would shank a soft ball like that so hard when he come have just come out there and condemned the people who were there to start violence? >> he should have condemned white sue prpremacistsupremacis. >> who do you think stopped that? >> well, the president himself. he did do it today. >> that was the mooch with stephen colbert. >> with us here today we have hallie jackson, mike barnicle, mr. john heilemann, noah ottmron with a great piece out today

pleasing no one, and combat veteran wes moore. good morning, everyone. let's dive into it. >> after almost 50 hours in the making, president obama denounced racist groups by name. >> the department of justice has opened a civil rights investigation into the deadly car attack that killed one innocent american and wounded 20 others. to anyone who acted criminally in this weekend's racist violence, you will be held fully accountable. justice will be delivered. racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are

criminals and thugs, including the kkk, neonazis, white supremacists and other hate groups who are repugnant to everything we hold dear as americans. >> the a.p. reported several of trump's senior advisers, including new chief of staff john kelly, have urged him to make and determination. much of the criticism came from the party, particularly senator tim scott. after signing a memorandum on trade policy later in the afternoon, the president was asked about that time lag. >> mr. president, can you explain why you didn't mention those hate groups by name?

>> they've been condemned. >> reporter: and why did you y ssa >> canny -- can i ask you some more questions? >> i don't mind but i don't like fake news and you're fake news. >> reporter: haven't you given fake news yourself? >> so hallie, let's start with the president's lag time, which

seems to be you need to go out and speak more strongly not because it's necessarily the right thing to do but because it won't go away. >> the feeling among some people inside the white house is the president should have been more specific in his condemnation over the weekend, but what you heard from the president is the media is really making a big deal about this, aren't they. and i think his tweet after was telling, going after the media for apparently not being satisfied, he believes, with his statement, which is accurate to report that it came two days after his original one. i think there was dissatisfaction as you reported and the a.p. reported with how the original statement unfolded. this was the clean-up job. people said better now than never and people said too little too late. >> we were talking about what it would mean two, three days later to come out and finally say what

should have been said on saturday afternoon. it's important he said it and put it out there but his impulse, his initial instinct was not to say that. he only said it was after two days of criticism. >> his initial impulse was it wasn't a story. is the bar so low that we're now celebrating and giving a standing ovation to a president who condemns nazism? let's remember what we're talking about. we're talking about fascists and people who drove moles and states away with nazi helmets. so the fact that he's now come out and said this is a bad thing, it's fine but at the same time, i feel like the bar should be significantly higher when we're talking about the president of the united states and this is not something that people should necessarily be applauding. i thought we moved past this a long time ago.

this isn't 1917, 2017. >> you've been writing about what the president should have done and didn't do. we know he got advice on saturday, perhaps not to alienate some of those white nationalist groups that make up the core of his support but then general john kelly emerging, perhaps two days late, to say you've got to do something about this. >> it feels like we're an eternity away from these stories. he was going to rain on this white house and put the tweets in order and we have the alt-right prominently featured on the president's twitter account. we know he's getting advice from people like steve bannon who says you have this nucleus of support on the fringe, you can't afford to alienate them. the president's instincts seem to be to listen to people like steve bannon and so you can't afford to alienate or

delegitimatize them. they're emboldened by the president's reticence to attack them and we're probably going to see more people come out as alt-right and, by the way, we're going to see the countermovement emboldened. we're a more fragile country today than we were yesterday. >> the pace of the media and the culture today has been accelerated every single day. this might be a moment to pump the brakes to stop and pause and think about what just happened to the presidency. the president of the united states creed -- ceded his moral authority on saturday. this is not the american story that we're witnessing. this is a selfish, inward,

destructive story that's taking place and the president's voice is lacking. and the president has decided not to lead but to follow and to follow what and who, we really doesn't know but it's not good. >> let's say again he said the thing that should have been said yesterday, he did say those words. but there was in the moments that followed, in the tweets that follow a tone of i gave you what you wanted, you wanted me to say the thing i was supposed to say now back off and now he says this is a media story and the media will never be happy. those comments were not in his heart on saturday. he said them because he was pushed into a corner. >> i don't think there's anybody who didn't see reading the body language, the delay, no one didn't see this as one who was forced into doing, unlike the reaction of merck who leaves the

business council, who is immediately on twitter attacking that person, i'm mad at that guy. he was not mad at david duke claiming donald trump saying we're here because of donald trump, neonazis, confederates all claiming trump on saturday. there's no one at this table who saw demonstrator, rioters inciting your name saying i'm here because of willie geist and that's not what donald trump did on saturday. but he did it to the ceo of merck yesterday and he did it to jim acosta in the room yesterday. so where's the genuineness? and here's the thing i just -- the last thing i'll say is we focus on the president all the time, rightly so. again, the reason i mentioned david duke and those people invoking donald trump is those people are listening to donald trump, too. what they heard on saturday was,

hey, he's with us. they've heard it from him before, they heard it from him on saturday and when they saw him yesterday they said, eh, that's the thing he had to do to appease the liberal media and libertarians. those people when they march again, which they will, they will know president trump has their back. >> they said that yesterday. he said what he had to say to push the story away but he's still got our backs. >> i'm an optimist by nature, this country has survived much. one of the jobs of the president, any president, is to recognize something that people in this country do recognize. there are open wounds in this country, open wounds of race, of economic disparity, of class disparity. a president's job is to heal those wounds, not allow the wounds to fester and poke at the

wounds and probe them and open even further fissures in the world. >> presidents are supposed to meet the moment in times of national crisis. i think people would say what happened in charlottesville was a national crisis. people look to their presidents in these times to play that role. people looked to president trump to do that on saturday and he didn't do what had been expected. he did it again two days later but is it still meeting the moment if it happens belatedly. that's a question people are asking not just around this table but on capitol hill. >> three top ceos have now left president obama's business council. kenneth frazier of merck was the first ceo to depart from the

counsel. yesterday morning president trump lashed out on twitter writing "now that ken frazier of merck has resigned from president's manufacturing council, he will have more time to lower ripoff drug prices. and later tweeted "merck pharma is a leader in higher and higher drug prices while at the same time taking jobs out of u.s. bring jobs back and lower prices. >> ge and dow said they have no tolerance for hating bigotry or racism. let's bring in columnist for the "washington examiner." kristen, a business decision for a lot of these people. yes, there's a moral component to it but shareholders, people who buy their products don't like what they're seeing out of washington right now. >> that's right. president trump's approval

ratings are at historic lows. for a ceo of a company, the decision to say yes to join the president's manufacturing council or any of these other councils of business, the answer you give is yes because that seems like the less political answers. if you say no, you are wading into those waters and that's bad. now a few months in, staying on these councils are what these ceos are afraid of the political move. the ceo of underarmor saying we don't play politics here, we focus on sports and products. >> the president of underarmor came under pressure when he did an interview on cnbc who said

pretty broadly it might be a good thing to have a business leader be in the white house. he was attacked for that. and now he's stepped off the council. people can only go on so long before pressure internally mounts enough that they walk away. >> what a ceo stands for and will not stand for is going to matter. it's not just from an internal perspective. it also from a business perspective. there are competitors out there. and we watch how this has played out, whether it's in this incident, whether it's intel, underarmor, watching what happened with uber a few weeks ago. people will nmove if they do no believe in not just a company's product but a company's values. he knows that this is not something just internal that they have to wrestle with.

companies have to be clear with their consumers about where they stand or consumers will walk. >> when you look at some of the new polling, the trump administration neers the selars seven-month mark. the gallup poll finds the president's approval rating at the new low. bill clinton's approval rating never dropped as low as 34%. gallup never found barack obama dropping to 34% during his eight-year presidency. still trump's approval has not yet reached the depths that other presidencies have over the years with richard nixon the lowest.

john heilemann, the significance of these numbers that keep finding new lows for a president that would like to get something done but has nothing legislative to show for his first seven months. >> deleterious, the effect. the president looks at all these polls and says they're another example of fake news, says all the polls are phony and fraudulent and points to his election victory and says the poll didn't think i could win and i won. the people who don't think the polls are phony are republicans and democrats. these examples we saw over the weekend of republicans speaking out on charlottesville are not isolated. in the last weeks we've seen the senate move to not allow recess appointments, we seen them pass the sanctions bill, republican senators to ensure robert mueller will stay in his job.

it has taken a long time for republican senators to start to break with president trump and they haven't broken fully with him. if you look over the last three weeks, there are more and more signs of republicans who are starting to stand up to trump. those guys are mathematicians. they say donald trump who loses a couple points, every day they get a couple more points of courage to break with him. >> i had a conversation with a republican, i said does this mean now policy splits -- no. they're still going to work with the president because they still want to get this stuff done. look at what's happening in three weeks or two weeks when they get back in september. they want to do something on tax reform, still rumblings they want to do something on health care and you have the border wall and some of these are really important. the opposition and the pushback seems like it may only go so far

when it comes to policy. >> saturday was a moment where it was easy for a republican to break with the president, ted cruz, marco rubio, on and on and on over charlottesville. the question will be do they come back around to him as they have previously. there have been moments not just during his presidency but during his campaign where they said i'm out, after the access hollywood tape. then they walk back toward him. is this a guy they need to get their jaagenda through? >> he has to sign legislation. he's always going to sabotage their efforts to get tax code reform, to reform the obamacare health care law. like john was saying, the republic calculus was they're afraid of their base. they don't want to get primaried.

so at 70% it becomes imperative for many members of the house to break with trump. the agenda is always going to stymie efforts to break from donald trump but the demands of reelection will force them to create distance. >> kristen, is there a number out there, 33, 32, 29 that in september if that number is that number that more republicans would say, hey, we got to take a look at what's going on here and walk away at this guy, at the expense, perhaps, of some of the agenda? >> i think if his numbers are looking in mid 30s, the ugliness continues. there's a chance -- i believe that polls are not fake news. i believe polls are good and a useful barometer of where the american people stand but can you forgive the president and others for thinking maybe the polls have got this wrong. but what that doesn't explain is why over the last month or two the polls have started capturing fewer and fewer trump

supporters. why would the polls have been more accurate in july than now? part of what's going on is you have a lot of trump voters -- it's that social desirability bias. they're thinking i don't want to pick up the phone and tell anybody i like the white house. that's the way the white house has spun it, they're not capturing my supporters. i don't think there's a good way to spin your numbers falling this low over the course of what thud have been a good part of your first six or seven months as president. >> i've had a chance to get out on the road and do interviews. one of the things i heard consistently from people who supported donald trump and even those now on the fence was jobs and the economy. i think there was a reason when president came out yesterday to

condemn white supremacy, he started by touting job numbers. it's we i this it -- why i thino important we're seeing some of these businesses pulling out of his business council. that top line is important, 34%, 33%, whatever it is, but it's also the number of the republican base that still supports him. when that starts to shrink, if it does, that's when you're going to see more of an impact of these politicians coming out against him. >> i totally agree. this is not just about rhetoric. it is also about the policies. we can talk about rising economy and rising stock markets and all that is true but let's also talk about the fact that inequality is rising and homelessness is rising. the same people that would vote for trump because of the frustration, because of the fact that the economic opportunities

aren't there, our country hasn't been honest with them about how fast the economy has changed and left many of them vulnerable. when you're putting to the policies calling for cuts to medicaid and to pell grants and to food stampstamps, that's notg to help you. so there is a reality that this is not rhetoric, it's my life is not get anything better. >> in addition to what you said that is absolutely accurate is these ceos on the council, each of them, because they are ceos of major corps, they know that much of what donald trump has been saying about the growth of the economy is not true, that the economy was growing last year month by month by month and it continues to grow. it's not him. it's just the way it grows. >> and as wes says people below

the ceo level not feeling that success at all. >> we're just getting started here. charlie dent, admiral james staff riddis kristen welker and george will will join us. another busy morning "morning joe." we'll be right back. but at fidelity, we're making retirement planning clearer. and it all starts with getting your fidelity retirement score. in 60 seconds, you'll know where you stand. and together, we'll help you make decisions for your plan... to keep you on track. ♪ time to think of your future it's your retirement. know where you stand. ♪ time to think of your future looking for a hotel that fits... whoooo. ...your budget? tripadvisor now searches over...

