tuesday morning. i'm yasmin vossoughian alongside louis burgdorf. "morning joe," everybody, starts right now. previously on the trump administration. >> i heard that your role is changing it at the white house. >> i'm right here. >> i want to thank personally sean spicer. this is obviously a difficult situation to be in. he's a great guy. >> "reince is a paranoid schizophrenic." >> i'm not reading this. no, you're not reading this. donnie, i don't want to hear from you. >> i just think it's an annoying distraction. >> he's a billionaire. >> everyone eats cheeseburgers and pizzas. what are you talking about? >> let's see where the chips fall. thank you. ♪ u take tyou take the good, yo the bad and there you have the

facts of life ♪ >> in case you missed the last episode, sean spicer resigned because of anthony scaramucci, who then pushed out reince priebus, which opened the door to john kelly, who then muched out -- pushed out the mooch. welcome to "morning joe." with us we have former aide to the george w. bush white house elise jordan, steve kornacki, former communications director for ted cruz's campaign, rick tyler, sam stein and willie's back. good god where you have been? >> i was away, i was across the street. the last time i was here, anthony scaramucci was not even a glimmer in our eye. >> what you have missed and in

what a short amount of time. our top story this morning really crystallizes the challenge for the new chief of staff. we'll begin with the report that says president trump overruled his closest advisers including family members when it came to the new york city about the story about donald trump jr. and russian advisers. it's really important for everyone to really keep in mind here the biggest issue may be the president himself. that may be the biggest challenge. "the washington post" citing multiple sources with direct knowledge reporting that the misleading four-sentence statement was personally dictating by the president flying home from the g-20 summit on july 8. think about it. he gets away from everybody,

there's attorneys, there's everybody wants to talk to him, gets on a plane and overrules his inner circle, his kids. according to the "post," presidential adviser and son-in-law jared kushner's lawyers knew how damaging it could be. hope hicks director of strategic communications advocated for a different approach. they say kushner's team talked about sharing everything, including the contents of the e-mails with the mainstream news organizations. hicks reportedly also spoke by phone with trump jr. about the transparency of the strategy, believing the complete story would eventually emerge. but as they boarded air force one, the president apparently

intervened, demanded that he describe the meeting as unimportant, that it was initiated by the russian lawyer and primarily was about her -- the adoption of russian children. according to people with knowledge of the discussions, attorney for president trump, john dowd called the story fakeness, incorrect and misinformed of no consequence. and another lawyer used similar language. willie, take it to the table. it seems to me that if this is true and if this is double and triple sourced at this point, --

>> for the president to say let's just tell them this is about an adoption and it will go away, it's not smart strategically. it answers the question as you're reading in great detail of "the washington post." >> what raised suspicion is the campaign doesn't generally take meetings about policy issues because you're trying to run a campaign. he had secured the nomination but he was still running against hillary clinton. there was no chance he was going to take an issue. this is a five-hour plane ride

coming back from the g-20. the entire staff is consumed in this inconsequential, meaningless meeting. then you have the president's lawyer, who apparently went out and lied for the president or the president is lying to his lawyer about the nature of the meeting. >> and on top of that, steve kornacki, there are serious questions that bob mueller might have about the president drafting this, if he did. >> if you lie to the press, can you certainly pay a deep political price but generally it's not a crime to lie to the press. if you think back to president clinton saying "i did not have sex with that woman," it's when he lies under oath.

in terms of what's on the record right now, there's probably not any legal jeopardy. >> elise, what would you be interested in if you were looking at the president, including his team for russia and you see perhaps inconsistencies starting from the president drafting a statement? >> i think it just goes back to the question why is president trump himself so involved in how the response is moving forward? why is he so consumed with what the response is going to be when it comes to this russia investigation and what is it that is out there that he is so worried about surfacing that he has a one-on-one with putin's translator at the g-20? just at the end of the day there's that big cloud of why does president trump address putin and russia in any terms? the other day putin said he's

going to ban offver 700 employe at the u.s. embassy in moscow, not a peep from donald trump. since when does he not respond to a slight. >> this for many my provide some hope, some order here, maybe people will report to somebody before they go straight to the president and maybe there will be organization inside the white house. then you see what happens when this president gets off on his phone with his phone or with his family, things happen, sam stein. >> keep in mind, this happened before general kelly or john kelly was chief of staff. i do think you're pointing out something interesting, though. when you unceremoniously fire and get rid of your chief of

staff, there is the possibility they might come around and bite you. i'm not saying they're responsible for "the washington post" story but you have to wonder what kind of stuff they can tell the press. i'm also struck by what willie said, which is there's sort of like this ham fistedness to all of this, this utter lack of discretion from the trump team about how they're handling all of this that is just puzzling to me. the cover-up is just so poorly executed that it's just raising all these suspicions. why is he in there crafting that statement? why is he talking to putin so much in why is he firing comey? i mean, everything he's doing leads a casual observer to say what's going on here? something must be happening. i'm wondering why they're so bad at being discrete. >> it raises the question again and again, to elise's point, whenever it comes to russia,

there's always cloud and smoke, never a clear-cut answer. and if this was an innocent meeting, why do you have this meeting with the president of the united states in the cabin of air force one. just say it's about adoption. if it's a nothing meeting, just say what it's about. just put it out there, say what it was about. if nothing happened in the meeting, just say what happened. >> their current line is this is something that is so rudimentary and benign that every campaign is interested in opposition research. in that's the ca if that's the case, why even go through the first step of attaching it to adoption policy? why conducoct some excuse of th? >> but in is what the president would have done when he was in charge of trump tower. they would say, we have it

planned out, here it is and he'd say no, no, we're going to do this. jared kushner and ivanka and his lawyers wanted to be transparent and the president just overruled it and blew it up. i also think it very interesting about the russian angle to all this because remember, president trump had an off-the-record meeting with vladimir putin. it went on for a long time. vladimir putin is now taking action for the united states for what obama did as he was leaving the administration and throwing out their diplomats. now he has finally responded because there was a promise made somewhere to putin that we will lift these sanctions and now that the congress has embarra

embarrassi embarrassingly for the president taken that away. there was no american interpreter in that meeting. putin could come out and say here's all the things we talked about, whether they're true or not. i think that's dangerous. >> i think essentially this is the big story of date and the d could unfold into more questions and more answers. the or story we have to get to is the story of yesterday afternoon, which really does say something about the president as well that we have to try and understand. after just ten days on the job, white house -- i don't even -- was he sworn in? was he cleared even? >> he was never cleared. >> white house communications director anthony scaramucci is gone. he was pushed out the same day the new chief of staff john kelly was sworn in, "the wall street journal" reports that shortly after taking the oath, the retired four-star general

urged scaramucci to resign. and scaramucci's profane remarks to "the new yorker" disgusted and offended the president. >> jared and ivanka. >> this says melania and ivanka trump, who actually advocated for him were a little upset at his language, like it was new information. take a look. >> tcan you describe what he found inappropriate? >> i said inappropriate for a person in that position. >> said what?

>> i can't really explain it any further than that. >> she can't explain it because this president has a hard time with what's inappropriate, right? how do you define what's inappropriate for this president? >> i'm more wondering, though, about the inner circle who pushed for scaramucci, let's just leave that story aside for now because it's kind of sad. >> his job was to push out priebus and spicer, mission accomplished. that leaves steve bannon to represent the establishment. >> sanders also made it clear that all staff will report to general kelly. so six months later they final le get they need a chief of staff that everybody gets in line behind, which could really help, you never know. i guess it's never too late to lose hope, even as late as sunday evening scaramucci told stephanie ruhle, he believed the

fallout from his "new yorker" int interview would blow over, but it was soon clear that mr. scaramucci would not be a fixture of the administration but a transitory figure. and seemingly above the fray of it all, the president tweeted "a great day at the white house." do i understand him as saying they planned this? nobody plans a mack track driving into the white house and spewing profanity. they certainly plan that. >> i have tired of the jared and

ivanka spin machine that is constantly trying to portray them as all powerful and powerless. they have so much control yet they have no control. and i was really disgusted by ivanka's tweet today saying she looked forward to working alongside general kelly. alongside? respect the chain of command in the white house. respect someone who served half a century in the military. maybe you could learn something. >> if anyone can rein in president trump, it will be john kelly. donald trump doesn't do a chain of command. if you think ivanka and jared aren't going to have a direct line to their father and father-in-law, you're sorely mistaken. i hope that john kelly can do

the job a chief of staff has done but i'll believe it when i see it. >> when you do have here is one thing that i think is sort of customary in a white house pup have a new chief of staff coming in saying i want my own people and i want the authority. you go back to ronald reagan, the shortest previous record for chief of communication was eight days, this was six. a new communications was installed, then a new chief of staff, howard baker, came in. the old one was pushed out because don reagan and nancy reagan didn't get along. there is somewhat of a similar dynamics playing out with had one. the so opera dynamics with this one go back much farther. but the thing at the core that we are seeing here is i think

