all day and all night. my thanks to charlie sykes, eugene robinson, nick confessore, susan page, and ronoto, that does it for our hour. i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. hi, chuck. >> great show. glad to see that the president only took about a minute of it. >> give him more than that. >> he took a minute or two. that was it. not bad. thank you. >> if it's wednesday, the chaos theory meets political science. >> tonight, did rex tillerson disparage the president of the united states? he neither confirms nor denies. >> can you address the main headline of the story that you called the president a moron and if not, where do you think these reports are coming -- >> i'm not going to deal with petty stuff like that. >> president trump defends his secretary of state. but for how long? plus, did the trump campaign collude with russia? the senate intel committee says it's not sure yet. >> i thought i was pretty clear that the issue of collusion is still open.

>> we'll talk to intel committee member senator james langford. and police question the las vegas gunman's girlfriend. does she help answer the biggest question of them all? why did he do it? this is "mtp daily" and it starts right now. good evening. i'm chuck todd here in washington. welcome to "mtp daily." big developments today, all of them pointing towards major headaches for this white house on a day that president trump traveling to las vegas in the aftermath of sunday night's massacre in vegas. folks today, was a tale of two press conferences and two converging crises. one involving chaos and disorganization at the state department and the white house, and the other involving the intell investigation. they give an update on their russia probe and said they could not back up the president's claims that there was no

collusi collusion, and they seemed to undercut the dossier is, quote, a complete fraud. in fact, the committee suggested that parts of that infamous dossier were corroborated, but then they hit a wall. >> though we have been incredibly enlightened at our ability to rebuild backwards the steel dossier up to a certain date, getting past that point has been somewhat impossible. and i say this because i don't think we're going to find any intelligence products that unlock that key to create june of '16. >> the senators also made it clear that russia is a threat to intervene in future elections here in the united states, so as much as the president would like the russia cloud to go away, it clearly won't. we're going to talk to a member of the senate intel committee in a moment. the other press conference involved the secretary of state, rex tillerson, who looked like he was trying to save his job

based on how many times he praised the president. his comments came after multiple senior administration officials told us at nbc news that tillerson was on the verge of resigning earlier this summer because of a number of clashes that he's had with the white house. tillerson stunned a handful of administration officials when he reportedly referred to the president as a moron after a meeting at the pentagon. now, tillerson today pushed back on the idea that he's ever considered leaving. but he was given two opportunities to deny calling the president a moron this summer, and he didn't do it. >> is that the only thing that you consider to be erroneous in that article? >> i think it's the most important element of the article, is to reaffirm my commitment to this role that president trump has asked me to serve. >> could you address the main headline of this story that you called the president a moron, and if not, where do you think these reports are -- >> i'm not going to deal with petty stuff like that. the places i come from, we don't deal with that kind of petty nonsense. >> the state department

spokesperson later did issue a denial on his behalf about the infamous moron comment. >> the secretary did not use that type of language to speak about the president of the united states. he does not use that language to speak about anyone. so i hope that that clarifies it. >> he never said that? >> he did not say nat. >> and the president, as you might expect, pushed back in what is now a predictable fashion. >> it was fake news. it was a totally phony story. thank you very much. it was made up. it was made up by nbc. they just made it up. taung all. thank you. total confidence in rex. i have total confidence. thank you very much, everybody. >> obviously, we here at nbc news do stand by our reporting on this. additionally, the republican chairman of the senate foreign relations committee went ahead and acknowledged the tensions between tillerson and this white house earlier today. >> he, from my perspective, is in an incredibly frustrating

place. he ends up not being supported in the way that i would hope a secretary of state would be supported. >> i'm joined now by my colleague carol lee, who was on the team that broke the story for nbc news. let's go through some of the denials here. let's start with the secretary of state's emphatic denial that he ever considered resigning. >> well, our story says that the secretary of state threatened to resign this summer. and we spoke with a dozen people for this story over all, seven senior administration officials who were there at that time. confirmed that secretary tillerson did indeed threaten to resign in july. and that there was an intervention of sorts by secretary mattis and then homeland security secretary kelly to try to convince him to stay. that was followed up by a meeting between tillerson and

