam or inspired by other motives to try and terrorize others. the intention is the same. and collision course, how does a u.s. navy destroyer with the most advanced radar
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available collide with a container ship more than three times it's size. the mother of one of the seven sailors killed in the accident, remembering her son. >> one thing that my son told me, that no matter what, he has my back every time, it never fails. he always had my back in anything. and good day, i'm andrea mitchell in washington. we're following breaking news today, another terrorism incident in the heart of europe. an armed driver ramming into a police truck. the driver is dead, a number of weapons and explosives were found in the car. no one was injured in what police are calling a police incident. one person is dead, ten people injured, all the victims
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were muslim. this is london's third terror attack in as many months involving a vehicle driven into a crowd. police say a 48-year-old man slammed his van into a group of people near the finsbury park mosque. the driver tried to escape, but was detained by people in the crowd. some witnesses say he was shouting threats at muslims. >> as we came outside the mosque, there were people screaming, it was like a horror movie, there was people laying on the floor, there was blood on the floor. and eventually a white man in a van started running people over. >> the man in the van started fighting with us and spitting at us and he bites my thumb right here. >> teresa may condemned the attack as sickening. and london's mayor vowed not to let this divide the capital city. >> the attack in manchester, the attack on london bridge, the
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attack on westminster bridge are all on attack on our shared values, our shared values are tolerance and freedom and respect. and we will not allow these terrorists to succeed. >> nbc's kira simmons is live in london. i can only imagine how on edge people must be after this repetition, month after month. >> reporter: that's right, andrea, and this is only reminding people that brutal extremism can have many faces, we have just heard in the last hour that the man in his 40s you mentioned is now being held under terrorism legislation here, terrorism laws, let me just step out of the way so you can see more clearly at the scene, this is where a man veered on to the sidewalk and mowed down people who had been in the mosque. you can see there are flowers now, and above that is a sign that says united against all
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terrorists. the message very clearly that after a series of attacks that were down to islamic extremism, this an attack on muslims, and the muslim community. is another example of violence in the name of politics as it appears to be can be carried out but it will be from different sides. >> i wanted to ask you also about what happened in paris, we don't know very many details, it just happened today. fortunately no one else was injured other than the driver of the van. >> reporter: yeah that's right, and there are some reports now that in that vehicle, they found a kalashnikov, it appears that it may have been an attempt to use a vehicle again as some kind of a weapon, andrea. and it's a kind of blood thirsty brainless attack that we seem to be seeing again and again. i think honestly, i speak for all of us when i say i wouldn't mind if we never covered another
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attack like this again. but it does seem to be the weapon of choice now, extremists on every side. what happened as far as we understand from the police, is that a man had collapsed prior to the attack, a group of people were around him helping him, and that was the point at which they were hit by this vehicle. and then afterwards, the man in the vehicle, appears to be waving and smiling, proud of himself. a group got around him, got hold of him and prevented others from carrying out, kind of immediate vengeance, if you like u on him. waiting for the police to arrive to arrest him. so a display of lawfulness if you like, even in the face of this outrage. >> we see not only the resilience but the values of the people in london, in the face of all of this. i just wanted to keep the record
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here and remind people about the awful high-rise fire and how the death count again today as they begin continue, i should say, to get through the debris and find out how many people died in that dreadful tower. >> that's right, and now the number that are dead or missing, presumed dead has reached -- is heading towards 100. and yet the actual number they have been ableo name, just five. so that just gives you a graphic picture of how difficult that investigation is. what's happened here, what's happened there at that tower, that now stands blackened, looking over west london, what's happened is really affecting people. and making people think about their communities and i think it's changing a lot of opinions. and it comes as you know in a very tense political climate, in which the government had only just managed to win the last election. these are tense times here.
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very difficult. and no one really knows exactly where this is going to end up. andrea? >> kier simmons, thank you for that. and president trump spinning circles trying to explain away that tweet. the president writing on friday, i am being investigated for firing the fbi director. >> the president takes action based on numerous events, including recommendations from his attorney general, and the deputy attorney general's office. he takes the action that they also by the way recommend. and now he's being investigated by the department of justice, because the special counsel and the special counsel regulations, reports to the department of justice. so he's being investigated for taking the action, that the deputy attorney general recommended him to take by the agency, who recommended the termination. >> you stated some facts.
