won. it was will the prpand we worked hard there pup know, my opponent didn't work hard there. the polls, that's also fake news. they're fake polls. but the polls will say but we won wisconsin. >> what was going on there? today could be the most consequential moment yet for the trump presidency and donald trump is still talking about hillary clinton. speak being last night to the national boy scott jamboree. today he'll find out whether republican go and if the health care vote wasn't enough, joe, today his son-in-law meets with house investigators over questions about russia meddling

while i don't think precious the with us national affairs analyst for nbc news, john heilemann, professor at the university of michigan school of public policy, former democratic congressman harold ford jr. former fbi session agent and msnn msnncc, a lot of different things going on. >> well, a lot of different things going on today, but you go back and you look at what the president did last night. it want a dang who is are prp

but it was just so unbelievably inappropriate for the president here, what, nine months after he was elected to be going and showing all of his insecurities to a group of boy scouts. and bragging -- it's rock replaying a game that he won six, nine, ten months ago. he talked about loyalty in a slight to jeff sessions, he talked about fake news, fake polls. >> weird. >> this is just no dignity. no class temperature. prp he exemplified everything

p prp. let's get on to the business of the day. you have jared kushner testifying again today. you have of course john mccain come being back in to vote on a health bill that polls show 16% support and almost 60% of americans disapproving. we'll see how that goes and the president and jared kushner to do anything he can stob sfrk president trump addressed the national boy scout jam bore ear last night. but one eagle scout who was not in attendance, attorney general jeff sessions, and it was easy to guess why. >> as the scout which we could

use some more loyalty, i will tell you that. >>s goings be frngs yesterday the president tweeted so why aren't investigators and our beleaguered attorney general looking into crooked hillary's times and russia relations? pb and rumors are every over who it could be are running rampant, pbs and it was jufy giuliani pushed back on that report telling cnn sell are and acco

according to politico, he did not meet with the president. last night he said the attorney general has the president's vote confidence and stoouchy told politico that sessions' mate well, that's pretty much it right there, unless you need more evidence that the attorney general has perhaps a target on his back. >> well, jeff sessions unfortunately in the mind of donald trump at least did what anybody that had a law degree that m hous and it just does

seem dk and it seems like just such a departure of norms but just for american politics but for you'll and ped kwrp to be beautiful $ed by. from including rudy giuliani said jeff sessions had to do, e rekpulz he is suggestion -- if sessions told him he was going to recuses fnks that he had a reason necessarily to recuse himself -- >> john, it was jake tapper who said you would have had a --

whatever you call that from "back to the future", a delorian and a time machine to be able to know if which required him to roo kuz himselfthis is talking about his ultimate power to pardon, this is all because the megs prpgs you can just sense it, can't you? >> it's hardin to just tack sgs sfks muchy may be shaking up the white house. we've had more reports over the last 48 hours, given the way it played out that prince priebus may i hi woot? >> sfwrchlt and every front is

besieged right now so on some level it's not prizing he would be thinking about an whole sale overhaul of his staff. the way he discusses that, the grievance, it's highly unusual the normal standard but increasingly the norm of donald trump. >> julie pace, let's hut this in proper that's your decision, if you fire your communications team, that certainly is up to you but republicans on the hill, are they not lotting drpt know? if fee if if he tires all of the people that are involved in the decisi

decisionhe's approaching a bij and that tn f. >> i think it's important to split these two decision making processes apord prp they're both related ot tngs and be mjt and there's very little consequence beyond the upheal that can create in the wes tring frpg and republicans have left raj because it flarchls the question to be asked, are you going to recuse yourself from the russia investigation? if jeff sessions had to recuse himself because he was involved in the campaign, which you look

at the actual language of his recusal, that could believe this just happened and here sfrm so where is the investigation a.g.? >> well, again, this is a man who last night -- he's actually in a time machine. we were just talking about getting a "back to the future" time machine. he is stuck in november of 2016. and, haired, how bizarre. again, it's just -- >> very bizarre. >> it's hard to get your why don't you investigate hillary clinton's e-mails? every day in 2016 he was talking

about the fbi investigating hillary clinton's e-mails, talking about what a great man shiems romy was purchases that if anyone pled it mef vietnam been beenonnational security, general fln said the the pmt sarah huckabee sanders tweeted about it and said things that would come pack pan we have this investigation. but he's talking about 2016, things that have already happened. and he goes to talk to boy scouts and instead of talking about duty, honor, think beery, barely won in november and lost

by 3 million row. >> how does a white house staff -- how does anybody deal with this? >> it's difficult. that clearly colors and fuels his mission as president. you have to wonder what is it that he wants in an torng rn do you want an attorney general who would fire mueller if the teerng did not find she would listen to hill almost the scout. she would intelligent that her accomplishments and achievements. if you new telecommunication

nchlts talking about those things, bragging about those things, as we commented here, this set and many other days, he lefs wind of in a time machine backwards pip can't quit figure out it iswe has a senate about to deal with raek, a senate about to put on a russia bill frrn i don't know what pushes impnchs but listen, anthony's comments about sessions, i would agree with mika. >> he just tweeted againin, if we can put that up. >> tweeted the president? >> right.

has taken a very weak position on hillary clinton crimes. where are e-mails and dnc servers and intel takers? he's done. >> they're going to make on a hillary clinton. >> now, this is right after his attorney general. joe? >> man, it's remarkable. clint, let me bring you in here. donald trump and i'm trying to remember who -- maybe it was jonah goldberg, might have been eric eriksson, a strong conservative voice said every problem that donald trump is having over the russia investigation is because of one self-inflicted wound after another. he and jared kushner were trying

to fire james comey. they should have known that would have ample -- amped up the search for robert mueller. now the smartest man they had ever met and knew, now donald trump is trying to throw just like they defended flynn nonstop, now they're trying to throw the attorney general of the united states overboard, a man who, by the way, a former member of the united states senate with friends in the united states senate and it looks like just as donald trump keeps making matters worse for himself by day trading, looks like he's going to do it again and there is no doubt as with the fbi director, the new fbi

director, senate republicans aren't going to allow anybody like giuliani to get through the senate, are they? >> so he'll have no attorney general. you look at mccain, you look at susan collins, you look at ben sass. i could name you four or five republicans that aren't going to allow this to become a banana republic. is this a case, clint, he's just going to matter matters worse for himself again? >> i think the message is clear if you're not a family member or general, you're going to get run over by the trump train. he speaks of loyalty, but it's very much a one-way street. he doesn't puloyalty back to th. he won't push family members or

kushner by extension, but anyone else is part of the swamp. and if he can't compel them or push them to do what he wants -- if you want to go serve your country and you hear those statements, we see low staffing at the state department, major gaps at the defense department, throughout the community people are heading to the exit doors. this is hurting our company. we're seeing blatant nepotism and staffing like we're a banana republic. >> who are the only two major figures to come out and endorse donald trump early? one was jeff sessions from alabama, who is about to be fired for doing what every first year law student had to do and then chris christie, who got thrown under the bus repeatedly

and, number three, the president threatens to pass a health care bill that nobody likes, they pass it and he turns and says it's mean spirited three months later. >> i think it's right to focus on how extraordinary this is. the president basically gave a vote of no confidence last week. he's had his surrogates out yesterday saying, oh no, the president is thoroughly behind jeff sessions. and then we wake up this morning and see this tweet, another slap in the face to his attorney general. again often frustrated but never lashing out in this way. looks to me that president trump is just trying to get jeff

sessions to resign. i want to ask julie pace, what is jeff sessions thinking? last week when trump attacked him in the "new york times," people said jeff sessions will almost certainlyly resign now. instead he said, oh, no, i'm going to stay here. you wake up to this todaynd the president is goading you to quit. how can you stay. >> it's pretty amazing. that's been the question for a week. how does jeff sessions stay in in job when it's clear the president doesn't have confidence in him? we're told from session advisers and his confidantes that he loves this job. when he was in the senate, be and he was on his own until he latched on to the trump campaign. he feels that separate from the

russia investigations that he is pushing a pro active agenda on criminal justice and on immigration. for him to walk away from this would be giving up basically his dream job right now and he's going through the motions of what that would entail for him. but how long do you sit there and take this and what does it say about you if you're willing to be publicly humiliated by the president day after day like this? >> it be well, he understand that when he gets into a battle with let's say rosie o'donnell, back in 2005, 2006 and they're insulting each other back and forth, he still is in that behindset that those.