something we've seen before, which is a chief of staff asserting himself early on and does raise a question of what will his authority look like a month from now. >> i'm surprised to see a tweet to work alongside john kelly. there's no one working alongside him. >> if you want your father to stop drafting statements that will get him into legal trouble, "the washington post" breaking the story, the exact quote is prosecutors typically assume that any misleading statement is an effort to throw investigators off track. this is like putting bread crumbs out for mule aeller and come this way, here's a little trail for you of all the things i'm going rogue with my family and with no experience to lead this country, instead we're just

going to try to get out of trouble we have made. they need someone in there to get all the people away from the president so he can focus on his job, sam stein, which right now if you look at the, what is it, ten failures in a row, many of them legislatlegislative, many political, some of them just morally embarrassing. it's time for the family to get out of the way. >> once again, i agree with willie. it's a shock, two times in 20 minutes. how do you make an effective chain of command when you have family under the chain of command? >> there's no way that ivanka and jared can take off their family hat and report to john

kelly. this is part of what people were worried about when you hire family members for that type of gig. again, the biggest enemy for trump is himself. so long as he can stop the tweeting and erratic behavior, maybe he has a chance to succeed. kelly's already making -- we have sources in the white house who are really encouraging him to go for it in terms of trying to found a democratic republican coalition for things like tax reform. but democrats feel like the well is poisoned a little bit here, that they can't really work with trump. and the truth of matter is that their base really doesn't want them to work with trump, too. i'm not entirely confident having done reporting on this that we're going to see some sort of showering with blossoming of bipartisan -- >> no. think of republicans. next hour we have republican senator jeff flake of arizona on the show. he has a new book out. in an excerpt he writes that the

republican party is in denial about donald trump. and he writes in part this -- it was we conservative who is upon obama's election stated that our number one priority was not advancing a conservative policy agenda but making obama a one-term president. the corollary to this binary thinking being that his failure would be our success and the fortunes of the citizenry would be presumably sorted out in the meantime. it was we conservatives who were largely silent when the most egregious and sustained attacks on obama's legitimacy were embraced. we conservatives have maintained an unnerving silence as instability has ensued to carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was anything

approaching normalcy required a suspicion of critical faculties and tremendous powers of denial. jeff flake will be our guest later on in the show. what do you want to say? >> i want to say it's about time someone is speaking up but jeff has been speaking up. he's in there and he's assuming the speaking for conservatives and i think that's good because conservatives, in my mind, conservatives who are adhering to principle and not just party label and what trump calls winning, winning, winning, my question as a conservative is if you win, what do we win? i want to know what the policy advancements are when we win? nothing is happening. >> the property. >> we -- the supreme court. >> well, that wouldn't have

happened without mcconnell. >> this president and his inner circle, why in the world -- what would they want to accomplish by at this point trying to do anything for this administration. >> you look at how president trump treats those who are most loyal to him. it's been crazy over the last couple of weeks to watch jeff sessions of alabama become a sympathetic figure who is suddenly this righteous arbiter of law and order to the left just because he has been so under attack by his former best friend and all-time supporter donald trump. so if that's the kind of treatment you can expect if you will not literally walk the plank for donald trump, then why make that risk and go in with him? >> remember, there's a

personnelmepersonnel me element on the jeff flake, front. president trump has said he has a personal layer where trump said i will primary a republican, a vote i desperately need in the senate because i don't like the guy and he hasn't been nice to me. >> we'll have more from senator flake when he joins us and we'll be joined also by senator bill cassidy, who was at the white house to revive momentum for blake and we'll talk to the former director of the government ethics office. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. whoooo.

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it's a new kind of network designed to save you money. joining us from washington, associate editor of "the washington post" and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson. you right that ivanka trump is part of the problem. and you write "foolish optimists expected ivanka trump to be a moderating force in the white house. but by now it should be clear what she's not part of any solution, which by definition means she part of the problem. apparently ivanka does apparently have real influence,

as in matters of personnel. she and her husband reportedly urged president trump to bring in foul-mouthed anthony scaramucci as white house communications director. seriously, that's the guy you wanted shaping the administration's message? scaramucci was dismissed monday after just ten days on the job. in her white house role she's not helping the nation and she's sure not helping himself. gene, there is sort of a strange reaction that she is having and different members of her staff saying they were insulted by his language. i don't know how you hire someone like anthony scaramucci and not know about his foul language. and have you heard the president's tweets and heard his foul language? this is like parallel universes

or something. >> and all of us being shocked that he used such language does not ring credible to me, does not ring true to me. what rings true is that they perhaps wanted him to come in and be like a hand grenade and blow some things up and so he certainly did that. but in the process he embarrassed and really disgraced the administration and the white house and thus the nation in a way that we should just never think of as normal. and i just sat down to write my column yesterday and i just said, you know, here's somebody who has been seen as a relatively sympathetic figure generally, but what is she doing and why is she there? why is she there as opposed to somebody who actually knows something about policy and knows and has some experience? >> well, and, i'm -- i mean,

i -- it's hard not to get a little bit too personal here but even this is a president who like tweeted at me what he tweeted and i don't know how you can be, you know, upset with anthony scaramucci when your father is lobbing out the most vicious, strange, unhinged tweets at news anchors. >> it's hard for you to make that point because it's about you, but, gene, mika's point is exactly right. >> i get the point. >> first of all, i've never known the trumps to be fragile flowers who are so frightened and scared by vicious lange badge but when he tweets something like that specifically about mika or anybody else on the people he's tweeted about, we didn't hear from them going to the president of the united states and saying, dad, you crossed the line. they haven't been upset or insulted when anybody else has used language like this. now for a guy like scaramucci,

who you pushed for, this doesn't pass the smell test. >> it doesn't seem to make sense. you can't equate those two things. and look it the perhaps the slightly bigger picture. the language is a big thing and the way he attacked mika and the way he has attacked others i think is a big thing. you never had a president of the united states do anything like that. and we what we were told, that ivanka and jared would be doing or trying to do in the white house, we're not seeing that either. so either they told us those things in bad faith or they simply are not effective in getting it done. >> you know, you mentioned, gene, that she's part of the

problem. and that point, elise -- she's very much like her father. and that tweet really does kind of add to that concept that she might just be literally like her father, especially in terms of some of these problems. to say that she's serving alongside john kelly is -- >> it seems to be very much about her and seem to be that as an adviser in the white house, she is basically staking out her territory and saying i am not going to be subject to the chief of staff's authority. and that's a very dangerous. >> what would make her qualified to serve alongside john kelly? can anybody -- come on, argue. i want to be educated here. >> and when she says serving, mika, serving how? >> why is she on par with a tore

are you kidding me? how embarrassing. >> when we started all this and they came to the white house, people said it could work, it might not work. it's pretty demonstrable right now it's not working and it's probably time for them to go. >> well, they lack the humility to make it work. they doesn't know what they doesn't know and they're unwilling to learn and listen. she's going to be working alongside this storied figure in the american military and in public service. >> you asks it's a family business it's a big business but it's a family business. it's been him, and.

>> yes, general john kelly is an honorable and good man. yes, he'll be good at his job. but the idea that ivanka and jared will not have a direct line to his father and father-in-law is preposterous. >> he couldn't have concluded because we were too disorganized to collude." now he's in charge. >> yeah. >> we'll be right back. ♪ well is seems to me you have been too much ♪

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all right, joining us now veteran columnist and msnbc contributor mike barnicle.

>> here's some of the last reince priebus, anthony scaramucci took general kelly's advice to resign yesterday after his predecessor, mike dubke quit back in may sean spicer hit after scaramucci's hiring. sallie yates, acting attorney general, michael flynn was fired, k.t. mcfarland, derek harvey was remanufactured by flynn's replacement h.r. mcmaster, walter shaub, who said he felt he could be more of an advocate for ethics if he left

the administration. he'll join us on the show this morning. left in there steve bannon, jared kushner and ivanka trump. elise alerted us to a tweet that i missed by ivanka trump over the past day, it would be like my dad when he was on the national security and madeleine albright worked for him, saying "mika, i'm going to have you come in and help madeleine albright today, just come in and you're qualified because you're my daughter." everything that ivanka has put on the table has been run over by this president. and now she brings in scaramucci and he's fired after ten days. how could she tweet what she

tweeted? >> she said looking forward to serving alongside john kelly, as we work for the american people. general kelly is an american hero. >> clearly she has a sense of entitlement that's given to her by her father, as does her husband, the sense of entitlement given to her by the president of the united states. she probably also has a flawed sense of her own importance at this stage, again, entitled by her father. she's going to have a different role, i think, now in the white house. she'll still have access to her father obviously. but, i mean, general kelly comes from the chain of command, 40 years, chain of command. when he was lance corporate, he knew that he was responsible for a private, he knew me was responsible for his weapon and anybody serving under him. that followed him all the way through his career of 40 years.

he has a sense of a chain of command, a loyalty to the chain of command but a larger sense of lo loyalty to his country. general kelly will be the guy you want there and if anybody does anything that he thinks harms the country, that's where the rubber hits the road. >> who does president trump roo expe -- respect? who has he talked about with any sense of reference, it's ceos and generals like general kelly. he loved calling him mad dog during the campaign. there is respect from this president for the chief of staff. there's never been anyone who could actually rein him in. but over the long term will one man in general kelly, as great a

man as he is, be able to rein in this president? that remains to be seen and it's never happened before. >> he would have to stop the president from tweeting on his on and every tweet will have to go through him. if that can't happen, this is a nonstarter. >> that won't happen. >> then this is a nonstarter. >> the front page story in the "new york times" today was about donald trump. would donald trump have been in position, would he have been able to just say this is the statement, nobody ask any more questions or would kelly have had the latitude to step in and say this is not a good idea, i'm not going to let this happen and would the president have said, okay, i'll defer to you. can the chief of staff do that? is anybody capable of doing that?