the vice president in which the vice president gave him what was described as a pep talk and said, you know, let's move forward, but in order to move forward, you need to get in line with the president. >> now, the other denial came into whatever the idea that he referred to the president as a moron. >> right. >> give us some context about this. where was this said? >> so this took place in july. there was -- if you remember around that time, the president was going through his afghanistan review, and he had a meeting at the white house on july 19th to go over that review. and there were a number of things that the president said in that meeting that stunned some of his advisers, including comparing that process to the renovation of the 21 club in new york. the next day, all of those same advisers meet at the pentagon in a secure room known as the tank, and the president has another meeting where he goes through not just afghanistan but isis and other policies. that meeting breaks up. the president goes and addresses

the cameras and the officials who were in the meeting, cabinet secretaries and white house officials, were still gathering around. and that is when secretary tillerson called the president a moron. and you know, i should be clear about this. three people independently, including those who heard tillerson say that, spoke to us about this. >> so this isn't just heresy from one person. this is three different people. >> correct. >> that were confident, didn't talk to each other. >> yes. >> and come up with this story. >> absolutely. as you know, we have a very rigorous standards process. we took all of those precautions to make sure that these people were not speaking to each other. >> there's one other aspect here i think, folks, this was not the first run-in that rex tillerson had with the white house. there was -- there was another heated exchange earlier having to do with personnel as well. so this has been an ongoing issue between the white house and state, as i think senator bob corker was referring to. >> it has.

and they have been at battle over personnel, at policies, on everything from the middle east to the iran nuclear deal. and you know, a bunch of other issues. but you know, chuck, one of the things about reporting this story out that is clear is that what you had when secretary tillerson came in, and ironically the president said he chose him because of his business experience, and yet the reality of that was two former ceos who are used to calling their own shots. we know the president does not like to have his authority checked by congress, the courts, or his own aides. and tillerson clearly doesn't enjoy being a subordinate. and that creates this recipe for the kind of clashes that we've seen. and what's caught in the middle of all that is america's foreign policy. >> that's an excellent point. carol lee, quite the story today. quite the reaction from all levels of the administration. anyway, nice work. happy to have you as a

colleague. >> i'm joined by our panel,iamec alcindor is a reporter for "the new york times." bill kristol, and stephanie cutter, a top adviser to the obama white house and his re-election campaign. welcome, all. bill, i'm going to start with you today, and actually -- >> start with stephanie. she has more recent experience with secretaries of state and you know -- >> fair enough, but first, i want to put this, rex tillerson came out today, clearly trying to save his job, knowing that it was an audience of one watching mid-air, mind you, on his way to las vegas. here's a compilation of rex sillerson praising the president today. >> president trump's america first agenda has given voice to millions who felt completely abandoned by the political status quo. president trump's foreign policy goals break the mold of what people traditionally think is achievable on behalf of our country. he loves this country.

he puts americans and america first. he's smart. he demands results wherever he goes, and he holds those around him accountable for whether they have done the job he's asked them to do. >> now, that was the secretary of state this morning before answering the specifics. he did take a few questions which is surprising, but that was clearly him trying to save his job. did he do it? >> i don't think he's going to be there very long. i haven't thought for a while he would be there long. he clearly doesn't get along with the president, and the president doesn't have confidence in him. the tweet, what was it, last weekend? time flies when you have so many -- >> when he -- rex tillerson came out and said we have a back channel to north korea. >> which is fine. it's not inconsistent with trump. you could say a smart administration would have a certain amount of processes and the back channel, and trump tweets we're not doing any diplomacy with north korea. what did he say? >> you're wasting your time. >> he shouldn't waste his time. that's humiliating for the president to say that publicly