>> it made the people that love rosie more and those who loved trump, it was a trump that this isn't a media game. you don't just boost your hatings up. in washington, d.c. this is not p and, clint, i wanted to talk about jeff sessions for a second. some people are saying how do you stay in a job if you're being humiliated every day? i've heard that over the past couple of days. think jeff zbrnks i'm not saying

that you can prove fshl he's clearly trying to kill an investigation that he knows is moving in a dregs it intelligence -- if you could advise jeff sessions right nowthat who sprnl or do you think he should move on? >> i think he should stay. this has been consistently something i've heard that i disagreeand a. if he leaves he's doing exactly what opinion if i were sessions,

i wouldn't go anywheres prngs as somebody who has been picked to fill that position, i would plant my feet roo into the ground and i would make the fire department. the department of justice is not to be influenced and influenc influenced -- >> see the difference. >> alec iks, what does the tweet say? >> the problem is the acting het is the 700,000 from -- haired, harold! he put mccabe up it as a possible finalist to be his

february director. >> someone need to run into his bedroom and ground his phone and now he's going back to come plant i want people to be observing and tackingon and acting look this is just like every frng the 25th. >> july the 25th. july the 25th. isle it on your calendar. this guy is spinning wildly out of control. i know you know never watch this show, donald. whatever show you're watching is making you crazy. but it's making you act raisy.

so really need to turn to sports center and you need to start watching because these tweets make you look ted nirng right now he's hearing interest frchl i am 100% serious. he need to stop watching the show! >> i would agree. it shows the influence of the show. . you think jeff sessions would leaves. if he believes honestly he's lost the confidence of the

president and at least the first ep or 8ments has given us although privilege has not been invoked. i disagree with a lot of the ways that jeff sessions has gone about doing his work at the justice department what if you're worried something is a can but i just differ with you and clint on that record. >> we're going to to, if as claes to the ram ras frrngs i'm just going to say we all all down because -- >> with espn --

>> don't watch the news. >> go to sport center. ? were and jared kushner, the president's son-in-law said he it if the can and republicanman kol can be they need a person. we'll talk about that. we'll be right back. ♪ ♪ ♪

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we're going to work toward killing this horrible thing called obamacare. by the way, are you going to get the votes? he better get them otherwise i'll say "tom, you're fired." >> you're saying affirmatively whatever the president says something, we can trust it to be real? >> when he's not joking, of course. >>s president like too talk about firing people. i'm sure you'll love having a stadium full of boy scouts cheering the president saying, "you're fire odd to have the

president try to publicly hu humeily wait him every day. first of all, want to apoll john mccain. >> i will stay back in my chair. thank you, mika. john heilemann, what happens if jeff sessions quits rethey're aren't a lot of good options, right? the senate is going to have a hard time approving anything. and then who's in charge there? look, fist first is this, the d.a.g., who is rod rosenstein. donald trump criticized him, too, in that new york city last

week when he. so i i pb firing sessions as a way of trying to installed so it would be extraordinarily high to whoever trump. who is opinion i don't know how it could be a better sfwhrnl kushner will speak to the house

intelligence committee today after he is interview with the senate intelligence nrnls. >> reporter: the record and documents i have voluntarily provided will show all of my be else in the campaign who did so. i had no improper contacts. i have not relied on russian fund for my businesses. and i have been fully transparent in providing all requested information. be pb and that is why he won been. suggesting otherwise ridicules those who voted for him.

>> so, clint, prks sfwrnlt sfrchlt first of all, do you agree? secondly, were you satisfied with the documents he released and the statement that he made? >> i think there ate really two part of to. but i also wonder why we had to wait so long about this. if they put this information fchbls the second thing i got from this, though, is absolute

pan be be packed it seems like someone o has no experience. national security. he talks at the very start of being in charge of everything from digital frnl if they had put anyone in with actual length. y you. that was a bank that's on the american sanctions list. there should have been no contact with it. and it shunned have sprng is why woo need a fwak can't tell our intelligence community, the military, that they need

neechld -- >> so the argument would be that jarrett was hon after sfrchlts explain what rose's role was to be a be a be fnchs certainly a tra frrngs one day they want to talk about administrative popcy approximately they don't through snvgt and i think what you saw yesterday was kushner basically trying to say on the one hand that he was the point person, he was really running the show on foreign policy but on the other

hade handing and so i'm curious and then we'll go to show, often people are chosen for their roles because of their experience, even secretary tillerson, although from the business world he had extensive international peacekeepers what was it that jared brought to ut table? was he an ex, in i'm just curious why he had that extreeng lit noofrm -- >> i think the only good answer to that is he had the rehiegs sh shchgs kushner is the one person a they ne nfrm that is really

the that will this. >> clint was talk persian gulf a concern which you were tugging, if sfrchl and put this this nurchl leaders from china, leaders from russia -- i didn't know about that but. dr nenchs and it was always his belief that jared ksh flrks so

we have two separate thanksgiving boo have sfrenchs sfrchlt that's twrchl how about the rex tillerson hinting he may be leaving the stragts. ? sffrmt that's certainly that possible ffrmt saying jared is going it create middle east pace and paccing did this is what

gerald is going it, if sfrurks drpt, the best thing u join has to say sfchs and gene joins us next. ♪ i'm your second hand news, yeah ♪ hey. pass please. i'm here to fix the elevator. nothing's wrong with the elevator. right. but you want to fix it. right. so who sent you? new guy. what new guy? watson. my analysis of sensor and maintenance data indicates elevator 3 will malfunction in 2 days.

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spicer said he's going to be okay and he will survive, which explains why he released this music video earlier today. >> no, not i, i will survive, i know how to stay alive, i've got all my life to live, i've got all my love to give, i will survive, i will survive period. >> joe, you got to feel for him and i'm dead serious i can't imagine how hard his job was. and to be in the communications office of this white house with a president who could tweet at any hour of the day and

undermine anything that's happening or change the direction, what could that be like? >> well, it's unlike anything you've seen in corporations. if there were a ceo in a corporation that did this, if there were -- that person would be fired by the board in a day. if we -- if you had a football coach or an sec team, if you had a preacher at a church, if you had anybody in any significant organization across america that was doing this, that was this erratic, that undercut the message of the football team or the church or the corporation, they'd be fired immediately. so it's got to be strorl and now for anthony scaramucci, welcome to the mad house. >> pace yourself. >> ahead there is talk of

impeachment on capitol hill but not just about president trump. could jared kushner face his own trial? and next gene robinson joins the conversation. what's critical thinking like? a basketball costs $14. what's team spirit worth? (cheers) what's it worth to talk to your mom? what's the value of a walk in the woods?

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when you lose elections as we did in 2014 and 2016, you don't flinch. you don't blink. you look in the mirror and ask, what did we do wrong? the number one thing we did wrong? is not present a strong, bold, economic agenda to working americans so their hope for the future might return again. >> from the heartland, to the suburbs and the cities, democrats are offering a better deal, better jobs, better wages, a better future. >> democrats yesterday unveiling their new agenda for 2018. calling it, quote, better deal. and joining us now -- >> oh, boy.

>> co-founder of axias, and eugene robinson. gene, you write in the washington post, forget a better deal. here's what would actually work for democrats. tell us what would work for them? i think a person would be good. >> a person would be good. a person would be good, and they promised us bold ideas, and i've looked through what they put out on a better deal so far, and i've spoken with some of the authors of the document. it's perfectly worthy and all that, and it's just not terribly bold to tell you the truth, and -- and i just -- you know, as slogans go, a better deal, it's not the worst i've ever heard. it's far from the best. it -- and there's nothing there that sort of punches you in the

gut, that tears at your heart, that involves you emotionally. and slogans 101. i mean, there are all these mad geniuses of advertising and of hollywood that are long-time and loyal democrats. get some of them in a room, and just -- let's just -- you know, you can just start with the slogan. just get them in a room and let's come up with something that connects with people, and so far i don't quite think this is it. >> well, you know, i'll say that they're looking for a complete shakeup of anti-trust enforcement. they want the federal trade commission and others to blah blah blah. you're reading about it. here's the problem. i feel bad, because this is a great group of people. they're all great leaders and

servants, patriots, everything good. but -- especially in my eyes because i'm a democrat, but they're setting themselves up here mike allen. coming out with a slogan is just going to create this conversation at this table and at tables across america. they need a person who stands for those things in how he or she has lived his live and can commune those things effectively with his or her voice. then the slogan should follow. making the sloeg and then finding the person is like trying to replace a television anchor in a spot. you can't do it. a person is a person. >> right. we vote for people, not platforms, and the democrats here are just trying to say we're something besides anti-russia. but the interesting part of it, the anti-trust element that you were talking about is a little bit trump, and specifically, it's a little bit bannon.

they're saying the bigger the better. corporate monopolies in the end hurt jobs. if they decide to go after tech, this could be a place that white house could agree we know steve bannon and others in the national swing of the white house would love to go up against the google, facebook duopoly, and a big tell will be the at&t time warner merger. if it goes through, awesome issue for democrats. if it's blocked, the parties are on the same side. >> that's a long way from the slogan, though. joe? >> mika, it's so bland. it's so vanilla and terrible. democrats lost the unlosable race in 2016. the question now is are they going to lose the unlosable midterm in 2018 in they're scared of their own shadow. they have to get in trump's face, and you do that by taking a slogan like take america back,

or americans first, playing off trump's slogan. putting americans ahead of your own ambitions. putting americans ahead of washington. putting americans ahead of wall street. putting americans ahead of the special interests that own washington d.c. whether democrats are running it or whether republicans are running it. they have got to be bold, and this was so horrible it was a slogan by committee. it's not going to inspire anybody. they need to go back to the drawing board. >> everyone stay with us. coming up, president trump intensifies his attacks on his own attorney general early this this morning with a series of stinging new tweets. the big question? how much more will jeff sessions take? "morning joe" is back in a moment. ♪ you're gonna have dizziness, nausea, and sweaty eyelids. ♪ ♪ and in certain cases chronic flatulence. ♪