>> sam, off of what steve just said, i'm betting the first half of that equation would be true. the second half of whether the president would go along with it, no one really knows. >> and there's only so many hours in a day that kelly can be at trump's side. he's not going to be waking up with him when trump grabs himself cell phone off his bed to tweet. that's impossible. but kelly's tasks are more than just stopping trump from tweeting. one of his biggest jobs is to staff up this administration. i don't think people understand just what a crisis this administration is in with respect to staffing. if you go to any agency, any cabinet, at the sub level, at the deputy level, there is just no one there. >> the state department is just bereft. >> the state department especially. and people just don't get how much government functions at the deputy level. we focus on the principals but

if you get stuff done, it happens at the deputy level. there has been sincere and profound hesitation and this is where jared and ivanka don't help. if there's a perception that they're still power broker, they can go around and get their father, father-in-law to reverse course, there's still going to be hesitance to go and. >> reports say he's eyeing military drills just outside the edge of nato's eastern territory. that's next on "morning joe."

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mike pence is in the nation of georgia this morning and speaking with the prime minister. pence appeared to give a

meaningful revision to the trump administration's foreign policy slogan. >> in a word, i'm here to say america first does not mean america alone. >> the vice president also strongly condemned russia's occupation of georgia before discussing sanctions against the kremlin. >> president trump has called on pressure to cease its destabilizing activities. in a sign of our commitment, very soon president trump will codify the sanctions against russia. a better relationship, the lifting of sanctions will require russia to reverse the actions that caused sanctions to be imposed in the first place. >> all this comes amid reports russia is preparing military drills at the end of the summer which seconds sending as many as 100,000 troops to the area. the state and defense departments have drafted

proposals to send military e weapons to ukraine as that country continues to battle russia-backed separatist. what's the significance here in obviously you have the russia story and the campaign and all that that we're looking at and bob mueller is looking at. from a foreign policy point of view? >> putin is escalating. what is president trump going to do in response to that is the looming big question considering he's been silent in the days that follow putin banning over 700 diplomats and russian workers from working at the u.s. embassy. it's been strange silence, too, because president trump always responds to a slight, and so putin is seemingly escalating and it's not going to stop. he always follows a pattern of continuing to escalate. what is president trump going to do to counter it? >> not even a tweet about what putin did, throwing out 750 american diplomats. >> and hasn't he tweeted about a

lot less? >> yes. you think? >> and he tweeted about back in december when putin initially announced he wasn't going to take any action, that's when president trump said that's when he tweeted i've always said he's a very smart man. he had a response when putin said he wasn't going to take action. now, no response. >> he's tweeted about china. he's tweeted about other countries, tweeted about people. he's tweeted about all sorts of things. why not tweet about russia? because this is a big issue. >> and president trump j is he really going to sign this sanction bill? he has said that he will sign the sanction bill that's passed through congress that's lumped in or on north korea and russia, and that was the reason that senator rand paul and senator bernie sanders voted against him because it lumped in so many countries, but is trump going to be able to follow through on that? >> can't he? not for some reason. coming up "the washington post"

phil rucker joins us to discuss his report that president trump de dictated don junior's misleading statement about his meeting with that russian lawyer. plus one of the most outspoken critics of the trump administration. senator jeff flake. the senator from arizona joins us here onset. "morning joe" is coming right back.

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>> it was not a long conversation, but it could be 15 minutes. just talked about things. actually, it was very interesting. we talked about adoption. >> you did? >> yeah. russian adoption. i always found that interesting. he ended that years ago, and i actually talked about russian adoption with him which is interesting. because that was a part of the conversation that don had with n a meeting that, as i said, most of the people, when they call up and say, by the way, we have information on your opponent, i think most politicians, i was just with a lot of people, they say who are you taking a meeting with? >> that was the president of the united states telling "the new york times" about a week ago what he spoke to vladimir putin in his previously indisclosed meeting with the russian president. this morning reports that topic

of russian adoptions played a big role in the very next day when the president personally dictated a misleading statement about that with his -- about his son's meeting with that russian lawyer. that is incredible if true. welcome back to "morning joe." it's tuesday, august 1st. joe has the morning off. with us we have mike barnicle, e leez jordan, sam stein, harold ford junior, steve schmidt, and phillip rucker who co-wrote "the big story in the post this morning. we'll start with the report that says president trump overruled his closest advisors including family members when it came to the initial response to the new

york times story about a meeting between donald trump junior and a russian attorney back in 2016. now, those advisors reportedly pushed for full transparency, but were overruled at the president's personal direction. "the washington post" citing multiple sources with direct knowledge. reports that the misleading four-sentence statement was personally dictated by the president flying home from the g-20 summit on july 8th. according to post, presidential advisor, son-in-law, jared kushner's lawyers knew how damaging the e-mail could be, exple explicitly about white house and the campaign. hope hicks huddled with lawyers and advocated for a more transparent approach. in one scenario they said kushner's team talked about sharing everything, including the contents to the e-mails with

a mainstream news organization. hicks spoke by phone with trump junior about the strategy of transparency believing the complete story would eventually emerge. but as they boarded air force one, president trump apparently interve intervened. the president directing that president trump junior's statement describe the meeting as unimportant. he wanted it to say that the meeting had been initiated by the russian lawyer an primarily was about her pet issue, the adoption of russian children. in a forward cabin trump was busy working on his son's statement. the president dictated the statement to hicks which served as a go between between trump junior. also a special prosecutor who investigated the bush administration's leak of the cia operative's identity said prosecutors typically assume that any misleading statement is an effort to throw investigators

off the track. attorney for president trump, john doud, called the story fake news, incorrect, and misinformed, of no consequence. another one of his attorneys used similar language. donald trump junior's lawyers told the post, i have no evidence to support that theory of the president intervening. phillip rucker, is it fake news? how are the sources on this? and if the president dictated this, why would he do that? >> well, mika, it's real news. it's not fake news. it's based on pretty exhaustive reporting that my colleagues and i did with a number of advisors from a number of walks of life who are involved in this in different ways. we're very confident in our reporting and sourcing, and i don't know what went through the president's mind at the time. i can only say that he personally intervened. there were advisors advocating more transparent and more complete response that we get at

the facts of the meeting and the president wanted to be incomplete. he wanted to be misleading and that's what the initial statement was. when air force one landed that evening in washington, everyone involved in this decision knew that they'd have to be dealing with this story for many days to come. they knew the statement that the president dictated that went out under trump junior's name was not going to be enough to put this to rest. it's the decision the president made himself. >> it also symbolizes the job for the new chief of staff, because you have lots of people advising the president. please don't do this. try for transparency. this will come out, and yet, he overrules everybody when he gets on a plane. and has people with him that obviously can't say no. i mean, there were attempts to, but absolutely nothing could stop him. >> it speaks to the lack of

disldi discipline. the lack of impulse control. we have the president of the united states at the top of an organization in a way that is unprecedented in the modern history of the presidency, the nonstop disasemiing, lying, to the american people. coming home from an international summit which was not particularly successful. the failure to disclose to the american people the meeting with vladimir putin. the absence of an american translator, the nervousness of our most important pallies, but the instinct to lie and how offended john kelly must be by that impulse in the white house. and when you think of his task, obviously scaramucci, his removal was an important first one. but the next person who gets up there and tells a little kid lie that everybody knows they're lying about, what will the

gener general's reaction to be. to bring veracity back to a staff level to the white house. is that even possible with the president's spread lixs to constantly tell mistruths. >> there's also a post story. phil rucker can speak to this after i finish speaking. the sense that he's coming back from the g-20 summit. he is on air force one. domestically he's beset with the health care issue. internationally he's beset with syria, iraq, north korea, and afghanistan. and yet there's this apprehension/fear of anything having to do with russia, and then it consumes so much of his attention and energy flying back to washington. phil, in your continued reporting throughout the past couple of months, this seems to be a general theme, this fear of anything having to do with russia.