about the secretary of state. it would be great if he said, i said it, i was exasperated. go out with a bang. >> what i don't quite get is the decision not to deny the moron comment on camera, but then i think they realized they left a big meatball hanging out there. and then they felt, and then they went ahead and dealt with it at the state briefing. i might not have done a state briefing today if i were them, but that's their business not mine. >> it makes no sense if you're trying to keep your job to not just flat out say i did not call him a moron, unless you're really, really scared that people have audio of you. if there are three independent people who are saying this without talking to etch other, that means people took that and either wrote notes about it, maybe sean spicer like notes about it, but i think when i was looking at that reel of him praising the president, it took me back to the mooch. and it took me back to this idea, i remember the bombastic presser where he was saying how much he loved president trump and then was gone in like ten

days. to me, praising president trump i don't think will ever save someone their job. you thing about jeff sessions who really instead of praising president trump, which he's kind of somewhat done, he's pursued policies that are in line with president trump. >> stephanie, obviously a lot of people, the comparison is to what happened with stan ley mcchrystal and president obama. bob gates tried to save the job on behalf -- my guess is jim mattis and john kelly for some reason are trying to convince the president to keep tillerson here. but there was a concern. what does the world see if the commander in chief can get disparaged without any problems? what does the world see if the president doesn't fire rex tillerson over this? >> you know, i kind of think that's the least of their problems. and the reason, i mean, first of all, it's news when your secretary of state calls your sitting president a moron. but it's also newsy because we know it's likely true because things like this have been reporting out from this administration since the

beginning. >> the despaisparaging of him, regardless of what you think of the president. >> regardless, but remember the reporting on general kelly and general mattis not wanting to be out of the country at the same time because somebody had to make sure nothing damaging happened from this president. so it's in line with the story line that's been ongoing since january 21st. so what does it mean to the world? i think it's just part of the continued trump story line. but what's more concerning to them is what he's actually going to do. >> bill, i guess i go back to, a colleague of stephanie's can't believe that this white house allows this blind quote disparagement of the president so -- like it's just a given that this happens so much. that over time, this is what you end up with. >> yeah, maybe. on the other hand, maybe the president's wise enough to know that, you know what, with all this disparaging, he's better off with general mattis and john kelly and probably rex tillerson

there than if they all quit. what would people think around the world if two or three of those people quit. i don't know that tillerson has been such a great secretary of state, but he has standing. if people with independent standing leave and you end up with purely staffers who are just trump loyalists, that really would be a crisis of confidence on the hill and around the world. so maybe it's better for everyone that they just pretend it didn't happen and go on with their business. >> i think they're also having a hard time finding people to fill these jobs. the department of homeland security is still open. so who would they get to fill this job other than reshuffling the deck? >> i think what's key in this is the fact that we're talking about an emotional president who does not want to look bad. so if the optics, i think, get to the point where he feels as though he personally looks bad, you asked the question about what does the world think. if he thinks at some point the other foreign leaders are saying i would never let my secretary of state talk about me like that, that could turn into a

rush decision and we could be thinking next week i can't believe he fired him, via twitter paeb. >> if you're rex tillerson, as long as the president is angrier at nbc than me, maybe my job is saved, but there is a public r persona with the president and there is a private one on this stuff. >> we have a lame duck secretary of state now. he's not going to be there more than two or three months. i don't think that's good for the country. could we survive? sure, but if i were john kelly, i would try to have someone ready to go, honestly. if trump decides to fire him on sunday or in a month or two months, ready to go so at least if you -- >> you can't have an acting -- you can have -- you can get away with an acting hhs for a while, an acting even dhs, you know, especially when the former is the chief of staff. you can get away with that. an acting secretary of state -- >> they should figure out if they want to move nikki haley over from the u.n. or mike pompeo from the ia. >> someone who has been through a senate confirmation. >> a serious person in there who they can announce the next day or that day and people feel,

okay, someone else is coming in who knows what he or she is doing. >> is there any way for tillerson to save his job and thrive? any of you think that's possible? >> i think it would be very hard. >> one thing to save your job, but to save your job and thrive? >> to save your job is one thing, but to save your job and thrive when you already said in the tweet, the president said he's a nice guy, but he's wasting his time on north korea. even when he didn't know you called him a moron, he's undercutting you completely. unlike jeff sessions who took all these beatings and said i can do a lot of work for you here. here's all the things i can do, oh, and by the way, daca is ended and i get to say that announcement. jeff sessions has shown he's willing to pursue that policy. i don't think rex tillerson has agency to do that. >> you identify jeff sessions and donald trump share a world view, and i don't know if rex tillerson and donald trump do. you guys are sticking around. coming up, why the heads of the senate intel committee say the possibility of collusion

with the russians in the 2016 election remains an open question. i'll talk to one member of the intel committee when we come back. hi. so i just got off the phone with our allstate agent, and i know that we have accident forgiveness. so the incredibly minor accident that i had tonight... four weeks without the car. okay, yep. good night.