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♪ i love you, basement guest bathroom. your privacy makes you my number 1 place... ...to go number 2. i love you, but sometimes you stink. ♪ new febreze air effects with odorclear technology cleans... ...away odors like never before. because the things you love the most can stink. and try febreze small spaces to clean away odors for up... ...to 30 days. breathe happy with new febreze. >> as the scout law says, a scout is trustworthy, loyal. we could use some more loyalty,

i'll tell you that. >> that's a scout for you right there. that was the president last night. >> i love, mika, i love when he talks to himself. it's great when he talks. it's great when he gives himself advice. we could lose more loyalty. he's talking about himself, talking about how we should be more loyal to republican house members that supported a bill that only 15% of americans liked but they did it to help donald trump, and then he turned around and threw them under the bus. i know he's talking about he needs to be more loyal. he needs to be more loyal to jeff sessions, a guy that jumped out early on, the first senator. i know that's what he's talking about. or chris christie, destroyed his political career in new jersey by getting out front and supporting donald trump. it is -- i love it when he talks to himself, and he's just sort of trying to hold himself to a higher standard. that is what he was doing there, right? >> well, he probably needs to

talk a little more. this morning he went after jeff sessions really badly before -- >> what? oh, gosh. >> early in the morning, maybe not even out of the bedroom. i don't know. welcome back to "morning joe." it is tuesday, july 25th. with us national affairs analyst for nbc news, john hailman, harold ford junior, clint watts, mike allen, julie pace, eugene robinson and joining the conversation new york times washington bureau chief, elizabeth bu miller. president trump began tweeting last hour during the beginning of our program. no response to us at all, just tweeting launching another even more direct broadside against his own attorney general and justice department. here they are. ukrainian efforts to sabotage

trump campaign quietly working to boost clinton. so where is the investigation ag? attorney general jeff sessions has take an very weak position on hillary clinton crimes. where are e-mails and dnc server? intel leakers. that echoes the tweet from yesterday. so why aren't the committees and investors and our beleaguers ag looking into hillary clinton's crimes and rrn relations. and also this morning the president went after the fbi. problem is that the acting head of the fbi and the person in charge of the hillary investigation andrew mccabe got $700,000 from hillary for wife. sessions has come under withering pressure -- >> mika, let me go to elizabeth right there. it is unbelievable, elizabeth that this president and some of the people around him keep

talking about the hillary clinton investigation, talking about fake news, and acting as if newspapers like your own didn't investigate the hillary clinton server scandal or whatever you want to call it, story for a year and a half when you all took withering criticism from democrats for doing just that and the fbi took withering criticism for doing just that in the heart of the presidential campaign. >> that is right. you know, just ask anybody with the hillary clinton campaign how they feel about "the new york times" coverage of hillary clinton's e-mails. you'll get a very long angry answer. i think the president is obviously trying to deflect any kind of attention on the russia investigation. i have to say his tweets this morning were unusually early, usually he tweets, i think, between 7:00 and 8:00. he was up early this morning, and the attacks on the attorney general were extraordinary.

we were under the impression, we've been told he had no intention of firing sessions, but i think these -- this opens at least not any time soon, but this opens a new question about what his real intentions are. >> elizabeth, a lot of people worry the president often tries to make his own news to deflect from news that he doesn't like, and obviously his son-in-law, jared kushner, is taking center stage, has the spotlight on him getting questioned by senate intel staffers and is under increased scrutiny for not disclosing meetings and financial dealings that he should have disclosed. >> that's right. and i think what was interesting yesterday, you obviously, jared kushner is up again before the house intel committee, and will probably take the same stance as yesterday which was that he was a noknee owe fite and the meeti

he attended with the russians and don junior, didn't know the subject. he was -- and he left early. he tried to have an excuse to get out. he's trying very hard to deflect from his own actions. >> yes. >> throwing the president's son under the bus, so to speak. >> and there's a lot of concern, some might have the question why in the world would you have a neofite working on middle east peace and russia and other incredibly complicated foreign policy issues. we will get to that. that will not be deflected from because it's a story one must cover. back to jeff sessions. he's come under withering pressure by the president for recusing himself from the russia probe, promising to stay on the job despite comments like this last week. >> sessions gets the job right after he gets the job, he recuses himself. was that a mistake?

>> well, sessions should have never recused himself. and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and i would have picked somebody else. >> i have the honor of serving as attorney general. it's something that goes beyond any thought i would have ever had for myself. we love this job. we love this department, and i plan to continue to do so as long as that is appropriate. >> attorney general sessions, how do you feel like you can effectively serve from here on out if you don't have the confidence of the president? >> we are serving right now. the work we're doing today is the kind of work that we intend to continue. >> whoa. >> you know, he's serving the american people, and if donald trump saw that press conference,

he's got two choices right now, mike allen. he can either have jeff sessions as his attorney general, or he can have the guy to jeff sessions' right as his attorney general, rod rosenstein, because if he thinks that john mccain, ben sass, and other republican senators are going to rubber stamp alackey to take over the justice department, he doesn't -- he needs to read the constitution and go back to article one. he doesn't understand just how difficult he's about to make things for himself. >> well, joe, you're right. that's why some of the names that the white house is floating are such a problem. yesterday axius reported they were talking about rudy giuliani. no way that the mayor is going to be regarded as an independent guardian of this department when you look at what he was saying during the campaigns. axius this morning they're reporting a remarkable phone conversation by the president.

as you know having been the frequent recipient, the president loves to stress test ideas. we talked to someone who had an maing call out of the blue. the president called and said what would happen if i got rid of sessions? no sugar coating it. he well-knew this would get out, and this person said, and this is a great reflection of how trump world is thinking. this person said they're going to talk about firing people at the justice department, don't you want to save that for mueller? >> great. >> and, mike, i think we're seeing this on his twitter feed, the incredible spectacle last week was the one of president trump going to war with the totality of the law enforcement and justice portions of the federal government. he's attacking everyone in the justice department and the fbi. those in the fbi now, the former fbi director, everybody. it's an extraordinary spectacle.

i want to ask you, harold jofor junior. the big split here was whether sessions should stay or go. your view as you were expressing it to me is why you think it is that trump would actually like to have rod rosenstein as the head of the justice department. why it would serve his political interest even though he's been as critical of rosenstein as everyone else. >> i think he'd love to have giuliani or christie. to your point earlier that rosenstein would succeed sessions if he were to leave. >> and it would be hard to get someone else confirmed. >> right. rosenstein would allow the president to have a fight with the justice department. republicans won't confirm my guy, washington, again, remains dysfunctional and aligned against me. if you're against me, you're against the interest of my supporters. if you listened to jared kushner yesterday, he said anyone who

questions the voters. is it a path i think the president is comfortable with? clearly. >> here's the problem. one of the wisest things that someone said about this is they said you can fire comey. you can fire sessions and mueller. you cannot fire the fbi. and that's a bad enemy to have just as he's found the intel community -- >> you don't think he already has an enemy? >> it's amazing. joe? >> i mean, we're talking again. we always try and talk about the need to keep things in proper context. him talking about firing let's say reince priebus who he's been shopping that around for four or five months calling people saying should i fire reince priebus. that's one thing. what he does inside the white house, sean spicer, that's one thing. but when you go, mika, to firing fbi directors because of a russia investigation, when you fire james comey and tell the

russians you fired him to end the investigation, when your white house spokesperson says the president wanted to end the russian investigation so he fired james comey, and when you start talking about firing somebody that got us through 9/11 as fbi director, robert mueller, that is when you go a bridge too far, even for these republicans. it's just -- it's something that if he does it, then we're talking about -- we're talking about him leading this country directly binto a constitutional pry si crisis and with the usa today poll, but 42% americans supporting the impeachment of donald trump and 42% opposing the impeachment of donald trump, and then you look at polls out of arkansas that show his approval rating at about 50/50 right now. this is a guy who has historically low approval ratings. started a constitutional crisis

when he's this weak with republicans who are getting increasingly nervous about him? not a smart political move from somebody who has done so many things that have been against his interests, but especially now. it would be pretty devastating for republicans. >> so elizabeth, if you compare the president's obsession with his attorney general investigating hillary clinton, at least we've seen it in his tweets this morning. he gave you an answer back on november 22nd, 2016, saying my inclination would be for whatever power i have on the matter is to say let's go forward. this has been looked at for so long. let's go forward. and you know, you could also make the case some good work was done in the foundation and they could have made mistakes. i think it's time for people to say let's go and solve some of the problems we have, blah, pla blah. i guess he wants to move forward. my question is does that back up

perhaps the argument that he's tweeting randomly to deflect? because so many people close to his inner circle have serious questions. and they have been caught, one would argue, in lies, like his own son, donald trump junior who released e-mails practically incriminating himself about this meeting with the russian lawyer that only had two people, only three people, only had four people, only had five people. and the scrutiny on jared kushner. it seems the president might be sort of lobbing things randomly left and right, one might say, to deflect? >> certainly that's part of it, deflecting. we all know that the president can say one thing one hour and the exact opposite the next. we've been through this mow for six months. and that actually -- actually ever since november 9th. you're referring to the new york times interview that we had with

him just a few days after the election where he was a very different president-elect trump than he is now. and we all know he was -- he talked about it's time to let it go. the clintons have suffered enough. it was quite striking when he said that at the time. he went in to the times in new york. and in that interview he was also very easy going, very open-minded about a lot of issues, and we know that he often plays to an audience, and i think in this case looking back, and we thought it at the time, he was trying to please his audience, and he certainly changed. and i do think that -- that he's angry now about the russia investigation. he can't shake it no matter what he does. it doesn't go away. it gets worse and worse for him. i think there's a certain amount of frustration when he wakes up in the morning and starts tweeting. >> joe? >> let's go to gene robinson and

julie pace. what happens to republicans in the senate, their relationship with the president, if he fires one of their own? if he fires jeff sessions after humiliating him for several weeks? gene robinson? >> well, look, jeff sessions served with the senators for many years. they developed friendships in the senate to see him they have to sit there and watch him humiliated in the way donald trump is doing. that could be potentially awful for donald trump. i want to -- my other question is how must this look to other members of donald trump's cabinet who see how the president can turn on them and sort of rake them over the coals in these early morning tweets for just essentially trying to do their jobs, these people gave up a lot to come in and try to serve their country, and this is the thanks they get?

