different times. he is 71 years old and lives in south haven, michigan. john mccain is back in arizona and expected to undergo treatment for brain cancer today. his office says he'll begin targeted radiation and chemotherapy and maintain a work schedule. we're told he plans to return to washington after the august recess. in the meantime, he tweeted this photo of himself and daughter last night. the caption, old man and his daughter on the mountain. >> certainly wishing the best for him during this time. that does it for us on this monday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. who the hell wants to speak about politics when i'm in front of the boy scouts, right? >> i did not collude with russia. >> beleaguered a.g. >> the hottest people in new york were at this party.

>> leak that information is very unprofessional. >> mr. mueller and his band of democratic donors. ♪ everybody is crazy get out ♪ >> attorney general jeff sessions has taken a very weak position on hillary clinton. >> i want the attorney general to be much tougher. ♪ celebrate noyour new disorder♪ >> hermetically seal off the comp team from this move forward. >> the way i [ bleep ] blocked scaramucci. >> welcome to the president's failure friday. >> i said, you can take the hand away, okay? i think it's unfair to the president. thank you.

>> now his mommy voted for us, right? >> great thing about this president, you always know where you stand. >> trump just tweeted, just named secretary john kelly as white house chief of stauf. >> we were promised watergate. we don't have water polo. we don't even have watermelon. >> welcome, everyone. >> you started failure friday. it actually accelerated. as you move toward the end of the day, it actually accelerated. >> into a woeful weekend. james langford summed it up with a tweet, what a week. profanity, fights between staff, controversial statements from leadership, a man cut from the team. what will this week have in store? i'm scared to ask. good morning, everyone. it's monday, july 31st. welcome to "morning joe." and the monkey house. with us we have former white house press secretary to

president obama, josh earnest, president to council on foreign relations, richard haass, former chief of staff to president bush, andy card, columnist for washington post, david ignatius and heidi przybyla. good to have you on board. >> let's try to put everything in perspective, if we can, very quickly. david ignatius, as we were saying, mika tagged it as failure friday this past friday, and yet as the day went on, things got even crazier. you look at the health care laws. >> speech to police. >> everything, reince being fired. and then telling police officers, go ahead, take your hand off the -- rough them up a little bit. again, his toughest defender said, that was a joke. that's not like any joke any

president's given before. but it just -- what was last week? >> it felt like a hurricane blowing through town. as you say, every hour there was something new, something destabilizing. we're now in the position of people in a town after the hurricane's come through, looking around at what's the damage? how's it getting fixed? where are we going from here? i think we're all focused on general kelly, the new chief of staff. he's a person who's shown he has the ability to be a good, strong, supportive associate of very different people. he was the military adviser first to secretary gates, then to secretary pin etta. my question, joe and mika, does he know that at end of this catastrophic six months, at the end of a week that highlighted

what's wrong, does he know that he really is the problem? you know, reince priebus had to go. reince priebus wasn't doing a good job for the president. but this wasn't reince priebus' fault. that's my big question as we start really a new chapter in the white house. does the president get it? >> andy card, as richard haass music is taken away from the set -- >> wow. >> -- that's impressive. anyway, as we move -- oh, they finally silenced it. maybe on the west side highway. they threw it in the water. so, none of this matters. john kelly coming, general kelly, none of it matters, does it? if daughters, sons-in-laws -- >> bannons. >> -- bannons. if people can come in, wander

around the president -- >> scaramucci. >> -- making sure they know he has direct access -- it's a zero sum game. if anybody can get around the chief of staff, everybody can get around the chief of staff. >> this is a preoccupation who reports to the chief of staff and who reports to the president. every commissioned officer, special assistant to the president, deputy assistant to the president reports to the president. however, they must respect the chief of staff because the chief of staff is held responsible for what's going on. i had a test of needs versus wants. if you need to see the president, go see the president. if you want to see the president, do not go. >> right. >> most people cheat. they come in with this need. it's a very thin veneer of need. you scratch on it once and it turns into a giant want. i want to know as chief of staff, before, during or after you've seen the president. if i don't know that you saw the

president and you did, you went there for the wrong reason. so it's the discipline. general kelly, i think, will bring discipline. the president has to allow that discipline to take place. >> that's the question. >> if he wants to hold the chief of staff accountable. >> "the wall street journal" says reince priebus wasn't the problem. and the board writes this, prrlt announced late friday on twitter, how else, he's replaced reince priebus with homeland security secretary john kelly. the decision was probably inevitable given how the president publicly humiliated mr. priebus in recent days. you have to wonder about sessions. but the shuffling of staff furniture won't matter unless mr. trump accepts the white house problem isn't mr. priebus, it's him. presidents get the white house operations they want and mr. trump has a chaotic mess because he seems to like it. he likes pitting faction against faction as if his advisers are

competing casino operators from atlantic city days. a presidential administration is a larger undertaking than a family business. and the in-fighting and competing leaks have created a dysfunctional white house. also, you do have to wonder who else is going to go given the fact that i think he humiliated jeff sessions far worse than he ever humiliated reince priebus. >> except jeff sessions, he doesn't feel humiliated. jeff sessions has a base. jeff sessions knows if donald trump fires him, it's going to get ugly. it's not going to be anything like firing priebus. >> were those humiliations on twitter -- >> you don't have to channel peggy noonan. >> i'm just saying -- >> he expected jeff sessions to be bullied and he expected jeff sessions to whimper away.

he's made known he's not going to do that. we saw this past week how devastating that would be with his base. again, i hate to keep bringing this up. donald trump was a democrat until 2011, until he discovered birtherism and a racist theory against a sitting black president would actually help him in the republican primary, he's gave money to hillary, he gave money to -- gosh, i mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars to the dnc. he gave money to schumer. you name it. he gave money to rahm emanuel, scaramucci gave money to -- he can call it fake media, but if you go after jeff sessions, who the republicans have known for decades. >> which he did. >> and you fire that guy suddenly you see what we saw

this past week which is a lot of conservative analysts going, bridge too far, brother. >> the difference between reince priebus and jeff sessions is president trump can replace reince priebus, which he did with kelly. the senate republicans have made clear they're not going to confirm a replacement to jeff sessions, which gives the attorney general a lot more leverage than he would otherwise have. it's an indication we're starting to see the institutions of the u.s. government start to stand up and say, no, we're not going to get pushed around like this. these are norms in place for a good reason. that's why you have police officers come out and say, we're not going to handle this loose talk from the president about roughing up. and the boy scouts saying we don't -- >> this is a great point. we've had the courts push back on the president. we've had the legislative branch push back hard against the president. we've even had this past week the leader of the boy scouts as an organization, we've had

police officers organizations doing the right thing. everybody is pushing back against the excesses. even this past week, you had chuck grassley say, yeah, you can fire sessions if you want to. you're not getting anything in return. >> i think that's what's important about in russia sanctions legislation that was passed. >> big pushback. >> probably the biggest one trump has faced from the congress. it was bipartisan, and on national security issue, where trump is already quite sensitive. i think that was an important step. i think as we go through the summer and fall and face some other steps about keeping the government open, raising the debt ceiling, what role are republicans and democrats in congress going to play together to make sure we're protecting these important norms that president trump seems to think are not that important. >> the russia sanctions bill was a highlight of this past week. you look at what's happening in north korea while all this chaos is going on, more troubling news

out of hillary clinton. >> that's in some way the big story, this juxtaposition of a world that's coughing up enormous challenges, north korea, what's going on in the middle east, russia, that we have as crowded and as demanding a foreign policy inbox as we've had in modern times against the back drop of an administration in disarray. the other thing we left out was health care. and all these dynamics going on in washington, consumed by personnel issues. the world doesn't say, okay, we're going to give you six months or a year to time out, america. the world doesn't go on pause. what's so interesting, thing about it, joe, we have yet to have a real international crisis. all the crises of this administration are essentially self-generated. but they're coming. i don't know whether the first one will be an iran/saudi war, i don't know if it will be north korea, russia, could be venezuela given the vote

yesterday. real crises are coming down the pike. the real question for us, is this administration even beginning to be ready to handle a -- >> there's a bigger problem, mika. when the crisis comes, everything's more difficult because pew just put out some polls, america's standing in the world is plummeting and has plummeted over the past six months. >> that's exactly the point that imen i wanted to take a look at, heidi. if you have a president that is belittling everything and everybody on twitter from north korea to china -- >> by the way, just for -- >> -- to attorney general jeff sessions -- >> for people driving. favorable view at the end of the presidency, down to 49% and unfavorable is rising. >> and everybody pushing back, literally having to raise this president, i guess, in a way his mother never did saying, no,

that's not how you talk to law enforcement and that's not how we treat human beings. no, mr. president, that's not how you talk to boy scouts. no, mr. president, we don't take people's health care away. everybody's saying no. he has been humiliated step after step after step in every failure because of basic common sense in terms of how to speak, mostly, heidi, on twitter. >> and i think that is why there's justifiably, joe and mika, some skepticism here in washington about just how much kelly can do once he gets into position. yes, he's a battle-hardened commander who can maybe bring some discipline to the white house. as you enumerated, meek kashgs all of those things, some of the biggest catastrophes of this administration, including the firing of james comey, now this political blow-back over flogging sessions. these are all things the president has done.

these are not problems at the staff level in terms of some of these leaks about who's knifing who at the white house and palace intrigue. the big stuff that's hurt this white house has come from the very top. that's why i think it's very much up in the air whether kelly can impose that kind of discipline on the president himself. it's about his discipline. it's about his lack of judgment. and i think we saw that in this failure of health care, just how important leadership is. leadership from the oval office and white house to getting something important done in congress. and the president just wasn't there, mika. he was throwing tweets from the sidelines. >> you know, david ignatius, mothers try their best but it seems the lack of discipline in -- i see 70 years old and it's very hard to understand the strategy here. and then a lot of people call it behavior.