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welcome back. president trump traveled to las vegas today, the second day in a row where he was serving as a comforter in chief for the country while his trip to puerto rico on tuesday raised eyebrows for comment about the cost of recovery among other things and the paper towel thing, today, the president stuck to the more traditional role of consoler in chief after the mass shooting that claimed 58 lives. he met with the wounded and with medical support staff at the university medical center. he called the shooter a sick, demented man. he praised the bravery of first responders and law enforcement and gave very touching remarks. take a listen. >> many families tonight will go to bed in a world that is suddenly empty. the people they so dearly love were torn away from them forever.

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welcome back. 100 witness interviews, over 250 hours of testimony, and 100,000 pages of documents. as we mentioned, the heads of the senate intelligence committee say collusion between the trump campaign and russia in the 2016 election is still an open question. >> the issue of collusion is still open. that we continue to investigate both intelligence and witnesses and that we're not in a position where we will come to any type of temporary finding on that

until we have completed the process. >> senators richard burr and mark warner, the chair and vice chair of the committee also said the committee has been able to rebuild parts of that controversial steel dossier, but they have not been able to set up a meeting with christopher steel himself. >> as it relates to the steel dossier, unfortunately, the committee has hit a wall. >> and on the question of russian-backed ads appearing on social media sites throughout the election, warner called on facebook to release those very ads. we haven't seen them yet. this comes the day we learned some of the ads targeted specific states in the election, including traditional battleground states. today, a facebook spokesperson confirmed the company will testify before congress. will they bring those ads with them? but on the biggest question of the day, where is the intel committee on the issue of collusion? what you heard from the senators may depend on your point of view. some, after all this work, the committee still can't present

hard evidence of collusion. for others, after all this work, the committee is still not prepared to rule out collusion. cue the resistance tweets. either way, the question remains open for now. so joining me to try to get insight on all of this is a republican on the intel senate committee, james langford from oklahoma. thanks for coming on the show. >> you bet. >> let me start with this. define the word collusion as far as this committee is concerned. >> let me back up and can fine another word, open and close. it deals with the issue of we have gone through all the testimony we need to go through, interviewed everyone we need to go through. that portion is closed because we have everything we need. open still means we're still in the investigation process. there are still people that we have not interviewed yet. so it's not a matter of if it's an open question we don't know. it's an open question meaning we haven't finished everything that deals with this and can close it and wrap it up. so that's the open/close portion of it. the collusion issue obviously is an issue of did any american

work with a foreign power to influence our elections. that's the key question that still has to beresolved. that's why it's still open, still unfinished. we still have after 100 interviews, we still have additional interviews to go. because as you know, you do one interview, they quote several people and we interview those individuals. >> where would you say the investigation is? are you at the midpoint? was this a halftime update? >> no, i think this was a timely update, but i wouldn't call it halftime. hopefully we're past halftime, but we have a lot of things and a lot of questions we have not stepped up publicly to be able to talk about in a while. we thought everyone, every person in the media, every person that's an american needs to be able to hear the investigation is still ongoing. we have not forgotten about it, we have not stopped. >> let me ask you this. is it wrong, is the president wrong to refer to all of this as a hoax? >> no, i think it's a legitimate investigation. there are a lot of questions out there. there's no question the russians were trying to interfere in our