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. can you and steve bannon still work together in this white house or not? >> it is privilege every day to enable the national security team. >> you didn't answer. can you and steve bannon work together in the white house? >> i'm willing to work with anybody who will help advance the president's agenda and advance the security of the american people. >> do you believe that steve bannon does that? >> i believe everyone who works in the white house who has the

great privilege every day of serving their nation should be motivated by that goal. >> general mcmaster had three cracks at that one. >> for weeks mcmaster has faced biting tweets and headlines from the far right and breitbart where bannon once was top editor but bannon is said to be increasingly isolated. it's reported the president has told associates he thinks bannon is behind some white house leaks and he's fed up with what's seen as self-promotion. bannon is on thin ice with general john kelly. he has said he will not tolerate bannon's shadowland machinations. and the paper reports rupert murder okay told kelly and jared kushner at a white house dinner that bannon has to go. this was before the president

went to his bedminister golf course on vacation. and here is what anthony scaramucci said about bannon and priebus. >> this is you holding your thumbs in your belt like a gun slinger and this is reince priebus. were you brought in just to get rid of him and sean spicer? say it like the mooch. give me some mooch here. >> the mooch of long island would say there's no love loss there. >> you thought he was one of the leakers. >> i did. >> he's gone, right? who's leaking now? is it steve bannon? >> well, i've said that. listen, i've been pretty open about that. >> steve bannon? >> i said he was and i obviously got caught on tape saying he was so i have no problem saying that. >> is he going to be gone in a week? >> what do you think?

what does the mooch think? >> if it was up to me, he would be gone. but it's not up to me. >> the mooch says he will be gone. the president reportedly consulted with bannon throughout the weekend over how to respond to the charlottesville violence. we've heard how many times that boone bannon is going to be gone this week. >> it is my sense that if there was ever a time, the time is now but it is at least at this point not appearing to be a done deal. you're right there have been stories repeatedly about bannon's safety and security at the white house and with the president but let me point out a couple of things here. steve bannon did not go to bedminister, where john kelly was conducting this review. he was assessing the troops, what strengths and weaknesses, figuring out who to make the structure run more effectively.

steve bannon was not there for that process, which i think says something. you also have i think concern among some folks inside the west wing and close to the president about bannon's role about the machinations with h.r. mcmaster because the two, remember, do have very different policy views. that's what this comes down to -- the bottom line is this -- while steve bannon's personal influence may be waning with the president, his policy influence does not seem to be. look what happened with china trade policy, that's steve bannon, with afghanistan, still nothing announced as the president grapples with what to do next, that is partly because steve bannon is in his ear pushing something very different strategically than h.r. mcmaster. >> he may be on the way out -- >> when the headlines come out, the president doesn't like to deal with the headlines. the more media attention, the

less like the president is to act. >> it was clear that bannon's influence was on display on saturday. do you or anyone else believe that general john kelly got in a room with president trump and said you shouldn't condemn the kkk, you shouldn't condemn nazis. no, that was the influence of somebody else on president trump. >> i'm not sure whether that was steve bannon or donald trump himself. steve bannon's job is to be karl rove, valerie jarrett. he's supposed to know what trump is thinking before he thinks it sa and express to trump what he's thinking before he knows what he's thinking. people who say steve bannon is the key to his base, the people in trump's ear saying steve bannon is our guy and if you let him loose, you let us loose and that really has gotten ahold him. >> mark meadows, coming out to

the news, a lot of them saying we luke him. >> and a lot of this has to do with perceived leaks of mcmaster. >> this leaking wore to take down mcmaster, steve bannon and the breitbart people, who would view an attack on mcmaster as treasonous and that is something that donald trump absolutely does not understand. >> you're absolutely right. h.r. mcmaster doesn't have a constituency and steve bannon

does. that goes back to pushing the thought to how donald trump is going to move. what's the down side risk of alienation of mcmaster as post to a alienation of steve bannon. >> that gets to what are president trump's instincts, his immediate instinct? was is to put salve to balm the nation's woods or to let it fester and open the wound wider? >> somehow steve bannon is left standing through all the changes in this campaign in this white house. the president's loyalty to steve bannon has prevailed. >> steve bannon hardly knew donald trump in august of 2016 and for reasons of incredible alchemy and desperation on president trump's part, he

seized on steve bannon and they were in sync and sympatico about a really key issues that trump for years has talked about, things hallie was mentioning before, nationalism, protectionism. steve bannon didn't put birtherism into trump's head. they had common cause. part of the reason it worked is that the two of them were on the same wave length, whatever you think of that wave length. that connection embassy and flows and trump sometime gets mad at bannon when he takes too much credit. he says there's things about me you understand that other people don't. there's a language that they speak when they that you can about things like the globalism and they talk about china and youngstown ohio and steel workers and bannon's nationalism, there's just a way in which they are in singe.

trump is controversy averse and there's this thing about bannon where they just jive in a certain way. i would never count bannon out in any of these battles. >> north korea says its leader has reviewed plans for launching missiles towards guam but is he ready to move? we'll talk to admiral james stavridis next on "morning joe." k wonif your brokerage offers some sort of guarantee? guarantee? where we can get our fees and commissions back if we're not happy. so can you offer me what schwab is offering? what's with all the questions? ask your broker if they're offering $4.95 online equity trades and a satisfaction guarantee.

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i think if they fire at the united states it could escalate into war very quickly, yes. that's called war, if they shoot at us. if they do that, then it's game on. >> that is the secretary of defense james mattis yesterday at the pentagon saying in no uncertain terms what would happen if north korea decides to fire first on the united states or on guam saying it's game on. his remarks come as north korea's army presented its plan to attack the u.s. territory of guam to leader kim jong un yesterday. in a statement from north korean state media, kim jong un implied

he would not order a strike if the united states and south korea cancel their joint military exercisesneck wee-- ne week. now joining us, the dean of fletcher school of diplomacy and law the georgetown ut add mir james stavridis. great to see you as always. let's reassess where we are in this back and forth with north korea. kim saying there's no plan right now to attack guam. he doesn't plan to do it anyway. and general mattis saying don't even think about it if you launch those missiles. where are we? >> general mattis is doing what

he should, which is to convey directly that launching missiles at a u.s. territory is tantamount to u.s. war. the thing to watch are the movement of the carrier battle groups. if you start to see our carriers flooding the zone, moving towards north korea, if you see more surface ships with those tomahawk missiles moving, we would also be doing cyber activity. we're kind of setting the table at this point. let's hope that kim jong un follows the krcorrect course of action here, which is to stand down at the idea that he's going to launch missiles at the united states. we're at a very dangerous moment, frankly. i don't think we're headed into a war this morning but we are closer than we were four or five days ago unfortunately. >> so admiral, this ten-day joint military exercise between the united states and south korea will be huge, involves tens of thousands of troops

between the two countries. should we read anything into that? is it just a signal being sent to north korea? >> no. this is a standard set of procedural exercises training that's done between the two countries. it's on an annual basis for a big one, we do lots and lots of them in between the events. general joe dunford, the chairman of the joint chiefs was in seoul over the weekend. this is business as usual. unfortunately it does land at a moment of extreme high tension. let's hope that everyone takes a deep breath here. >> admiral, this is off topic of north korea but you've been your entire life to the service of this country, you've been surrounded by others who have given their entire lives to the service this country. some of your friends have lost their lives in service to this country. what's your reaction to what the president of the united states did not do or say last saturday?

>> it is inexplicable to me as someone who has spent my life trying to ensure that people across this spectrum of this nation are treated fairly and equally that the president could not identify fascist nazis and all the other actors who came into charlottesville, virginia where my daughter went to university, jefferson's university and disgraced our nation, why he could not do that is something i think any serving member. armed forces would be asking him or herself continuing on even after the 24, 48-hour later reclaima. >> do you think secretary mattis is conveying that kind of message to president trump? >> i suspect he is staying off of the domestic political agenda, but i would hope that he's conveying it to his close

friend, fellow four-star marine john kelly, who sits at the center of the storm on this and god bless him, he's a terrific officer, a terrific person. i got to think that his influence is what led to the restatement of reaction and i hope his influence continues. >> let's me shift back to north korea. there was some sometimes that the action of pyongyang was tantamount to blinking. is that your assessment? >> the statements that were coming out were from lower level officials. kim jong un has reserved his own personal comment, his own personal engagement so i think that's a hopeful sign that if he's not blinking, he's at least opening his eyes a little wider and seeing what would happen to him and his nation if he chose this reckless course of action.

>> admiral james stavridis, thanks as always for your time. we appreciate it. >> still ahead, the president hopes to prompt a pretty big news conference but when it was times to answer questions, he lashed out about fake news and walked away. what powers the digital world. communication. that's why a cutting edge university counts on centurylink to keep their global campus connected.