>> that's exactly right. and it's not just a fear about russia. it's sort of an obsession with russia. it's an eagerness by the president to play his own lawyer, and his own strategist and his own public cyst. he's hired all these professionals to defend him and his family members but he's taking it into his own hands. in some cases as is the case we reported in this air force one story, he's rejecting the advice to the professionals and following his own instincts which is dangerous not only for him but for the people around him. >> well, and another sort of symbol of the challenge for the new chief of staff is exactly who is making the decisions that led to the oust of the communications director. afterless than t-- after less to weeks on the job j scaramucci was pushed out. "the wall street journal" reports citing two administration officials that shortly after taking the oath,

the retired four-star general urged scaramucci to resign in a one on one meeting in his office. two sources close to the president say scaramucci's profane remarks last week to the new yorker disgusted and offended some of those close to the president including melania and ivanka who had initially advocated for scaramucci's hiring. >> you said the president found his remarks inappropriate. can you specify what he found disturbing about that? >> i said he found it inappropriate for a person of that position. >> to do what? >> i believe the comments that he made, he found those comments inappropriate. i'm not sure what's unclear. i don't think that it's complicated to understand that the president felt the comments were inappropriate. i can't really explain it any further than that. >> all right. sanders also made it clear everybody reports to general kelly. everybody reports to him.

the president tweeted at the end of the day, i guess he wanted to sort of put an exclamation point on the day saying it was a great day at the white house. ivanka trump tweeted that she looks forward to serving alongside john kelly. is there anything wrong with this picture? >> yes. she's not serving alongside john kelly. she's working for the white house chief of staff. this is the problem of having presidential kids around. it was inappropriate for her to be seated with heads of state at a g-20 table. it makes the country look like a banana republic. it's well past the hour where people ought to react to the idea that the inexperienced 34, 35-year-old son-in-law of the president should super cede the authority of the secretary of state. these are absurdities, and one

of the tasks for general kelly, and he is a great american patriot, but if the kids are still around, in their current position in the white house in six months, he will not have been successful. this is not how american government funks. this is why we have nepotism laws. of course family members can be close advisors and play important roles. george w. bush did for his father. president bush during the white house days told the white house chief of staff it was time to start packing the bags. but this level of engagement and involvement and the sense of entitlement clearly that emanates, almost that there's a royal pedigree that gives power to the family, it's un-american. it's wrong. and it drives part of the chaos. you can't manage the place when you have nepotism to this degree. >> but harold, what about the

argument that ivanka trump is a monitoring force for president trump? >> it's a good argument. it hasn't proven to be true yet. at the end of the day, to echo the points made, this is about donald trump. the pushing out of scaramucci yesterday, i wish him the best, but at the end of the day, this is donald trump. i think he deserves an oscar for his direction of anthony. he achieved something that others in the white house couldn't achieve. which is to get rid of rieprien priebus, but this is about donald trump. we'll know in about a week or so whether or not john kelly really has his arms around this white house. can he control the tweeting? just a few days ago we were wondering how the president could have tweeted out a change in military policy about how to treat men and women serving in this country in the military. until we get a directive from the secretary of defense, we went act. can kelly get his arms around

that, and if he does, maybe we can begin to talk about issues and seriously talk about tax reform, health reform. maybe we can seriously talk about a real foreign policy that we don't have at this point as it relates to north korea, syria, iraq, afghanistan, and ultimately can this president talk about russia in a first and forceful way that he should be. >> we're going to find out the answers to a lot of those questions you just posed over the next four or five, or six months. but sam, we know general kelly. we know his career. we know his dedication to the chain of command. we know the fact that he comes into this job laden with honor, valor, commitment to the mission. based upon four decades in the marine corps. what we don't know and what you're reporting and others are reporting have indicated is that his ability to handle the level of chaos in the administration under him, and you alluded to it earlier. the difficulty of retaining,

finding and retaining people to work in the white house. >> yeah. and there's a threadline through all of this. steve's point about the kids being in charge and the problems they face, i thought it was manifested perfectly yesterday. here you have jared kushner who is being dogged by the these russia allegations and his involvement in this meeting in the e-mails, and then also at the same time tasked with among other things, creating middle east peace, reforming the government, and solving the opioid epidemic. he's got all these things. and he's being distracted by russia. yesterday the administration's opioid commission put out an interim report by chris christie. it said declare a public state of emergency in the opioid epidemic. they want to authorize more resources to helping the epidemic in the country. no one is talking about it. even though this is under jared kushner's per sue, no one is

talking about it because there are so many other chaotic things happening in the white house involving kushner and don junior and ivanka and the president. part of what john kelly has to do is take the spotlight away from here and move it over here to the substantive things the president is doing or trying to do, and then maybe build some legislative progress off of that. >> phil, we'll end with you. the piece you worked on along with your team at "the washington post." there's a piece as well saying ivanka trump is part of the problem. you heard sam talking about jared. there's also don junior, who in your piece revealing the president was busy on a plane crafting that statement for his son, trying to get his son out of trouble. it really is an incredible narrative, family narrative that is taking up the presidency as rome burns. >> yeah.

it's a family business. donald trump has run his enterprises with his kids in power and floating in and out and him taking personal ownership. it's difficult to run a government that way. and he's finding these challenges in the white house, i think, jared and ivanka are trying to take or at least signal they're going to take a backseat to kelly for the moment. i can't imagine that's going to last. they have a huge amount of influence with their father and will continue to try to exercise that. as does don junior and melania donald trump and eric trump. >> i don't think they've signalled they're taking a backseat, unless alongside means a backseat. >> alongside does not mean a backseat, but i'm told that kelly has made it clear that everybody is going to theoretically report to him, including them, but again, they'll have the ear of the president and be able to work their own process around kelly, i'm sure. phil, thank you. and still ahead on "morning joe," republican senator jeff flake has taken on donald trump

from capitol hill. now he's taking on the president in a new book where he writes in part, we created him and now we're rationalizing him. he joins us next on "morning joe." ? ? sure, just sign up online. then we'll alert you if we find your social security number on any one of thousands of risky websites. wow. that's cool. how much is it? oh, it's free if you have a discover card. i like free! yeah, we just want you to be in the know. ooh. hey! sushi. ugh. i smell it! you're making me... yeah, being in the know is a good thing. know if your social security number is found on risky sites. free from discover. done.rs. super-cool notebooks. done. that's mom taking care of business. but who takes care of mom? office depot/office max. this week, filler paper just one cent with five dollar minimum purchase. ♪taking care of business.

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no one else lets you do that. see how much you can save when you choose by the gig or unlimited. call or go to xfinitymobile.com. xfinity mobile. it's a new kind of network, designed to save you money. joining us now member of the foreign relations committee, jeff flake of arizona. his new book conscience of a conservative a rejection of destructive politics and a return to principal is out today. in a part of the book you write from the republican party is in denial about donald trump. you write in part this. it was we conservatives who rightly and robustly asserted our constitutional prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government when the democrat was in the white house. but who despite solemn vows to do the same in the event of a trump presidency have maintained

a silence. to carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was normal approaching normalcy required a determined suspension of critical faculties. and tremendous powers of denial. if ultimately our principles were so malleable as to no longer be principles, what was the point of victories in the first place. all great questions. how are you being received among your colleagues? >> it just came out today so we'll see. >> but you've been raising these issues for quite some time? >> i've been concerned for quite some time. in the book we talk about being a conservative, what it really means. it means a lot on policy. i'm concerned that the type of policies going forward, protectionism, isolationism, are really not conservative values, and i am concerned about where the party goes if we embrace

those kind of principles. but also being a conservative means something in terms of demean and comportment. a conservative is nothing if particularly in foreign policy, if he's not measured and sober and predictable. our allies need to know that. we need to embrace our allies and recognize our adversaries, and to do otherwise is not conservative. >> so to ask you to go after your fellow conservatives or republicans would not be fair. but what about putting it this way. what were some of the key moments along the way? so far in the trump presidency where you and your fellow conservatives, republicans should have stood up and said no? >> well, i think, and i have to say many conservatives didn't come out with firing of jim comey. >> what were the big missed opportunities. >> the comey firing. you can fire the fbi director.

could have said last year he did things he shouldn't have done. the way he handled the campaign wasn't good, but the reason given, hey, the russia investigation, that should have set off more alarm bells than it did, and i think going forward we ought to be careful. there's concern that the a.g. may be fired. that would be a real concern. and i'm glad that some conservative are standing up and saying that certainly wouldn't be tolerated by capitol hill. >> senator, in the book you write a lot of things, but in particular you write about a meeting that bill buckley had with barry gold water had at a place in palm beach. gold water was not concerned so much with running against linden johnson or nelson rockefeller in a primary, but he was really concerned about the damage the john birch society was doing to the cause of conservatism within the republican party.

my question to you is what's your level of concern about what the freedom caucus is doing to the image of conservatism and the republican party given the fact that they cheered on, loved apparently, a health care bill that would throw more than 22 million americans off of health care? >> we can argue about what's conservative and what's not with regard to health care. i certainly think that obamacare needs to be significantly changed, if not repealed. i would love to repeal it and start again if it were up to me. about 200,000 oarizona people will wake up this morning without health care. they pay the fine but can't afford the policy. even bigger number have a policy but cant afford to use it because deductibles are so high. we're hurting out there in terms of where we need to go with health care. what i'm concerned about is policies on trade.

we have always been, the republican party, a free trade party. we're only 5% of the world's population, 20% of the world's economic output. if we don't find new markets for our goods, we don't grow. i'm concerned about where the party is going and the anti-immigration fervor. that's not a place the republican party wants to be in the future if we're going to be an inclusive party that speaks to a broader audience. >> in our interchanges with you over the years, and i've heard democrats speak about you. you're a friendly, open guy, but there's a level, and it's just image, i understand that, but image is important. there's a level of meanness to conservatism now in this country that's bothersome. >> i do talk about that in the book. you have to be meaner somehow, and that is not a conservative value. my biggest concern is we've got some huge things to tackle. our debt and deficit.