election. that's not a question that's unresolved. >> that's a fact. that is hard to you, period, underline, russia -- >> i have no doubt. >> tried to interfere. >> i have no doubt. >> the question is did they have help? >> correct. the issue is not do they have help or were they trying to help one side or the other, were they trying to help every side. the russian model in the european elections is to crate as much chaos as they possibly could. we have seen that also in our election process where they're trying to create as much chaos as they could. same thing they do on any kind of divisive issue. when there's a divisive issue in american life and americans start having a loud public debate, the russians will step in and try to amp the volume up. their goal is to try to destabilize every democracy in the world and this is one way they're doing it. >> i will admit to being surprised at how much detail the senators went into as far as the steel dossier is concerned. how important a piece of evidence is this to your investigation? >> that is an important piece of evidence in the sense that some of the accusations that are out there. the hard part is we don't know

who paid for it still, we don't have all the sources and facts behind it. the russians have been very good about playing all sides of the election, trying to create chaos in the process. so that's an essential portion of it, is to be able to meet with chris steel to get the information to be able to know who paid for it, who sponsored it, and to be able to verify sources. currently, it's unverified. >> what i found fascinating there is apparently, so your committee investigators are trying to rebuild it, essentially, trying to put the pieces together, and have succeeded to a point? >> i would say that's a hard one to be able to answer. i want to be able to go into all the detail on it. we're working on it, the fbi is working on, it to establish what facts can be established, what facts we can't establish and what areas we can establish that are completely false. we're trying to chase down all three of those aspects. it's important we get as much information as we can. >> you define collusion as this

idea that an american may have helped russia. so that also doesn't necessarily mean the collusion, you're leaving open the possibility it's americans that may not have been associated with any campaign. >> sure. yeah. that's still just as illegal. >> yeah. absolutely. how confident are you that the russians had to have had some help from an american, regardless of their affiliation? >> i would say i'm not confident in that. the russians don't have to do that. again, they didn't have that in other european elections. they step in and try to find a way to affect it. they can certainly read the newspapers here in the u.s. and get a chance to watch other programs to be able to find out what are battleground states, what are the key issues, again, their specialty is being able to find on social media where is their division and they amp up that division by creating bots and trolfarms to increase the noise. this statement that i have heard from several people that say they were targeting battleground states, it's not as if it was a secret what is a battleground state. i can tell you the battleground

states for 2020 right now. there's no grand secret of that or political insight. they have their own team to strategize and what they're going to do. >> when we talk about who's been cooperative and who hasn't, how would you characterize facebook and twitter? have they been cooperative or has it been a challenge to get them to fully participate in this investigation? >> i would just say we have a ways to go to get full cooperation there. they're very aware of how their platform has been used. obviously, they're an open free speech platform and they want to allow everyone from all over the world to participate in dialogue, but when it talks about influencing an election, that's a unique thing for them. they have algorithms, they can attract what's a troll farm, what's a bot. we want to go how they're tracking it and what they're able to do to push back on that platform. this is a free platform. they don't have to allow everyone to participate. if it's hate speech, a foreign

power interfering in the election, they don't have to allow that. many of the ads, if you were to see some of the ads i have seen so far, you would be stunned by some of the issues they were trying to use. weren't election issues, just divisive issues. we want to see all of them and get good context for that. it's important the american people also see that so they can recognize in some of these platforms what's real and what's not. >> i was interested. your democratic colleague, mark warner, says facebook should release all of these ads. if you have them, why aren't you releasing them? why don't you guys release it? >> you know, we don't do that in the intelligence committee. what has been submitted to us, regardless of what it is, we hold that. that was submitted to our committee. we'll work with any individual, but if those things are going to be released, facebook needs to be able to release that directly because they're going to answer for that. regardless of who brings us information, we're closed in that setting and we're not going to release that out. >> before i let you go, this issue between the secretary of state and the president, do you have -- do you have confidence in rex tillerson as secretary of

state? >> i do have confidence in rex tillerson as secretary of state. he's doing something most secretaries of states and most people who walk into a bureaucracy wouldn't do, that's trying to restructure it. restructuring any federal agency is hard grunt work and is difficult to do and takes a lot of time. and he's taking it on. i'm proud of him for taking it on because it should have been done a long time ago. it's much needed for our international diplomacy to make sure we're more efficient in that area. he's a solid leader. he's done it in other large organizations and i hope he stays on. >> if he was indeed disparaging the president of the united states, is that a fireable offense? >> i'm not in that conversation. the president can make a decision. i didn't hear any disparaging comments. i have spoken many times to rex tillerson. he's been very positive to the president in private conversations with me. i would be surprised if he wasn't in other conversations. >> i'm going to leave it there. thank you for coming on and sharing your views.