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welcome back to "morning joe." time now for the must-read op east side. the headline, we are cowards. he writes the only morally acceptable response to the events in charlottesville is full-throated condemnation, full stop. this is not the time for moral equivalencies. the par barrism committed by white supremacists in the name of white supremacy should not get support. the root cause of this weekend's murderous violence is racism.

the end. donald trump's how cacowardice unique. amid it, we are sleepwalking to a terrible past. absent stealy conviction on all our parts, the worst is yet to come. let's flush that out when we talk about this being a slow-moving disaster. >> saturday was not the time to make moral equivalencies. a year ago was. there was an event that passed through the nation's consciousness, and we did not address it. in sacramento in june of 2016, white supremacists got a permit and demonstrated on the streets of the capital. they were accosted by people who called themselves "by any means necessary". they came armed. they were violent. the police said it wasn't the white supremacists who started it, it was the other group.

about a month ago, one of the women was charged with conspireing to incite a riot. we didn't talk about it. these were people who were flying the flags and attacking people demonstrating. it was our moment, and we didn't talk about it. >> the point you're making and the point a lot of people have looked at and you've heard from many of them online, i assume, over the last 24 hours, is the action in charlottesville was done by a white supremacists, but this has been going on for a couple of years on the left as well where you have political violence perpetrated by antifa. if you want to call them the left, i don't know what they are, but the violence is not limited to one side in this country. >> it's not. >> is that a fair assessment. >> one of the least covered stories of 2016 was the

organized violence against trump supporters. we covered the violence committed by trump supporters at trump's behest as we should have. we didn't really cover the violence that was reciprocal. it's easy to attack nazis. we know how that went in history. there's no moral ambiguity. when it comes to the lashing out of people who are, for example, hispanics, who are lashing out at supporters and breaking bottles over people's heads, people are more conflicted about that, and they shouldn't be. violence is violence, and we should be able to call it what it is. >> christen, you're in washington. what do you make of his piece? >> i think a lot of trump supporters were well aware of violence against trump supporters. many of them were folks who were sick and tired of when the tea party would hold peaceful rallies, there would be media coverage of guys who brought guns by the rallies.

they were pegged as maybe they're potentially violent. i think that planted the seed that led trump to have this instinct to want to say well, there's violence on all sides. but saturday was not the right time. on saturday there was violence on one side, and it was white supremacists. these are not your peaceful folks wanting to hold a peaceful rally about cutting tacks or get the government out of my business. these are folks saying one race is better than another. their words could be construed as violence fairly. and then the fact that somebody drove a car into a crowd of people which is what we see isis encouraging radical terrorists to do, i think saturday is not the time to say well, there's violence on both sides. even if it's true, saturday was not an incident of that. >> wes, this is not, obviously, the end of this. we talked about why a president's words matter. because the people at the rally and the people at home who are white supremacists were watching. they took some cues by what the

president didn't say and they are emboldened in a way they weren't 48 hours ago. >> i remember when we watched terrorist attacks last year, there was a large rallying cry of people saying where are the moderate muslims? why aren't they speaking out about this? i now ask the same question. because there are people who voted for donald trump, and who backed donald trump for legitimate economic reasons that could pertain to their own life that are not these people. that are not the nazis and the fascists and the anti-semimites and the racists and the others. there are people who said i want something different. i need someone who hears me. well, we're calling on you now. where are you? where are you? because right now there's a tremendous blurring of the lines that took place on saturday when the president was unable to distinguish between a fascist and someone who protests them.

so the same way we're calling on people to speak out for moderate muslims to speak out, i'm calling on people who are supporting donald trump to do the same thing. because right now these lines are feeling incredibly blurred. >> give it a read. it will get you thinking this morning. we'll talk to republican congressman charley dent to came out early to denounce white nationalism. and carol lennoc. "morning joe" is coming right back. david. what's going on? oh hey! ♪ that's it? yeah. ♪ everybody two seconds! ♪ "dear sebastian, after careful consideration of your application, it is with great pleasure that we offer our congratulations on your acceptance..."

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made with premium cuts of 100% kosher beef, so you can feel good feeding your family, no matter what time dinner is. hebrew national. we remain strict. even though the tonight show isn't a political show, it's my responsibility to stand up against extremists as a human being. the fact that it took the president two days to come out and denounce racists and white supremacists is shameful. i think he finally stood up because people stood up and said something. we need to acknowledge that racism exists and stand up for what's right and civil and kind and to show the next generation that we haven't forgotten how hard people have fought for human rights. we can't do this. we can't go back ward.

we can't go back ward. >> that's jimmy fallon last night. welcome back to "morning joe." it's tuesday, august 15th. with us this morning hallie jackson, mike barnicle, john hileman, noah rothman, wes moore, and carol lenny. george will and barrett pitner. welcome all. president trump denounced hate groups by name as he offered condolences and a plan of action after a white supremi supremacist rally on friday.

the president spoke after meeting with jeff sessions and christopher ray. >> the department of justice has opened a civil rights investigation into the deadly car attack that killed one innocent american. and wounded 20 others. to anyone who acted criminally in this weekend's racist violence, you will be held fully accountable. justice will be delivered. racism is evil. and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs. including the kkk, neo nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as americans. >> those comments came as a relief to some in the white house. the ap reported several of trump's senior advisors including john kelly had urged trump to make a more specific

condemnation than the one he made on saturday warning the negative story would not go away and that criticism from fellow republicans could endanger his legislative agenda. much of the pressure was from his party. tim scott responding in part today the president's remarks were clear and specific, however, they would have been more impactful on saturday. barrett, let me start with you as you join us for this hour. just your reaction to the president making the comments. he said they were clear and direct. they did come a few days after the initial comments, though. >> yeah. i think the significant part is how long it took for him to make that statement. if he came out authoritative right off the bat and denounced these white supremacists and all the actions that happened in charlottesville, we could see there's a president that maybe understands the severity of the situation. it took him a couple of days, and a large amount of pressure from inside the white house and outside the white house to get him to come out and say something as profound as racism is evil.

he needs to be better than that. we need someone that can address the situations adequately. i can see how there's relief that he was able to do this, but it's already too little too late. he's shown he's not really up to par for this severity of the situations this country is facing regarding race. >> george will, the president tweeted later that yes, i made clear comments. i couldn't have been more clear, but it will never be enough for the media because they're all bad people, something to that effect. the undercurrent of that being that i said what they wanted me to say. okay? i gave you 48 hours. i stewed on it. and i said all right, they pushed me into a corner. i said it not because it's what was in my heart but because it was what i was supposed to say. >> well, douglas mccar thur said everything can be described in two words too late.

it's not news that the english language is not mr. trump's best friend. he doesn't express himself fluently and gets tangled. and third, among the many aspects of the modern presidency he seems ill-suited for, there's one that's particularly awkward. that's a sort of pastoral sense that the president is supposed to come out and express moral sentiments. ronald reagan did it brilliantly after the challenger space disaster. others less so. but it is particularly challenging to a man whose instincts have not been honed by any experience in public life and public affairs. >> george, it seems this is not just a matter of inarticulate. it was a matter of not having the right thought or feeling or sentiment in the moment about what he was seeing happen in the streets of shcharlottesville. do you think that was donald trump thinking he had nothing to

say directly to nazis and the kkk members marching? >> i think it was a trump whisperer trying to get him back on script, but it was a script. and remember, there has been a simmering undercurrent of violence surrounding the trump movement from the start. we've seen him addressing crowds where you talk about people who would heckle him and say well, in the good old days people like that would be carried out of r here on a stretcher. a few days ago speaking to police officers who are constantly monitoring and being told how to restrain themselves, he said when putting people in a police car don't be too careful about ducking their heads. kind of not very subtle invocation to a not very pleasant kind of police brutality. there is something in the president's makeup that makes him slightly sympathetic to and

interested in tiptoeing along the edge of violence. the trouble is you sometimes fall over. >> we have now seem the story evolve since saturday since yesterday into something very different. let's just acknowledge that the president more immediately and more directly went after members of the media than he did white sprem sis with his tweet last night. last talk about what you heard from jimmy fallon, the reaction, i imagine inside the white house is, hitting the president after he condemned the folks by name. it is rumblings i have heard displeasure with how the story is being handled. i want to get your reaction to what seems to be the backlash to the backlash you're hearing from some. specifically from some donald trump supporters. >> well, they're going to say that people are being bad about it. but the fact is the president is expected to be more sure-footed than mr. trump is and to have instincts. what people are questioning is

if it takes you a long weekend to get something right that is so obvious as the case in charlottesville, then there's something wrong with the makeup of the president himself. now, the people who like mr. trump like him with a kind of -- they're bound to him by hoops of steal, and they're not going to be moved. so we get, as you say, any one of these back and forth ping-pongs, but both sides have spoken, and it seems to me mr. trump comes out of this diminished. he has never learned -- i know he says the bible is with the possible exception of the art of the deal, his favorite book, but he never read the part about the soft answer, turn away wrath. when people criticize him, he comes bounding back at them. it seems to me a weak man's idea of strength to constantly be insist on having the last word. then he winds up with senior business leaders leaving a panel

he's put together for white house advice, and he can't leave bad enough alone there. one of them is from the pharmaceutical industry so he attacks him for his drug prices. again, it's a man who just doesn't know how to leave bad enough alone. >> barrett, in the summer of 1964, well before you were born, three young men, james chainny, michael swerner, and another were killed in mississippi, charged with enrolling people who vote, americans to vote. in that summer of 1964 that act ignited an outrage across this country felt by a lot of people. rich, poor, black, white, didn't matter. do you think that level of outrage could still be summoned today in this america of 2017? >> i definitely think that the

level of outrage. i envision we'll aroach pproach with a civil action. but the key component is when people realize that the impacts of racism and racial oppression, that impacts all americans. it's not just like a black or a white thing or a latino and white. it's everybody. these structures, once this, like a water shed moment happens where the lightbulb goes off and everyone recognizes this affects everyone in various ways. just standing up for your friend who is of a different religious belief or ethnicity can have an impact that we all need to unite to combat the forces that want to divide us via some sort of racial sentiment or used violence and create structure that separate us. i think this could be a water shed moment where everyone is waking up, and as george was talking about, we needed some

leadership from the white house, and the fact that there isn't, i think is going to embolden people even further at the state and local level to stick up for the diverse communities in america, and make sure that we all know that this type of violence that is being inflicted upon americans of all ethnicities and all beliefs is no longer acceptable, and we have to find a way to move beyond it and ensure it doesn't rise again, and i think the renaming of parks and removal of monuments is making sure that people rally around this present imagery don't have the images to embolden them even while their voices may be violent for years. >> we're going to come back to charlottesville if n a moment. we have news about e-mails reviewed by an outlet purporting to show a young member of that team seeking to connect the campaign and russian officials. moves that appear to have been rejected by higher ranking