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first of all you said that he now is getting investigated. >> no, he's not being investigated. >> you just said that he's being investigated. >> no, chris, i said -- let me be crystal clear, so you completely understand. we have not received nor are we aware of any investigation of the president of the united states. >> you just said two times that he's being investigated. >> no, the context of the tweet, i just give you the legal theory, chris, of how the constitution works, if in fact it was correct that the president was being investigated, he would be being investigated for taking action that an agency told him to take. >> whether you believe me or your lying aeyes and ears. not a great performance there, but how do you explain that tweet? that is a complicated bit of business. >> reporter: it is, andrea, and the entire episode underscores the fact that the president's tweets can be problematic, and
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that we continue to see this coming out of the white house and now the president's legal team. so what was the president's attorney trying to argue there, he was basically saying that the president's tweet that you read have been taken out of context and that he was being hypothetically, if there were some investigation, stressing the point, he said that the president hasn't been alerted to any investigation. a couple of points to make there. what does the reporting show? "the washington post" of course broke the report, and a number of news reports, including ours, said that -- the fact that he hasn't been alerted to any investigation, andrea, not necessarily a huge surprise, because of course the investigation still in its early stages if in fact that is the case. but the fact that the president tweeted that tweet on friday, backing his legal team, and his surrogates into that corner. and over the weekend, you had
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some of his top surrogates, including newt gingrich, expressing some concern about the detail tweets saying it's not helping the president. it's basically trying to undercut and delegitimize the russia probe. what we saw today when he was meeting with the president of panama, he declined to answer shouted questions about all of this, andrea, and it's worth noting that secretary sean spicer is holding a gaggle today. but it's not going to be on camera and we're not allowed to report out on the audio. you can report the content, but you won't be able to hear the audio. the last time we had a full briefing from the white house was last week, which is significant given all the very important headlines coming out of this administration. >> joining me now the jeremy bash, the former chief of staff
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both at the cia and at the department of defense during the obama administration and also an msnbc national security analyst. let's start with the russian investigation and how it complicates foreign policy. >> clearly the president is being investigated for obstruction of justice, a lawyer is supposed to be an officer of the court and he's supposed to tell the truth. and he basically doubled down on that claim that the president is not under investigation. i don't know now he knows that. a better statement would have been that we haven't been contacted that an investigation is being warranted. and i think the less bandwidth there is to deal with the many national crises that are brewing around the world. >> which brings to syria. today for the first time, the u.s. has brought down a syrian warplane. the warplane was attacking
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u.s.-backed resistance forces, but this is basically getting us into a potential conflict with russia which backs the regime. >> an extraordinary series of events occurred yesterday, andrea, u.s.-backed syrian defense forces operating against isis, frying to take raqqa, some counter terrorism operations. we called some russians and the russians said we're not going to abide by that. and a half hour later, they dropped bombs on the syrian defense forces and that's when we shot down with our f-18 superhornet the syrian fighter. the escalation occurred by assad and it occurred by the russian backed air force. >> we have not done a very good job, the united states has not done a very good job of pushing
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russia out of the way, we have let russia have too free of a hand in my view in the skies over syria. >> and the criticism is that the president is reluctant to go after russia, again, this is only one place where he's reluctant to go after russia. another is the fact that he still resists acknowledging the russian invasion of our cyber security for our elections. >> a big issue has been an inexplicable lack of regard in russia. when they say russia is not our friend, russia is doing very bad things, vis-a-vis our friends in nato, vis-a-vis, interference in our democratic process, and obviously backing that assad regime. and we have not been willing to take them on. >> and at the same time we understand that jared kushner, the president's son-in-law is go to real this week to try to
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negotiate the israeli-palestinian situation, is that really a top priority in a region that is in such conflict. the last time he dealt with it was in the riyadh summit, which dealt with the misunderstandings between riyadh and qatar. >> if i were to rank them, i would say number one would be to help get a political resolution to the syria crisis, so we don't have an escalation of violence, an all out war. and second to resolve this situation in the gulf, where qatar has been involved in some very bad behavior and now yo see syria and otherings trying to split that gulf counsel group which is a friend and ally of the united states. third down the list i would say is making progress on this israeli-palestinian issue, i don't think that u.s. interests are as implicated as they have been on the first two. >> we have just done a big f-18