his whole strategy is based on this sort of shrinking and ever more concentrated base of his. and there is a tipping point, and as it contracts, as the numbers of arkansas and places like that get worse and worse and his edge gets smaller and smaller, the whole political calculus for senators, for house members, for the republican party, starts to change. >> gene makes a great point on the message this sends to other people around trump. jeff sessions was the very first republican senator who came out to support trump. he has been loyal to him. far more loyal, frankly, than a lot of people in the white house were during the campaign. as for republicans, talk to them privately, and they do complain about the tweets. they complain about various things that trump is mulling over, but then they end up lining up with him publicly. if he were to fire sessions and

there were to be a confirmation fight over a replacement, this would be a safe place to distance themselves. they could say this isn't about trump. it's about democracy and the lines between the justice department and the white house. this is where you could potentially see them start to pull away. specifically if health care goes away. it's struggling despite the fact that they have control of both ends of pennsylvania avenue. >> and clint, what's the impact inside the fbi? what's the impact at the justice department? if donald trump fires the attorney general and starts talking about firing robert mueller? >> i think it's going to cause everybody pause, because they're eventually going to wonder how do they begin to maneuver on this and can they enforce the rule of law? what you'll actually see is each leader sort of removed from the process. you'll see a doubling down by these investigators. whether it's in the fbi or even in the intelligence community, you're going to see them

maneuver. they're also going to be very, very careful about the information they disclose and what they provide to the president. and then you have to ask, can the president make the best decisions if everybody is sogarded with their analysis and their input. you have to be nervous when you walk into the oval office about how you present your information. so then can the president make the best decision or does he even want to make the best decision for this country? >> thank you all for being on the show this morning. still ahead on "morning joe," the president told congressman charlie dent he was destroying the gop for not backing health care. we'll talk to the pennsylvania republican straight ahead. plus member of the house intel committee, congressman erik swalwell joins us. you're watching moing.

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think the chances are that this massive crowd, record setting is going to be shown on television tonight? 1% or zero. the fake media will say president trump smoked -- you know what this is. president trump spoke before a small crowd of boy scouts today. fake media, fake news. by the way, just a question. did president obama ever come to a jamboree? in the scout oath, you pledge on your honor to do your best and to do your duty to god, and your country. and by the way, under the trump

administration, you'll be saying merry christmas again when you go shopping. believe me. merry christmas. this is a long time ago. sold his company for a tremendous amount of money, and he went out and bought a big yacht, and he had a very interesting life. i won't go any more than that because you're boy scouts so i'm not going to tell you what he did. should i tell you? should i tell you? [ cheering ] >> oh, you're boy scouts, but you know life. you know life. in the end he failed and he failed badly. lost all of his money. he went personally bankrupt. and he was now much older. and i saw him at a cocktail party. and it was very sad, because the hottest people in new york were at this party. >> yes. the audience for that was a massive crowd of boy scouts in

west virginia. joining us now from capitol hill, a member of the house permanent select committee on intelligence, eric swalwell of california, and former justice department spokesperson, matthew miller. thank you to you both for being on with us this morning. congressman, jared kushner is interviewed by house members today. do you think he with his 11-page document and his statement yesterday helped clear up the questions that surround the president's son-in-law? especially pertaining to meetings that he didn't disclose, meetings that he didn't know about, and information about his financial dealings and dealings with people that he didn't disclose on white house documents? >> good morning, mika, joe, and team. no, actually, past his prologue, that statement is going to be amended by jared kushner, and we're probably going to learn more. there's a lot of questions with respect to why they were meeting

with so many russians during the time that russia was interfering with our campaign. and why the only time they contacted anybody was because jared kushner just happened to read a spam e-mail just weeks before the election. that's the one that caught his attention and thought he should report, not the one that said russia, clinton meeting, the one to dish dirt on hillary clinton. there's a lot of questions around that. >> congressman, good morning. harold ford. you've indicated that your support for jeff sessions leaving the justice department, i guess we discussed it a little bit this morning. one, are you comfortable with whom the successor might be in rod rosenstein, or do you believe that's the case, and two, longer term, do you think president trump could get a candidate through the senate and have him or her confirmed, and if so, who? >> good morning. i believe that jeff sessions has to go for different reasons than donald trump. he wasn't forthcoming with the

senate and the american people about his russian ties, and he was a part of the james comey firing. for those reasons, i don't think he can remain the top laurmt officer. donald trump, his reasons are he's not loyal and that he won't attack and go after and prosecute donald trump's political opponents. i am comfortable that the senate has a responsibility to protect this country and that that doesn't mean they have to rubber stamp whoever donald trump puts forward. they should put in place a true law enforcement official not connected to the president presidential campaigns. >> matt miller, i'm going to acknowledge right now i'm going to introduce a new topic that's blowing my mind this morning. there's a new york times story about a guy going before the hearing, someone i've never heard about, about a lawyer who for a period of time represented alpha bank, one of the largest and most important financial

institutions in russia. the subject of scrutiny for having mysterious computer links with trump tower. i find it mind blowing because this is the kind of person nominated to run the criminal division. what do you know about this hearing about to take place today about this guy, and just speak to the broader strangeness of yet another person being put into the trump orbit who has some, at least kind of questionable ties to a big russian financial institution and the political establishment in russia? >> it certainly -- the top ranks of the administration seem to be filled with people who have ties to russia, have represented russian interests. in this case, i actually think, brian ben kous can i comes from a big law office in d.c. just about all the law if i weres -- law firms have represented russian banks.

they hire them as sanctions have ramped up. while it's a bit odd that so many people can russian ties keep coming in to the administration, but i don't think it's a disqualifier in this case. you would find respected lawyers from big law firms that represented alpha bank and other big russian conglomerates. he's going to have to answer questions about this and explain what his vomt iinvolvement is a promise to recuse himself from related matters if he's confirmed. >> congressman, a question for you and matt. what did it appear skrajared kushner's explanation was for the inconsistencies on every level? >> it seems to be forgetfulness. that's a convenient excuse from jeff sessions and paul manafort and general flynn. again, if it was one person with one tie to russia and they had

forgotten to disclose it, i think there are innocent explanations, but we are seeing a pattern take place. so that's what we hope to dive into today to corroborate what jared kushner said or discredit it through other evidence. we know now we can't just take donald trump or anyone in his family or on his team at their word when it comes to their ties to russia. >> and matthew miller, would you agree it's forgetfulness that's the explanation? >> i think i would add the story he wants us to believe is he was naive and bumbling, not nefarious. that's not a great defense for something charged with bringing peace to the middle east. there are a couple of hard questions that need to be asked of him. one, when he held the meeting with the russian ambassador, why didn't he propose to a u.s. national ambassador to have a secure channel. the meeting in june of 2016, he

says he never look at the e-mail that explained it was about russia. but it seems keer he had a conversation with his brother about it when he agreed to come to the meeting. what did he tell him about the purpose and why they were meeting. that's a very -- that's a question that will tell us a lot about what happened and why he was there. >> i guess you have to believe he walked into a meeting not knowing what it was about or who they were? >> that's right. he just came to this meeting because his brother-in-law asked him to. he didn't know what it was and never read the e-mail. >> who. >> and he never read the e-mail when the subject line made clear it was about damaging information about hillary clinton. >> congressman, thank you, matthew miller, thank you as well. coming up, weeks ago the house health care bill was considered dead on arrival in the senate, but that may be exactly what the senate votes on today. the long, strange trip to rewrite obama care next on

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zplnch i don't know the details of how it's coming from the house right now.

my guess is weir going to spend at least a month look agent the issues. >> i think the house freedom caucus made it less pbad. >> no amendments debated for three or four hours. anything in a process like this that hasn't been scored, you have to be suspicious. >> the senate will pass theirs and we'll pass hours. >> i haven't paid that much attention. there's no reason for me too. we will take it up here. >> at the end of the day, i think there will be a senate bill, and then those two bills at some point will have to come together. >> the house bill is not going to come before us. the senate is starting from scratch. we're going to draft our own bill. >> we're all involved in discussing the way forward and we'll discuss the issue in the coming weeks. when the house passed the bill to prepeal and replace obaa care, they viewed it skept

skeptically. today the very smarts will be voting on that very bill. we'll dig into the big day on capitol hill and speak with charlie dent who has stood up to his own party on health care. now he's bucking plans to slash entitlements. "morning joe" is back in just a moment. ♪ ♪ i'm... i'm so in love with you. ♪