members. george pop drpadopalis. she's seen meeting in this meeting. in announcing his team on march 21st, trump described him as an energy and oil consultant and an excellent guy. but some question his credentials at a 2009 college graduate. three days after joining the national security team, he sent an e-mail to seven campaign officials with the subject line "meeting with russian leadership" including putin. he reportedly told them his russian contacts welcomed the opportunity. according to an internal campaign e-mail read to the washington post, putin wants to host the trump team when the time is right. he wrote that april 27th. the post says he made more than half a dozen overtures between

march and september 2016 on behalf of russian contacts. the suggestions were rejected by sam clove us saying nato allies should be consultanted first. when he approached paul manafort about meeting russian fishes manafort rejected it which his attorney says, quote, is concrete evidence the russian collusion evidence is fake news. this were included in what the trump campaign turned over to congressional investigators informal carol, this is your report from the washington post. first of all, who is this guy? >> so he was announced at our paper as one of candidate trump's five foreign policy advisors, people that were going to guide his campaign in how it dealt with other countries and foreign policy issues. of course, he didn't have much of a resume, and he had

virtually no sort of political footprint in any national campaign. he worked briefly for ben carson. he'd been out of college for ten years. what is so striking about the e-mails we looked at is how frequently george poppadopolis is bringing recommendations and invi tak invitations from anyone from a russian-government linked ngo to putin himself urging a meeting with trump and trump's campaign. i think my favorite e-mail in the group is the putin government stands ready for a meeting with the trump team when the time is right. it's a striking body of a sneak peek of a large treasure-trove of e-mails. this is only a small hand full of 20,000 that the campaign has turned over. but it's a really curious thing that this is such a frequent

conversation in the trump campaign between the spring and the early fall. >> are you able to sort out in your reporting or in the e-mails, carol, what george poppadopolis's fascination was with russia? >> we don't know for sure, but we've talked to a lot of people who also reviewed them with us, experts, for example, a former cia agent who was explaining to us how russia works. and steven hall said several times about these e-mails that it appears that the man may have essentially been the russian government's entry point into the trump campaign. one of several entry points into the trump campaign. we can't be sure from these e-mails what actually happened. all we can report is what we know which is that every other week, it seems, this young policy aide was urging russian meetings for the trump campaign to accept. and against this backdrop while

he is urging this to happen, even though some people rightly raised reservations, trump officials do meet with russians. remember that during the same period, again, march to basically july, you have jeff sessions, the head of this foreign policy advisory team for trump, and so essentially this man's boss meets with the russian ambassador. he does that in july. in june you have paul manafort who in the e-mails raises reservations with the meeting meeting with a russian lawyer at trump tower. you have carter page on the foreign policy team advising the trump campaign in july going to moscow after the man asks for permission for a campaign aid to accept some of these russian government overtures. while the e-mails show some resistance, there's obviously some acceptance. >> hallie, there's some internal

conflict here which is that in the piece reported by carol and her team, you have paul manafort and other members of leadership saying we don't do these kinds of meetings. one of the e-mails says dt is not doing these trips to meet and yet, there were meetings taking place. >> look what happened in june. >> right, and what i think you would hear from folks that were on the campaign at the time was they didn't know, for example, at the time, what that particular meeting with donald trump junior was about in june where this was explicit. for as much as team trump hate stories about russia, paul manafort's people don't hate this one. they see this as concrete evidence. one of the reps said to me yesterday when we were sort of chasing carol's piece that this swift action reflects the attitude of the campaign to reject meetings with russia, seizing on it to say we didn't do anything wrong. carol, this is just a little bit of the 20,000 some pages of

documents handed over to congress. in an investigation that is going to stretch months, almost certainly years on both the congressional side and on the special counsel side. this is an example of the story that's not going to go away over the next year, maybe two years for donald trump. >> absolutely. it's a huge -- it's a much larger trove of documents that we hope we'll mine, and it's also think about what it's like to be president trump. you're rescripting and rewriting your commentary about charlottesville, a very serious event. and at the same time you're dealing with the constant drip, drip, drip, of this particular probe, and bob mueller is obviously stepping up his efforts, and we hope to report more about that soon. >> wes, this goes into the stew for bob mueller's investigation which could take another year or another year and a half. >> that's right. and also the stew in terms of can we actually get anything

done? and so it's a question for you, george. at the same time when we have americans who are genuinely hurting, and who need legislation, who need forms of relief, who we know that policy matters when it comes to making their life any easier, but if the constant drum beat is around russia and also around nazis and white supremacy, what are the prospects of legislation that deal with everything that health care to infrastructure to tax reform? what's the possibility of anything like that happening when this cloud hovers around us? >> if you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own. here we go. another week. we're not talking about infrastructure. the trillion dollar shiny new things that were going to happen. we're not talking about health care reform. we're not even talking about tax reform. we're talking about thing shoved under the president's plate, and then he makes them central and

worse. if he cannot control the conversation of his own administration, he obviously can't control the conversation of the world. the events will intrude. but to be so buffetted by events and to in effect, give them momentum as they ricochet around his administration, you will get nothing done until you can control the narrative. and he has seemed to show so far no aptitude for that. >> you know, it's interesting. you even saw what happened yesterday. the instance and the inclination to lead with the economy before then later on talking about issues of race where one it's a conversation about how we're doing. and again, i would actually debate that argument about how we're doing as well. but at the same time the fact that there needs to be the seeming buffering or covering that we're going to use of how

we're doing as a prelude to the real question of who are we and what do we stand for? that goes back to the difficulty of keeping on message and on task to getting policy done. >> it's not only keeping on message but it's a pastoral dimension of the presidency. this is a modern phenomenon. we didn't expect others in the past to be national moral leaders in times of crisis, but with modern communications and particularly social media, it turns out that this is expected. and this is, as i say, something for which he had no experience and no discernible aptitude. >> we're only six months into the trump presidency. it seems in dog years, it's 72 years. can you recall a good day that this president has had in the past six months? >> the past six months?

>> yeah. that's what i thought. >> gorsuch. >> the gorsuch confirmation is the go-to call. i think the time dimension is really important. try to tie up things together. we talked earlier about the president's approval ratings, about what's going on on capitol hill, controlling the narrative. the window, we're six months in, but the window is closing rapidly. the first year of a presidency is the year in which historically stuff gets done. you do the big things in that first year. you then head into a midterm election year where not as much gets done and then it's off to reelection with the presidency thereafter. trump is in terms of legislativeness, gotten nothing done and we're in the middle of august. between now and thanksgiving there's a window where tax reform, some of these other big ticket items, it's either going to get done or not. and the trajectory of trump's approval rating is going down. that affects members of capitol

hill. if he doesn't get anything done between now and thanksgiving, the likelihood he's going to do anything between now and midterm is likely zero. his approval rating will continue to fall, and members of congress will less want to work with him. you'll turn the corner into next year, and it's every man for himself at that point. what's the prospect, wes asked george this question. in this narrow window the chances of doing a big sweeping tax reform that historically has taken years of bipartisan agreement and cooperation to get done, what's the likelihood of that? >> i think the question answers itself. >> the biggest achievement was supposed to be the repeal and replacement of obama care, and that's gone. >> as we head to break, what's on the president's mind this morning? he just retweeted an image of me with a trump train driving

through a cnn logo. thank you very much. great having you in our conversation. we'll be reading your piece entitled donald trump and the second southern redemption. thank you all. still ahead, when a retweet really isn't an endorsement. we'll try to figure out what's happening with the president's twitter account. and first, a number of republicans standing up to president trump. we'll talk to charlie dent about the changing dynamic on capitol hill. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. when this bell rings... ...it starts a chain reaction... ...that's heard throughout the connected business world. at&t network security helps protect business, from the largest financial markets to the smallest transactions, by sensing cyber-attacks in near real time

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within the last 30 minutes. what's he saying? >> he is, willie. and these tweets may be giving some of his critics more fodder in the wake of this controversy you've within tabeen talking ab. let's look at the first one. this is a retweet of an image of a trump train smashing into an image of a cnn logo. also worth noting, though, there's a person behind that logo. it is an incredibly violent image, willie, but we have to underscore just moments ago the president deleted that tweet. so perhaps he took a harder look at what this image actually showed or perhaps one of his advisors weighed in. either way, this is a tweet that's going to get a lot of attraction over the day. overnight he retweeted a tweet by a right wing conspiracy theorist. he was talking about crime in chicago and wondering why the

media wasn't spending more time talking about the crime in chicago and spending so much time focussed on what happened in charlottesville over the weekend. this is a controversial figure. again, the president not hesitating to retweet something by him. finally, he just retweeted an article by fox news about the fact that he's considering pardoning the former arizona sheriff. he's a lightning rod, someone who was convicted for contempt, for failing to follow a judge's order to stop detaining people because he thought they were in the country illegally. bottom line, this is going to set up yet another day of potentially very difficult headlines for president trump as he tries to turn the page. he's going to be holding an infrastructure event. this comes after hundreds of people were out protesting overnight. >> kristen welker at trump tower. we remember the president a few weeks ago tweeted out a meme

that showed a wrestling move with him body slamming the cnn logo. a few minutes ago he deleted the latest one. charlie dent with us this morning. good to see you this morning. you pretty quickly in realtime immediately on saturday condemned what you were seeing through the streets of charlottesville with nazis, with the kkk and with other members of the white supremacist groups. the president came out yesterday and did make a clear statement of condemnation, specifically to those groups. but it came a few days after yours and others. what do you make of the way he handled the last three days? >> well, willie, thank you for having me on the program. i would say the initial response clearly was inadequate and failed response. then he came out yesterday with a better response, but it looked a little bit forced and half hearted. i think what's affecting the president is the fact that his prior statements during the campaign, he went after -- he made attacks on mexicans,

muslims, the indiana judge, and i think it makes these situations more treacherous for the president. i was miffed yesterday when he talked ken frazier. i know ken. his father was a janitor. he went to penn state. i went to penn state. i met with him many times as a friend. they're doing great work on cancer drugs. i thought it was a cheap shot. other members stepped off and he didn't attack them. he didn't handle that well. . that bothered me. and as we're talking about this, we have big issues to deal with. i heard what you said about the tweets. again, we're tweeting about cnn again, and other things that really are distracting us from doing the important work of the country. >> you led me to my next question. there's a lot on the table that you and others on capitol hill are trying to get done for the country. and the sun has been blotted out almost entirely about the

stories about russia and charlottesville. most of them of the president's own manufacturing. how frustrating is it to you as a republican or lawmaker on capitol hill trying to get things done when the attention goes to something that donald trump said or did that he didn't need to say or do? >> of course it's frustrating. i am a senior aproep ray or the. we have to make sure this government is properly funded. we have to deal with budget issues and pivot the tax reform and infrastructure. i'm trying to deal with serious matters. september is going to be a difficult month in washington. and we have to be firing all cylinders to get it own. and we have to work with the administration to achieve some of these very important basic functions of governance. that's where i'm focussed to the extent we're dealing with other issues like in charlottesville, it's problematic. >> congressman, september is going to be insane. there's so much happening in