still ahead, what is next for rex? secretary tillerson says he's not considering resigning from the state department. but after his reported comments about the president, can the secretary keep his job, and should he keep his job? we'll talk about that next. this woman is laughing because she's listening to a hilarious audiobook on audible. and this woman is laughing because she's pretending her boss's terrible story is funny. still actually laughing. no longer making a human noise. experience the comedy, not your commute. dial star-star-audible on your smartphone to start listening today. hey. what can you tell me about your new social security alerts? oh! we'll alert you if we find your social security number on any one of thousands of risky sites, so you'll be in the know. ooh. sushi. ugh. being in the know is a good thing. sign up online for free. discover social security alerts.

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court case that could send politicians from both parties back to the drawing board. but first, here's hampton pearson with today's cnbc market

wrap. >> we had u.s. stocks closing at record highs. the dow rising almost 20 points to an all-time record closing high. both the s & p and nasdaq up by about three points. private sector jobs grew by 135,000 last month. that's according to adp and moody's. the decline is due in part to hurricane damage. more jobs data coming from the government on friday. google's new wireless headphones support live translation between languages. they'll have to be paired with google's new phone, the pixel 2. that's it from cnbc, first in business worldwide. you nervous? ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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could you address the main headline of this story that you called the president a moron, and if not, where do you think these reports are -- >> i'm not going to deal with petty stuff like that. i mean, this is what i don't understand about washington. again, i'm not from this place. but the places i come from, we

don't deal with that kind of petty nonsense. >> welcome back. as we have been talking about, secretary tillerson calling president trump, a quote, moron, raises the question whether the secretary can keep his job after public learns he may have spoken disparagingly about the commander in chief. this is not the first time his discontent has been reported. politico reported tillerson blew up at a top white house aide, frustrated about delays in appointing staff. days later, they reported he argued with steven miller over immigration reports. in july, cnn reported two of their sources said they would not be surprised if there was a, quote, rexit from foggy bottom. state department has pushed back on all of this, but today's reporting didn't come on a silo. he said he would continue to serve, but in recent history, leaders have left their jobs over snide words about an

administration. in 2010, general stanley mcchrystal resigned one day after rolling stone posted a story mocking numerous officials including joe biden. joining me is richard haass who himself says it's time for tillerson to resign. haass is also the author of the book, a world of disarray, american foreign policy and the crisis of the old order, which now seems so, so over there. you would think what is chaos? that's that order. we have our own chaos here, richard. let me ask you this. you believe rex tillerson should resign or be fired. do you think the president needs to fire him? >> well, i think the president has made it clear through his public comments, his tweets and the like, that he's not prepared to back his secretary of state in a way that's essential for a secretary of state to be effective. i think the worst was this past weekend, chuck, when secretary of state is meeting with chinese officials and have the president to tweet publicly that he should

stop wasting his time and disparage diplomacy, which is kind of what secretary of states are in the business of doing. so i think that's the bigger issue. quite honestly, much more important than anything the secretary of state may have said that disparaged the president. >> so you view it as this is on the president, the president is undermined, the secretary of state out of respect for the office should quit. >> not out of respect for the office, can he be successful? the president has made it extremely difficult for this or any secretary of state to succeed, in part by his tweets, in part by his policy pronouncements, by reducing resources, by not approving high level officials. by giving jared kushner a large role at the white house. i then think secretary tillerson has made it harder by agreeing to the reduction in resources, by not dealing publicly with some of the -- with the press and others. so i think he was dealt a bad hand. i think he's made it tougher. again, i think what he may have called the president is the