but it is impacting our place in the world. >> he has a very defensive, impulsive way of behaving. we've all been watching it. you can try to go to the roots of it in terms of his biography but, you know, most of us aren't qualified for that. we do see again and again the same kind of behavior. the question is, is there a way to organize people around him in a way that those traits are not as damaging to his presidency. look, we're six months in and he's accomplished nothing of his domestic agenda. he hasn't begun to get to infla structure, tax reform, the thing people were counting on, the thing markets were pricing in. his foreign policy has really made essentially no policy on the major crises he identified.

one thing i'd say is the the events of the last week do i have give him a chance for a reset. and the russia, i think, overreaction of demanding 7 5 expulsions of u.s. working for u.s. diplomatic facilities in moscow, they've overreached. essentially what happened here is congress pushed back and said no. they said no to trump policies. they said no to putin. there's an opportunity for good diplomacy, steady diplomacy and, perhaps, the beginning of rebuilding if the president is smart. >> rich, do we even have 755 personnel working in moscow? >> it would be a generous host, including the foreign service nationals. what you'll end up are even numbers between russians serving in the united states, americans serving in russia. it reflects putin's conclusion that all of his hopes for a

better relationship that trump could deliver, pardon the expression -- reset in u.s./russian relations is gone. it's one of the great ironies of trump's first six months. the one foreign power he came into office caring about a new u.s./russian relationship is out the window, lost his credibility and congress filled the gap. putin has said this is gone, so now putin is staking out the position putin normally stakes out, is tough national position. he can't deliver anything on the economy. russia is basically bankrupt. he can be muscular with military, so putin has reverted to putinism. >> what a remarkable rebuke by congress. >> first of all, the president wants to manage inside the white house with having people stab each other in the back. he kind of invites the in-fighting. then he tells congress they have to get along. they say, which is it,

mr. president? your own team isn't getting along. how do you expect us to get along? he's not setting the right example to create a climate of governing, people working together. >> and it's not just the fear of donald trump on the hill anymore. and, you know, he attacks republican members. of course he attacks democrats all the time. but you can go down the list of republican members that he has attacked and the dumbest thing last week was lisa murkowski. he attacks lisa murkowski through zinky and she says, we're not going to approve any of your people and, by the way, i have the purse strings and he put her in a position where she had to vote no. donald trump make her vote no by doing that. you push somebody into the corner, that's how they're going to respond every time. >> and now it's getting easier for republicans to say no

because the door is opened and many have walked through. they've made it to the other side. they like that room they're in. it's much more comfortable. it feels like to them freedom to the point where they can make their own decisions. they're not going to be strong-armed by the president and, quite frankly, ryan zinke really let the president down. he should have said, i'm not going to do that. that will not look good for you. he let the president down. >> richard, i always tell the story, i don't know if on camera, but mika has to hear this story every day, the first six months i got to congress -- >> you were in congress? >> you were brac, the base realignment commission, there was a general in a certain service that lied to me. and just lied to my face. the chief of staff, who had worked for navy ola was shocked and said, i can't believe the guy. he just came in and lied to my face. very powerful guy in washington.

my chief said, don't worry about it. a week later the general came back in and what do you need? we'll take care of it. >> well, that was the members on my committee, the chair of my committee and everybody else, they spent that week figuring out how to make that guy's life a living and breathing hell. and they succeeded. so the guy had to come back, and you know, make good. that's how it works there. >> what you're talking about is a difference between relationships where you got to think about how your behavior one day will affect your standing another day and simply transactional things. that's where trump's former life gets in the way. my question for you is whether we're beginning to see the early stages of donald trump not just running against democrats but republicans. he's taking them on on health care increasingly. he's challenging them, the enemy, that we're now beginning to see a white house almost pure populism that's pushing against

the republican establishment. we saw it in the inaugural address where he didn't distinguish between republicans and democrats. this is where donald trump is essentially going to go because he can't work with people so he's going to work against people. >> i think so. a lot of concerns on friday we heard about that, but that would be a horrible mistake. his home team, whether he likes it or not, are the 52 republicans in the senate. >> they have the power. >> he has insulted democrats so much. i mean, josh, i don't see democrats saying, hey, we're going to help this guy now. >> in large part because he hasn't reached out at all. there was an opportunity for him at the beginning because there was somebody who did break the mold. >> there was such opportunity at the beginning. >> particularly when you look at electoral battle grounds for 2018. you have all these democrats representing the states trump had won. that would have been a golden opportunity for him to say claire, joe donnelley, this can

help me and help you look good. he took the opposite tact, he took the lisa murkowski track to -- it was a missed opportunity. >> called really -- i mean, in any white house, the minority of the leader of the senate one of the most important people in washington, d.c., donald trump if not the for president of another party if he wants to get things done, he calls chuck schumer a guy that he's known, that he's contributed to, that he gts along with socially, called him a clown off the start. we'll say it again. we've been saying this since he got elected. if you declare war on everybody, everybody's going to declare war back on you. on friday we read from peggy noonan's op-ed. we'll read from kevin williamson's column called

"death of a bleeping salesman" and kevin will join us live in the 8:00 hour. also with us oscar-winning film maker michael moore is here on set. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. 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. there you go. you still need a pass. when i was too busy with the kids to get a repair estimate. i just snapped a photo and got an estimate in 24 hours. my insurance company definitely doesn't have that... you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™ liberty mutual insurance. going somewhere? whoooo. here's some advice. tripadvisor now searches more...

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it all adds up to our most reliable network ever. one that keeps you connected to what matters most. the u.s. along with south korea and japan conducted a ten-hour show of force yesterday flying supersonic bombers and fighter jets over the korean peninsula and japanese air space. it comes in direct response to north korea's test of another intercontinental ballistic missile on friday, which experts say has a range that includes much of the continental united states and as possibly as far as the east coast. however, the accuracy of the missile is in question and it's not believed pyongyang has the technology to add a nuclear weapon to the missile or if they

could survive re-entry into the earth's atmosphere. president trump took to twitter to pass off blame saying, quote, i'm very disappointed in china. our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade, yet they do nothing for us with north korea, just talk. >> wait a second. >> we will no longer -- >> wait. >> i'm sorry. >> richard haass, isn't this quite about-face, i thought donald trump thought one dinner with china would take care of the entire korean problem. >> we've run up gements against the limits of the chocolate cake. >> the most wonderful chocolate cake you've ever seen. >> at the end of the day, china likes korea so much it wants two of them. it wants to keep a buffer state on its border so the idea china is going to somehow put enough pressure on north korea to destabilize it is a fool's hope. it's not going to happen. >> david, we've been talking about the first six months you

were discussing the failures of the first six months. how embarrassing if they were capable of shame. this administration has to be our embarrassment. just look what they've said about north korea. they thought a trip to mar mar-a-lago and beautiful chocolate cake and firing missiles, and they would bring peace to the middle east with a couple of quick trips. they've expressed their surprise that it's not as easy as it looks from your living room in trump tower. >> well, in that recognition maybe the beginning of wisdom. i think president trump's outreach to china and xi jinping, his recognition that the only really plausible way out of this mess is with chinese help and, perhaps, with other neighbors, that was correct. and for him to go back on the

war path now and say, all right, we're furious and you let us down, that's the part that bothers me. >> exactly. the smart move actually was after insulting the chinese throughout the entire campaign, the smart move was actually sitting down and trying to understand how we could forge a partnership on this issue. >> exactly right. the challenge now is trump has to let the a-team assemble. we have outstanding people in our government who are thinking about this in very creative ways. let them roll out policy that's systematic, that comes through an iteration process, deep in discussion, take your time. that's true with north korea. it's true with russia. russia presented us with a perfect opportunity to thing, okay, where do we want this relationship to go? >> dave, we're 30 minutes in. i should have asked you this question off the top. we're going to get to north korea in a second. you know general yell well.

tell us about general kelly. do you -- of course, nobody can can predict what donald trump is going to do next hour, but talk about general kelly coming in as chief of staff. do you feel better this morning than you did friday? >> i do in a sense i think we have a buffer against the worst outcomes that could happen with this impulsive, inexperienced president. general kelly is a person who's seen a lot of the world. he's seen command in iraq. he raced to baghdad and people said, how's this going to go? he said, hell, we're marines, what do you mean how's it going to go? we're going to win. he has that command energy. he was in iraq as a more senior commander toward the end of the surge. he saw that. he understood what had been accomplished. interestingly, he came back to be the top military adviser, first to secretary gates, republican, then leon panetta,

democrat, and it was seamless. he's a master into accurate and he's also loyal to the guy he works for, whoever that is. he's been very loyal to donald trump. i hope he can help trump organize a real process. something that should have begun day one, but hasn't. that process will be the systematic development and inte mentation of policy. no question kelly knows how to do it. will he get room to do it from donald trump? that's what we're going to watch. >> the bottom line, will the president let him do his job? joining us gordon chang, author of "nuclear showdown." the president has always said, i like to be unpredictable, that's my strategy. but we're at the point where unpredictability, some might see it as unhinged, undisciplined and frightingly weak. how is, in the grand scheme of the north korea problem, how is his leadership looking?