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okay, watch this. do the thing we talked about. what do we say? it's going to be great. watch. remember what we were just saying? go irish! see that? yes! i'm gonna just go back to doing what i was doing. find your awesome with the xfinity x1 voice remote. for the past 17 years obama care has wreaked havoc on the lives of innocent hard working americans. behind me today we have real american families. great families. just spent a lot of time with him. they are suffering because seven years ago a small group of politicians and special interests in washington engineered a government takeover of health care. every pledge that washington democrats made to pass that bill

turned out to be a lie. it was a big, fat, ugly lie. we as a party must fulfill the solemn promise to the voters of this country to repeal and replace what they've been saying for the last seven years. but so far senate republicans have not done their job in ending the obama care nightmare. >> secretary tom price is also here, and hopefully he's going to get the votes tomorrow to start our path toward killing this horrible thing known as obamacare that's hurting it. by the way, you going to get the votes? >> i hope so. >> he'd better get them. he'd better get them. otherwise i'll say tom, you're fired. i'll get somebody. that was the president yesterday taking aim at obama care, and members of his own party ahead of today's senate health care

vote. this morning the president has tweeted a lot. writing big day for health care after seven years of talking, we'll soon see whether or not republicans are willing to step up to the plate. obamacare is torturing the american people. the democrats have fooled the people long enough. repeal or repeal and replace. i have pen in hand. and so great that john mccain is coming back to vote. brave american hero. thank you, john. we learned last night -- >> wait, mika, hold on. i thought that skrajohn mccain not a hero. i thought he said that he didn't consider john mccain a war hero on the campaign, because john mccain was captured and tortured. >> well, it serve him to say that today, i guess, some might argue he says what serves himself in the moment, but this isn't new york city media. this isn't real estate.

this isn't rosie o'donnell. this is washington, and i think it might be a different game. we'll see. we learned last night that senator mccain would return to washington for today's vote. the news comes less than a week after the senator was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor. according to "the new york times" majority leader mitch mcconnell will put forward the same bill that narrowly passed the senate. if it succeedsucceeds, the hous take it multiple amendments. joining us from dlcapitol hill, congressman dent. he was one of the few republican no votes on the house gop's health care bill to replace obamacare that passed in may. joe, i'll give you the first question. >> hey, good to see you, congressman. it's so fascinating hearing the president talking about the american people being or the

tortured by obamacare, the nightmare that's been obamacare. you've seen the polls, we've seen the polls. obamacare is more popular now than it's ever been. people support it because it's seen as the alternative to the house and the senate bills which maybe 15, 20% of americans support. what is going to happen? any idea what's going to happen in the senate today, and what are you hearing from your constituents in pennsylvania about the republican health bills? >> well, first, let me tell you this, joe. i don't know what's going to happen in the senate, but i'll tell you i think the fundamental problem is that the senate is using the house bill. the house bill is structurally similar to what the senate propos proposed. i think that's been a big mistake. senator mccain got it right the other day when he said we shouldn't make the same mistakes the democrats did trying to

muscle health care reform through on a hart zpartisan bas. there are things we can fix in the employer mandate and changes we can make. i think doing it on a partisan basis is a mistake and continues to be a mistake. >> well, i think at this point there's a lot of questions about the president's tweet this morning, even about his own attorney general. i think it's completely fair to ask this question. do you have confidence in the president and his ability to lead at this point? >> well, i'm very concerned about the continuing drama, chaos, instability, and dysfunction coming out of the white house. i have come to expect a certain amount of dysfunction in government, but they've taken the fun out of dysfunction. this is really tough. this is not easy for any of us. talking about the fbi director

gets fired now trying to push the attorney general out. and there was discussion last week about pushing out or firing mueller. i mean, you can't fire the fbi. the investigations are going to continue. i just don't -- i don't understand why all this interfeern. it's not helpful, and it's very distracting. we have a lot of work to do on capitol hill, but we deal with this daily drama, and it doesn't make your job easier. >> harold ford, charlie dent gave the democrats their slogan for 2018. donald trump, taking the fun out of dysfunction. >> yeah. in a big way. you wanted to talk about that slogan, harold. there you go. >> i think the better deal piece is not the right thing, but we can come back to that. charlie, let me ask you this. are you hearing from other republicans in the house, the sentiment you expressed and the frustration you expressed not only around health care, but has it filled over to not getting

the taxes and infrastructure and other parts of the agenda that may have attracted republicans to president trump? >> yeah. look, i have conversations with my colleagues privately. they're frustrated and concerned too. this week we're supposed to be dealing with the appropriations bill. my bill is moving this week, military construction va. but we're not able to deal with the basic elements of governing. we have to get appropriations bills passed and the debt ceiling passed. i'd like to get into a bipartisan budget agreement. that frees up time and space to deal with issues like tax reform or infrastructure. and so i think -- but we're dealing with drama down the street at the white house, it's hard to focus on our agenda and nobody is paying attention to it when you're talking about the tweets all day. >> congressman, obviously the subject of great interest the is the health care vote. the president, there's lack of clarity about the president's

focus is. we have a tweet from him this morning where he says the democrats fooled people long enough. repeal or repeal and replace. i have pen in hand. i just ask you as a matter of just constructive leadership, is it now helpful to have the president expressing that position which is basically i'll take either? >> no. it's not. frankly, i think one of the failures of the health care debate is we need strong executive leadership. i think it's important for a president to lay out his principles or his bill. and let congress chop on it, i think it's hard to make a case that i'll sign a repeal and replace bill or repeal only bill. what are the president's principles? he never laid them out. health care has been outsourced to congress. president obama outsourced the health care issue to congress as well. i don't think this is at all

helpful in fact helpful. it isn't. that's been the frustration i think for a lot of us. the strong executive leadership demands that the president put a proposal on the table, and congress should chop on it. the president shouldn't be critiquing everything that happens critiqueing everything that happens in congress. >> all right, congressman, thank you so much. it is always great to see you, to have you on the program, thank you. let's go to harold ford right now, harold, we were talking about -- >> a bitter deal. or is it tastes great, less fill something what was it? papa john's? i forget. what are they doing, man? what are they doing? >> i think it's a decent try. it misses the point. i think a lot of times democrats, voters hear when democrats talk about pro growth and pro jobs and pro consumer, democrats almost talk about it in ways they think those three aims are inherently and permanently in conflict. if you talk to big business, small business, alike, they all

want smarter and fewer regulation, the only way they can create jobs, which is to generate a profit, pay jobs, pay taxes, is if you create a business climate where these things can happen. for some reason when democrats talk about these things, they sound like they are talking about each of them in silos. i think they miss the point. if you look at the special election race they lost, schumer said we lost because he had no clearco gent economic message. again i applaud them for trying, there is still no rhyme there. i mean, the fact is, in a lot of people's minds in silicon valley, in new york, that's where the growth is. chicago, detroit, parts of these places are experiencing growth. they're crime-ridden, gang warfare, there are kids that don't have opportunity. that's where the growth and the opportunity akrieb to, until democrats ae waken to these reality, it was will be hard to

awaken our base and new people to the fold. so aapplaud the tribe. we are aways away from having a better deal. >> well, they're going to have to make some, some decisions that may not be popular with everybody in their base. they may have to say that they're going to fight for working class americans and fight for working class americans by changing the ratio of immigrants, high skilled immigrants to lower skilled immigrants and in so doing, you excite your supporters in silicon valley and in the tech community that you are talking about by allowing more high-tech workers into the country at the same time, working class americans who have been concerned for decades about the flood of low skilled immigrants coming into america, will feel like the democratic party is fighting for them. again, it's very simple. there has been a split between

what the aflcio and what union membership thinks is best for them as far as keeping their wages up, and what the democratic party has been doing by 15 -- for the past 15 or 20 years. it's not an easy decision. but they have got to focus on working class americans and doing whatever it takes to bring wages up for them and that may require john heilemann for them to make some uncomfortable decisions that will actually upset some people in their base. and that's another thing, doesn't this whole thing feel like it was a slogan and a program trotted out that split straight down the middle between the progressive bernie sanders' wing of the party and the more establishment when of the party that hillary clinton represented last year? >> well, yeah. i think -- look, there's, yes, it's true there are these deep

cleavages in the democratic party. no doubt about that. i think one of the other things mika earlier in the show commented in a pithy way, they don't need a slogan, they need a person. i think there is a sense that what happens with parties especially when they're in the wilderness to some extent which democrats are in every way is someone needs to kind of emerge to set the course to have the big debate, to represent a poll in the debate. we have bernie sanders/elizabeth warren representing one piece. there is a whole other argument that you are representing, joe, we used to be the bill clinton wing of the party, to some extent was the barack obama wing in the party. there needs to be that debate. it can't happen in a vacuum, it can't happen without people to vocalize those arguments in the most compelling way. i don't know who that person is on the democratic side. at some point, there will be a big showdown in some way between

the warren owe sanders wing and whoever it is that emerges to lead that other piece of the democratic party. i don't know who will win that debate. but it's got to take place between humans, no not big think tanks or in the democratic caucus in the house and senate. it's got to have big leadership figures to make and enunciate those arguments. >> i think the way you excite people to run for office and as much as i think we need a single person and thing happening, you need hundreds of people across this country wanting to run for city council and senate. not to favor the deal because i chaired it and was a part of it. the go pp represents an aspect, here's what we believe in, encourage job growth. make it easier for businesses to start. excite a new generation of leaders in the party who want to run. that's the way the democrats find their way back not only to a majority of the house and senate, but for their mindset and thinking to be more prevalent in the american

political system at every stage and every step of the way. >> yep. and for that, there's no doubt, bernie sanders and elizabeth warren and that swing of the party exsuits the coast, excites the democratic elites. they do need people that represent the dlc wing of the party. >> that will excite democrats and independents in arkansas, like bill clinton did. in nebraska, in middle america, in kentucky, in states where democrats used to win and when rob emanuel was running the dnc, finding people that actually represented their areas culturally but were still more progressive when it came to democratic issues. they forgot that. they need to reconnect with that message. still ahead, they need to get

senator joe man chin's take on this conversation and the president's message to the boyscouts in his home state of west virginia and also the president is tweeting like it's saturday morning upping his attacks on his own. tomorrow, should jeff sessions resign or should he force the president to fire him? that's the question we have been asking this morning and debating. as we go to break, white house press secretary sarah huckaby sanders was asked moments ago about the situation between the president and his ag. here's that exchange. >> does he want the attorney general to go? he called him beleaguered yesterday. i never we heard a commander in chief call his own attorney general beleaguered. >> look, i know he is certainly frustrated and disappointed in the attorney general for recusing himself, but as we've said, i think it's a decision that if the president wants to make he certainly will. he is continuing to move