$20 trillion. we'll be adding $1 trillion a year soon to that debt. the only way to solve that, any decent budget agreement we've had has been when we've had divided governments. when republicans and democrats said we're going to share the risk. right now we don't have that. if we ascribe the worst motives to our opponents and call them clowns or losers, you lose the ability to sit down and solve the big issues and actually enact conservative policy. that's the paradox of all of this. somehow conservativism has become being mean or loud, and you can't enact conservative policy if you act that way. >> the president used the word mean first, just fyi. >> senator, speaking of a national debt as really an issue of generational theft. >> yes. >> and a moral issue.

$20 trillion in debt. how is it that supposedly curveti curvetive members are voting on a health care bill that touches a sixth of the economy with no idea how much it costs? to me that's not conservative. it's radical. and i wonder how the conservative movement has been hijacked by radicals who claim the mantle of conservativism. and specifically we think about the john birch society in the 60s. what's their equivalent today? is it a on talk radio or tv networks? what's the threat to conservativi conservativism, and why is it we have no regard to spending? >> conservative are nothing if they're not concerned about debt

and the deficit. limited government is the outline of conservativism. bill buckley got together with barry goldwaters and excommunicated the john birchers from the party. they were the emblem of responsibility. you can't embrace conspiracy theories or talk about alternative facts. there are truths that are self-evident, and we have to as a country agree on certain things. if we don't, we're going to have hard time moving ahead and solving the problems. >> hard times ahead. >> so just to be clear, senator mccain voted against you guys in arizona, he voted against the bill because he said he didn't have confidence it would go to congress. that thing would come back and hopefully we'd get there. if he fires mueller, is that a

catalyst to move forward with impeachment. >> i wouldn't want to say what it's a catalyst for, but we can't stand for that. >> you talked about the disposition and his demeanor. is that really the bigger issue here? because at least if you got to debating issues and policies in a serious way, a lot of what you're talking about would come out is you can't get to that because he has so much personal negative facade around him? >> and it's not just him. i point out in the book, this is not just a problem of this presidency. this was a long-time and coming. i entered in congress in 2001. i am after running the gold water institute. mcca mike joked with me once on the floor saying i feel like we're minutemen called to the battle front and now we're told the

revolution is over and now we're going to be talking about things like a prescription drug benefit or no child left behind instead of the big battles of ideas that republicans used to engage in. but we became a coarser party during that time. standing up with few republicans willing to stand up and say that's wrong, that's out of line. i think whether it's a republican or a democrat doing that, we ought to stand up and say some things should be out of bounds, and i think we're losing some of that. >> senator flake, you talk about just how important it is to actually have principles when it comes to foreign policy, and some of the damage that donald trump has done to our foreign policy, i'm curious, how confident are you in this administration's strategy when it comes to north korea? >> i have tremendous confidence in general mattis and rex tillerson. he's a great guy.

i do think president has picked a good cabinet and surrounded himself with good people. he's done some good things, i think. supreme court of justice is good. some good federal judges. i am on board with some of with what the president has done, but with regard to foreign policy my biggest concern is, as i mentionmentio mentioned, we have always stood for principles and have done so in a sober, consistent, predictable manner, and chaos is the last thing that our allies and adversaries need to be seeing. and i'm afraid they're seeing too much of that. and our respect for international institutions that we had a hand in or were the major part in building like nato. world trade organization. these kind of things, i think we need to respect and utilize to hold our place in the world, and i wonder about our standing around the world now. >> do you think the new chief of staff kelly can maybe help reign

in some of the chaos? >> i do. i'm glad he's there. i think there's a lot of respect for him on capitol hill. i like the start that he's got. and so i'm very hopeful that that will help. >> okay. the book is "conscience of a conservative". how today. senator jeff flake, thank you very much for being on the show this morning. thank you. >> still ahead this morning, katy tur who spoke with anthony scaramucci yesterday morning as he was being forced out. she joins us with her exclusive new reporting, and tom brokaw with a firsthand look at why many of trump's voter aren't going anywhere. we'll be right back. garfunkel (instrumental)

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joining us now katy tur and tom brokaw. good to have you both on this morning. katie, take us through the tick to be of the day yesterday. you spoke with scaramucci through the process. >> i spoke with him at 10:00 yesterday afternoon depending on the time line that you are trusting that's out there. that was either right as this was happening or it was right

before this was happening. and i asked him simply, hey, i'm getting back from vacation, how you doing? are you going to be reporting to general kelly. he said i would be willing to do that if that's what the president wanted. i would do anything for him, him being the president of the united states. and i said well, how are things going? he said i'm in the bunker right now. i trying to deescalate the situation referring back to what happened last week, and i think specifically that new yorker article. i'm told the new yorker article was just the last straw for everybody in the white house. it was a one straw and an early straw, and considering that the president himself has used colorful language in the past, but the blowback from that was intense, and that ultimately he could not survive that once it was out there. and they were not happy with the way that he handled himself. that being said, stephanie rule talked to him the night before yesterday morning, so two nights

ago, and he seemed fine. he didn't seem to think it was a big deal. what happened between her conversation with him and the conversation that i had with him where he seemed less scaramucci-ish. anyone who knows him, knows he has a lot of confidence. he seemed taken back around 10:00 a.m. yesterday morning. was that just as this was happening or was it just before this was happening? >> it's a little rich, isn't it, for the trump administration suddenly to be outraged and upset and fragile about colorful language. they wanted to put him in. he lost his chief of staff because of scaramucci. in the pace of about ten days the entire west wing was shaken up and then they let him go because of an interview and language he used? >> it is a shocking reversal. from indications we had, donald trump liked his language to that reporter and enjoyed the way

scaramucci was willing to go to bat for the president and really bolster him. and then to say this, that it was just too much for him suddenly. >> listen, what happened without knowing exactly, a four-star marine general made chief of staff was not going to tolerate somebody like scaramucci around him going around him to get into the oval office. if that had happened in the military, the guy might have been called up on a court marshal. what he did was exercise military discipline. scaramucci thought he was going to report directly to the president, and now a marine general is standing in front of him saying not just the language, but the idea that he would have the autonomy he thought he was going to have. seems it was military discipline with full effect. >> how does military discipline apply to the kids? >> that's hard to know. we'll find out over the next

several days what the new white house is going to look like because he's got a long, distinguished military career. he does have allies in the white house. the president called him in public, the best thing that's happened to the white house in his head of homeland security. so he's put him up and said he's in charge. and i think we'll see more changes coming along in terms of who reports chain of command and discipline and also the kind of language that people use as well. whether he can shut down the president on tweeting is another whole matter. my guess is no. maybe for a couple of days, and that's a big issue. i was going to tell you i've been in wyoming the last couple of days working on a 75th anniversary of heart mountain. it was a japanese internment camp. we're in a small town, community college, prosperous farm community. voted 70% for trump. i went around and said where are you now in 69.9, i'd say at this

point, and they blame us. they say you guys are all in the hands of the democratic party. they don't feel any connection between what we do and how they live their lives. and they're not entirely wrong. because they look at these shows, doing analysis and commenting, and they don't see anybody who looks like them or lives the lives they do. for me, when i raised, for example, the tweeting with one woman, she said oh, yeah, i know that is kind of troublesome, but that's who he is, and that's the one that they wanted in there. now, his negatives, obviously, are high across the country, but in hard core trump country, he still has a very strong following. >> fascinating. >> that's what i find too. they like he's a finger in the eye to us and to washington. but did you pick up any frustration that just from a legislative point, nothing is getting done even with donald trump there? >> yeah.

kind of one of the senior members of that community has been there forever, and he has a group of guys he has coffee with every morning. he said we have to find a way to work together. that's the big issue. the country cannot continue with this kind of division fuelled by both sides. but especially about the president who is in my judgment, using the worst kind of language and attacking not just the democratic party but now members of his own party about how you're going to get things done. the master at pulling everybody together was linden johnson. he had an outrageous temper, but he knew when to go backstage, work the crowd, found out how to get something done. you don't see that at all with this president. he's now turned on his party, which i think is terrible for the country. >> and the scaramucci situation over the past 12 days, any precedent for that? what did you think as you were watching that unfold in terms of, i don't know, any parallels you've seen in history?