>> well, you -- >> from the outside looking in. >> for the most part the trump administration has done that with some regrettable lapses. with regard to the chinese and north koreans, he's been unpredictable and i think that's a good thing largely because the american people right now are in pari peril. trump is able to do that. that's the precondition of success. now, of course, he can make things a lot worse. but nonetheless, you know, he's doing some things i think are pretty good, including imposing costs on chinese because they have been involved in reprehensible behavior with north korea. those transporter erector launches that brought those july 4th and july 28th missiles to the sites, those are chinese. we need to have a conversation about that. >> richard haass, i'm just curious, when we've dealt with these issues in the past or

similar issues, don't we usually hear or see surface the foreign policy team? are we? where are they? >> six months have gone by. one thing that's missing other than saying we want china to solve this for us, i haven't seen one american diplomatic issue on north korea. one thing we might have done, for example, is put forward a proposal, a diplomatic -- an arms control proposal saying, this is what we can live with. here's what we're prepared to do for it. either north korea agrees to it, which we're happy. if they don't agree, then it sets the stage for use of military force or, perhaps, some introduction of other poefltz. but it seems to me you have a vacuum diplomatically and more than six, seven months have gone by. what are we missing? >> one thing i would add. you talk to north korea but only when they know they have to disarm, so not now. what trump did at the end of june was brilliant. on june 26th he met prime minister modi, a very important signal to beijing.

then severed bang of dandong because of money laundering for north korea. another signal. he sold arms to taiwan. that notification to congress. he did a couple other things that week. seeing, this is what i can do in the future. i can amp up the pressure prepare. >> don't you think north korea is moving much faster with missile and nuclear development than we are at putting the pressure on? it seems to me our timetable and their timetable don't mesh. we'll be slightly ratcheting up sanctions and north korea is very quickly going to -- already has missiles that can reach the continent continental united states, so who are we kidding here? >> this didn't instantly become dangerous in january. trump -- you can't sort of knock the chinese on their back on day one. what he's doing is telling the chinese, look, this is what i can do. i would like this to go faster. i agree with you, but nonetheless, i think the direction is clear and the

administration is doing something. we may find out it's not sufficient but i think there are some extraordinary things we should be doing and the trump administration has been talking about. for instance, nikki haley yesterday said, i'm done with talking. i think that was a good thing at this particular time. >> gordon chang, thank you very much. coming, president trump tells a room full of cops and the rest of the world that police shouldn't be so nice to suspects during arrests. how officers are responding straight ahead on "morning joe."

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♪ president trump's most consistent form of communication, twitter, continued to reveal some major inconsistencies in his positions over the years. tweeting in 2012, three chief of staffs in less than three years of being president. part of the reason why barack obama can't manage to pass his agenda. president trump is on his second chief of staff within the first seven months of his administration. also in light of his weekend-long tweet storm calling for an end of what he now describes the very outdated filibuster, there is this tweet from 2013.

quote, thomas jefferson wrote the senate filibuster rule. harry reid and obama killed it yesterday. rule was in effect for over 200 years. that's weird. heidi, when do inconsistencies, though, become a step beyond unpredictability and chip away at his credibility and that he loses more republicans, perhaps, along the way? >> mika, i think that the health care legislation is notable and really impactful, not with what's just happening over the past eight years it's not going to happen when we start to stare down the barrel of 2018. i don't know anyone, mika, who sees even a scintilla of a path

forward here on health care. i know he wants them to take another stab at it. >> he's still pushing it. >> that just shows a basic lack of understanding of what just happened as does that tweet about the filibuster because as we all know and have been reporting for months on this show, they don't need anything more than 51 votes. so, i think this could be a turning point in that, yes, we've already seen republicans walk through that door, but as you know, many republicans were not with trump from the beginning. let's just be frank about it. but they did see him as a potential vehicle to get their agenda done. once they stopped seeing him as a vehicle and start seeing political peril for themselves ahead in the next cycle, i do think you could see more republicans, you know, walking through that door. >> so, heidi brings up a point that the president's show in his tweet a lack of understanding and how things work. couldn't this new chief of staff help this president if he just

stopped him from tweeting? because every time he tweets, he is showing a weakness. >> i'd go beyond that. >> and undisciplined. >> i would go beyond that. i mean, josh, you probably agree with me. i'm from the school of squeezing every word. when you're in public life, certainly at the level you were at, it's important that every word -- and andy, we'll get to you next on this. every word the president utters, there has to be a reason behind it because words matter for presidents. they may not matter as much for reality stars but i would go beyond the tweets. get rid of the tweets. but also, he doesn't do wide-ranging interviews with newspapers. every time he does -- i'm not joking -- it ends badly. he's not going before cameras unless he has his talking points. these are the two things you're going to say, mr. president.

don't go beyond that or you're failing at your central mission here. that would be like putting it in words he understands would be like going into negotiate for a property in manhattan and instead, you know, talking about baseball the entire time. >> yeah. well, look, we talk about this question of discipline a lot. and this is where i think it is most revealed. when you're sitting in the oval office, when you have all the trappings of the president, people care deeply about what you say. they're going to look at what you say to try to define your intentions at every step of the way which is why it's important to have a strategy about what you're trying to communicate. that is not the kind of effort they have under way. when he does these long-form print interviews, like with the new york post a couple weeks ago, it turned into a news buffet. there was no clear strategy, no agenda they were trying to strife for. peggy noonan wrote about this.

president trump has missed an opportunity to use this platform to make an argument. he makes assertions, many are questionable when it comes to facts, but there's no coherent argument that forms the basis -- >> and people are getting scared. joe, a lot of people talk about and, andy, for john kelly to have success with president trump, he's going to have to find a way to let trump be trump. actually, we don't want kelly to have success with trump. we want him to have success with the country. >> with the country. >> i would suggest perhaps not letting trump be trump. >> i think he can change that. >> do you think so? >> he took an oath and witnessed people sacrificing because of that oath. >> knows it better than most. >> he does. he's seen it. heing a n ing ago nized it. commanding young men and women to sacrifice for us. it's important for the president to taste his words before he

spits them out. there's consequences for every word that is tweeted and uttered. understanding the consequence before you issue the word so that you don't have a bad consequence is critically important. i'm not saying the president should stop tweeting. i'm just saying he should have discipline around it. give consideration to the words he uses and understand the consequence which means, talk to others before you put the words out because they understand more consequences than you do. then you have fewer unintended consequences. that's the trick. >> which -- every day. coming up, with their dreams dashed to kill obamacare, will republicans have better luck with tax reform. we'll talk to congressman kevin brady who chairs the ways and means committee. what are democrats' next move? we'll talk with joe crowley. "morning joe" is coming right back. boost. it's about moving forward, not back.

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>> the national reviews kevin writes about the death of a bleeping salesman. i can't say it. trump is a political version of a pickup artist, and republicans and america went to bed with him convinced he was something other than what he is. trump inherited his fortune but describes himself as though he were a self-made man. he is a career in real estate and a poor one as a hotel and casino operator. he isn't smart enough to do the job and isn't man enough to own up to the fact. for all his glade plated toilets, he's at heart a junior middleman sales man thinking to himself that's the man i want to be. how many times do you imagine he's stood in front of a mirror trying to project like alec baldwin? unfortunately for the president,

it's baldwin that does a good imitation of trump. not the other way around. >> that's just a small snippet. >> kind of nails it, don't you think? >> imserio'm serious. that's the punch line of a long and important setup of kevin williamson. >> he's going to be on the show. >> read peggy newnan's op ed and kevin's. it's epic and talks about how donald trump has sold himself to americans as this great titan of industry, and the truth is he inherited his money. ran into trouble, and has never had to run a large organization. he is in way over his head right now. >> yeah, and he sold himself to the american people as somebody who understands how the system works. it's pretty clear that he doesn't. when it comes to running his own white house, he brought an general kelly with the sense that general kelly can impose

discipline and is used to giving orders. the truth is it's the president's job to impose discipline, and it's in people following orders. i'm not sure that's going to happen in this white house until president trump makes clear that's what needs to happen. >> at the same time, david ignatius, let's try to be positive this morning even though it's not our jobs. we have all seen this president have, far him, a remarkable amount of deference to james mattis. if you have someone in place that you respect, then you defer to them. and donald trump has certainly deferred a great deal to general mattis. he could have put ivanka in as a chief of staff, or jarod, or he could have put in somebody that ran a golf course in virginia in charge, but he chose a known

commodity, somebody who is disciplined and buttoned down. is there a reason to hope that maybe he understands that his chaos has led to historically low ratings? >> well, trump was generals well. he had an eye for mattis, appointed him. it's been probably his most successful appointment. it's interesting that jared kushner is the special advisor, also defers to those generals, and interestingly, mattis has insisted that rex tillerson will be united with mattis on every policy issue. so i think you can look for the possibility of a kind of forever of kelly chief of staff, mattis secretary of defense. rex tillerson secretary of state aided by general mcmaster whose role and then jared kushner.

>> that's going to happen? >> what's kelly's top priority? >> understanding the president's expectations and make sure the president understands his expectations for doing the job and get the support. >> thank you very much. still ahead, retired general john kelly will be sworn in as the chief of staff today, but will he be able to whip the white house into shape? "the washington post" bob woodward joins the consideration to talk about that. plus the best schmitz on television. >> uh-huh. >> michael smith and former mccain strategist steve smith. they join us when "morning joe" continues.

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most allergy pills only block one. and 6 is greater than one. rethink your allergy relief. flonase sensimist. ♪ president trump insists he has done a lot in office, and that is, you know what? -- >> is it true? >> let's go through it. >> you know what? six months is a long time. let's just talk about last week. >> all right. just last week he turned a blind eye on his communications director as he hue mailuated his chief of staff. that chief of staff then resigned. he publicly shamed his attorney general receive jeff sessionss who is very supported by his base. that seemed extremely self-destructive. >> and rebukes from conservatives. >> and redrew rebukes from the

boy scouts because he was so political and kind of inappropriate at his speech to the boy scouts. then there was the police, what he said about suspects and his own pentagon, what he tweeted about transgender and the military, and he took all sorts of positions after his health care plan collapsed, failed in the senate. so this president has done a lot in a short period of time. >> a lot. we got is schmidt brothers here. steve schmidt. that's quite a week. >> big week. we saw the merging of all of these strange management incompetence, the chaos, the erratic qualities of decision-making, the complete collapse of policy making inside the senate, inside the republican party, inside the conservative movement. we saw the president abrogate the chain of command, how we make policy with regard to our

readiness in the military, and then shocking things, the assault on the attorney general, the language of scaramucci. i mean, i say as an eagle scout to stand up in front of an important institution in this country, the boy scouts of america, and to give that performance, and for those of us who have had the privilege to walk into the west wing of the white house every day, this assault on the institution of the presidency, the denigration of its majesty, and the anxiety with which it must cause our allies around the world and the degree to which it must inspire what described as the predator nations looking for opportunity, when you take it all in, america's standing in the world has been diminished. the world is less stable, and

the hour of danger that this type of behavior induces and causes grows nearer. >> michael schmidt, if you look at what steve talked about, what nika talked about, the laundry list, it knees back to something josh said last hour, which is this president is getting pushback from the system. he puts out a transgender tweet. his own pentagon says no, no. we're not following that until you direct us, until you order us to follow that. health care, he insults lisa murkowski. she votes now. it goes down in flames. he insults john mccain a year ago. mccain gets the last word there. you think of jeff sessions. he attacks his attorney general j conservatives rise up as one and they attack him. the boy scouts attack him.