that month. it is almost tough to wrap your head around it. i have two questions for you. one of the things i have been hearing from folks inside and close to the white house is about how they've learned thelethe lessons from health care when it comes to tax reform. regarding outreach to outside groups and trying to make sure lawmakers are buying in. in your personal experience, have you been approached about tax reform. do you think they're handling it in properly? >> i think we need to back up a little bit on tax reform. >> that's not what the white house wants to do. they're not backing up. they're full steam ahead. >> i think in the house we've got to figure out what we want to do. i think we need top pass reconciliation on tax reform. i would not have a debate while we're doing tax reform. you'll give off the impression that we're going to be cutting

taxes for businesses while removing people from food stamps. that's a lesson, when we're removing taxes from the obama care taxes on higher income people and removing people from medicaid, that's not a very good optic. to put it mildly. >> i'm. go ahead. >> that was my point. that's a lesson i think we need to learn. i think we have to focus the reconciliation instructions on tax reform, get a responsible top line spending number and move forward on tax reform. i think we should save the mandatory changes for another day because of the optical situation that's created. >> when it comes to a fight over funding for the border wall, is that going to get in the budget? >> i suspect there might be some additional money for establishing operational control of the border. i don't think it's going to be a huge amount of money. i think the bill passed just a few weeks ago $1.6 billion to help implement part of the

secure fence act that i voted for in 2006, i believe. i think there will probably be some border funding. that will be negotiated with the senate, and the senate democrats will have a say in this. we'll need 60 votes to fund the government. >> congressman, this morning, there's a story populated with quotes by state level republican officials expressing frustration with republicans who took issue with donald trump's statement on saturday. do you think these people have a point, or are they enabling the president's worst instincts? >> anybody who watched what happened on saturday, we saw what happened. these were white nationalists, whoever they were, they were itching for a fight. they came there with body armor. they had pepper spray. they had batons, helmets. i've seen a lot of demonstrations. most of the people who show up don't show up armed like that.

this is a bad bunch of people. it had to be condemned. i was doing a lot of things on saturday. i had various engagements. i was appalled with the little i saw on that day. it was appalling. we had to condemn it. and i don't think anybody is trying to play politics here. i wish the situation had never happened. it was ugly. but we have to deal with the situations as they arise. >> does this change the way you feel about president trump? the way he handled charlottesville? >> look, as i said earlier, during the campaign he made some incendiary statements on mexicans, the judge from indiana. he mishandled the david duke situation. there are those types of situations, muslims too, he made all these comments. i think that's made it more difficult for the president to deal with these kinds of situations like the one that occurred on charlottesville the other day. so i think that's the reality of the situation. i want to work with the administration.

i have to oversee the va funding. i want to work with these folks for the good of the country. i want everybody to succeed here, but these types of incidents make it harder for us to get along. >> choongressman, thank you for your time this morning. >> thank you. >> coming up, we'll get an update on the state of mueller investigation, why old business deals could come back to make things complicated for the president. "morning joe" is back right after this. hundreds of dollars on youmy car insurance. saved me huh. i should take a closer look at geico... (dog panting) geico has a 97% customer satisfaction rating!

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oklahoma man is facing charges for planning to bomb a building in oklahoma city. after the fbi stopped him from carrying out that attack, officials say agents arrested 23-year-old jerry drake varnel saturday morning. they say he tried to detonate what he believed to be a van loaded with exploes ives that he parked next to a bank. it was full of materials covered by an undercover agent. he initially wanted to blow up the federal reserve building in

washington d.c. with a van bomb similar to the one used in the 1995 oklahoma city bombing. if convicted he faces up to 20 years in prison. >> just -- you have to pause on this story. this guy talks about timothy mcveigh and being inspired by him. it's worth talking about. 20 years ago when this happened i was working in washington and flew out to oklahoma city and spent days out there and watched bill clinton give his reaction. this is an old story in america. there's no doubt that donald trump has amped up the anger of the -- what they call the alt-right, but we've been dealing with this for a long time. this is an old story. timothy mcveigh had all the same sympathies as people who marched in charlottesville. this doesn't go away. it ebbs and flows. it's not to excuse donald trump,

but we always want to look away from the problem. it's been with us for a long time, and we got to focus on it, because it is a thing that costs lives with some frequency in the country. >> it's always there. just emerges from time to time. >> it does. and there's never a year that goes by where some people don't end up dead because of it. >> and great police work to disrupt it. the get away driver was an undercover agent as well. they disrupt third down plot before it became deadly. coming up next, what did the president mean when he said, quote, many sides were responsible for the violence in charlottesville. there are many sides. jeremy peters is here with his reporting next.

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questions? >> i like real news, not fake news. you're fake news. >> that's president trump calling a cnn reporter fake news at an event yesterday. joining us jeremy peters and jeff mason. gentlemen, good morning to you both. jeff, let me start with you. the frustration of not having press conferences with president trump over the first seven years. i think as hallie was saying, i think part of him believes that was a press conference, the fact that he stoodpodium. there were cameras and he delivered remarks. >> how hard did you try to get him to do more press conferences? >> it was a constant part of our outreach to the white house in addition to making sure the cameras stayed on during briefings. we had a period where that wasn't happening.

in general we pushed hard. i know the association will continue to push hard for press conferences and for the ability to ask questions we need to ask. >> why what the president said on friday is he genuinely thought yesterday was a big press conference because he had got in front of cameras. he made a statement and that reporters were present, and that was a press event. i'm not sure that he sees the difference between the two. there is a difference because a press conference is where they have a chance to question him. >> part of what is what you are seeing to me too is that when he goes to these pool spraz, so that's the ones where the -- when he takes 50 questions leak did he in bedminster, he feels like, hey, that's enough. it is to be clear from a journalist press perspective, not enough, right, because you're not with the entire group

of media that covers you. it's not an extended period where you are taking these questions. >> we certainly welcome it. >> it was a de facto press conference. he has only held one. >> what do you say to the average american who is just watching, they don't care about what we want. they watched trump last week. trump took a lot of questions. he took them all from phil rucker one day and -- >> peter alexander the next day. >> one reporter, it's not the whole press corps. for the average american sitting around going i saw the guy on tv the other day. he took 30 questions. i saw him on tv the day after that. he took 30 more questions. why do i care if pittsthe presi is taking a press conference? >> the average american doesn't operate on our clock. they're still thinking he has

only been there for six months. a lot of them are saying, give the guy a break. he has only been there for six months. he -- we're thinking six months seems like 72 years. the other aspect is, unfortunately, for the country, for history, for who we are as a country, the fake news thing has sunk in. it's taken hold. >> it was an event on saturday where donald trump made the now infamous comment about on many sides that there was eight t aid on many sides in what happened in charlottesville that day. why did he say it? where did it come from? what was behind that particular remark, which looked to most of us like an ad lib off the text he was reading from? >> right. i think that in explaining why trump was so reluctant to call out by name white supremacists

and nazis who were clearly responsible for the death that occurred in charlottesville, it's important not to confuse the policy -- the politics with the personality, and you have a 70-year-old -- 71-year-old very stubborn man who is very relukt yabt to do what everybody is telling him to do at any given time, and in that case this was to call out white supremacists. he spent a lot of time in the conservative media where donald trump is an avid consumer. what you will hear a lot of is that a violent unhinged and anarchical left is responsible for as much violence as the far right. while it is definitely true that this country needs to have a debate where one side doesn't call the other nazis all the time, the fact is it's not many sides. it's one side that's responsible

for the deaths and statistics show that. the president and many on the right seem relukt yabt to acknowledge that. >> noah, this goes exactly to your piece in commentary, which is to say that the death on saturday was the work allegedly of a white nationalist, of a white supremacist, of a man who sympathized with nazis, but the frustration you perhaps heard from president trump and other republicans is that democrats and progressives are not asked every time there's some political violence at a rally by a group like that to respond to it and to react to it. >> yeah. i had the privilege of speaking with jeremy the other day about this very topic. whether we're talking about a body count, it's too late. we've already let the phenomenon go on too long. we've allowed it to metastacize too much. with this event in sacramento we talked about, it was a pivotal event in the fact that democrats were not pressed about how this violence was started, by liberal leftist organizations, sort of

allowed it to go unanswered and it wasn't the last time that it happened and the event that we saw in virginia was an extension of that event, and it won't be the last time. everybody needs to go on record. both left and right, and say that these groups don't represent us. these groups are on the fringe, and they deserve to be on the fringe, and nobody is asking the right people that question. i think that is something that conservatives are right to say that actually happened. legitimate and justified to say it. the fact that some of the press maybe sneer at that suggestion is indicative of the problem. >> he believes there's violence on many sides, including from the groups on the left. the comments he made yesterday had the appearance of someone who had been sort of backed into a corner and forced to say what he said where. >> it did, and i think you can back that up by the fact that this is somebody who does share his opinions pretty routinely on twitter and he did not take to twitter to talk about white supremacists. he didn't address that and say that out loud until he was at the white house yesterday. >> jerry peters, thank you very

much. we'll be reading your piece that just went up in the "new york times." a fascinating look at the comments. thank you as well. still ahead on "morning joe." >> i was a bit miffed yesterday when he attacked ken frazier. i know ken. he is from philadelphia. his father was a janitor. he went to penn state. he i tonight i went to penn state. they're doing great work there on cancer drugs like melanoma, and i thought it was a cheap shot. >> that was congressman charlie dent on "morning joe" just moments away, responding to the president's attack on the ceo of merck after leaving his advisory council. we'll get a report from wall street on the difficult calculus ceos across america are having to do this week. morning joe is coming right back.