it just seems to chaotic. >> it's representative of a lack of structure in the white house. i've covered the white house since the nixon days, and i was a keen student of it before that. and you always had a kind of border. as you know, when jim baker and ri on here, we talk a fair amount. jim baker ran it with a very strong hand. who was seeing the president, under what circumstances. who had one responsibility. they stayed on the menu for the day. here it's jump ball all day long, and you can't govern that way. you may have been able to run his empire here as a builder or in atlantic city, this didn't always work out very well. he's never had a corporate board of directors. he never had to report to anyone except himself. he was well known in this community for winging it and getting in trouble and then not

paying his bills on many occasions. >> katie, the final word here, but i think it comes down to the tweets. i think if you have a president still tweeting like this president, this chief of staff will not be successful even a four-star general. >> well, i think. my guess is, look, there's no need for general kelly to stay around if they don't play by the rules that he puts in place. there's -- he doesn't need this. he's got a distinguished military career. he has retirement he can enjoy. >> and what sort of mandate was he given by the white house? he may have been told he's going to be in charge of the staff, but the staff is only so much of the problem. if they go out and deliver a message, a message from the white house that donald trump undercuts the next day, their work is for not, and donald trump's not going to be happy with the way he's being defended if he's not being defended for what he believes he should be defended in the moment that he tweets. he just changes his mind so often. he's on every side of every issue, and he seems to have a hard time controlling himself

when he feels like he's under attack. john kelly, good luck to you. maybe you'll get him under control for a few days. we've seen that happen in the campaign and in the transition, and from time to time, but ultimately, somewhere down the line, a week, two weeks, maybe three weeks, donald trump does break and he does end up going out on a limb he's always gone out on. >> all presidents have tender egos. this one, i've never seen anybody like that, the slightest criticism of him, and he goes nuclear on everybody. >> unless it's russia. >> tom brokaw and katy tur, thank you very much. both of you. up next, some republicans are trying to bring the obamacare repeal back from the dead. we'll talk to senator bill cassidy who was at the white house yesterday talking about the possibility of a revival. and on tomorrow's show, an exclusive interview with goldman sac's ceo, and former new york city mayor michael bloomberg.

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joining me now is phil cassidy. sam has a question for you. >> thank you for being with us. >> hello. i know you are pushing your healthcare plan. opening threats to under mind obamacare and letting it fail is his wording. would you advise him to do that or things like that or would you encourage him to keep obamacare

in place of the time being. >> a couple of things, sam, by the way, i love our exchange last week so we do not wish to do anything and we don't want to make it worse for them, help them. the short term continuation of the csr that we are calling it share deduction is apart of that. so i do think congress in the short term should authorize the money. we need to obey the constitution and move on something that's a more satisfying solution. >> that's a nice conversation. thank you. >> harold. >> two quick questions, there seems to be a split in the republican caucus in the house where the government should play any role in trying to make health insurance affordable in

america. is that a fair assessment? i am not sure if your first statement is true. mark medal says something on the line that we are going to cut the taxes of the wealthy. there is some role to help lower income americans afford insurance. the difference is whether or not washington, d.c. should have the power or states should have the power. most republicans agreed that should be the state of the patien patients. >> what's the big difference between what you and senator graham and heller are proposing of your core verses what the senate voted down a few days ago? >> i think ours is more, the grand cassidy is similar to my

mind than the heller's plan. it allows the governor to use those dollars in a malleable way to make sure many possible to have a healthcare. the way it was being set up, weapon vote on the skinny package and go to conference and grand cassidy would be over layed in conference and come back out and give us a vote. >> senator cassidy, good to see you this morning. joe is not here so i will speak for him. in other words, why do you keep ongoing in and in on something that failed over and over again in terms of repeal and replace. what makes you think this time will be different? >> wily, think about the family sitting around the kitchen table

who cannot afford premiums. logging on my facebook page and speaking of $1,800 a month for family cannot afford. one couple that i know, their annual premiums was $39 for one year. i am going to continue to work for those family. >> i am with you on that. i am terms of the vote of the republican majority in the senate and you could no get a skinny repeal through, what makes you think this time you will get 50 votes at least. >> the meeting we had with the governors at the white house, we need fresh perspective and momentum, it has to come from outside of washington, d.c. ideally it over comes the partisan divide. listen to the governor and what would work for your state or other states. you take that input and hopefully that's something that'll appeal to governors

across the nation and they'll give momentums. >> senator cassidy, thank you so much, best of luck to you. >> where does this go forward? terms in terms of looking for the republican party? >> it is hard to look ahead to see where the legislative win comes from? the ability to go out and make complicated proposal and making popular with the american people and be able to explicate them and on a good day, this healthcare proposal had a 17% approval and none of these senators seem to have the ability to communicate to average americans that what it is that this legislation will do for them and how it will help them. unless we can do that, you do that on healthcare or tax reform or offering conservative solution and explain it

properly. it is difficult toll pass and secondly, i am just struck by, we are talking about the sixth of the economy, the notion that you can reform uni laterally with the majority, it is just wrong. it is not how the senate is supposed to operated. that's why we have a legislative mess. >> steve and harold, thank you very much. still ahead, the new white house chief of staff moves in and scarramucci becomes the shortest communication director ever. how much power does general john kelly really holds over the west wing? >> the washington post of new materials reporting president trump dictated don, jr. 's

meeting should we have seen it coming? >> did the president signed off the statement or before it was given? >> i don't have that conversation. let me say this, the president was not involved in the drafting of the statement. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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i want to thank sean spicer. this is a difficult situation to be in and i love the guy. >> reince priebus is an expletive, paranoid and schizophrenia. >> no, i am not reading it. >> i think it is a distraction. >> everyone eats cheese burgers and pizzas, what are you talking about? ♪ >> oh man. so in case you missed the last episode, sean spicer resigned

because of scarramucci who pushed out reince priebus which opens the door to john kelly who pushed out the mooch. you got all that? that's today's episode of where the trump administrations pick up. welcome to "morning joe." joe has the morning off. we have our steve cornacki and former director for ted cruz, rick snyder and sam stein. will is back. >> the last time i was here, anthony scarramucci was not a glitter in our eye. >> wow, what you have missed and what a short amount of time. our story crystallizes the

challenge of the new chief of staff. now those advisers reportedly pushed for full transparency but were over ruled at the president's percent directioson. i want to put that in quotes because it is important to keep in mind that the biggest issue is the president himself, that maybe the biggest challenge. the washington post cited multiple sources reports that the misleading was dictated by the president flying home from the g-20 summit on july 8th. it gets away from everybody, there is attorneys and everybody wants to talk to him.

he gets on the plane and over ruled his inner circle, his kids. the presidentireport says he wie white house director of strategic communications puddled with christian's lawyers and advocated for a more transparent approach. in one scenario these people said chris' team shared with everything. and hicks also spoke by phone with trump jr. of this strategy of transparency. but will the real story will emerge? as they boarded air force one, president trump intervened, the president directing that trump, jr. statement describing the

meeting. the meeting was about her pet issues of the adoption of the russian children. in a forward cabin, trump was busy working on his son's statement. the president dictated the statement of her pickings. john dow called the story fake news, incorrect and misinformed of no consequence. donald trump, jr. told the post that i have no evidence to support that theory of the president intervening. really take to it to the table. it seems to me that if this is true and double and triple source at this point, there is conflicts of what really happened and some legal trouble for the president.

>> it is so blatant knowing what the truth of this meeting was. for the president to go out lets just tell them it is about adoption and this thing will go away. it is not smart strategically, rei rick tyler, and also of the leaks that's coming out of the west wing, somebody's getting their side of the story out in the public because they know what's coming down the pike. >> what raise the suspicion when i heard about it is the campaign does not take meetings of policy issues because you are trying to win a campaign. he has not secured his nomination but he was still low against hillary clinton. there was no chance he's going to take it in. this is a five hour plane ride coming back to the g-20 and the

entire staff is consumed in this meeting and then you have the president's lawyer who's lying to his president. >> on top of steve cornacki, there is serious questions that bob mueller may have about the president drafting this. >> again. if you lie to the press, you can pay a deep price. generally, it is not a crime to lie to the press. you think that was bill clinton's impeachment when he said i did not have sex with that woman. the question here i think is more in direct when it comes to mueller. there is a revelation like this work up his interest in getting him to look this way. i think in terms of what's on the record right now. >> what would you be interested in if you were looking at the

president for a lot of different questions including potentially of his team and collusion of russia and you see perhaps inconsistent inconsistency starting from the president drafting the statement. >> it goes back to the question, why is president trump so involved in how the responses is moving forward. why is he so consumed of what the response is going to be. what is he so worried about servicing that he has a one on one with putin's translator at the g-20. at the end of the day there is a big cloud of why did president trump address putin and russia in different terms. the other day, putin says he's going to ban over 700 employees in moscow and not a peep from donald trump.

when does he not respond to a slide. >> this is what we talked about yesterday and now given this new story, it is more important as we deal with potential an in coming chief of staff that for many may provide some hope like o oh my gosh, perhaps we'll have some order here or somebody will report to somebody before they go straight to the president. yet then you see what happens when this president gets off on his own with his phone or with his family, things happen sam stein. >> yeah, keep in mind this happens for general kelly was chief of staff. i do think you are pointing out something interesting though. when you fire or get rid of your chief of staff and reince priebus and press secretary, there is a possibility that they may come around and bite you.