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deal, a billion-dollar plus deal with qatar, have we not? >> we do have important strategic interests, like that telephone deacon scripation. that's why you hear secretary mattis and the pentagon saying we have to protect our interests there. buzz the big issue is that qatar has been getting tee close to iran. and russia has been providing cover for syria, for the assad regime and for their friends in iran and that is a dangerous development. >> jeremy bash, not a reassuring monday message. >> a lot to worry about. >> thank you, jeremy, as always. and coming up, behind closed doors, the senate democrats forced the secret health care debate out in the open. next on "andrea mitchell reports" only on msnbc. when it hurts, it hurts. when i can't do something,
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here you have legislation which deals with 1/6th of the american economy, that's the health care situation. and there are republicans who haven't even seen this legislation and certainly no member of the democratic caucus has. it seems to me, that what they want to do, what this legislation is so bad, is keep it secret, keep it hidden. and in the last possible second. rush it before the senate and get a vote within a few hours. >> bernie sanders and senate
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democrats gearing up for a marathon on speeches this weekend, slamming the secret health care deliberations. republicans are trying to deflect the outrage. >> the first step of this may be crafted among a small group of people but then everyone's going to get to weigh in a and it's going to take days and weeks to work through that in the senate. >> amy joins us now. and the majority leader is saying this is going to be done by the july 4 recess. >> we have not even had a hearing with the affordable care act, we only had one hearing, no republican amendments and here we have now is a bill that's being drafted behind closed doors and all we know is what the president said about the health care bill. he said it was mean, it was
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mean. and we are now getting some of mean, or as i call it mean 2. and we don't even have a chance to see a bill that could throw over 20 million people off of their insurance. strongly opposed by aarp and seniors group. trouble for rural america. and we want to work with republicans on changes to the affordable care act. we have been so clear about that. prescription drug pricesprices-- >> it's not just democrats that have been speaking out against this, there are some republicans who have been speaking out against the secrecy, that they haven't been able to see it yet, they haven't been able to read it. >> and there's a number of republicans who say we need more transparency, and we still don't know about the senate bill, but we know about the house bill,
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but the president said after having a meeting at the white house said it was mean. >> there's a list of potential hearing rooms that are available if they want to -- you can see the graphic there that we put up. that there's space on the hill to hold these hearings if they want to. >> there's more than space, i'm actually the highest ranking democrat on the rules committee and i have something to say about space in the capitol and i can tell you, we will find the space for a hearing. >> you're also on judiciary, and so far jeff sessions the attorney general has testified before intelligence, but not yet before judiciary. what are your concerns about that? >> well, it's fairly unprecedented, we have had attorney generals testify before intelligence, i think it's very important that he went before the intelligence committee, they're doing a very good job on their investigation. but the judiciary committee not only has jurisdiction over the fbi and what happened with this firing, i'm glad that senator
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grassly and senator feinstein are -- we want to talk about the voting right changes, we want to talk about the commission, we're concerned about the refugee order, as many of the american people are. what is happening with criminal justice reform or what is not happen i happen i happ happening. >> getting back to the russia investigation. on friday, the president said i am being investigated for firing the fbi director and then his attorneys, his outside attorney this weekend trying to say, no he's not being investigated after all. what do you have to say? >> that tweet was a shocker. when you don't think you can be shocked anymore. that tweet was a shocker because he not only said he was being investigated, but he blamed it on someone he said told him to fire jim comey.
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the deputy attorney general told us in a briefing and told us we could say it publicly, had told us that the president had already made his decision before rod rosenstein wrote that memo. so 20 claim that rod rosenstein gave that order is something he said --. >> is this a -- i. >> i think rod rosenstein is a reasoned prosecutor, he was originally a bush appointee, firing him, firing mueller in the words of lindsay graham would be a disaster. the chips will fall where they may, but you simply cannot have a president that's above the law. >> what is the point of his tweets repeatedly saying that this is a witch hunt. >> well, first of all, i think it's a truth hunt.
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but second of all, every time he sends one of these tweets, right when we perhaps could be working on infrastructure, actually changes to the affordable care act, that would make sense to the people of this country, we could be doing something on workforce training, he's been doing a bit of work in these areas, but every time he sends one of these tweets, four of them on friday from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., he squanders another opportunity to govern. >> i want to ask you aboutcuba. i know you'v been to cuba a number of times, you know the officials there, you have dug deep into this policy, what is your reaction to what some are calling a minor tweak and what the people on the ground were telling me, is a major set back for economic opening? >> it's not a complete roll back, you know our embassy is still there, travelers can still go to cuba, but it is clearly a set back. the economy there is so intertwined with the government owned hotels, and the private restaurants and things like that.