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>> we won and won, so when they said there is no way to victory, there is no way to 270. you know i went to maine four times because it's one vote and we won, but we won, one vote. i went there because i kept hearing we're 269, then wisconsin came in, many, many

years, michigan came in. so, we worked hard there. you know, my opponent didn't work hard there, the polls, that's also fake news, they're fake polls. the polls are saying we won wisconsin. >> what was going on there? today could be the most consequential day for the trump presidency. donald trump is still talking about hillary clinton, speaking last night to the national boy scout jamboree, today he'll find out whether republicans will keep their promise to mismantle obamacare or lay bear the deep divisions within the gop and if the health care vote wasn't enough, joe, today his son-in-law meets with house investigators over questions about russia meddling while congress pressures the white house to either sanction moscow or face bipartisan backlash. good morning, everyone, it is tuesday, july 25th. with us, we have national affairs analyst for nbc news and

ms nbc john mileman, professor at the school of michigan public policy, former democratic congressman harold ford jr. >> good morning. >> ms nbc contributor clint watts and washington bureau chief of the washington press julie pace, joe, set the scene for us, a lot of different things going on. >> well, a lot of things going on today, but you go back and you look at what the president did last night, it wasn't a danger to democracy, it wasn't -- it wasn't somehow undermining the constitutional norms in america as this president has appeared to do over the past six months, but it was just so unbelievably inappropriate for the president here what nine months after he was elected to

be going and showing all of his insecuritys to a group of boyscouts and bragging -- it's like glory days replaying a game that he won six, nine, ten months ago, he talked about loyalty in a slight to jeff sessions, he talked about fake news, fake polls. this year no dignitary. no clasz, no nothing showed last night. actually he exemplified everything that boyscouts are taught they're not to be. it was quite a grotesque performance, but, you know, it's -- we're used to it. let's get onto the business of the day, we have jared kushner testifying again today. you have, of course, john mccain coming back in to vote on a health bill that a poll shows

had 16% support and almost 60% of americans disapproving. we'll see how that goes. and then this jeff sessions saga just absolutely bizarre, the president appearing to want to fire everybody from james comey to his attorney general who he says this morning it's a man in washington, d.c., all in an effort to do anything he can to stop an investigation that's obviously cutting a bit too close for his comfort. >> let's start right there. president trump addressed the national boy scout jamboree last night flanked by rick perry, tom price and interior secretary ryan zinke. one eagle scout not in attendance attorney general jeff sessions and it was easy to guess why. >> as the scout law says, a scout is trustworthy, loyal -- we can use some more loyalty, i will tell you that. >> sexes has come under

withering pressure by the president for recusing himself from the russia probe. yesterday the president tweeted so why aren't the committees and investigators and, of course, our beleaguered attorney general looking into crooked hillary's crimes and russia relations? the washington post report says advisers are privately floating the peblt of replacing him and rumors over who it could be are running rampant the "post" speculating ted cruz could be a replacement, a claim he vigorously denies and action axios says rudy guiliani could fill the role. he pushed back, saying sexes was right to recuse himself in the russia probe. as all this plays out, sessions was reportedly at the white house on monday, according to politico, though he did not meet with the president. last night they told the attorney general has the president's vote of confidence,

and brand-new communications director anthony scar is -- scaramucci says sessions fate is up to the president and he remains disappointed in the ways the attorney general has handled certain situations. well, that's pretty much it right there. i mean, unless you need more evidence that the attorney general has perhaps a target on his back. >> well, jeff sessions, unfortunately, in the pliepd of donald trump at least did -- in the mind of donald trump at least did anybody with a law degree anybody in his position would do. he had to recuse himself, john heilemann, it just does say just like that boy scout speech seems like such a bizarre departure of norms for american politics just

for human behavior, human form you don't have to be a lawyer and have a law degree that the president is continuing to obsess over the fact that jeff sessions did what everybody did including rudy guiliani said, jeff sessions had to do, recuse himself. >> right. of course, joe the strange thing about that when the president raised it in the "new york times" interview, the obsession if sessions told him he was going to recuse tms himself, he wouldn't have given him the job. of course, it wasn't clear until he testified at his confirmation hearing he had a reason necessarily to recuse himself. >> i think, john, it was jake tapper that said he would have had to have had a flux to -- wall you call that from back to the future, a delorrion and time machine to be able to know in february, a flux capacity tore

they owe owe capacitor to know what was happening in february february, this, everything he is doing from bizarre tweets over the weekend, talking about his ultimate power to pashderdon, t is all because the investigation is cutting close. he is starting to get scared. you can sense it, can't you? >> i'd say it's hard to take the sessions thing in ice lakes, right? we also have reports in the show that anthony scaramucci may be shaking up the white house. we had reports the way the scaramucci thing played out, reince priebus might be on the way out. i think it's important to think about this, historically speaking, joe, we seen presidents over and over again, when they get in trouble, have problems in their first year or two, they shake up the white house staff t. president on the legislative front, on the political front, on every front is besieged right now, so on some level, it's not surprising

that he would be thinking about a wholesale overhaul of his staff. but the way in which he expresses it the degree of a sense of grev vans, that is no doubt it's highly unusual by normal standards, but it's increasingly the norm when it comes to donald trump. >> but justly pace, let's put this in proper context, if you fire reince priebus, that's your decision, if you fire other people your communications team, that's up to you. but the republicans on the hill are they not letting donald trump know if he thinks about going after mueller, if he fires sexes, if he fires all of these people that are involved in the decision-making as it per that insurance to the russia investigation, that he's a bridge, it's one bridge they will not allow him to cross

without krens consequences. >> i think it's important to split these decision-making processes here, on the one hand they are related around the russia investigation. the president can oust his chief of staff at any time. there is little consequence in the west wing. going after sessions, moving towards removing him from office a totally different ball game here and republican versus lever annual because they ultimately would have to confirm the replacement for sessions. you can bet one of the first questions that any replacement would get at is are you going to recuse yourself from the russia investigation in there were these floats yesterday about chris christie or rudy guiliani, that won solve the problem. because if jeff sessions had to recuse himself because he was involved in the campaign, which if you look at the actual language of his recusal is what he said, that would korea it the same problem for guiliani or christie. >> joe, trump tweeted again, ukrainian efforts to sabotage

trump campaign -- quietly working to boost clinton. so where is the investigation ag@seanhannity? >> well, again, this is a man who last night i think he's actually in a time machine. we were just talking about getting a back to the future time machine. he is stuck in november of 2016 and, harmd, how biz, a again, it's just hard to put, get your arm around all of this he is obsessing about hillary clinton. he keeps saying why done you investigate hillary clinton? hillary clinton's e-mails? every day in 2016, he was talking about the fbi investigating hillary clinton's e-mails in talking about what a great man comb was because of the investigation of the e-mails. said if anybody pled the fifth they must have been guilty.

said if anybody sought immunity, they must have been guilty. his future national security adviser, general flynn, said the same things on "meet the press" at the republican national convention, they talked about hillary's e-mail investigation forever. sarah huckaby sanders tweeted about it and said things that would come back and blow up in her face this year. they had that investigation. he's talking 2016. things that have already happened. he goes to talk to .scouts instead of talking duty, honor, country, values. he's talking about a race that he barely one in november by 3 million votes. how does the white house staff, how does anybody deal with this? >> it's difficult to deal with. the one part of the decor part of being a scout that he talked about was loyalty, clearly,

clearly that colors and fuels his mission as president. we have to wonder, what is it that he wants in an attorney general if, indeed, he fires mr. sessions, senator sessions, does he want the attorney general who would narrow the scope of what mueller is do something does he want an attorney general that would fire mueller if the attorney general did not find what mueller was doing satisfactory or approve of it. if you listen to him, you would imagine where a president might go, trump his accomplishments and achievements to see this president has either little interest in doing that, if you listen to the new communications director and this president. this is the most successful six months any president ever had. in indeed that is the case in their minds, you would think they would be talking about those things, bragging about those things, instead, this set, yesterday, today, many other days, he lives in a time machine backwards. i can't quite figure out what it

is he wants. he has a republican congress, a republican senate. he has a senate now struggling to go with health care. he has a senate about to put on thinks desk a russians sanctions bill. you would imagine. you would hope if that would be where the focus is, for some peculiar bizarre set of reasons, it is not the case. >> if we could put that up, i'm sure you might be right. he says this, attorney general jeff sessions has taken a very weak position on hillary clinton crimes. where are e-mails and dnc server and intel leakers? >> i mean, this sounds like a setup. it's going to blame it on hillary clinton, not investigating her. this would be the predicate for it. >> this is right after his attorney general. joe. >> man. >> well, it's remarkable. clint, let me bring you in here. donald trump, and i'm trying to remember who maybe it was johnny