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why did it take so lock? >> that is the much with steven c colbert. with us here on set nbc chief news white house correspondent halle jackson. veteran columnist and msnbc contributor mike barnacle, national affairs editor and analyst for nbc news and msnbc mr. john heilman, associate editor of commentary magazine noah rothman with a great new piece out today that's pleasing almost no one. congratulations on that. the ceo of the robinhood foundation, best-selling author and u.s. army combat veteran wes morgan. good morning to everybody. good so have you with us. in a statement almost 50 hours in the making, president trump denounced hate groups by name as he offered condolences and a plan of action. after a white supremacist rally on friday and saturday's deadly violence in charlottesville, the president spoke after meeting with attorney general jeff sessions and fbi director christopher ray. >> the department of justice has opened a civil rights

investigation into the deadly car attack that killed one innocent american and wounded 20 others. to anyone who acted criminally in this weekend's racist violence, you will be held fully accountable. justice will be delivered. racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the kkk, neo-nazis, white supremists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear to americans. >> the move came as a relief to some in the white house. the a.p. reported several of trump's senior advisors, including new chief of staff john kelly had urged him to make a more specific condemnation warning that the negative story would not go away and that criticism from fellow republicans could endanger his legislative agenda. much of the pressure came from

the party. senator tim scott of south carolina responding in part today the president's remarks were clear and specific. however, they would have been more impactful on saturday. after a signing a memorandum on trade policy later in the afternoon, the president was asked about that time lag. >> mr. president, can you explain why you defendant's exhibit condemn those hate groups by name over the weekend? >> they've been condemned. they have been condemned. >> and why were you not having a press conference today? you said on friday you'd have a press conference. >> we had a press conference. we just had a press conference. >> can we ask you some more questions then, sir? >> it doesn't bother me at all, but i like real news, not fake news. you're fake news. thank you, everybody. >> do you regret not saying something -- >> haven't you put out a lot of fake news yourself, sir? >> a president talking to a reporter from cnn. he continued to attack them. "made additional remarks on charlottesville and realized once again that the fake news media will never be satisfied. truly bad people."

this is the trump re-election campaign that released its first ad labelling members of the media as "the president's enemies." later, the president retweeted criticism of the media for not covering the gun violence in chicago. the tweet was sent by a prominent alt-right figure who the new york post and others identify as a past collaborator with richard spencer, one of the participa participants in the charlottesville demonstrations. let's start with the president's lag time and the response from the white house, which seemed to be that you need to go out and speak more strongly not because necessarily it's the right thing to do, but because the story won't go away. >> because you're catching so much heat for it. the feeling among some folks within the white house was partly, yes, the president should have been more specific in his condemnation over the weekend, but also, what you heard from the president, which was the media is really making a big deal out of this, aren't they? that played out into what you saw from the president. the tweet after was telling. go after the media for apparently not being satisfied,

he believes, with his statement which is accurate to report that it came two days after his original one. i think there was dissatisfaction, as you reported, as the a.p. reported inside the white house, with how the original statement unfolded. this was the clean-up job, and i think the reaction fell into one of two camps. people who said better now than never, and people who said too little too late. >> we were talking yesterday around this table about what it would mean to have the president two, three days later come out and finally say the things that should have been said on saturday afternoon. is there value in what he said? it's important that he said it and put it out there, but his impulse, his initial instinct was not to say that. he only said it after he came two days worth of credit simple. >> maybe the initial impulse was this wasn't a story. you know it's interesting because i'm watching these people now who are congratulating him for coming out and saying it, even if it's two days later. the thing that comes back in my mind is the bar so low that we're now celebrating and giving a standing ovation to a president who condemns nazism? you know, let's remember what we're talking about. right?

we're talking about facists and people who drove miles and states away with nazi helmets. the fact that he is now come out and said this is a bad thing, it's fine, but at the same time i feel like the bar should be significantly higher when we're talking about the president of the united states and this is not something that people should necessarily be applauding. this is something that, again, i thought we moved past this a long time ago. this isn't 1917. it's 2017. >> noah, you have been writing about this for the last several days, what the president should have done and didn't do. speak a little bit, if you can, to what happened inside the white house to the extent we know what happened, which is that he got advice on saturday perhaps not to alienate some of the white nationalest groups that make up the core of his support. then john kelly, general john kelly, emerging perhaps two days late, but emerging eventually to say you've got to do something about this. >> it feels like we're an eternity away from those stories when john kelly first came on as chief of staff, who was going to

yell put the tweets in order. we have the alt-right being prominently featured on the president's twitter account as virtually a racist, in i good he had done yesterday. we know he is getting advice from people like steve bannon that says you have this nucleus of support on the fringe who can't adpord to alienate them. the president's instincts seem to be to listen to the people like steve bannon and people who say that the alt-right is very important to your face, and so you can't afford do delegitimize them. no doubt, they are emboldened by the president's redisense to attack them. we're going to see the counter movement expand as a result. they are just as legitimateized and emboldened, and we are a more fragile country today than yesterday. >> you know, i mean, the pace of the media and the culture today has been accelerated and is accelerated every single day. this might be a moment to pump the brakes, to stop and pause

and think about what just happened to the presidency. the president of the united states ceded his moral authority on saturday. he could not define or distinguish the difference between protests and nazis. nazis on the streets of an american city. fomenting a riot. this is not the american story that we're witnessing. this is a selfish inward destructive story that's taking place, and the president's voice is lacking, and the president has decided not to lead, but to follow, and to follow what and who we really don't know, but it's not good. >> john, let's say again -- he said the thing that should have been said yesterday. he did say those words. there was in the moments that followed in and the tweets that followed and the comments that followed that you saw there with jim accosta from cnn, a tone of i gave you what you wanted, okay? you wanted me to say the thing i

was supposed to say. i said it. now back off. now he says this is a media story and that the media will never be happy. those comments were not in his heart on saturday. he said them because he was pushed into a corner. >> yeah. i don't think there's anybody who didn't see reading the body lairng, the delay. there's no one who didn't see this as being something that was forced into doing. right? unlike his reaction to the ceo of merck who leaves the business council and immediately is on twitter attacking that person. not that's an instinctive reaction. i'm mad at that guy. he was not mad at david duke on saturday in charlottesville claiming donald trump, saying we're here because of donald trump. not neo-nazis, confederates, kkk members, others all claiming trump on saturday. now, if you saw demonstrators, let alone rioters out invoking your name saying i'm here because of willie googeist, bec

of wes moore, you would say i want nothing to do with that person. that's not what dlt did on saturday. he did it to the ceo of merck yesterday, and he did it to jim accosta in the room yesterday. where is the genuineness? here's the thing that i just -- the last thing i'll say it is we focus on the president all the time, rightly so. again, the reason i mentioned david duke and those people invoking donald trump is those people are listening to donald trump too. what they heard on saturday was, hey, he is with us. they've heard it from him before. they heard it from him on saturday. when they saw him yesterday, they said, ah, that's the thing he had to do to appease the liberal media, to appease the establishmentarians. those people, when they march again, and they will, will feel like donald trump has their back. >> still ahead, the president's poll numbers fall to a new low in the latest gallop poll, and, later, top executives make a difficult choice. how to maintain their access to the president while criticizing

his response to charlottesville. plus, joy reed and mike lupica joins the set. >> willie, we're all about the tropics. hurricane gert off the coast of the united states. this one is parallel to the carolinas and then head out to sea. it's looking impressive this morning. just rip current threats. also large waves. make the surfers happy, but for everyone on vacation from cape cod all the way down to the outer banks, water will be dangerous over the next two days. this storm is definitely churning the ocean up. then we go back out further into the atlantic. now as we mentioned, we're getting into the peak of our season. we get one storm after another setting up. this is the five-day development zone. you notice puerto rico right here. we're going to have another storm to watch in a couple of days. where that goes from there, still a lot of questions if it stays south or heads to the gulf or the east coast. that's about ten days away from now. we'll all pay attention to that in the days ahead. showers and storms still possible today in the mid-atlantic region. warm conditions from texas through the middle of the country, and everyone out west

is enjoying a beautiful day. not too hot, and temperatures are in the comfortable range. this takes us into monday, and, of course, you'll see a lot of eclipse forecast. people want to see the eclipse and they may need clear skies. the weather needs to cooperate. this is as we begin the eclipse. watch it travel here. it looks like there could be some clouds in the inner mountain west. also through nebraska. maybe some showers and storms in the midwest too. it's an iffy forecast in missouri, and definitely iffy through south carolina. the green shows you where it's even a chance of rain. six days away. this forecast will change and it will be tweaked as we get closer to the event. a lot of people spent a lot of money to travel to that path of totally. we'll keep you updated as it gets closer. new york city saw overnight rain to clear up just in time for that morning rush hour. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. you don't let anything

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the trump administration nears the seven-month mark now. the latest gallop poll finds the president with his worst approval rating yet.

at 34% his job approval rating has hit a new low in this poll, while it's 61% that his disapproval at an all-time high for this poll. in context, bill clinton's approval rating never dropped to 34%. george w. bush hit 34% in april 2006 as the iraq war worsened, rising gas prize, and an abandoned supreme court pick and the fall-out over hurricane katrina. gallop never found barack obama dropped 34% during his eight-year presidency. still, trump's approval have not reached the depths that other presidents have over the last 50 years. nixon the lowest at 34%. gallop found the president's approval rating among republicans had fallen to 79%. gallop said that number dropped to 77% in the final three days from friday to sunday. john, the significance of these numbers that keep finding new lows for a president that would like to get something done, but has nothing legislative to show for his first seven months.

>> you know, the president looks at all these polls and says they're nor example of fake news. he says all the polls are phony and fraud lenl fraudulent. the people that don't think the polls are phony are the republicans and democrats. republicans on capitol hill. these examples that we saw over the weekend of republican senators speaking out on charlottesville are not isolated. we've seen in the last couple of weeks we've seen the senate move to not allow trump to do recess appointments. we've seen the past sanctions bills. we've seen senators who moved -- republican senators who moved to insure robert mueller will stay in his job. there are -- it has taken a long time for republican senators to start to break with donald trump, and they haven't broken fully with him, but if you look over the last three weeks, there are more and more signs of republicans who are willing to stand up to trump, and that's not because they've suddenly found courage. it's because they are looking at donald trump's poll numbers trending ever downward.

those guys are mathematicians on capitol hill. they see donald trump every day. he loses a couple of points. every day they get a couple more points of courage to break with him. >> look at the flip side of that, which i had a conversation with a top republican, says somebody close to one of these folks that came out against trump over the weekend. i said does it mean now policy splits? no. they're still going to work with the president because they still want to get this is it uf done. look at what's happening when they get back in september. they have to do something. they want to do something on tax reform. there are still rumbling that they want to do something on -- you have the debt limit, authorization for money for the border wall. you have big fights coming up. some are really important to republicans on the hill. the opposition to the president and the pushback you're talking about, john, seems like it may only go so far when it comes to policy. >> yeah. we were talking about this yesterday too, which is saturday was a moment where it was easy for a republican to break with the president. we saw all the way down the lean, ted cruz, marco rubio, on and on and on over charlottesville. the question will be do they come back around to him as they have previously? there have been moments not just

during his presidency, but during the campaign where, you know, they famously said i'm out after the "access hollywood" tape. people walking away and then they walk back towards him. do you think it will be different this time, or as halle said, is this a guy they need to get their agenda through? >> yeah, this is a guy they need. he has to sign lejs lake. trump's election was the torment of tantilus for republicans. they had their agenda within reach, but just outside of it. he is always going to sabotage their efforts to get tax code reforms, to reform the north carolina -- and like john was saying, the republican calculus is they don't want to get primary, but it's a point of diminishing returns once you get 70%, something along those lines because they also have to seek re-election. at that point it becomes easier to break with donald trump. imperative to break with donald trump for many members of the house, for example, who are in districts that are vulnerable. the agenda is always going to stimy efforts to break fromming donald trump, but the demands of seeking re-election will force them to create some distance.