or push back against his unpresidential behavior in front of them the police on friday, he says yeah, jokes, supposedly jokes, it's not a joke, to feel free to rough up criminals as you're throwing them into the back of your, quote, paddy wagon, people that, by the way, the constitution still presumes are innocent until proven quality. you can go down the list. the courts have done it. the legislative branch has done it. this president is getting pushback now. >> the other thing that i still find remarkable is we're six months in and he's not faced any sort of real external crisis. no real external challenge. sure, there's north korea and health care and stuff like that, but when are we going to watch him go through deep water horizon and watch him deal with a problem in a day in and day

out thing he can't do anything out, and he's getting crushed within the press like obama did with deep water horizon. how will he handle that? it's going to happen at some point. >> yep. >> and then that will be the ultimate real test to see -- because this is all self generated. this is all stuff he's created himself. >> also joining the conversation we have with us bob woodward. bob sees a lot of parallels between the hiring of kelly and a past presidency. >> right. line them up for us, bob woodward. some pretty remarkable parallels. >> it is. the last general brought in as chief of staff who was general hague in 1973 for nixon, in a moment of somewhat similar crisis, and what really is parallel is the expersonal world that exists for the new chief of

staff. clearly a pivotal job for donald trump. first of all, there are all the investigations going on about the alleged russian collusion. there are monumental national security issues, not just north korea, but what is trump going to do with russia, china, isis, the war in afghanistan? also on the table at this time are relations with congress which are strained to nonexiste nonexistent, the relationship with his own party. clearly leadership questions in the justice department and the fbi. in the investigations going on for nixon in 1973, it was his

aides. for trump some aides but also members of his family. that obviously is very unnerving. also in these investigations they are going to migrate, and apparently they are into the money questions, the financial questions. when they started looking at nixon, they discovered that he had to pay $500,000 in back taxes. now, that's lunch money for trump, but looking at all of his finances, his issues, then there is this media environment of skepticism and distrust. i'm sorry it's a long list, but the really significant similarity and in nixon you found he ran the white house and his administration and his life

where he didn't share the full picture with anyone. i think you see that with trump. he's not sharing the whole story with anyone on the staff, with any of the lawyers. >> and, heidi -- >> he may not know what it is either. >> well, he knows what it is. >> no. >> that he doesn't want bob mueller to find. heidi, you're on the hill of the laundry list of things bob just talked about, having allies behind you, the president having allies behind where you are right now would be obviously something you might be interested in, and yet, the tweet this weekend, lecturing mitch mcconnell about something mitch mcconnell knows more about than just about anybody on the face of the earth. that's not received well in the senate majority leader's office. he seems to be in the office of making enemies, even among those who should be his closest

political allies. >> reporter: do you remember that course dale carnegie, how to influence people and gain friends? it might be a little relevant right now. no to me, i can put on my congress hat and expertise in having covered this chamber for several years, but this is about basic common sense in terms of what do you do to try to influence people and persuade them to do what you want them to do. and this is a big difference. maybe you can say it's like an interpersonal problem. maybe it's an executive problem because he's been in business his whole lifer, and it's not just any old business. it's a sole proprietorship. he makes the only decision. he doesn't have to worry about the power of persuasion. that's everything in this town. being able -- and that was something that many presidents have been critiqued based on. president obama was critiqued as being someone who maybe needed to reach out more to capitol hill, including to his own party and to woo these lawmakers a little bit more and get them to

do what he wants. well, trump really sold high, himself high on this coming into this office that he was going to be a deal maker. and he may know nothing about government. he may know nothing about how the legislative process works. but at least he would have that interpersonal skill to be able to woo people to get them to do what he wants them to do. that has shown to be inaccurate. >> one of the big questions is who is going to report to general kelly, reports this weekend indicate that kelly will likely fill the deputy chief of staff position. kerstin nielsen served as special assistant to the homeland security in the bush white house. it remains unclear who else will report directly to the chief of staff. jonathan swan tweeted source familiar tells me jared kushner and ivanka trump will follow general kelly's lead in terms of protocol and access to oval and

information flow. but as for those like anthony scaramucci who demanded direct access to the president, the answer remains less certain. >> will all of the white house staff report to the new chief of staff? >> so i will do whatever the president and our new chief of staff asks me to do. >> has scaramucci, have you, have you now been told you report to john kelly? >> i will speak with general kelly and the president about that. as i'm sure anthony scaramucci will. >> so, josh, i don't want to sound condescending to anybody. i'll just put it this way. >> okay. >> if you were interested in the best interest of the president of the united states, and you were interested in making a president of the united states look strong instead of puffing

yourself up for your tv hits whether you're kellyanne conway or anthony scaramucci, if you want what is best for donald trump, you will say, yes, i will report directly to the chief of staff, because this is something that donald trump may not have understood before, but he needs to get now. that, actually, when you empower your chief of staff, and you make everybody go through that door to get to you, that actually makes you look more powerful. this is not about anthony scaramucci. this is not about kellyanne conway. this is not about jared, ivanka. this is about a presidency that's damaged and the fastest way to fix what ills this white house is a hard nosed chain of command. >> that's right. and what else it illustrates, humility is missing from this white house. and it starts at the top. if you're going to work at the white house, particularly with a

high profile job like kellyanne conway, it's easy to think c chris wallace must think i'm really smart, attractive and influential. the truth is he wants you on his show because you have access to the president and a responsibility to advance the president's agenda and what people want incite into is how the white house works and what you're going to push the president's agenda. but look, it starts at the top. and we haven't seen that kind of humility on the part of president trump either. somebody who understands the burden that he barears and the responsibility to represent all americans. this humility influences everything that happens in the white house that's -- >> if you're not going to be humble, and there have been a lot of occupants in the white house that haven't had humility, you'd better have the discipline to have somebody that can come in and say no. no, you can't do that. >> before it happens.

>> this is not about me as being general kelly, your chief of staff. this is about you, mr. president. this is about the institution. you need to tell everybody they come through me to get to you. >> but this also would require that the president understand that the office is larger than he is. that the demands of the job are different than anything he's ever faced. >> any chance he's learning that after six months? >> john. >> bob was talking about the parallels between this president and '73. i'm struck by the differences. nixon was there as vice president. nixon wasn't a radical. he did what he did, but also he was a man of the system, and donald trump is something different. >> when the supreme court of the united states said turn over the tapes, there really want a question in richard nixon's mind, he had to turn over the tapes, even though he knew it would destroy them.

>> he was a man of the system. he broke the law, but to question now whether we have someone who is of the system in the same way, it's not obvious to me. >> bob, every mistake, setback and failure so far for this president, i'm pretty sure every single one and there are many, can be attached to either a tweet or an ad lib. >> i think that's fair. at the same time, what i was trying to sketch out is the conditions -- how is the table set? and back in '73, nixon's lawyers called this all the sharks in the water or the time bombs. and trump is in exactly that same situation. there are sharks in the water out there. the biggest are these investigations, particularly mueller's special counsel investigation which can literally go anywhere. but in fairness here, the

question is in nixon they uncovered massive criminality. i mean, in a way that was unimaginable. we don't yet have the kind of evidence that might lead to some action by mueller that would lead to the removal of trump, but as general kelly goes in there, what's the relationship with congress? my god, it's awful. with the justice department, also awful. with the media, the media is spring loaded against trump for very good reasons, because of the things you're talking about. so it is a tough world that they are inheriting, the general kelly is inheriting, a tough world that trump is living in. bottom line, i think we're in for months, if not a year or

more of where is this going? is there any stability in the government? >> bob makes shades toward water gate, but you're right, there's nothing that brings us to that extent yet, joe. we look at tweets or ad libs being owned by the president. how as bob talks about kelly going in there, it wasn't reince who said the things the president said. it wasn't attorney general jeff sessions who has been humiliated by the president and said the things the president said. they're either tweeted or ad libbed by the president of the united states. how does kelly get around that? >> i think i hate to keep going back to one of my themes over the past six months, but it's important that steve bannon is sidelined. he plays to donald trump's worst instincts. >> but they still come out of the president's mouth. >> i know that. >> call the press the enemy of the people.