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and we're sending a message to the american tourists or the administration is sending a message, hey, we might audit you, keep all your records, we're going to be after you. come on, this is not the direction the policy is moving, i think the chamber of commerce of the united states of america said it best, they actually issued a pretty hard hitting statement, and they said that this policy actually seeds business opportunities to american businesse e businesses. chandler china has created the computer system for the port and these are the things that america could be investing in. hotels, like in my state. but instead we're letting other people step in. >> the other thing is about the state department, and this is not jury jurisdiction, but the u.s. state department is now cutting back on opportunities set up by charlie wrangle and others for minority, diversity
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in the armed services. jobs are being given to -- are now being shut down so spouses are having to come home and families are being divided. >> it's not good for the families, but mostly it's not good for america. you want to have broad representation of our country, just like our country has a diverse population, you want to have that reputation of having that kind of representation around the world. and i am most concerned of course about the broad cuts, 20%, 30% that we would see as general mattis has said, he would just have to buy bullets to replace that. this is american diplomacy at a time where it has never been needed like it is now. we have conflicts going on all over the world, the decision to get out of the climate change agreement. now every meeting a diplomat has
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is going to lead with another country saying, well, why did you get out of that? we're going to meet the goals, where china can go to meetings and say how can we work with you? we would like you to come to china to buy your solar panels. all of this can be worked out diplomatical diplomatically. a conservative republican who took michele bachmann's seat. talked about the foreign aid cuts. because he believes like i believe that this is a security risk if countries like somalia continue to deteriorate because of the drought. we shouldn't be cutting off funds in that way. >> so your advice to secretary tillerson would be? >> please keep having a moderate voice in the administration and keep working with others that may feel the same way, work with congress, because we have to
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send a unified message to america that not just stand with nato, that's important, but we also stand with the rest of the world. and coming up, what went wrong. more questions today on what caused a u.s. navy destroyer to collide with a container ship off the coast of japan killing severen american sailors. an update from the scene coming up on andr"andrea mitchell rep." right here on msnbc. using artificial tears often and still have dry eye symptoms? ready for some relief? xiidra is the first and only eye drop approved for both the signs and symptoms of dry eye. one drop in each eye, twice a day. common side effects include eye irritation, discomfort or blurred vision when applied to the eye, and unusual taste sensation. don't touch container tip to your eye or any surface.
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the reason it happened, joe, is think of it as an 8 or 16-lane highway, when the cars are moving at speed, but there's no traffic separation, anyone can kind of go anywhere they want to, this is open ocean. a lot of ships pass through here a day. and if anybody acts erratically or zips in the wrong direction, you can end up with a tragedy. it's surprising this kind of thing doesn't happen more often. >> on "morning joe" right now they discussed what may have
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gone wrong during the deadly collision between the destroyer and the container ship. how an advanced warship with sophisticated equipment and a watch group could collide with a cargo ship more than three times it's size. seven sailors died in the collision. what more do we know? >> reporter: well, there are no fewer than three investigations into the collision that are focusing on a number of aspects. first of all, they need to narrow down the exact time of the crash. to this point, u.s. navy officials have said that it happened at about 2:20 in the morning. but japan's coast guard told us yesterday that after speaking to the crewmembers on the cargo ship involved, the acs crystal, they believe it might have happened closer to 1:30 in the morning, this becomes important
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when trying to interpret the marine traffic records of activity in the area at the time. the acs crystal went to a different heading. they also want to speak with the crewmembers of the uss "fitzgerald," u.s. officials here say they are open to any investigation and they will fully cooperate. >> and we know that the captain is now out of the hospital, is that correct? he was badly injured? >> reporter: he was badly injured. he was medevaced, air lifted from the destroyer the night of the collision, they shifted to the star board side, we saw it yesterday, and it was crushed and there's a huge gap near the keil of the ship. but most of the damage is below the water line. that's where the sleepi inin ii
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compartments were. >> thank you very much, reporting to us from that base in japan. and coming up, state of affairs, a republican senator slamming the secretary of state for wanting to slash the state department budget. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. 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. i own my own company. i had some severe fatigue, some funny rashes.