you have to wonder if people are dis -- i am sure that's fwoigoin the minds of trump's people. i am struck by what wily said of utter lack of discretion from the trump's team of how they are handling all of this. the cover up is so poorly executed that it is raising all the suspicions. why is he crafting that statement and why is he talking to putin so much? why is he firing comey? everything he's doing leading to what's going on here, something must be happening. i am just wondering why they're so bad at being discreet. >> it raises the question again and again to unleash the point when it comes to russia, there is some clouds and there is never a clear cut answer. if this was a nothing meeting as

donald trump, jr. keep on insisting. why do you have this meeting, just say it is about adoption. just put it out there what it was about if nothing happened in the meeting, just say what happened. >> their current line is this is something so rudimentary and benign. if that's the case, why go through the first step of att h attaching it to an adoption policy and having the president wasting his time trying to con castle ro concoct some confusions of this. >> this is what the president has done. this meeting would come back of

jared kushner and ivanka wanted to become transparent. it looks like don jr. was on board with that plan and the president blew it up and their story just changed. the adoption story was not working, oh, it was the russians and oh, never mind. i also think it is interesting about the russian's angle to all this. remember, president trump had an off the record meeting with vladimir putin that went on for a long time. vladimir putin is taking action against the united states of what obama did as he was leaving the administration and throwing out their diplomats. now, he finally responded. there was a promise made that he will lift this sanctions and now that the president is taking that away. what would putin say in that meeting because we don't have our side of that transcript.

there was no american interpreter in that meeting. putin can come out and say here are all the things that we are talking about whether it is true or not. i think that stinks. >> still ahead, ivanka trump, says she's happy to work alongside john kelly. that conversation is next. but, first, bill karins is checking our forecast. >> we had a bit of a wind damage but nothing too bad and thankfully no one was hurt. that's beach florida. emily is out of the opening water. now we move onto the next story, this is one is going to be epic. 15 million people at risk of excessive heat. the problem of the pacific

northwest, not everyone has air-conditioning. they right lane conceconcerned elderly. how hot will it be in the northwest? we start today off with record heat and medford oreg, oregon, break the record today into 100 degrees. we have a chance to get an all time high temperature in memphis and seattle is going to break record easily. the hottest temperatures recorded is 107 degrees. we have al good chance of that on thursday. the rest of the country, watch for some showers and storms, hit miss from st. louis to chicago. a nice summer day under way for much of the east coast, including new york city, "morning joe" will be right back. ♪ this is a story about mail

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the smoomooch is out. the mooch is toast. >> yes, the mooch blast, lasted only ten days. that's not even a whole pay period. [ laughter ] >> he's going away party conserves what's left of his welcome cake. they can change congratulations to congratulater. [ laughter ] >> was he sworn in? >> anthony scarramucci is gone. he was forced out the same day the new chief of staff was sworn in.

shortly after taking the oath, sources surged scarramucci to resign. scarramucci's profane remarks disgusted and profaned some of those close to the president. >> jared and ivanka. >> melania and trump who would advocated for him were upset of his new language. take a look. >> you said the president found his remarks -- can you specify what he found inappropriate or disturbing about this? >> he found it inappropriate for a person in that person. >> to do what? the comments he made, he found those comments inappropriate. i am not sure. it is unclear. i don't think it is complicated

to understand that he felt the comments were inappropriate. i cannot explain it further than that. >> she can explain it. this president has a hard time of what's inappropriate. >> right. i am wondering of the inner circle who pushed for scarramucci, lets leave that story aside for now because it is kind of sad. >> well, his job is to push out reince priebus and sean spicer, mission accomplished. sanders made it clear that all staffs will report to general kelly. so six months later they got the chief of staff that everybody gets in line behind which could really help. scarramucci told stephanie th

that -- mr. scarramucci would not be a figure who created an opportunity for mr. trump with his daughter ivanka and son-in-law jared kushner to take the far reach shake up intended to purge the white house staff of leakers and aids viewed as not sufficiently loyal to his cause. the president tweeted, a great day at the white house. do i understand that to be them saying that they planned this? nobody plans to bring in a colossal disaster and driving to the white house and spewing profanity so we can do -- >> they certainly did not plan it and it is more their spin. i am quite frankly tired of the jared and ivanka that's trying

to portray them and how all powerful get powerless. they have so much control and yet no control and cannot control anything. i was also really disgusted by ivanka's tweet yesterday saying she's looking forward to work alongside general kelly. respect the chain of command and respect someone who served nearly half a century in the military, maybe you can learn something. >> coming up. jeff flake who says his party is in denieal of donald trump. straight ahead on "morning joe." hey. pass please. i'm here to fix the elevator. nothing's wrong with the elevator.

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republican senator jeff flake of arizona who's taking on his own party of the moment they could have stepped up and stood their ground of the start of the trump administration. >> what was the key part where you and your fellow conservatives, republicans should have stood up. >> i have to say many conservatives did come out.

>> what was the biggest opportunity? >> the comey fire. you can fire the fbi director and could have said last year he did something he should not have and the way he handled the campaign was not good. the reason given of the russia investigation, that should set off more alarm bells and i think going forward, we caught to be careful with this and concern that the ag maybe fired. that would be a real concern. i am glad that some conservatives are standing up p and staying certainly that's not tolerated by capitol hill. the book, you write a lot of things in the book. you write about a meeting. and, goldwater was not concerned so much of of rocker feller and

lyndon johnson. my question to you, what's your level of concern over the freedom caucus is doing to the image of conservativism and republican party given the in fact they cheered on and loved apparently by healthcare bill that would throw more than 22 million americans off of healthcare. >> we can argue about what's conservative and what's not with regards to healthcare certainly, i think that obamacare needs to be significantly changed. if not, repeal. i would love to repeal it and start again if it is up top me. about 200,000 arizonians will wake up without healthcare. they'll pay the fine and cannot afford the policy and

deductibles are so high. we are hurting out there in terms of healthcare. i am more concerned of policies like on trade. we have always been a republican party of a free trade party. we are only 5% of the world's population. if we don't find a new mark for our goods, we don't grow. i am very concerned of where ever the party is going and anti-immigration forward. that's not the place the republican party wants to be in the future. we'll be an inclusive party that speaks to the broader audience. >> you know and i heard democrats speak about you. you are a friendly open guy. it is just image and i understand that. there is a level of meanness to

conservativism n conservati conservatism some how. >> my biggest concern is we got some deficits toi tackling. we'll be adding $20 trillion soon to that debt. if you look at any decent budget agreement we had was when he had divided government. republicans and democrats sat down and say we are going to share the risk. right now we don't have that. if we describe the worst motives and demean them. you lose the ability to sit down and solve the big issue and that's conservative policy and of the pair doradox, somehow --

>> okay, the book is conscience of a conservative, it is out today. anthony scarramucci can face some foreign ethics issue while working at the white house. we'll talk to walter schaub who resigned his role saying the rules need to be tighten.

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scarramucci got out and stood behind me, it was time for us to head out to the oval office. >> less a week ago, yesterday,

he got bounced himself and i figured out who he is? >> who? >> i have been thinking who is this guy? it is ari gold from the show. >> the mooch. kind of explosive and profane and like what he's doing in the white house? >> joining us now, msnbc anchor, stephanie ruhle. and our contributor editor and columnist and former director of the office of government ethics and now senior director of ethics, walter schaub and washington's chief, susan paige. lets start there stephanie, because you spoke with scarramucci. >> i did. i speck to him on sunday night and he was in the mode of i am

here to serve the country and i made a mistake of my language but it is full steam ahead, i will be at work in dc, first thing tomorrow. something that i find rich here for the white house to say and sarah hucklebee sanders to be saying that language is too much and for jared and ivanka to put out this narrative was awe feof. nobody was offended when scarramucci was served as hit man getting bannon out. well, we did not want anthony here and general kelly. >> two-thirds day ago, it was ivanka and president trump who brought anthony in the white house and met with him for an hour and a half. hours later, president trump offered him the job. the last week, white house's lawyers were spinning worried of

anthony's conflict because his company has not been sold. now the single senior woman in the white house said a single word when the president viciously attack you and anthony did not attack the president. he was serving the president. he was talking how much he loves and adores, ivanka said nothing then but now it does not work. please. >> can we just dispense what the fiction that the president hates viral people even though he fired people on "the apprentice." how many people have been fired? whether or not he's the person who call them, you got to go or not. various people, george w. bush fired john sununu. there is this idea that he ne

needed scarramucci to come into fire reince priebus. anyone could have fired reince priebus. he could have handed a letter off to the body fire reince priebus. it does not matter. >> i think we agree that this move would not have happened had general kelly would not be there. this is the kind of guy of four star general that donald trump respects. is it too much to ask to reign in whatever it means president trump. >> what human being comes into a job whose assignment is to control -- there is this notion that trump is standing on one side, he cannot fire and he's too scared to fire people and scarramucci is too delicate and he came in and fireproof.