attack the intel agencies. talk about a deep state. do everything you can do to turn all the official washington against you. this is a guy that said he was a lennonist. he wanted to tear government down. he wanted to tear everything down, and what he has done -- washington always wins. washington will be around when donald trump is gone. and the same systems will be in place. and so what does general kelly do to sideline people like steve bannon who are saying tear everything down and go to war with members of your own congress? >> well, look, a couple of things. when you look at any organization, the white house, of values, are set from the top, not from the top guy's chief of staff. and values come from history. from the memory of the organization. so general kelly spent his life in an organization whose core

values are honor, courage, and commitment. so we know that general kelly can command u.s. marines. can he command this white house f-troop? that's an open question. the last part is this, and i don't know the answer. you look at scaramucci. you look at the comportment of the president of the united states. no public company ceo. that behavior would not be to tolerated by the board, and it wouldn't be tolerated in the office of the united states marine corps. >> one of the best companies in america as far as growth goes was pushed out for doing 1/1000 of what donald trump has done in the first six months. mike schmidt, what if, though, you have the general coming in at a time where, as bob woodward says, he doesn't know everything

in donald trump's background and donald trump knows things he can never tell anybody? richard nixon, it ends up he owes the irs $500,000. the vice president went to jail for tax evasion. there is a lot going back 30 years on donald trump that general kelly will never know. >> there's an expectation. the president is a 71-year-old grown man. the idea that someone who just comes in now is going to change him, i think is unrealistic. maybe in the best case scenario as sort of this nonpolitical outsider he can get all the different factions to maybe come to the president in a way unlike priebus, he doesn't have any skin in the game politically. he's not a republican insider. maybe he can get the process to work better, but the expectation this is going to be a better white house, i don't know why -- like he was going to change when

he won the nomination and became president. >> he's got to change the president's behavior. >> he can't. >> i don't see why. he's never changed in the past two years. >> he can't, but he can change how the white house is run with a little bit of buy-in from the president. if you just have chaos coming from the guy at the top which is bad, but instead of everybody shooting at each other around him -- >> the other thing to remember about bannon is remember when he got the job, he was announced as a co-equal to reince priebus. i wonder if he's a co-equal to john kelly. >> bob, thank you so much. still ahead on "morning joe," the kremlin strikes back in a showdown over new u.s. sanctions against moscow. we are joined in the conversation. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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>> at this very moment russia seeks to get borders by force. and divide the free nations of europe one against another. we hope for better days. for better relations with russia. but recent diplomatic action taken by moscow will not deter the commitment of the united states of america to our security, the security of our allies, and the security of freedom-loving nations around the world. >> that was some hopeful words from the vice president this morning. the diplomatic tit for tat in russia. it's after the russian foreign minister said on friday the u.s. would have to reduce the staff.

that's the reported number of diplomatic workers in america. that's in response to sanctions in the u.s. which putin calls illegal restrictions. the state department official says the move is regrettable and uncalled for act adding their assessing the statute of limitations and how to respond. >> with us now, andrea mitchel and also staff writer at the atlantic, julia yaffi. julia, mike pence. mike pence doing what the secretary of defense has done in the past. what other administration officials have done in the past, and sound like traditional american leaders. and doing -- >> how reassuring is that to hear the vice president in a former soviet state today? he's now on his way to georgia. the fact is that mike pence is

representing what has been bipartisan foreign policy for decades. this is the posture toward russia when russia is aggressive toward us. what is abhorrent is this friendly, perhaps naive, perhaps something worse, approach to russia, to vladimir putin. all these months including weeks ago in germany from the president of the united states. no one can understand it. why didn't we hear all day yesterday from the state department except one statement saying it's regrettable? why was there no one from the administration speaking out? finally mike pence spoke yesterday and again this morning which you showed. but that is, i think, the problem encapsulated of u.s. foreign policy where we have a secretary of state who is being big-footed by white house aides, included the son-in-law of the president -- >> the de facto secretary of state. >> and people of congress are

rising up in an almost unanimous vote, bipartisan, and this is -- and at the same time we haven't even addressed north korea which is a more immediate threat. >> abhorrent behavior is a way of putting it. >> julia, if you were in russia right now, you're thinking okay, we have a good chance with the trump guy. we're not exactly sure what's in the background, but there's something in there. he's been bending over backwards to be -- on the other hand, you have the secretary of defense sounding like every other secretary of defense in the past. you have mike pence attacking russia. you have the united states congress passing legislation almost unanimously. how does russia lead that? >> well, when i saw the response from russia, i was thinking i don't know that it would have been as extreme if mike flynn

hadn't led the russians by the nose and told them you know what? these will probably be the shortest sanctions in american history. we'll come in and do it. don't worry about it. and the russians didn't retaliate immediately in december. and then you have the negotiations that didn't go anywhere between the state department and the russian foreign ministry about getting properties back in the states. they didn't go anywhere. i think when vladimir putin announced this last night on a tv show with a very famous host, he said our patience has run out. i wonder if it would have been this bad if there hadn't been this hope and this dashed hope. if it had just been from the beginning you interfered in our elections. okay, we have this mutually distrustful posture to each other, as opposed to we can get this done. we can get this fixed.

don't worry and kicking the can down the road until it's unmanageable and dashed expectations lead to anger on the russian wide. >> we were talking with bod woodward before about parallels between nixon and trump. i remember when water gate, reading about leaders and soviet leaders not understanding how a president couldn't handle a situation that nixon was going through. it was foreign to him. it's going to be so foreign to vladimir putin, a guy who gets whatever he wants and russia, one of the most powerful people in recent history of the world to have donald trump being thwarted by members of congress from less taxes, in des moines and all over the country. this has to be bizarre to vladimir putin. >> it's not just that it's

beyond his imagination, but also he clearly prefers this political outcome. now because of what congress has done rather than the better relationship that was obviously what he was hoping for, he now has a worse relationship. in some ways it undermines the interrationale for what putin was trying to do which was bring about a political outcome in november of last year that was to russia's benefit. i think now for the administration, the question is how do you proceed? i would argue against further tit for tats. instead, i would look at ways of toughening up american policy toward russia. we should look at what can we do to make vladimir putin's life more miserable at home. i think the real issue is whether we take steps to take care of nato. the real question is whether we get serious to prevent what i think would be the major crisis in the world which would be russian temptation to do to a nato country what it did to

ukraine. now the is moment to em price a more robust view for nato. >> we're talking about a skit fr -- skits frchizophrenic approa russia. the same thing with nato. it seems like the policy now has caught up to american history. what do we do moviing forward? >> his immediate, his initial posture toward nato, he did fix that, but he hasn't taken seriously enough what russia did to ukraine. and let me just connect the two big dots here. russia and north korea. because what the data show is that russia has been increasing its economic aide to kim jong-un dramatically since february, since donald trump became president. it's not only china that is ignoring his pleas and backing this north korean regime.

but also russia is propping up kim jong-un. both of the countries are to so afraid of u.s. dominance in the korean peninsula, of reunification and the u.s. being the big power that they are willing to tolerate a nuclear north korea on their border including this unpredictable leader. >> david ignatius. >> i want to ask julia a question. some of the people i was talking with last night about the russian actions were saying after a time of steady response, the u.s. needs to think about sending a very private emissary to moscow to see if we can talk about the terrain of a relationship that works better. people mentioned the obvious names, jim baker, henry

kissinger, bob gates who all know russia well. what do you think of that idea? >> i think it's possible, but if there were a normal administration in place. again, we have a president who sits atop a completely uncoordinated policy apparatus, and he tends to tear the rug out from under any of these people. i can't imagine, for example, dr. kissinger going to moscow who is respected by putin, having an interesting conversation with him, and then getting blown up on twitter by the president. what would that achieve? >> andrea? >> i would just say, david, that would make sense normally, but at a time when there was the russia investigation, how would you deal with all the suspicions of some sort of private emissary? in dire times we could go to china and talk and resolve a

crisis at the beginning of the bush administration. how do you do this when there's this unknown factor which is robert mueller and the russia investigation? it would create a lot of problems potentially for the white house as well. >> we have to go, but quickly, do the russians consider this to be the low point in u.s./russia relations since 1991. >> i don't know about since 1991, but they consider it to be a low point. this goes to what richard was saying. this is not the outcome they hoped for, and this should remind us that when we think about vladimir putin as this master strategist who always gets what he wants, he didn't get what he -- he did and then he didn't. he got donald trump, but then things didn't go his way. he tends to win short term and then things blow up in his face long term. just something to consider going through. >> mick jagger school of foreign policy. >> of course. as well as what they call the counsel in foreign relations.

>> you have a jagger wing, right? >> we do. >> yes, sir michael jagger. >> thank you to you all. if you listen to the conversation all morning, perhaps the past few months, but it's crystallizing. this white house, nothing can happen. it's impossible for anything to function productively until the president stops tweeting. because every conversation and even about like a strategic vision with russia or china or north korea, every one ends with the problem is the president tweets. the problem is they'll get undermined by a tweet. the problem is every step of the way the president shoots himself, his administration, and his foreign policy in the foot by a tweet. >> by the way, if you send henry kissinger to russia, and when he's flying back if there's anything critical side of the president, then before henry kissinger lands in the united states, he's been attacked by donald trump? >> yes, and you wonder why with

the decades of experience they have, why they would take the risk of going out on a limb. they love their country, but i don't know if they feel like they can be successful if they don't get the backing of the president and they can count on it. >> still ahead on "morning joe." >> there's a guy totally disruptive, throwing punches. we're not allowed to punch back anymore. i love the old days. you know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? they'd be carried out on a stretcher? >> guards are careful with him. like to punch him in the face, i'll tell you. >> so if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? seriously. okay. just knock the hell -- i promise you, i will pay for the legal fees. then candidate donald trump was accused of inciting violence in his campaign rallies. now president trump is under fire for urging police to get

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all right. joining us now from the white house, peter alexander. the president is facing backlash this morning for some comments he made on friday. we thought we were done by friday morning, but he kept on going. >> reporter: yes. the sort of public riffs are the equivalent of the tweets except he says these aloud speaking before police officers in suffolk county. this is the second straight public speech where he's earned a rebuke or apology from the event sponsors. remember the boy scouts earlier last week. these made the president take heat where he appeared to endorse the treatment of rougher treatment by police officers. >> you see them thrown in rough,

i say please don't be too nice. like when you guys put somebody in the car and you protect their head. you know? you put your hand over -- like don't hit their head. and they've just killed somebody. don't hit their head. i said you can take the hand away. okay? >> reporter: a lot of those officers behind african-american from that police department. the police department quickly tweeted the following. they wrote the scpd has strict rules and procedures related to the handling of prisoners. viegtss of the rules are treated seriously. as a department we do not and will not tolerate roughing up prisoners. then we heard from the biggest group that oversees police chiefs in america. they wrote law enforcement officers are trained to treat all individuals with dignity and respect. this is the bedrock principle behind justice. there was a backlash from one coast to the other, the nypd

calling the comments unprofessional. in boston the bottom line they said our job is to help, not harp. >> all right. ? >> he had a speech. >> as you say, tweets and ad libs. a paddy wagon also. >> good lord. >> wait. >> it starts -- >> straight out of the song "the night chicago died". again, there was some people thinking he was just joking. >> he wasn't joking. >> but even if he was just joking, you do not joke in front of police officers about abusing suspects. >> well, it shows the character of the police officers, a lack of conception. when president obama went out and spoke about his issue, he said, of course, there are bad police officers, but the overwhelming police officers are dedicated public services trying to do the right thing and help

people. donald trump obviously thinks that police officers are equivalent to some third world para military thug force that should be beating people. a presumption of innocence of innocence in this country, and again, it's just another degradation of the office of the presidency. presidents don't talk like that. it's important, i think, increasingly to be focussed on the lack of normalcy of it all. >> and michael schmidt, self-inflicted. there were local police force and the national association having to correct the president because he was wrong. again, weakening him. another chip of blurting, shooting himself in the foot and having to be corrected by base irk norms. >> i wonder at what point do the president's words start to cheapen themselves and we start to pay less and less attention

to what he says. as the president we pay attention, but it will be interesting to see if the media starts to tail off and ignore these things and starts to ignore what he says because of so much what he says is either not true or is controversial in ways that don't really help the dialogue. >> wait. what do you think? >> i think the media has a tendency to not have a great attention span and will slowly, the tweets will become less and less interesting, and we'll start to focus our attention on something else. >> when they're all so devastating, it is hard not to get desensitized. michael, thank you very much. still ahead this morning, alec baldwin does quite an impression of donald trump. but is it donald trump doing a baldwin character really? "morning joe" is coming right back. (vo) a lifetime of your dog's