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secretary of state rex tillerson is emphasizing the policy of doing more with less at the state department. that's raising bipartisan concerns in congress. >> i think this budget request is radical and reckless when it comes to self-power. if you cripple the state department, it's not about debt, it's about american values being impeded. >> new demand, you're going to do all that and cut the budget by 39%. thank you for coming. >> i was going to be tough. much of the world has looked to the united states for leadership. we're walking away from that leadership. >> joining me now is -- what is
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your take on the state department budget? >> this is a psidentho came into this office offerin a less -- he's trying to diminish the state department with these budget cuts and i just find it incredibly disturbing that the lack of staffing at the top levels, you have 99 unfilled senior positions at the state department. you have around 50 ambassador posts around the world, in critical spots like afghanistan that are unfilled. it really is baffling to me what the actual strategy is if you are goi aren't going to have people in place to run the state department. >> this is a serious conflict in syria, the worst perhaps in
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years, it's a conflict with russia, there's confusion as to whether we are edging closer to a direct confrontation with russia. >> this is the first time this has happened in terms of a shootdown, but it isn't the first time we have engaged syrian forces loyal to bashir al assad. this of course was the first time we shot down an airplane. but this raises a broader question here. the donald trump administration seems to be taking a much harder line against the forces of bashar al assad. but it seems like they don't have a strategy in place for not only dealing with syria, but also with russia. if there is missions creep, if it continues a pace, how are we going to react, if there is a confrontation, with god forbid russian forces, that has the ability to inflict mass casualtyings on our forces, not only in syria, but throughout the region, even closer to home. >> that brings up the whole question of the president's
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son-in-law. you've got the secretary of state basically grounded, not going to the oas meeting, sending his deputy, so that he can stay here and try to disentangle the mess that was created partly out of that riyadh summit, and now you have kushner going to the middle east to negotiate israeli-palestinian peace. does this make any sense? >> it's been kind of a ridiculous look, jared kushner going around the world, traveling, it looks a little bit like study abroad, with his flack jacket in iraq. and you're being thrown into all these high stakes diplomatic missions that really should be for the secretary of state rex tillerson. so i think the question has been with this administration as with so many things, if it's being run by president trump's family who holds the power, what is the position of seasoned personnel who have expertise in these
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areas, are they going to be completely overshadowed by the familial bonds between trump and his family. >> there aren't seasoned diplomats, other than tom shannon who was the acting deputy, and now you have a deputy who is not a diplomat, but the new under secretary of state. there are all these vacancies as ambassadors. >> not only are there not top appointments, yes, there are perfunctory meets between the administration and -- we have heard these stories of the diplomats and officials and intelligence officials, gathering around the table, making recommendations to the we have had steve bannon swoop in and overrule them. we had the imminent national
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security policy making authority acting based on their own personal whims, it's not a process that i think can produce sound foreign policy for our country. >> the other issue, elise, is them overriding the minority and women who were supposed to be recruited into the state department, into the foreign service, that program is among those that are being cancelled. >> that's another decision that's absolutely baffling to me, why did the government choose to invest so much money into these women, into these highly competent individuals who were selected for this specialized program, if only to abandon their investment when it was about to come to fruition, it really makes no sense. the spending decisions that are being made and i would just add that the state department is a place that certainly could use more diversity and more women at the table. >> coming up. summer camp, the president taking his first trip to the
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or suicidal thoughts or actions. tell your doctor right away if you have these, new or worsening depression, or unusual changes in mood or behavior. or swelling, trouble breathing, rash, hives, blisters, muscle pain with fever, tired feeling, or blurry vision. common side effects are dizziness, sleepiness, weight gain and swelling of hands, legs and feet. don't drink alcohol while taking lyrica. don't drive or use machinery until you know how lyrica affects you. those who have had a drug or alcohol problem may be more likely to misuse lyrica. with less pain, i can be more active. ask your doctor about lyrica. president trump's son-in-law
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and senior advisor jared kushner is about to take another trip to the middle east this time to broker an israeli-palestinian peace deal or try to. sam stein, politics editor and msnbc contributor and soon to be editor at "the daily beast." >> yes. >> congratulations. >> they got you. >> yeah, they got me. it's going to be a good move. bittersweet. >> as it all things. >> yes. >> carol, let's talk about middle east diplomacy. >> uh-huh. >> you've been covering foreign policy for years and here we have jared kushner, a novice, if you will, on foreign policy. what is the advantage to him going and representing the president in the middle east? >> well, the advantage, from the white house's perspective, is that everyone who talks to him knows that he's very close to the president, he's a direct line to the president, that he speaks for the president and he's trusted by the president. and that very much matters. so he's going to try to build on the president'srip to israel