he will fire kelly two months if he has to. he does not care. >> who has the president truly shown respect for and great credibility in the white house. >> tom rick puts it best, he hijacks their credibility over and over again. >> i am skeptical it will be different. as the ceo that donald trump respects or a general. he talks so much of mad dog and patent on a lot of the campaign trail. these are the kind of people that he respects whether it extends to the new job. we'll get to that in a second. susan paige, a twofold question, what was the concept of bringing anthony scarramucci in, whose idea was it? it seems like a horrendous idea

and a terrible mistake and a huge embarrassment for the white house. ivanka trump tweeted that she will work alongside with general kelly. does that mean she's on par with him? >> the number one advocate bringing anthony scarramucci to the white house was scarramucci. i don't think you should under estimate the power of the message that john kelly sent by getting him fired, by firing him as basically a condition of plummet. there is to prospect that the chief of staff can reign from the president. to pose some kind of order that john kelly has. there is no order at the white house. there is no fundamental process that we have seen at the white

house. limiting on what you can expect him to do. clearly, he plans to do that and getting rid of the mooch was step one. >> step one, i mean i understand that you want to put a frame around it but understanding the power of it. i am going to push back a little bit. that's about the easiest thing in the world to fire scarramucci, the guy that's spewing f-bombs and insulted people right and left and was just a human time bomb in the white house, to ask him to leave, that's not, you know, i am not saying kelly is not a dpra great man with unbelievable skills. how do you deal with steve bannon and the forces that are bringing this president down which happens to be the president's own fingers. that's what i want to see. would you say those are the real

challenges and not scarramucci. >> firing scarramucci is not the toughest thing that john kelly has to do. all those things happened and the president did not protest what he said. totally adpregree that ivanka a jared are trying to get control with. if scarramucci is still there today, this would be a problem for john kelly. just to recap for people, what made you step out of that office. what bother you so much that made you say i will not finish my term here. >> to answer that, i have to explain that i have not been at the office since 2001, i have seen how the ethics program was supposed to run and under democrats and republicans and

administrations, always have the full support of the white house. there is a lot of talks these days how we are discovering how fragilely -- people who want to play by traditional rules. it was absolutely true of the government ethics. oge has no power. what we have done again is the man who's not there. he's uninterested of the ethics program and unable to signal that rules matter. the thing that general kelly has to deal with is the absence of somebody in the council's office saying we have to be careful and instead of somebody stoking with fire. >> is there a specific action where this is a last straw. there is something that happens

that i cannot have efficacy of this job. >> i fought a battle to get routine documents and copy of waivers. and, it was amazing that they resisted that and it is completely routine. when i got my hands on it and when you are trying to figure out why the white house does anything. but when i dpot thgot that, the all the appearance. it seems like the secret waivers is that there were no secret waivers. they are undated and unsigned and one of them is ex p-- the president basically says i here by waive the ethics rule by

myself. at that moment, i had doubt about this. >> general kelly can impact this. i spoke to someone in the white house on friday who said kelly is not going to like scarramucci. no side deals or steve bannon can talk to the great bar. general kelly will tighten the plan. the question is, can he execute that. the challenges of jared and ivan ivanka, that's coming out a little bit. there is no moderating force, what is it that they bring to the table? >> you ask the question of what will be the sign that kelly has control of the white house and there is a simple answer of that. if we hear that five or six people still have the right to walk into the oval office when ever they want to and kelly has not control access, we'll not

have control of the white house. if bannon walks inside the oval office without him, he will not have control of the white house staff. it is that simple. if it happens and he dpgets the right to close the door, he will be in charge and if it does not, he won't. >> ivanka trump has never shown up to a warning meeting. president trump attends and reince priebus. ivanka never been to it. now that there is a new general in town, is she going to be apart of the staff. >> susan paige, is the big story of the day, the reporting that the president dictated donald trump, jr. 's defense or explanation of the meeting of the russian lawyer. the fact that the president got on the plane and against the better judgment of people around

him just took over. >> the story today that could have consequence down the road. i raises the perception of obstruction of justice by the part of the president. it is not against the law lito like the press. it is one more brick to look at and questions about whether the president has tried to prevent the story from coming out about russia. the firing of james comey is a bigger piece of that wall that we maybe seen of special counsel starting to build. yes, that's the most consequential story that was in the paper this morning. >> stephanie ruhle, thanks for coming on. thank you all as well. before we go to break. some sad news this morning from

the acting world. >> award winning actor and play wright, sam shepard has died. he kentucky from complications from lou gehrig's disease. shepard's rise began in the 1960s in "new york," but it was his work in the 1970s that helped thrust him into the spligt including the 1979 pulitzer prize-winning play "bu "buried child." he was celebrated for capturing the darker side of american family life. he then made the move to the big screen starring in "days of heaven, "baby boom," and "the right stuff," which earned him an oscar for his portrayal of test pilot chuck jager. he was celebrated for his works as novelist and short story writer. he was 73 years old. up next, steve bannon and

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on september 23rd, comcast and nbc are proud to partner with global citizen for the global citizen festival in new york in central park. among the headliners, stevie wonder, green day, the killers and the chainsmoker who is sat down with jacob soboroff to discuss the movement. >> one of those organizations, it's incredible what they do on such a large scale but it's about the small scale and the individual. i think it's crazy that everyone attending this concert has gone out and done something to help further the progress of this world. >> and join us now, founder, ceo of global citizen, our good friend, hugh evans. good morning. good to see you. >> how are you? >> another incredible lineup starring with stevie wonder. say no more. you had me at steve you wonder. it's a fun night in central park, obviously, but it's not

really about the music, it's about the message that comes in between. what's the focus this year? last year when we got together, president obama was in the white house. we have a new president now. how have things changed in those 12 months? >> a lot has changed and we live in turbulent political times. i think what we're seeing around the world is increasingly voters are rejecting that sort of nationalism and populism. i refer to the french election and the wonderful outcome there and i think that the message for this year's global citizen festival is that we want to stop the foreign aid cuts that president trump has proposed an we also want to see a real investment into global education, because for too long education has been the poor cousin of global development. a lot of focus has been on global health. we want to see that the global partnership for education raises the $3.2 billion it needs to ensure that the 263 million children currently out of school get a chance to go to school. >> so you, how is it -- what's the degree of difficulty been for you within the last six or

seven months in this country? globalism is one thing. we're all in favor -- most people are in favor of globalism when they think about it, but this withdrawal symptom here in this country toward nationalism. how has that impacted you? >> interestingly, we're finding far less complacency than ever before. to give you one statistic, we have now about 20 million to 30 million people every single month enfwajing with global citizen. compare that just to a few years ago and that was 4 million. so we of seen this massive growth in engagement amongst americans who are taking action like never before. so while on a public policy level it's been really challenging, on a an engagement level we're seeing more global citizens active than ever before. >> especially did you notice any changes in grassroots engagement at the beginning of the trump presidency? not to make it political, but you saw a lot of marches happening across the world.

were people who weren't usually engaged decided to become engained in some way. >> yeah. i think if complacency isn't dead it's definitely dying and i think that's the good news. we're seeing incredible engagement and that's why we're so excited for this year's festival, because i think we have this rallying moment when all the heads of state are in town for the u.n. general assembly meeting, the only time you've got every world lead there are in one moment. we can make sure that issues that matter not just to the current political turmoil but actually matter to the world can be on the agenda and we can focus for a second if only for a heartbeat and say we don't need to just worry about these, you know, ins and outs of the next tweet that comes but focus on the things that matter for humanity. >> it's not just social issues. it's also national security. can you talk about how this movement actually can make the world more secure? >> well, obviously, they say that any food foreign policy is based on defense, diplomacy, and development. and obviously there's a lot of talk on defense all the time these days but we also need to

put a lot of attention on diplomacy and development. as president trump has proposed a 32% cut in foreign aid, that would be existential to the movement to end extreme poverty. fortunately, the house appropriations committee has said they won't go through with that and the senate appropriations committee has recommended a more reduced cut thus far, but we hope there will be no cut, it will be level and we can actually see the sorts of investments that even george bush made in africa to fight hif huff aids continue, because this is always been a bipartisan issue. foreign aid has never come into the political fray and we want to keep it that way. this is above politics. >> we say hugh evans is a radical optimist. >> he is. >> he believes we can eradicate poverty from the world. sounds crazy, but you have a way to get there. what's your goal this year? >> our goal would be that education is on the agenda, that by february next year, $3.2 billion is raised to help the global partnership for education

put 263 million children into school. >> sounds pretty good to me. >> i think you can do it. >> global citizen festival takes place september 23rd in new york city's central park. it does such great work. go to the website and check it out, see how you can get involved. hugh evans, thank you. >> that's a good note to end on this morning. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> good to see you again, mika. hi, there. i'm stephanie ruhle with a lot to cover today starting with "the washington post" bombshell that the president's lawyers call fake news. how involved was president trump in his son's misleading statement about why he met with a russian lawyer? >> if this is true that the president drafted a lie in connection with criminal investigation, he's got to go. >> is there any further information around anthony trump and the trump administration? now that he's out as communications director, why did you toss the mooch?