goldberg, it might have been erick erickson, a strong conservative voice said over the past couple of days that every problem donald trump is having right now in the russian investigation and the reason he has mueller is because of one self inflicted wound after another. he and jared kushner were pushing to fire james comey. they should have known and if they knew anything about washington, they would have known. >> that would have just amped up the pressure on people like rod rosenstein and other professionals to actually find somebody like muler who is beyond reproach. now they're talking about firing the attorney general of the united states, a man that jared kushner and donald trump spent 2016 praising as the greatest mind in washington, d.c., the smartest man they had ever met. the most loyal and honest person they ever knew. now donald trump is trying to throw, just like flynn, just

like they defended flynn, non-stop, now they're trying to throw the attorney general of the united states overboard. a man who by the way let us not forget, clint, a former member of the united states senate with friends in the united states senate and it looks like just as donald trump keeps making matters worse for himself by day trading, looks like he's going to do it again and there is no doubt. as with the fbi director. the new fbi director. >> senate republicans aren't going to allow anybody like guiliani to get through the senate. are they? if they're going -- >> i don't know. >> i can make, you look at mccain, you look at susan collins, you look at ben sass, i can name you four, five republicans that aren't going to allow this to become a banana republic. so is this a case, clint, where he's just going to maits make matters worse for himself? >> reporter: yeah, i think the

message is clear with this trump team, if are you not a family member or a general and you jump on the trump train, you will eventually end up under the trump train. he has done that constantly run over people loyal to him. he speaks of loyalty last night. it's very much a one-way street. you know, he does not push loyalty back to them. he won't challenge his family members, if you watch, or kushner by extension or other generals. i think he knows that would deliberately undermine his base. they will not go for that. but anyone else is a part of the swamp. if he can't compel them or sort of push them to do what he want, then he's going to send stem right to the exit doors. i think for our country this is damaging because if you want to go and serve your country and you hear those statements, we see low staffing at the state department. we have gaps at the defense department. throughout the intelligence community people are heading for the exit doors. this is hurting our country.

we are seeing blatant nepotism and staffing like we are a banana republic. senator joe manchin joins us and also congressman joaquin castro joins the conversation. they serve on intel committees woes staffers are questioning jared kushner. we'll get the latest developments on that next on "morning joe." i have spent years taking over-the-counter products for my belly pain and constipation. i've had it up to here! it's been month after month of fiber. weeks taking probiotics! days and nights of laxatives, only to have my symptoms return. (vo) if you've had enough, tell your doctor what you've tried and how long you've been at it. linzess works differently from laxatives. linzess treats adults with ibs with constipation or chronic constipation. it can help relieve your belly pain, and lets you have more frequent and complete bowel movements that are easier to pass. do not give linzess to children less than six, and it should not be given to children six to less than 18.

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have voluntarily provided will show that all of my actions were proper and occurred in the normal course of events of a very unique campaign. let me be very clear, i did not collude with russia, nor do i know of anyone else in the campaign who did so. i had no improper contacts. i have not relied on russian funds for my businesses. and i have been fully transparent in providing all requested information. donald trump had a better message and ran a smarter campaign and that is why he won. suggesting otherwise ridicules those who voted for him. so, clint, the "wall street journal" this morning praised jared kushner for getting everything out and said that the

president of the united states should be as transparent as should everybody else in the administration, in part the problems they're having with the russia investigation is they didn't do exactly what he did yesterday. first of all, do you agree, secondly, were you satisfied with the documents you released and the statement that he made? >> i think there is two parts. i think on the first part, when i read his explanations they sound entirely plausible. if they put this sort of information out from the start, donald trump's claims about the russia investigation being of nothing important, this might have helped his case, so politically, i don't understand it. the second thing i got, though, is absolute panic and fear about our country's national security. when i look at this document, it seems like someone with no experience in foreign policy, thrown head first into national

security. he talks the very start of being in charge of digital operations to, you know, managing the campaign team to all foreign contacts that come in. anybody with experience, if they put anyone in would have known you do not take these meetings. i think the last gap is the meeting with the russian banger, st that was a bank on the americanss sanctions list. there should been contact and rather thanned with the treasury department t. other part that's still strange to me is why do we need a back channel even in ambassador kislyak brings it up? what is it the generals can't tell the military they need to go direct to jared kushner who is just coming on board. >> right. >> it doesn't seem to make sense to me or in the best interest. >> so i go es the argument, julie pace would be that jared was brought on to sort of be a

mini secretary of state, explain what his role appeared to be and what it was characterized to be by the senate himself in the early days of the presidency (. >> reporter: certainly in the transition into the presidency, kushner has been the main point of contact for countless foreign governments within they want to talk about administration policy, reach out to the trumped a min shares, they don't go through secretary of state tillerson, they go directly to jared kushner. >> that has continued even as tillerson settled into this role i think what you saw yesterday is kushner basically trying to say on the one hand that he was the point person, that he was you know running the show on more than policy, on the other hand, presenting himself as an overwhelmed novice on a lot of things, trying to play both sides of this. >> coming up, last week, the white house had trouble spelling john huntsman's name, now it's

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♪ there you go. >> okay. >> it's interesting. hey, listen, mika. >> yeah. >> something over the past ten minutes i have been looking and contev e servetive media members have been defending donald trump of late. some of whom have been correct am of donald trump. but it seems that the conservative reaction by a lot of commentators pretty negative on donald trump this morning. eric ericson, says this of his tweets about jeff sessions.

trump said not to pursue clinton. sessions followed orders. now, sessions in trouble for doing just that. >> oh, yeah. >> bill crystal said, well said to anthony scaramucci's tweet, a.g. jeff sexes is a stand-up guy. he always said he would recuse himself from any case in which his impartiality could be questioned. brent hume, stinging criminal. potus at his worst and most disloyal talking about the tweets this morning. matt lewis brings up a great point f. are you a senator on the fence about today's health care vote, how does trump's early morning tweets impact your thinking? rich lowrie, obviously the editor of the national review, what trump is doing to sessions must be unprecedented in the history of american government. matt lewis, back again, saying the revolution eventually devours its children and ross says pushing out sessions

poisons well with republican senators, cabinet members and a key block of ideological conservatives. other than that. it's fine. >> good day. >> yeah. >> i don't know if it's his purse -- to conservative points of view, it's pretty rough tweets undermining his attorney general, hue hewitt, white house communications director, anthony scaramucci weighed in on whether president trump should fire his attorney general. >> why not just fire jeff session sessions? >> well, listen, i think the president has certain scale, skillset. he's obviously frustrated. i said yesterday sarah murray, maybe the two will get together. maybe the president doesn't want to do that. so i think him and jeff, sorry, attorney general sessions need to work this thing out. >> it's clear the president

wants him gone? >> i have an enormous amount of respect for the attorney general, but i do know the president pretty well, there is this level of tension in the relationship, that's public, are you probably right. but i don't want to speak on the president for that, because he's a cabinet official. i sort of think that has to be between the president of the united states and the cabinet official. >> and twitter and his millions of followers on twitter. well, no, am i right? i'm dead serious, he's tweeting about his attorney general lamb basteing him on twitter, it's between the president and the attorney general and his followers on twitter. scaramucci spoke to nbc news peter alexander, he likened the strained relationship between president trump and sessions to questions that can cause a divorce. he says when you begin to not like one another you either reconcile or separate. of trump and sessions, he says they need to either get together

or separate. >> now those are the two available options. >> so joins us, washington bureau chief, susan page, i don't know, i'm having trouble keeping up this morning. so, maybe help fill us in on what you see happening between the white house and the attorney general and isn't anything but what it appears to be, which is that jeff sessions teams seems to be punished because he's angering the presidents for recuseing himself from the russia investigation. >> i've gefr e never seen anything like this in covering six presidents. it is an open address to the attorney general to resign. anthony scaramucci says number one the attorney general is refusing to meet and hue hewitt is probably right when he says the president wants the attorney general to resign and i guess the question, for what purpose

does he want to push out this, the first senator to endorse him last year for president is it because he actually wants an attorney general in there who is in a position to fire bob mueller? that might be one interpretation. >> he's looking for loyalty. >> your layouts of speculative scenarios here, if are you jeff session, someone you covered for a long time, a long time member of the u.s. senate, he's ended up in this job, he's been invited to resign last week. he says, no i'm going to stay, how does session fwan this out? what are his calculations when he thinks of what he should do under all the circumstances that you are considering. >> you remember what he said at a news conference, he would stay the attorney general as long as that is appropriate t. calculation for him is, does he now have a responsibility to resign? because he should have the confidence of the president if you are his attorney general? or does he have an obligation to

stay pause he thinks he is kind of maintaining the rule of law in a difficult circumstance? >> it's hard to know what the answer to that is. let's bring in a member of the house permanent select committee on intelligence, democratic congressman joaquin castro of texas. i guess we should look at the potential of a jeff sessions departure, congressman castro and how that would impact policy like immigration, for example? >> it certainly looks that way the president is trying to s to every possible message for jeff sexs to resign. he said it, alluded in interviews now t. white house staff has done that. he's also gone on twitter this morning to make that point. >> congressman john heilman, i know you have a lot of questions like everybody does for jared kushner. a lot of things you wonder about. yesterday in both his written testimony and in his statement from the white house afterwards, he used this very careful construction when he talked