least of his problems. >> all right. you're lavrov in russia. what do you make of this? and do you feel as if you -- that rex tillerson is the person you deal with? >> well, it's a legitimate question. i think the fact you even have to raise it tells you your answer. it's not just lavrov. it's also the foreign minister of china, people watching in north korea, people in europe. this devalues or diminishes the role of secretary of state. think about jim baker when he was 41 secretary of state, there was no daylight between them. and everybody knew that the secretary of state spoke with the full backing and authority of the president of the united states. quite honestly, i don't think anyone in the world thinks that rex tillerson speaks with the full backing and authority of this president. as a result, his chances of succeeding are modest. so i think the president needs to change his ways. i don't know if it's too late for rex tillerson. i kind of think it is. if he's going to hire somebody

else, that individual is not going to do any better unless this president changes his way of doing business. >> well, you basically answered the next question i was going to ask. you think it's sort of too late for this relationship to be fixed. but if they do decide they want to fix this relationship, and i get the sense that at least, i mean, the president leaned in heavily at attacking us rather than rex tillerson today. which if you're rex tillerson, makes you feel better, i guess, tonight. you could sleep better. how would you fix this? what's the public way that you would need either rex tillerson to throw his arm around the president or the president throwing his arm around rex tillerson. >> the president needs to stop tweeting in ways that undermine the secretary of state, that surprise him, that disparage him, and the president needs to make it clear publicly as well as privately that the secretary of state is his principle foreign policy adviser, his principle diplomat for the united states. probably means reigning in what jared kushner does as well as what the president himself is

doing. he's got to entrust his secretary. president has to want rex tillerson or anyone in that job to succeed. right now, he's essentially making it impossible for that person to succeed. >> at this point, bill kristol called him a lame duck secretary of state. is that how you view him? >> he's close to that. again, i think he has been severely damaged by the administration. i think he's hurt himself in many ways. i don't know whether he can recover. i also think, chuck, it's difficult for someone to come into this job from business, even someone who knows the world, no experience with foreign policy, no experience with government. i think it's an awfully tough transition to make. and i think the secretary has made it tougher by not bringing in the sort of staff he needs to help him succeed. >> and you don't think -- you don't view the disparagement remarks as important as being undermined. but how much does that have an impact on how the world sees this president and this secretary of state? >> well, if you're talking about what the secretary of state said about the president, the

disparagement, it's what the president thinks. this president is not known for having a particularly thick skin. so it's quite possible that that hurt their relationship from his point of view. and ultimately, the secretary of state works for the president, as tillerson said today. i think the world now is just confused, a bit mystified, what's to see how this plays out. and until the world sees some clear signals that rex tillerson, one, is here to stay, and two, really does enjoy the backing of this president, it's not so much that he's a lame duck, but he won't be effective. >> all right. until the next episode, as this administration turns. anyway, richard haass. i'll going to go read your book. it will comfort me more. still ahead, how a 19th century sal amander just wound up at the center of the biggest supreme court case of the year. -ahh. -the new guy. -whoa, he looks -- -he looks exactly like me. -no. -separated at birth much? we should switch name tags, and no one would know who was who.

jamie, you seriously think you look like him? uh, i'm pretty good with comparisons. like how progressive helps people save money by comparing rates, even if we're not the lowest. even if we're not the lowest. whoa! wow. i mean, the outfit helps, but pretty great. look at us.

welcome back. tonight i'm obsessed with gill versus whitford. if you don't know what that is, you're not alone. chances are it will impact you. it's the case the supreme court heard this week on political gerrymandering. the term gerrymander comes from the 19th century voting district shaped lie a salamander, drawn when a man was the governor of massachusetts. it's become as much as part of our political process as ads. they redrew maps that packed

democrats in ahandful of districts and created a whole lot more safe republican districts. in 2012, republicans won 49% of the vote, yet they carried 60 of 99 seats in the state assembly. democratic voters have made it easy for republicans by clustering in big cities, and democrats have done their share of gerrymandering too. just see the state of illinois. in short, more and more candidates are picking the voters, not the other way around. is it fair? well, the supreme court has already thrown out maps that were considering racially biased, but ruling against a partisan district would be a first, and no surprise, with the justices expected to go their usual left/right corners, things will may be left to one man, anthony kennedy, again. if kennedy rules with the liberals, members of congress may be forced out of their safe spaces to interact with constituents who don't always agree with them. the irony is parts of the country are so self-segregated by party, they may have to do something to make them more