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do democrats need new leaders with new ideas? >> let me say this. self-promotion is a terrible thick, but somebody's got to do

with it. >> i agree with you. >> eye a master legislator, i know the budget to the nnt degree. i respect the people who are in congress. >> congressman joe crowley of new york, always great to have you here. >> thank you. >> you understand that running against trump will not put democrats back in power. >> i do. i think that's what the better deal is all about. the dislike for donald trump, but what do democrats stand for? >> what are the specifics? u the specifics are to a better deal, better jobs, better wages and a better future. >> how do you get that? >> i think we need to have a robust infrastructure plan.

they're building bridge, but for the future. that's what i think -- just go right at it. wet to grin jobs back to america. >> steve? >> look, i think that politically democrats have a couple problems, one i think of party leadership, you have an old party of old leadership. it's stifling the ability of younger democrats to rise and put a new face forward. >> right. >> you just saw it play out in the state of california, single payer which the democratic legislature voted down, a $450 billion a year. i think increasingly you'll see a contest in a democratic presidential primary where everybody is leapfrogging everyone toll left, free college, free single payer,

country's $22 trillion in debt. these issues could be as ultimately fantastical as trump's magical wall. >> i do see a move toward single payer. i think much of it is aspirational. i think the expansion through the affordable care act is in essence a movement towards that. i think that's good, make sure as many people can be covered. >> how many you bring back, you'll lose more than that because of artificial intelligence, robotics, what's the democratic thinking about the future? >> that's my point. people don't want to be retrained at 50, 55 years of age. they need those jobs now that can help bridge that connection to the future economy. i recognize automation is on its way, but there is an opportunity here for this generation to prepare the next generation for that. that's what they're longing for. and by the way, we need to make

these investments. we need to invest in roads, tunnels, bridges, broadband, hospitals, schools, those are what we should be doing. >> what's the advice you're giving to people who are think being running for hive? one of the keys to democrats' success is recruiting good candidates. >> your country desperately needs you right now, that -- >> but how do they win this. >> but that all politics is local. i've said this before. the russia stuff is going to take care of itself. i think there is a lot ofening we need to be concerned about. north korea, and richard has talked about finding those answers, how to respond to north korea and russia, but it's about local politics, it's about how you spy to your constituency. you grew up in queens, the other side of the tracks from donald trump, but, you know, i can speak to those kind of voters. that's what i'm doing around the country as well. congressman, thank you for

being with us. >> thank you, joe. president trump returns are retired general john kelly, we'll dig in. and michael moore will be with us on set after warning democrats in the election that donald trump could win. what is he saying now six months into that presidency? back to "morning joe" in a minute. we, the people, are tired of being surprised with extra monthly fees. we want hd. and every box and dvr. all included. because we don't like surprises. yeah. like changing up the celebrity at the end to someone more handsome. and talented. really. and british. switch from cable to directv. get an all included package for $25 a month. and for a limited time, get a $100 reward card. call 1-800-directv.

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who the hell wants to speak about politics when i'm in front of the boy scouts, right? anyone aboard a big yacht -- i won't go any more than that. >> i did not colewd with russia. >> beleague erred a.g.? >> the hottest people in new york city were at this party. >> to leak that is re unp unprofessional. >> attorney general jeff sessions has taken a very weak position. >> i want the attorney general to be much tougher. >> i asked whether or not you think i will someday be on mt. rushmore. >> hermetically sealed team from this sort of nonsense. >> the way i blank-blocked

scaramucci -- it's the f-bomb, i think. >> no, it didn't. >> welcome to the president's failure friday. >> you can take the hand away. >> it's unfair to the presidency. that's the way i feel. know that his mommy voted for us. >> one of the great things about this president is you all know where you stand. >> the president tweeted just named general john kelly -- >> we don't even have water polo. we don't have a watermelon. >> that was just one week in the presidency. >> you started failure friday. it actually acsol rated as you moved forward the end of the day it accelerated. >> into a woeful weekend. james langeford it summed

that up -- what a week. controversy, a man cut from the team. what will this week have in store? i'm scared to ask. good morning, everyone it's monday, july 31st welcome to "morning joe" and the monkey house. we have now josh earnest here with us. the president of the council on foreign relations and author of the book "a word in disarray" richard haas. former chief of staffed to it george w. bush, andy card, and senior politics reporter at "usa today" heidi przybilla. good to have you all aboard. >> let's put things in context quickly. david ignatius, as we were saying, mika tagged it as fallier friday, yet, as the day went on -- >> it kept going. >> -- things got even crazier.

you look at the health care laws -- >> the speech to the police. >> -- everything he said, reince being fired and then telling police officers, go ahead, take your hand off -- >> rough them up. >> again his toughest defenders said that was a joke. that's not like any joke that any president has given before. just what was last week? >> it felt like a tornado blowing through. now we're in a position after the hurricanes come through, looking around at what's the damage? how is it getting fixed? where are we going from here? i think we're all focused on general kelly, the new chief of staff. he's shown the ability to be a good, strong, supportive associate of very different people.

he was the military adviser, first to secretary gates, then to secretary panetta, seamless transition. clear that president trump is reaching out for a figure of order and stability. my question, joe and mika, does he know that at the end of this catastrophic six months, at the end of a week that highlighted what's wrong, does he know that he really is the problem? >> none of this matters, though, general kelly, none of this matter if daughters, son-in-laws, bannons, if people can wander if and go around the general. >> scare mariuccii? >> the mooch made people -- it's a zero-sum game, isn't it? if one person can get around the chief of staff, everybody can get around the chief of staff.

>> this is preoccupation with who reports to the chief of staff. the truth is every commissioned officer, special assistant to the president, deputy assistant to the president, reports to the president. however, they must respect the chief of staff, because the chief of staff is held responsible for what's going on. i had a test of needs versus wants. if you need to see the president, go see the president. if you want to see the president, do not go. >> right. >> most people cheat, and they come with this need, a very thin veneer of need, and i had this rule, i want to know as the chief of staff before, during or after you have seen the president. if i don't know that you saw the president and the did, you went there for the wrong reason. so it's the discipline. general kelly i think will bring discipline. the president has to allow that

discipline to take place. >> that's the question. >> because he wants to hoff the chief of staff accountable. >> the board writes this -- president trump announced late friday on twitter -- hoe else? -- that he's replaces reince priebus with john kelly. the decision was probably inevitable how the president publicly humiliated mr. priebus in recent days, but this shuffling of the staff furniture won't matter unless mr. trump accepts the white house problem isn't mr. priebus, it's him. presidents get the operations they want. mr. trump has a chaotic mess, because he seems to like it. he likes pitting faction against faction as if his advisers are competing casino operators from his atlantic city days, but a presidential administration is a larger undertaking than a family business and the infighting and

competing leaks from created a dysfunctional white house. also, you do have to wonder who also will go given the fact i think he humiliated the attorney general far worse than he ever humiliated reince priebus. >> expect that jeff sessions doesn't field humiliated. jeff sessions has a base. jeff sessions knows that if donald trump fires him, it will get ugly. were those hollow limp accusations? >> you don't have to channel peggy noonan this morning. >> no, i'm saying did they mean nothing? >> he expect jeff sessions to be bullied, and he expected jeff sessions to just whimper away, and jeff session has made it known. if donald trump wants to fire jeff sessions, he can fire jeff sessions. that we saw this past week how devastating that would be with his base, because again, i hate to keep bringing this up,

donald trump was a democrat until 2011, until he discovered birtherism and a racist theory against a sitting black president would actually help him in the republican primary. he's gave money to hillary. he gave money to, gosh, hundreds of thousands to the dnc. he gave money to schumer. you name it. he gave money to rahm emanuel, scaramucci gave money to president obama. so, you know, he can point at the media and call it fake media, but if you go after jeff sessions, which the republicans have known for decades. >> which he did. >> and you fire that guy, suddenly you saw what we saw last week, a lot of contingent serve tiff analysts coming out and saying, a bridge too far, brother. >> the senate republicans have

made clear they're not going to confirm a replacement to jeff sessions, which certainly giving the attorney a lot more leverage that he already would have, but we are startings to see the institutions of the u.s. government start to stand up and say no, we're not going to get pushed away. that's why you have police officers saying, no we're not going to tolerate this loose talk about roughing up suspects. the boy scouts saying, this is a civic institution where we preach values, we don't try to use these kids as a prop for politics. >> this is a great point. we've had the courts push back. we've had the legislative branch push back hard against the president. we've even had this past week the leader of the boy scouts as an organization. we've had police officers organizations doing the right thing. everybody is pushing back against the excesses. even chuck grassley this past week said, yes, you can fire jeff sessions, you're not