about his financial ties to russia. he said that he had not relied on russian funds to finance his business activities. >> that seems like a very lawyerly constructionco me. what do you read into that? what kind of questions does that raise for you? >> i can only speak about the things i'd like to know about. it's a few things, first, one is the financing. remember, he was a high level executive at his families the kushner companies at their business. so we want to know about the financing and how much of that may have been russia meddling including anybody who may have been problematic. the second thing has to do with these meetings he and campaign members had with russians, including some who were obviously russian agents or russian operatives. we feed to find out more about those things and then the third part is jared kushner oversaw the entire campaign data operation and this is somebody who as far as we can tell had

never really worked, the nuts and bolts of a campaign before and so had no experience with this and was now overseeing their entire data operation. we need to know exactly who he worked with, who he gave orders to and whether he was coordinating with anybody who was outside of the campaign. ? joe. >> congressman, we reason asking everybody this morning whether jeff sessions would be serving his country best by resigning or by staying put. what do you think? >> reporter: that honestly is a very, very difficult question to answer at this point. i was somebody who said that jeff sessions should not have gotten the job. i said previously he should resign. so i'm in a very weird position not just myself but so many others that the president has put the country in now where you almost don't know which way to go, on the one hand, i don't want to allow donald trump to dictate the terms of the russia investigation because him

forcing out jeff sessions to me seems like a pre loo you had to essentially do away with bob mueller and the country cannot allow him to do that. on the other hand, i also think that jeff sessions has a lot of conflicts of interest and for that reason, he shouldn't be in that job. so this is a very awkward position to be in quite honestly. in the next few days, i think we will probably see jeff sessions gone. >> all right, congressman, thank you so much for being with us. we greatly appreciate it. susan page, it seems few look at the tweets and the reaction to donald trump's tweets from conservative media, that let's just say the waters are getting a bit more choppy on the right, not only with the conservative reaction to the sessions' tweets, also the suggestion he might fire bob mueller in the future. it seems republicans and

conservatives have been pushed to the wall enough. some are pushing back this morning. >> you know, it's interesting. we had a poll out yesterday, a usa today media ethics popping, a nationwide poll, in which 15% of republicans told us that they thought donald trump should be impeached. now, that mean, of course, that 85% of republicans didn't feel that way. but i was struck by the fact that a fraction of republicans feel that way, overwhelmingly democrats feel that way because of the russia investigations, because of controversies over his leadership. and you know, we wondered if this got pushback from readers who thought it was bias for us to ask this question. i have to say that the politics here is so enflamed that we found this perfect device, 42% of americans say he should be impeached. 42% of americans say he shouldn't. this is a state of affairs, first term president six months into his tenure we never seen

before. >> susan page, thank you for being on the show. >> thank you. >> on the show tomorrow, angus king and chris kuhns will be on, donald trump said jared kushner did very well yesterday, in proving he did not collude with the russians, witch hunt. next up, 11 year old barron trump! we're going to talk more about the day ahead on capitol hill. just ahead on "morning joe."

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. this is a long time ago, sold the company for a tremendous amount of money and he went out and bought a big act and he had a very interesting life, i won't go any more than that, you are boyscouts. i won't tell you what to do. should i tellu should i tell

you? oh, you're boyscouts, in the end he failed. he failed badly, lost all of his money, he went personally bankrupt. and he was now much older and i saw him at a cocktail party and it was very sad because the hottest people in new york were at this party. >> wow! that's incredible the president speaking to the national boyscouts, little boys, jamboree. in our next set joe manchin weighs in, his party's effort to win back working class voters and the campaign to boyscouts in west virginia about hot people. plus, motels ago, jared kushner departed for his second day of interviews on capitol hill.

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manchin. >> all right. hey, senator. great to have you here. we have about 25, 30 questions we'd like to ask you about trump's tweet sessions, et cetera. >> let's go, joe. >> you are uniquely qualified to answer the question we've been asking this morning, which is what do the democrats do to reconnect with working class voters? i'm going to be specific here and say what joe biden and what ed rendell said back in the dnc. specifically, white working-class voters in states like west virginia. so democrats can start winning there again. >> democrats in rural america, like rural west virginia, felt like the national democratic party have left them and forgotten them. it was always about the working person. we've overregulated to the point so we're so politically correct we can't do anything, so taking our jobs away. the fairness to the tax system seems to be out of balance. there's not a chance for an average perp in a rural area to really get ahead. so they said, wait a minute, you guys have left us, so we'll try

something different. and the only thing i have said is that, you know, not all democrats are like that. i'm not a washington democrat. i'm a west virginia rural democrat who believes in fairness, the rule of law, and also believes in giving people a helping hand. i also believe people ought to get off their butt and work a little if they can. give some effort back. it looks like we not demanded accountability and responsibility. we've got to reconnect. and it can't be all about urban -- the democratic party can't be about urban america. itis got to get back to its roots of rural america and rural west virginia when you still have, joe, a majority of west virginians registered as democrats, these are proud people. and they would like to get back and say, listen, i'm going to give everybody a chance but i want to make sure you give me a chance too. >> so let's talk about the rule of law. you brought it up in that first answer. >> sure. >> you know jeff sessions. you worked with him as a senator. he's got a lot of respect from

republicans in the united states senate. i know you respected him a lot. 17 years serving and now being treated really badly on the national stage and the world stage by the president of the united states. what's your advice to jeff sessions this morning? does he serve america and justice best by staying in as attorney general or should he leave? >> well, first of all, just jeff, keep doing your job. i knew you had the experience and the ability to do and protect the rule of law who we are as americans that makes us so different the rest of the world. with that, he also knows that when you take a job such as that, for an executive, we call it will and pleasure, joe, that means you come and go when that person's term is up. at anytime, they lose confidence and faith. the president has the right to put his team together. i just would say that the next person, if jeff's not going to be there, the next person's going to have a much more

strenuous time coming through it will confirmation process because we want to make sure people in the justice department put the rule of law above any one human being or any one party. that's our country. that's who we are as a nation. and madam justice, you know, she's blind. she don't know if you're rich or poor or what color you might be or what political party persuasion. she's going to treat you all the same. and that person has to represent that. >> let me ask you how she pertains to jared kushner. do you think he provided enough answers in his 11-page document in his statement outside the white house yesterday? members of congress and staff will be talking to him today. a lot of questions about how he could make the omissions he made. >> right. i think, mika, this all could have been cleared back in november. this is very serious. first of all, the campaign, there need to be a campaign manager system, discipline in any campaign. i've been in many.

but you have discipline and keep within the boundaries. especially once you get into that position, then as you transition in, there are some serious things, especially going through the security clearance. you better be accurate, extremely accurate. and if you make a mistake, admit to it then and everything should be laid out. that's what gives everybody some pause and consternation. we've seen everything. we were briefed at 2:00, he was in there at 10:00. we're anxious for him to come back before the full committee. i would have liked to have been there, but we've got to make sure these people are coming before us and we as a committee person have the confidence that everything's forthright, everything's up on the table, and, again, the rule of law, you're innocent until proven guilty. so we have to assume he was being forthright and honest with

us. >> let me turn then to ryan goodman op this question of can jared kushner be impeached or whatever else. i wonder if we're going too far asking that question. still want to know the answer. this is something that donald trump brought on board in the white house with a security clearance who he deemed someone who will bring peace to the middle east as well as head up many other foreign policy communications, initiatives, conversations. at the very least, is it fair to say he will be proven as woefully inadequate and unprepared and inappropriate for the job he was given, given the testimony or the statements that he has made so far? >> right. so it's actually kind of on the first question of impeachment as a possibility, getting ahead of ourselves, i think maybe so. it's kind of premature at this point. it's a long process. he's testifying again today.

we'll see the transcript of the testimonies and see what the others say happened in these meetings, et cetera. but at least we know that's a prospect, like we want to know what does mueller have in his toolkit, what does congress have in its toolkit. has impeachment as a possibility, not just the president. but there is this suspicious cloud that comes out of the statement that he made in the sense that to avoid responsibility for what looks like very bad actions and meeting with a russian government official or russian government lawyer, he instead says it's almost like incompetence, like i didn't know i was in a meeting with somebody -- >> as a foreign policy expert, you would know not to have that meeting so if he didn't know -- >> it's speaks of some learn lack of experience and fore thought. senator manchin, 30 seconds left in the show. senator, health care, big question. what's your gut and your head tell you what you think is going to happen? is there going to be a debate or no? >> well, i'll make it very clear, if you're going to vote to proceed, you're voting to repeal. and joe knows very well that if

you go into and all you're doing is work og the bill on the floor, it's not an open process. it's a controlled process, whoever's in the majority. harry reid was accused of it when he was a democrat, republicans raised holy cane, and now the democrats. if you want to fix this bill, repair it, put it in the committee. let us recommit that bill immediately the first vote, put it in committee and let's repair it and fix it then. then you have time to do it. >> senator joe manchin, thank you very much. ryan goodman, we'll have to have you back as this story unfolds. thank you as well. >> thank you. >> stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> thanks, mika. i'm stephanie ruhle with breaking news. jared kushner heed back to capitol hill to face more questions but this time he'll be under oath. >> let me be very clear. i did not collude with russia. and back for battle. senator john mccain set to make a triumphant return to the senate in order