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the panel is back. one of the stories that has gotten coverage this week, we led with it this morning. what nick ayers, the chief of staff to the vice president, and he was recorded at a fund-raiser here in washington with some big donors, giving him an update. apparently he said, it is time to purge the party. most of you are familiar with this story. it didn't get a lot of attention because there's been so much else going on. we have las vegas, a lot else. he said things like we'll get

shellacked and it is better to be in the minority with people that are loyal to you than to be in the majority with people you're not sure where they're at. this was to donors. >> if i had said that 25 years ago when i was chief of staff, i would have been shellacked. i would be writing my resignation letter. >> who are you mr. vice president chief of staff? >> he is telling his donors, we need republican senators, republicans to be loyal to president trump. and he got 49 out of 52 senators. and they are elected officials. they are supposed to vote their conscience or their judgment or listen to their constituents. no respect for those who got loektd their sxoen were elected before president trump existed. ran ahead of president trump, if you want to get more political

about it. if you're a republican senator or congressman, this is what the trump white house thinks about me. >> but did he haevil's advocate speaking to voters who are really upset. you have control of the house, the senate, you have the presidency. you don't have any major legislation. he's saying, wait a minute. you need to hold congress accountable. >> i wonder if this is what is being privately said inside the white house. certainly the president has put the blame on congress for not passing health care reform. >> he's had a fair point on health care. they have been pushing that seven years. is that on the president or on them? >> on both of they will. they are co-equal branches of government and it doesn't get down without a president. that i know from personal experience. he showed no leadership on it. remember when the house passed their leadership and he supported and it then he called it a bad bill? remember when he said to both the house and the senate, i don't care what's in it.

i just want it repealed. where he is that leadership? >> what caught me off guard, this is the fall of 2017 that he's saying. this he set a deadline, let's see how they're doing december 31st. if they don't deliver, maybe you should withhold money. corey gardner is the republican from colorado. right now they're trying to keep guys from retiring. i would think a remark like that has to send shivers down stiver's back. >> this isn't a collaborative effort where he understands your seniority and all that comes with being on the hill. instead, he is an employee, an at will employee, who he will take money away from if you don't have basically complete loyalty to him.

president trump hasn't been about policy. he laid them out in vague terms. it is interesting to see the loyalty without, leadership isn't what he wants. >> from 30,000 feet, this seems twlik parties. >> i say john mccain, susan collins, lisa murkowski get together and say, let's teach them a lesson. we're voting against budget resolution. >> do you know what it doesn't do? elect democrats. >> look. she's smiling. i'll leave it there. thank you very much. we'll be back in a minute with an unusual character who showed up today on capitol hill.

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stivers. in case you missed it, the monopoly man was on capitol hill today. yep, there he was. sitting behind the former ceo of equifax while he testified on the company's massive data breach, which they undersold the first time. the top hat, the red bow tie and the bushy white mustache were first spotted as the witnesses sat down and the hearing got underway. then rich uncle penny bags, his formal name, positioned himself so he could be seen, just barely, in the frame. we saw him wipe his forehead

with giant paper money. you might call it monopoly money. sometimes he put on a monacle. i would always be playing with my mustache if it looked like that. all in the nail of drawing attention on forced arbitration clauses used throughout the industry. the groups who protested said they are get out of jail free cards which the monopoly man also had with him today. it was pretty clever. it made me, whatever happened to season three of mr. robot? "the beat" starts right now. >> people forget the get out of jail free card, that is the pardon power in the game of monopoly. >> there it is. >> there you go. >> i have a feeling you're setting yourself up for something. >> maybe. i wanted to get involved. thank you. here's a message that is new today. quote, the russians did it, they'll do it again, but there is no final answer on whether