getting anything in return. >> that's what's important about this russia sanctions legislation that was passed. >> that's a big push-back. >> probably the biggest one i think that is trump has faced from the congress. it was bipartisan and is on a cord with a national security issue, where trump is already quite sensitive. 'we go through the summer and the fall, and raising the debt ceiling, what role are republicans and democrats and the congress going to play together to make sure we're protecting these important norms that president trump seems to think are not that important. >> richard, the russian sanctions bill was the highlight of this past week. but you look at what's happening in north korea. while all this chaos is going on, more troubling news out of the north korea. >> that's in some ways the big story, this jection that position of a world that's coughing up enormous challenges, north korea, what's going on in

the middle east, russia, that we have as crowded and as demanding a foreign policy inbox as we've had in modern times against the backdrop of an administration in disarr disarray. the other thing we left out ways health care. all these dynamics going on and consumed by personnel issues, consumed by political issues, but the world doesn't say we're going to give you six months for a year to time out, america. the world doesn't go on pause. think about it, joe, we have yet to have a real international crisis. all the crises of this administration are essentially self-generated. they're coming, i don't know if it was be a iran/saudi war, russia, could be venezuela, but real crises are coming down the pipe. is this administration even beginning to be ready. still ahead, michael moore is here with his new project

borne out of the presidency. congressman kevin brady, who chairs the ways and means committee, but first the u.s. brings out the big guns following another missile launch by north korea. president trump voices his frustration with china on twitter, do the tweets or the show of force do anything to stop the nuclear showdown? you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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[ phone ringing ] hi mom. it makes you wonder... shouldn't we get our phones and internet from the same company? that's why xfinity mobile comes with your internet. you get up to 5 lines of talk and text at no extra cost. [ laughing ] so all you pay for is data. see how much you can save. choose by the gig or unlimited. call or go to xfinitymobile.com introducing xfinity mobile. a new kind of network designed to save you money. the u.s. along with south korea and japan conducted a ten-hour show of force flying over the korean peninsula and japanese airspace. it comes in direct response to north korea's test of another intercontinental ballistic missile on friday that experts say has a range that includes much of the continental united states, possibly as far as the

east coast. however, the accuracy is in question and it is not believed that they have the technology to add a -- president trump talked to twitter -- i'm very disappointed in china. our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions in trade, yet they do nothing for us for north korea, yet just talk -- >> wait a second, mika. isn't this quite an about-face? i thought trump said one dinner would take care of the problem. >> we've run up against the limits of chocolate cake. >> the most wonderful chocolate cake you have ever seen.

it's just a fool's hope. >> david, we've been talking about the first six months. how embarrassing if they were capable of shame, this administration has to be, our embarrass metropolitan, just look what they have said they thought a trip to mar-a-lago, a beautiful hog lat cake would intimidate the chinese, and they believed they were going to bring peace to the middle east with a couple quick trips. they have expressed their surprise that it's not as easy as it looks from your living room in trump tower. that recognition may be the beginning of reason. i think the outreach is a

recognition that the only plausible way out of this mess is with the chinese help, perhaps with other neighbors. that was correct, for him to go back on the warpath you let us down. >> the smart move actually was after insulting the chinese trying to understand how we could forge a partnership. >> the challenge now is that trump has to let the a-team assemble, and we have outstanding people. let the a-team assemble and let them roll out policy that's systematic. tulane your time. that's true with north korea, that is true with russia. russia has presented us with

a -- >> so you know general kelly well. tell us about general kelly. talk about general kelly coming in as chief of staff do you foal better this morning than you did friday? >> i do, in the sense i think we have a buffer against the worst outcomes that would happen with this impulsive, inexperienced president general kelly has seen a lot of the world. he's seen command in iraq, and he raced to -- and they asked how does it mean? he says, hell, we're marines. how do you think it will go? he has the command energy he understood what had been accomplished. interestingly, he came back to be the top military adviser

first to secretary gates then the leone panetta, and it was seamless he as a master bureaucrat, also loyal to the guy he works for very loyal to donald trump. i hope he can realize a real process and that process is going to be the sort of systematic development and implementation of policy no question he can do it. will trump give him room? we'll just watch. the must-read opinion page is next on "morning joe."

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? the value of capital is to create, not just wealth, but things that matter. morgan stanley

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nick confess our, and ruth marcus, and "national review" correspondent kevin williamson, who inspired that bump and bite, with his new piece, death of a bleepin' salesman. >> our only regret here, kevin -- >> we can't read the whole thing. >> i'm serious. even though we have a three-hour show, we can't rae the entire column. we read the punch line, but the setup is what's extraordinary. earlier we read a bit from the piece. >> these guys don't want to see alec baldwin in glen gary glen ross. they want a swagger, to you are can, to insult, exercise power, exercising power over men being the -- which is, of course, is

what this and nine tenths of everything else in human affairs is about. hence the cartoon tough guy act. scaramucci's star didn't fade when he gave that profane interview in which he reimagined steve bennett as a -- but his best impersonation of the sort of man that the president of the united states, go god help us, aspires to be, but he isn't that guy. he doesn't blake. he's poor, sad old shelly levine, who cannot close the deal, who spends his nights whining about the unfairness of it all. kevin, set it up for us. you were talking about the revival -- for people who haven't real the whole column yet, set it up for us. explain it. >> well, i guess where i should start in tra dill action italian

theater, there's a stock it comedy character, and his name is scaramucci. maybe i should start looking this as a theater critic. so it occurred read that's correct interview that normal people don't talk like this. my theory is these guys have just watch glengarry glen ross too much. >> there's a scene that a lot of -- >> there's a famous monolog in the movie character called blake, played by alex balance win. it's in the movie, but not in the play. i marriedy the play in 2012, you could tell they were movie fans,

they were reciting lines from the famous monolog. and this were add what they don't seem to understand is this character is a creep, a cartoon, but the kind of person think aspire to be. this abusive kind of cartoonish executive figure, but that is their kind of weakened debased idea of what masculinity looks like. the punch line, it is end what kevin gets to, steve, is it's not black that -- donald trump is not blake, he's actually the sad, beaten down pathetic salesman who had a middling career and can't close the deal. >> i'm old enough to remember when the republican party was the party of personal

responsibility. one of critiques of liberalism in that era was that the democrats were the party of victims. and to watch the republican party particularly under this president become the victim party, become the grievance party, there's always someone doing something to donald trump. he's perpetually and forever the victim. from a character perspective, you just have never seen that type of weakness as a virtue manifested by the american head of state and commander of chief of the world's most potent military. >> the president just tweeted. it's important to know as we pass it to nick next -- highest stock market ever, best economic numbers in years, unemployment lowers in 17 years, wages raising, border secure, supreme court -- of course, that's his one thing. no white house chaos.

>> i refer a few years ago a kroimpsial story about the trump vot voter, and the politics of grievance in trump country. is there a connection between the complaints oufds presidet o president, your theory about the salesman problem, and the rapture support he has some a certain segment. is there a connective tissue there? >> i think it's status anxious zeile. particularly blue collar men looking at what middle-class life was like in the post-war era. the story that's not entirely true, where you can just get out of high school, go to a factory, make enough money to support a family, buy a house, retire and get the gold watch at the end, the 21st century, the economy is more complicated than that. it turned out the previous economy was more complicated

than that, too. it has -- in a long time, more than they expected to be, and so i think this does drive a lot of anxie anxiety. so there's a lot of political juice to be gotten out of it's not our fault. it's these scheming chinese or sneaky mexican stealing our jobs, because we know all those guys in long island want to be out there picking avocados, so i think there's a connection with that kind of anxiety, with their place not only in the economy, but in society. so let's talk about your piece, daily the president's boundless anxiouser seems to find a new target. he is variesly unhappy with his lawyer, his strategist, his press secretary. there's although someone else

for trump to blame, never himself. he appears incapable for, primarily because hi's uncapable of and unwilling, he cannot govern himself. perhaps things will settle down, but that is hard to imagine. the past six months feel like p prol prologue. >> when it looks at all the different failures or missteps that have happened, either off his twitter feed, or out of his mouth from an ad-lib. it's never been something that's prepared for business hi team that he blames a lot of the time. >> well, i think that's the scariest part, because what happens when an external problem occurs, when there's some kind

of crisis, a real serious foreign policy crisis. we've seen the instability in north korea and the threat of north korea. what happens if something really bad happens? what happens if there's a natural disaster? the fact that all of these wounds are essentially self-inflicted doesn't bode well for the abilities to sustain other wounds. i just was so depressed hearing you read that. i'm sorry i inflicted it on people. >> kevin, let me ask you a question that maybe you can answer that we could and i can't even as a guy that grew up and was in southern baptist churches for the first 40 years of mite life in the deep south. i still for the life of me don't understand why donald trump won in record numbers among

evangelicals, with the personality just go through the beatitud beatitudes. you're in dallas, the belt buckle of the bible belt, some would say. can you explain that? you explained working-class americans and why they would vote for donald trump. why evangelicals, a lot of them pretty highly educated? >> i think they were making the same choice, which at the end of the day it was a choice between donald trump and hillary clinton. i don't blame people for making that choice, though i blame people for being naive for what it meant. like a lot of people, they have fallen into the trap thinking what's missing in washington is toughness, this is why trump has this phony tough guy act. if actual toughness and courage were required, george h.w. bush would have been one of the most successful ever. he finished a combat mission

with his airplane on fire and a head wouldn't. if that's what we were looking for we should have elected john mccain, but what isn't missing isn't actually that. it's not as if there's a bucket of magical options out there. it's that we have very difficult and complex problems to deal with and unfortunately we elected a reality tv host to do that, and now we're all surprised we have a reality show. >> thank you, kevin. ruth will stay with us. up next congressman brady is in charge of writing tax law in -- wee ask him what that might look like, and whether anything he passed in the wake of the health care failure. also this hour, michael moore joins us on set. you're watching "morning joe." ♪

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felden, 50iers that the party had lost sway. i think similarly today, the party has lost its way. we have given into nativism and protectionism. i think that if we're going to be a governing party in the future and a majority part, we have to go back to traditional conservatism. >> joining us now republican congressman kevin brady of texas. good to have on you board. jeff flakes there. he's in an interesting position. some say -- just they're so at odds, but does he make a point about where the party is now? >> i don't know necessarily. look, what we're trying to do in health care is incredibly difficult. where we're going on tax reform, which is what i'm excited about, and frankly most of my colleagues are as well is the

american people, and exactly why -- we're going to make the case last week there was a lot going on, but what a lot of people missed was a pretty important step was the white house.and the senate coming together on bold principles. >> so we're moving towards -- the headline is, we are moving past health care reform, that debate and we are moving now into tax reform? >>. >> yes, and while i'm still hopeful that the senate can do something, i'm not ready to give up yet. there has been some evidence after schism, about tax reform being revenue neutral. as you fix the tax coat you're not adding.