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last month and advance, see where things are, meet with prime minister netanyahu and president abbas and check in, basically. the white house is very much lowering expectations saying there's not going to be anything major coming out of this, that it's to try to see where the parties are and what step they may take. >> i can see that to the extent that we have a series of secretary of states over the years who don't have access to the oval office and who have been undercut by presidents. i've seen it myself when some of his predecessors, rex tillerson's predecessors have been there. like john kerry, we saw that with the syria policy. that said, what are we doing worrying about the israeli palestinian issue when syria is in flames? >> there are a lot of the parts of the world that are flames, too, but in this instance they look at the middle east as the passage of which everything is
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falling apart. if you can resolve that, you can take steps towards iran and syria. jared has his work cut out for him. he's new to this. these deputy positions, which are utterly critical for doing anything foundationally remain understaffed. the one way that trump remains with one advantage, at the moment where they are doing a presser, trump actually outwardly criticized or urged him to stop and he was not rep pri manneded in the press trump has capital to work with. i don't know if he has the person to make it work. >> we also have a situation where the president is consumed by this -- what he calls a witch hunt by the ongoing
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investigation that is or is not an investigation. let's talk about the performance of jay sockalo over the weekend. >> i think what they are trying to do is to say that the president was saying he was responding to a "washington post" report. he's not been told he's under investigation but the president didn't frame it that way. >> that's not what the president wrote on twitter. >> he said very clearly i'm under investigation for. they are going to have to explain this even further. >> but they are not having a briefing again today. >> not on camera. >> the white house press secretary has been diminished in terms of them not, sam, doing the daily briefing and taking the questions and being part of the pushback, if you will. >> sure. and they are deflecting these questions to the outside counsel which is difficult because they're not the most successful people and they don't represent the government. sean spicer's job is to
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represent the government here. i'm still of a different mindset after how much of a cloud this is having over the trump administration. it's distracting and there's major ramifications down the road. but all that being said, we are still seeing progress on a variety of legislative fros that i didn't anticipate that we'd see. for instance, health care in the senate is happening. judicial nominations, i'm hearing that they are ramping up. he's making that incremental progress on the edges. whether he can go further than that with his administration is to be determined. >> the counterargument is that people on the hill are watching what they see as disarray, carol, and are getting worried about standing with him on tough votes, especially after he calls the health care the health -- >> yeah. >> let's talk about camp david. this is the first time they've gone there. >> uh-huh. >> we've been to camp david and we've seen negotiations there
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and it's been a prized weekend retreat where margaret thatcher and other leaders have been. >> yeah. it's this storied presidential retreat that's been a little atrophied under the last presidency. president obama didn't go there very often. he held a couple of summits there. he had a g-8 there and he had the gulf leaders there but it wasn't his kind of thing. he didn't really like it that much. so president trump went this weekend and for father's day and it's the first time he's been there. you know, by all accounts, he seems to have really enjoyed it and says it was a really special place. >> but you can understand, it's not where you can hang out and play basketball as obama would like to do on the weekend and when you have young kids who have friends and want to be in down. >> it's a bit isolated. it's also not a trump property. and he's got to get those trump properties visited to, you know. >> sam and carol, thank you. more ahead.
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and that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports". follow the show online and on twitter. chris jansing is up next on msnbc. hey, chris. >> thanks, andrea. good afternoon. i'm chris jansing in for craig melvin. at this hour, mixed messages. the white house doubling down insifting president trump is not under investigation. if he isn't being investigated,
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why did he tweet that he is and why has he hired three different outside attorneys? jared kushner is looking to increase his legal team amid the russia probe. and london terror. a van plows into people near a mosque. and this begs the question, why so many and why now? but let's start with all that legal maneuvering surrounding the russia investigation. today, a member of trump's legal team is trying to stamp out the fires that trump himself created about whether there is indeed an investigation. listen to what jay said on sunday. >>
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