>> is there a number out there, 33, 32, 29 that in september if that number is that number that more republicans would say, hey, we have to take a look at what's going on here and get away from this guy, at the expense, perhaps, of some of the agenda? >> i think if his numbers are looking in mid 30s that the ugliness continues. i think there's a chance -- look, i believe the polls are not fake news. i believe that polls are good and a useful barometer of where the american people stand. you can forgive president trump and others for thinking that maybe the polls have got this wrong. maybe they're missing some of my supporters. what that doesn't explain is why over the last month or two the polls have started capturing fewer and fewer trump supporters. why would the polls have been more accurate in july than now? part of what's going on is you have a lot of trump voters who may be -- it's that social desirability and bias. they may have seen the news over the weekend, and they're thinking i don't want to pick up the phone and tell anyone i still like this guy.

that's not a good story for the white house, but, of course, that's the way that this white house is sort of spun bad poll numbers. well, they're not capturing my supporters. i don't think there's a good way to spin within the same poll your numbers falling this low over the course of what should have been a very, you know, good part of your first six months or seven months as president. >> coming up on "morning joe" anthony scaramucci says it's time for steve bannon to go. so does rupert merdock. just ahead, we'll talk about the nine lives of the president's chief strategist and what lies ahead for him in the trump white house. if you're told you have cancer,

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sno ask you and steve bannon work together in this white house or not? >> i get to work with a broad range of talented people, and it is a privilege every day to enable the national security team. >> can you and steve bannon work in that same white house? >> i am ready to work with anybody who will help advance the president's agenda and advance the security, prosperity of the american people. >> do you believe steve bannon does that? >> i believe that everyone who works in the white house, who has the privilege, the great privilege every day of serving

their nation, should be motivated by that goal. >> general mcmaster had three cracks at that one. there are signs of shifting power and the shadow war within the trump administration between chief strategist steve bannon and national security advisor h.r. mcmaster. mcmaster has faced biting tweets and headlines from the alt-right and breitbart where bannon was top ed sore. bannon is said to be increasingly isolated. axios reports the president has told associates he thinks bannon is behind some white house leaks and that he is fed up with what's seen as self-promotion. according to the "new york times" and other outlets, bannon is on thin ice with the new chief of staffer general john kelly. "kelly has told mr. trump's top staff that he will not tolerate mr. bannon ace shadowland mac nations, according to a dozen current and former trump aides and associates with knowledge of the situation." the paper reported rupert merdock told kelly and jared kushner at a whose dinner that bannon has to go. this was before the president went to his bedminster golf course on vacation. here's what a former white house

communications director anthony scaramucci said last night about bannon and former chief of staff reince priebus. >> this is you over here holding your thumbs in your belt like a gun slinger, and this is reince priebus. what is going on? were you brought in just to get rid of him? >> i don't want to say that. >> and sean spicer. say it like the m uh-hmuuc. >> all right. >> give me some muuc here. >> the muuc of long island would say there was no love lost there. look at the picture. >> you thought he was one of the leakers. >> i did. >> he is gone. right? who is leaking now? is it steve bannon? >> well, i've said that. >> say it now. >> i've been pretty open about that. >> is steve bannon the leaker? >> i said he was. i obviously got caught on tape saying he was, so i have no problem saying that. >> okay. is he going to be gone in a week? >> that's up to the president. what does the muuc think.

>> if it was up to me he would be gone. it's not up to me. >> still, the president reportedly consulted with bannon throughout the weekend over how to respond to charlottesville violence. you've been reporting on this story as well. we've heard, i don't know how many times. live lost count that steve bannon was going tb out this week. he is on thin ice. he has a week to go. what are you hearing? >> it is my sense from having conversations with folks with inside and close to the west wing that if there was ever a time, the time is now, but that it is at least at this point not appearing to be a done deal. you're right that there have been stories repeatedly about bannon's safety and security at the white house, and with the president. remember, let me just point out a couple of things here. number one, steve bannon did not go to bedminster where john kelly was conducting this review, essentially. he was assessing the troops, figuring out how who has what strengths and weaknesses, trying to figure out how to make this structure run more efficiently. not how to control the president, but how to control the president's staff and put process says in place to help

things run better. steve bannon was not there for that process, which i think says something. you also have i think concern among some folks inside the west wing and close to the president about bannon's role, about sort of the macinations with h.r. mcmaster. the two have very positive policy views. the bottom line is this. this is how somebody put it to me, and i thought this was a smart point. steve bannon's personal influence may be waning with the president. his policy influence does not seem to be. look at what happened yesterday with the china trade announcement. that is steve bannon. look at what's happening this week. nafta trade, that's steve bannon. look what's happening with afghanistan. still nothing announced as the president grapples with what to do next. that is partly because steve bannon is in his ear pushing something very different strategically than h.r. mcmaster. >> he may be on the way out. i say may because we've had this story many times. >> the other thing is when these headlines come out, the president oftentimes doesn't like to deal with the headlines so more media attention about this, the less likely for the president to act. >> whether he is in good or bad

graces, it was clear to a lot of people that bannon's influence was on display on saturday. that was not -- do you or anyone else at this table believe that general john kelly got in the room with president trump and said, you know, you shouldn't condemn the kkk. you shouldn't condemn nazis. general john kelly. no, that was the influence of someone else on president trump. >> i'm not sure whether or not that was steve bannon or president trump himself. no one can know the mind of donald trump. what steve bannon's job is to be is to be karl rove, valerie jarrett. he is supposed to know what trump is thinking before he thinks it and express to trump what he is thinking before trump even knows what he is thinking. i think the people who say that steve bannon is the key to his base, the people in donald trump's ear saying steve bannon is our guy and if you let him loose, you are letting us loose have really gotten ahold of him. i think that's a compelling argument. that's something the president really believes. >> coming up on "morning joe" no questions asked. the new yorker says the trump organization barely vetted its

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>> we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hate wed, bigotry,ing and violence on many sides. on many sides. >> that was president donald trump's original statement on charlottesville on saturday. joining us now the host of a.m. joy on msnbc, joy reed, and staff writer politico magazine, his latest piece says white nationalists are trying on an unfamiliar role. police victims. good morning to you both. joy, let's just get caught up with you on the events of the last several days. saturday, this saturday, we just saw violence on many sides. he talked about hate on many sides, although there was only one death in charlottesville. it came from one side.

then it took him until yesterday to say in clear terms out of his own mouth that he disavoied and everything else he should have said earlier on. do you believe the new comment was sincere? do you believe he was forced into the position of making that comment? >> well, i this i that donald trump's tweet saying what the media is still not satisfied kind of revealed the fact that it was forced on him. that he sort of revealed. you know, he is revelatory about his motives on twitter. i think he was clear that he did it in order to get better media coverage, and he is angry it didn't work. it's interesting because it started on saturday as far as the major breaking news. including on our show when we had a guest pulled off of our set live. the actual incident started the night before, and so i think, you know, when i'm looking at this, i'm looking at it from the perspective of a president who had got 80% of the evangelical christian vote, and the night before there were pastors, clergy, including my guest the next day holed up inside of a church on the uva campus being

surrounded by people marching with torches. i mean, it was sort of a lame version of a klan-effect sort of display. they were tiki torches. if you were inside that church, and we spoke to people including pastors in that church, you are talking about christian pastors and lay people who were inside a church praying while outside they could hear the rumbling and roar of blood and soil, chwhich is, of course, the nazi theme and the agriculture theme of nazi germany. reverend blackman said when she was a kid growing up in the south she remembers klan rallies, and it sounded like a klan rally. think about the terror they inflicki inflicted on pastors the night before. for the president who claims the support of the evangelical christian world, not to come out and immediately condemn the terrorizing of ministers and then the next day that same group of pastors were set upon

with by white nationalists with brass knuckles and baseball bats. this wasn't just a march that went awry. this was incredible violence and terrorism perpetrated against lay people, christians, peaceful marchers who were just there to organize against hate. this was -- this was a lay-up for any president. this was the easiest, lowest bar a president would have to reach to condemn that. the fact that he had to be forced to do it is a scandal on the presidency. it's a shame. it takes away the moral authority of the office. >> you're writing this morning for politico about the reaction in the days since saturday in charlottesville of white nationalists, of the group that have bubbled up and been given some cover to behave in the way they behaved over the last few days. how were they feeling right now as they have watched how the president has conducted himself and why were his words or his lack of words important to them? >> you know, richard spencer gave a press conference yesterday in ago exalexandria.

he said he doesn't think the president really meant what he said. that he feels the president only made his follow-up save yesterday because he was forced to. spencer pointed out that the president did not name white nationalists in the group that he condemned. spencer considers himself to be a white nationalist and feels that the president still hasn't condemned him and that the president hasn't actually told spencer at least or people who identify with the alt-right to do anything differently from what they have been doing. >> you know, ben, i'm watching that video of richard spencer. it's been reported that he couldn't get a hotel that would support this kind of press conference. he ended up in some apartment i think in northern virginia with like a stack of cd's behind him and a flat screen. i just wonder, you know, yet reporters obviously showed up to listen to what he had to say. joy, i would ask you this as well. the role that the media has in either covering or not covering these groups. giving them oxygen, obviously, this is when somebody is killed,

when a car plows through a crowd of people and somebody dies, that is news. it deserves to be covered. at the same time i would love your thoughts on the responsibility that we have, i think. >> yeah, i think of all the sort of profiles that have been done of richard spencer, i'm wondering why are we doing that? why is the media doing full-on profiles of these white nationalist leaders as if they are normal political figures. he has become accustomed to that. i recently read a piece that talked about the haircut that they're wearing. feesz are being written about what they wear. who cares? these are people who should be on the fringes. i was a kid when -- i'm old enough to remember when david duke first took off the klan robes and said we're now going to dress up in suits, and he innovated that, and spencer is sort of the next generation of that. i think we give them too much attention. you know, i actually have to give it up to go daddy, which is a conservative trump supporting founder of that company who said, you know, you can't even put your website on here, storm front. it's a shame that we have to know the names of all of these.