>> so the key is permanence. my view is tax form needs to be permanent so, it hag to balance within the budget. the statement we made is our party is permanence so can you pro promise a neutral are -- >> that's my goal. >> we saw this debacle play out. a 13% natural approval level. there's no attempt in the house or the senate to explain to the american people, to make it popular. is it going to be the same road with tax reform? is there going to be any public communication effort to make it popular?

it will start in august there's people out there making the case for tax reform this year. the statement we laid out. it's about unifying behind principles, it's about urgency. it needs to be done this year to get the economy going, and the president supports this approach. so that was lost in all this other really important step. >> congressman, you talked about unifying. the president was tweeting this morning, essentially threatening subsidies that members of congress and their staff get for health insurance like the rest of us get from our employers. what do you make of that? is that helpful or hurtful to the cause the tax reform? >> yeah. so i don't think -- i think members are really focused on

incentivize to what is this doing to our folks at home? in texas we have lost nine insurers, the costs are skyrocketing, so our incentive on health care reform is, man, get this cost down, get some stability into health care. i think that's a huge incentive. it's why the house delivered. >> chairman of the house ways and means committee, congressman kevin brady, thank you so much. >> good to see you kevin. >> good to see you, joe. >> thank you. a one-man show aimed at taking down the president of the ups. best-selling author and award-winning film maker, matthew moore. he joins us next on "morning joe." why put another crossover on a road already filled with them? why give it headlights like jewels? a body that feels sculpted? why give it an interior where even the dash

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when this guy got a flat tire in the middle of the night, so he got home safe. yeah, my dad says our insurance doesn't have that. what?! you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™. liberty mutual insurance. joining us now michael moore. the terms of my surrender, is currently in previews and officially opens on all sew. welcome back to the show. >> thank you for having me. for putting me on. they knew not me to come on early. >> you were working on the body clock issue with his your broadway debut. >> we just had the first weekend. so it's -- it's eight shows a week. >> my goodness. >> that's a lot. >> it's quite a workout for

someone whose normal workout is, you know, opening up the next bag of chips. >> oh, that's good. what are people going to see when they come to surrender"? >> it's a piece of theater that i've written. it is a one-man show, but there are some surprises. and so i have a number of stories to tell, a number of ways to -- i try to answer the question how the heck did this happen. and how do we prevent it from happening again in ways that normally aren't being discussed on television. >> you were warning democrats before that donald trump could win this election. >> yeah, no, i went further. >> you said he was going to win it. >> last summer. but i was in michigan, though. >> how do you warn against something that you saw coming?

>> well, obviously i need better communication skills because i didn't conduct seed in convincing either fellow liberals or democrats that the tsunami was coming. and i could not convince people connected to the clinton campaign to please come to michigan and wisconsin. and now it's kind of like -- i have a thing in my show where there's like a 12-step program that democrats need to be in right now to make sure this doesn't happen again, because we've won the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections. all right. and yet we sit here this morning with no power, nothing. they have everything. democrats control six of the 50 state capitols. six. >> so tell me, what happened to the democrat -- we can obviously see donald trump's election but as we say all the time here,

democrats have lost a thousand state seats, governorships. what's happened to the democratic party? how did they get disconnected? and do you see anything coming out of washington from democrats that will reverse that trend? >> a better deal? >> well, part of this is that the democrats aren't really disconnected because hillary clinton got the majority of americans to vote for her. there were another 7.5 million that voted green or libertarian, so 10.5 million americans who said they didn't want president trump as president. >> in that race, right. >> yes. but i guess the other side knew there was this thing called the electoral college and nothing's really changing there in terms of -- you know, he seems to hold his support no matter, excuse me, what he does. >> why is that? why are there still people in michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania, ohio, still supporting president trump when clearly six months in he's overmatched for the job? >> because i don't think the

democrats have yet to offer what the alternative is. as we sit here today, even people -- we're going to take the house back and it's like really? where are all those great candidates for next year? i think people, especially people who watch this show, who are wired into politics and what's going on, democrats, liberals need to think about running next year or get people in your legislative districtser your state rep, state senate districts to run. find the beloved american in your district and run that person who can win. and i've said this to you before. we have to start running people who can win and people who are beloved by the american people and who understand how to talk, you know, to the american people. and that's not a knock on hillary clinton. it's just -- it's not just her. it's six out of last seven that we've won the popular vote. the american public is liberal on the issues. right? the majority of americans, women the same age as men, are

pro-choice, they believe that there's climate change, go down the whole list. americans -- they almost call themselves liberals but on the issues they're liberal. why do we hold no power? >> so i'll let you take it next, but a better deal is their slogan. you weren't sure -- >> i heard that. >> that's their slogan. obviously it doesn't really connect. >> three words, down to three word. lock her up. crooked hillary. i guess that's two. >> a better deal. but run candidates who can win, they tried to run a candidate in georgia. you can't run a candidate. a candidate needs to step up. it needs to be within him or her. >> yes. >> it needs to be the person that is the leader that steps up and people follow. and i just feel like they're trying to create constructs -- >> correct. >> -- instead of discovering talent. >> so true. there have been studies to show that when democrats try to sound like republicans locally

especially, move to the middle or the right, they lose. when they run as depths and run on the liberal issues that the majority of americans agree with, they win. there's something about democrats, they felt the only way we can win, we have to appeal to those trump voters or whatever. who we have to appeal to are 8 million obama voters that voted for trump. we can win some of though back. i come from a state where hillary lost by two votes per precinct. that's all she lost by, 10,000 votes. we can do this. we can get those people back. but it has to be a real concerted effort. and people cannot in michigan and wisconsin be waiting around for the democratic party in washington to -- they're not going to ride in on the white horse and say -- >> yeah. nick? >> so, okay, you said earlier this is a left country, so if america is a progressive country, how are democrats shut out at every level of government? they control nothing as you said. it's not rally possible in terms

of basic retail politics if the country agrees with you, you can't get elected. how is it possible? >> exactly. again, i think it comes down to running the right people. california is the experiment right now, so there's a state where democrats control both houses. the governor's seat. and things are getting done. good things are getting done. and that's only happening in six states. so this is -- as a real effort -- anybody watching this -- >> what's the disconnect, michael? why are democrats lose so badly everywhere? >> because they don't have the right people running. that's it. people watching this show who are democrats or who lean that way or whatever, need to think about running next year. even for local offices, school board, this is how the right did this. they did it the right way. i have such, as i said to you before, respect and admiration for the other side because they get the right people running

locally and then they have the courage of their convictions to stick to what they believe in and they are up at 2:00 in the morning last week still trying to do -- pass something that only 17% of the american people were in support of. you've got to admire the tenacity of that. >> josh, what do the democrats do? >> well, what democrats have to do is figure out how to communicate better. i think what michael is illustrating that so much of what we have done to try to advance this country is generally supported, not by everybody, and not certainly on every single detail, but in terms of fighting for values, making sure everybody has health care, recognizing the united states has to play a leadership role and respond to a bunch of challenges including climate change, making sure we have a financial system that isn't rigged against people. these are kind of values unifying for democrats. what's confounding about this is that the difference for trump, the difference for his success an the difference in flipping some of thee counties who have

gone for trump is these are the people most directly affected by these issues. >> that's always been sort of -- democrats have always asked the question, what's the matter with kansas? >> so we go back to remarkable video that you produced where you explicate why trump is going to win to voters. and you begin, you say, you know, people in michigan, they're not racist, they're good people, and you go through that. as a michigan guy, who comes to new york, who's on the west coast, democrats, do they have a problem with -- do they have an elitism problem, a cultural condescension problem that is demonizing these voter in states like michigan and wisconsin from hearing them on some of these issues? what's the difference when you come to manhattan between a manhattan progressive and a michigan progressive? >> funny, i was thinking that the other day because when i lived between these two places

back and forth, when i first came here, this was a state that had a republican governor, a republican mayor, was the home of rush limbaugh, his radio show came out of wabc, right? for new york being such a liberal place, i come from a place that gave us the middle class, where unions and other things happened to raise the standard of living for everyone. and those people are still there and struggling, but they've been left behind. and please understand, they don't love donald trump. there's no -- you know, people might have loved reagan or whatever, they don't love trump. they're angry. trump was their molotov cocktail to throw into a system that had not been there for them. we need candidates that will be there for them. >> ruth. >> ruth martins. >> i to totally agree, michael, with your diagnosis that democrats need to run the right people, but i'm kind of questioning, i want to push you a little bit, on whether the

best people, the right people are kind of coming at them from the left when democrats retook the house under the leadership of rahm emanuel. he ran people who were the right people for those districts, which were much more conservative and the kinds of candidates you're talking about. so why is he wrong and you're right? >> you're talking about 2006. >> mm-hmm. >> we're taub about 2018 now. every year there's 3 million more 18-year-olds that become eligible to vote. so we're a much younger country now, and the youth of this country don't believe in the old ways, they wanted bernie sanders, the last poll i just saw more of them support socialism than capitalism. these are the people that are going to determine the future. and i would reach out to a coalition of young people, women, and people of color and not be afraid to be real