>> ben, the focus of your piece really is about the relationship between these white nationalist groups and police. traditionally the white nationalist groups have been supporters. they have supported them. jason kessler, who organized the charlottesville rally, said "this has changed everything. i thought the police would uphold constitutional law no matter what." now they're going after the police in america as well? >> that's right. and they're sort of -- they seem to be processing a form of shock that they would ever feel that the police were not on their side. both kessler and richard spencer expressed that sentiment. they are planning to file lawsuits they say against charlottesville for the way it policed the event against the state of virginia for the way that -- >> what's their specific complaint about that, ben? >> they have a few.

kessler claims that there was a plan that was made ahead of time with the city of charlottesville and that the city of charlottesville departed from that plan. i spoke to a spokeswoman for the charlottesville pd. she says that it's the white nationalists who didn't follow the plan that they agreed to ahead of time. >> we're watching them be pretty active right here. peeling someone off of him. >> that's right. they say they're speaking to lawyers and looking for a lawyer in the state of virginia who will take their cause to court and say that they were the victim of a police conspiracy to deny them their civil rights. >> the argument, ben, is i don't want to belabor this too much is that if not for the police performance on saturday in charlottesville that heather

heyer would not be dead? >> yes. they say for the first time in his life that the police were not on his side. whether that gave him more sympathy for groups like black lives matter and for minority groups who say they've been treated unfairly by the police that traditionally the alt-right has demonized and belittled, he sort of dodged the question. i never really got a total answer from him on that. >> all right. ben, wild piece. thank you very much. we'll be checking out your reporting in politico magazine. >> you know, joy, one of the more interesting and depressing aspects of everything that's occurred since saturday and before, actually, says is the combination of human nature and instinct. on saturday you have nazis in

the streets in charlottesville. you have violence. you have a death that occurs and an minute american. >> my only real surprise is that people are surprised. donald trump has been the same person since i moved back to new york in the late 1980s as a teenager. he is the guy who wanted the central park five who were teenagers like me at the time dead. he was a guy that was sued by the nixon administration by not allowing people like me to move into his apartments. i saw him as a bigot years ago, and he was a birther. the fact that, you know, he cultivated the alt-right, he brought them into the white house, steve bannon proclaimed on the record to a reporter that

breitbart is the home for the alt-right. he wanted it to be that, where his instinct has always been to give if not a consent and support to the alt-right to at least give it a pass. he hasn't changed. this is who he has been his whole public life. donald trump is donald trump. he is 71 years old. he is not going to change. this is who he is. this is who people elected. under armour, merck, and -- they've left the president's manufacturing council. >> we have a statement, willie. the ceo of intel who just a few months ago was at the white house in a big unveil of new

technology jobs now says, "earlier today -- this came out last night -- i called on all leaders to condemn the white supremacists and their ill marched and violence. he says i resign because i want to make progress while many in washington seem more concerned with attacking anyone who disagrees with them. we should honor, not attack, those who have stood up for equality and other cherished american values. i hope this will change, and i radio he main willing to serve when it does." kevin plank of underarmour, you mentioned also came out and resigned from the manufacturing council. he didn't mechanics charlottesville or anything specific. just said, "under armour engages in innovation in sports, not politics." it's been also interesting to monitor some of the other ceo reaction. we, of course, reached out to all of them on the president's council. many of them feel that it's important to stay on and engage. have a seat at the table. for instance, jeffrey immelt, the ceo of general electric says ge has no tolerance for hate,

bigotry, or racism, but that immelt will stay on board. also, similar from andrew, the ceo of dow chemical. he says at dow there's no room for hatred, racism, or bigotry, but ultimately, that it is important to stay on board. this is a big debate for ceos. they're having with their pr teams. it's a fine line that they're finding themselves in right now, which is how do i get a seat at the table for some of the policies that i have been wanting forever. lower corporate taxes, more infrastructure spending, better workplace hiring, and dealing with labor shortages while at the same time trying to reconcile some of the morality issues that come from the response from charlottesville, by the way, and other ceos who resign in the wake of the u.s. pulling out of the paris climate areasonable doubt cord. >> cnbc sarah eisen. thank you very much. as you mention, the president almost immediately attacking merck ceo ken frazier after he made the announcement that he was pulling off. joy, he said now that ken frazier and merck pharma has resigned from the president's

manufacturing council, he will have more time to lower rip-off drug prices. that tweet took him about, oh, i don't know, ten, 15 minutes to rip off. took three days to go after the klan. >> he didn't go after the other ceos that resign. it's interesting that ken, the only african-american, that resigned, that donald trump is very quick to attack when he feels attacked, but he is very slow to attack when it's somebody he thinks supports him and likes him. >> also, can't you both work to lower drug prices and also not like neo-nazis? >> i think what's amazing about this is that particularly the second tweak about merck. pharma's leader in higher and higher drug prices while at the same time taking jobs out of the u.s. bring back jobs and lower prices." if this guy is a bad guy because he is -- why was he on the president's jobs council in the first place? literally the day before he was a proud member of the president's jobs council and then today it's like, oh, you are the worst guy in the world. you have taken jobs over the

whole time. this is a small inconsistency. i don't mean to get hung up on it, but whatever. >> funny how those things happen. >> joy reed, always good to have you here. >> thank you. >> long before he was the president, he was a he was a bu, now robert muler is said to be interested in both as his investigation presses on. we'll talk about that in just a moment. keep it on "morning joe." at ally, we offer low rates on home loans. but if that's not enough, we offer our price match guarantee too. and if that's not enough... we should move. our home team will help you every step of the way. still not enough? it's smaller than i'd like. we'll help you finance your dream home. it's perfect. oh, was this built on an ancient burial ground? okay... then we'll have her cleanse you house of evil spirits. we'll do anything, (spiritual chatter) seriously anything to help you get your home. ally. do it right.

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welcome back to "morning joe" on a tuesday morning. joining us now, author and columnist for the new yo"the ne daily news" and msnbc contributor, the great mike lupica. good to see you. also staff write we are "the new yorker," his article in the magazine's upcoming issue looks at wh special counsel robert mueller may find as he examines president trump's past foreign deals and how they may help explain his relationship with vladimir putin's russia. adam writes in part, several news accounts have confirmed that robert mueller has indeed begun to examine trump's real estate deals and other business dealings including some that have no obvious link to russia. this is hardly wayward. it would be impossible to gain a full understanding of the various points of contact without scrutinizing many of the deals trump has made in the past decade. he branded buildings in toronto and the sojo neighborhood are

with people with connections to the kremlin. others in brazil, india, indonesia are caught up in corruption probes and collectively they suggest that the company had a pattern of working with partners who exploited their proximity to political power. quite a piece here, adam. dig into it a little deeper for us. what specifically are we talking about here? what is bob mueller so interested in? >> well, if you think of how would there be connections between trump himself, the trump organization, and the kremlin, this guy was a businessman far lot longer than he was a politician. and his business has been remarkably involved with a lot of russians and specifically russians in proximity to putin, people want to flatter putin, et cetera. it seems that one avenue of investigation that i believe others looking into that would be a fruitful one is trump made a lot of really, really risky deals with some really, really sketchy people. and the idea that the kremlin has a history of amassing

information on business people so that they can use it to blackmail people. that's a standard kremlin technique. so it seems almost unimaginable that there isn't some set of dossiers -- we know about the more salacious ones but some set of dossiers that make a legal case against the trump organization, the kids, trump himself. >> adam, according to your reporting, within your report, where would trump go for financing? domestically or abroad? >> well, starting around 2006, 2007, 2008, he's really going -- he's leaving this real estate development business where he's amassing hundreds of millions of dollars to buy property, develop it, he turns into this volume game where he's getting money for licensing deals, and that means he needs a lot of deals fast. these are giving him a million bucks here, two million bucks there, not hundreds of millions of dollars. and there's really this promiscuous p period that peaks in 2010, 2011, 2012, where he's

going around the world -- we identified eight people who are under investigation for money laundering, foreign practices, other illicit finance who trump did business with, people nobody in america would do business with, really sketchy people, almost no due diligence in the trump organization. >> i imagine when you went to the president's books for a response, they were infuriated you were asking because we know the president has said my financial dealings, business dealings are off limits to bob mueller. >> his lawyer, jay sekulow, was very clear, using me and others to communicate to bob mueller, if you look at this stuff, we're going the call foul and the president himself told "the new york times," yeah, i might fire him if he looks here. for this particular story the white house just brushed me off, they wouldn't respond at all. >> mike, russia is in the backdrop, ever so slightly as bob mueller conducts his investigation, front and senter is the way the president's conducted himself in the last three days or so around the

events in charlottesville and the death of a young woman there. what do you make of the way he's first said not enough, perhaps, and then gone out and been pushed into saying something yesterday? >> he was a reluctant witness yesterday. you see a lot of those in courtrooms. you know, e wiwillie, i was str listening to him yesterday and over the weekend, i went back and listened to president obama's speech in dallas after the five policemen were assassinated in the wake of philando castile, in the wake of alton sterling, and listened to him and read his words again about the divides in this country and that's what you do in moments like this in america. you don't speak to your base. you speak to the whole country. i'm not sure he even did that yesterday. >> a million bucks here and a million bucks there, the first thing i think about from adam's reporting is you, mike barnicle, a man who knows about business. get some money together quick. >> what are you suggesting?

>> when you read a story like this one, what do you think? do you think in the end that trump's dirty? bottom line? >> yes. yes. >> on the business side? >> yes. yeah, i mean, adam's story not just this one, there's prior reporting indicates that pretty much what we know, no american bank, large bank, would do business with him and he's forced to go overseas looking for money, pan handle lg, actually, for money in a sense. >> although we have a big barnacle expose coming up. >> i will read that. >> that's all public records material. >> i stayed at the trump sojo once and alarms should have gone off when i saw the russian oligarch tax when we were checking out. >> oh, come on. come on. lupica. do you think the president can recover from what happened the last couple days? does it matter? >> you know, he's moved on. you saw it yesterday, he thinks if he continues to speak about the economy, he's okay. he opened with the economy yesterday before he got to

charlottesville. >> back to politics. back to policy with his infrastructure conversations later this afternoon. >> adam davidson, thank you very much. look for your piece in "the new yorker." mike lupica, thank you. stephanie ruhle picks up our coverage right now. >> thanks so much, willie. to good morning. i'm stephanie ruhle. too little too late. the president denounces white supremacists. >> they have been condemned. >> but has the damage already been done? three major ceos quit the president's advisory council as he tried to get back to the agenda. >> our economy is now strong. unemployment is at a 16-year low. and businesses are more optimistic than ever before. >> and on the north korea front, south korea wants to prevent war by all means as kim jong-un promises to monitor all u.s. actions. >> that's called war, if they