players, said he would bench players that knelt during the national anthem. that wraps up this hour for me on msnbc. thanks for watching. you can always find me on twitter, instagram, snapchat, facebook, i can't keep up with all of it anymore. "deadline white house" with nicolle wallace starts right now. hi everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. gop senator bob corker has effectively pulled the curtain back on the worst kept secret in washington by calling the white house adult day care, and warning that the president's recklessness threatens world war iii. while those working in donald trump's white house have long maintained that we should want them there to protect america and the world from donald trump's impulses. another former national security official privately called them all enablers. corker once on the short list to serve as donald trump's secretary of state said in an interview with the "new york times" yesterday that the president was treating his office like a, quote, reality

show, with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation on the path to world war iii. he concerns me. he would have to concern anyone who cares about our country, corker added. and this, quote, i know for a fact that every single day at the white house it's a situation of trying to contain him. the "new york times" interview capped a day long twitter battle between the gop chair of the senate foreign relations committee and the president of the united states. trump tweeting, quote, senator bob corker begged me to endorse him for re-election in tennessee. i said no, and he dropped out. said he could not win without my endorsement. he also wanted to be secretary of state. i said, no, thanks. he is also largely responsible for the horrendous iran deal, hence i would fully expect corker to be a negative voice and stand in the way of our great agenda. didn't have the guts to run, end tweet. according to corker's office these assertions are false. it was trump who repeatedly

asked corker to run. and it was corker who removed himself from consideration for secretary of state. but corker didn't engage in a tit-for-tat. he simply tweeted this, kwoetd, it's a shame that the white house has become an adult day care center. someone obviously missed their shift this morning, end tweet. and here we are. joining us today from "the washington post" robert costa and msnbc political analyst at the table republican strategist and msnbc contributor steve schmidt, carrie, former senior associate counsel for the office of the dni, former democratic congressman of tennessee harold ford jr., and "new york times" op-ed columnist and msnbc contributor bret stevens. robert costa, let me start with you. you've been reporting all weekend about both the corker side of this debate and the white house side of the debate. bring us up to speed on the latest. >> the latest is this is a revealing episode about the tensions between senate

republicans, republicans in general on capitol hill and president trump. it's been going on for months ever since august when senator corker first pinged the president and questioned his leadership. you've seen this simmering frustration on both sides. now it's erupted into the public view. >> carrie, i talked to a national security official who served democratic and republican presidents who said that his view has changed about the national security leaders in this administration. that he long viewed them the way they'd like to be viewed by outsiders, as people who were there protecting the country and the world from donald trump's tweets and his spats with members of both parties. but that he now views them as enablers of what bob corker calls clearly someone who doesn't have the stability or competent for the job he holds. >> well, i'm glad senator corker has finally come forward with what he and many other members of congress have been saying

privately in washington for a long time now. there were over 100 of us national security folks from prior administrations who in the spring of 2016 tried to warn the country and warn members of congress and warn those voting about what a president trump would look like and what his unpredictable foreign policy would look like. and so i think senator corker hopefully is starting to be sort of the first crack in congress who is willing to acknowledge how damaging this president is for the nation's foreign policy, for our reputation in the world, for national security. but it remains to be seen whether other members of congress are going to similarly take a public stance. >> i reached out, bret, to a close ally of the president's. and i said what do you make of corker? and he said, oh, senate republicans are lame. i said, yeah, but corker is a trump ally. i mean, corker has seen the president up close.

corker sort of lent some credibility to help trump beat back people like carrie who questioned his foreign policy acumen and now seeing up close viewed tillerson, mattis and kelly as the only things standing between chaos. >> corker elected 2006 -- >> i think confirmed -- >> very well. he is nobody's idea of a kind of republican squish. he's not a jeff flake style libertarian. and he was willing to work closely with the administration. there were a lot of republicans who felt even if they had their doubts about trump that he was owed the benefit of the doubt. so what we hear from corker is his experience of this administration now what are we nine months into it, it's an extraordinary worrisome thing. i would say it also tells you something about the larger breakdown between senate republicans and the presidency.

it reminds me of the charles and diana marriage. you knew it wasn't working. you didn't know quite how bad it was. this is like the conversation with camilla if people will remember. >> i remember all that. let me get you to weigh-in on, you know, underneath -- no offense, i'm really glad corker's there. and i'm really glad he's speaking -- >> i like this move too. >> but, i mean, underneath all of this is corker asserting that the president is essentially not fit? >> so a couple things. i think the question you asked of carrie and her answer, and i appreciated her courage back in the spring of '16 some of her colleagues warning about this. john kelly and look at reince priebus, you have to wonder, it doesn't matter who's in the white house with this president. it's his white house. he's going to do what he wants to do. that's number one. number two, whatever personality things are going on between corker and trump i don't know, but the thing i find most interesting about his comments

are twofold. one, he mentions world war iii, as a part he mentions tweets and undermining negotiations under way. at some point you have to wonder republicans if senator corker said he believe there are a number of republicans feel this way privately, if you have an unstable president in the white house that could lead us inadvertently, could lead us stupidly into world war iii, does that call for a larger action? >> like what? >> everyone has look at the russia investigation as something that may -- >> what are you talking about? are you talking about confidence? >> i think they're calling into question the confidence of the president, which would call into what you just raised. >> so let me put up that tweet. >> then there has to be some reason to believe that maybe we ought to think about because world war iii would be in my mind a high crime -- >> we don't have any rush here. nothing else to get to. let's put up the tweet that was

the foreign policy tweet that may have inspired corker to speak out. so saturday morning donald trump tweeted this, presidents and their administrations have been talking to north korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid. i didn't know he could rhyme, hasn't worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry making fools of the u.s. negotiators. sorry, but only one thing will work. this a couple days after talking about the quiet before the storm. is corker basically saying that he wouldn't put it past this president to start something on the world stage to distract from his problems? or is he simply saying that he's so reckless and uninformed that he could stumble into a war? >> what he's saying is that he's unfit. and what he's saying is that through incompetence, malfeasance, recklessness, he has every ability to cause a tremendous tragedy. so let's talk about world war

iii for a second by starting with a small discussion about world war ii, which killed 80 million people globally. when we look at korea and the korean peninsula, we have 40,000 american forces in japan, we have roughly 28,000 on the korean peninsula. the north koreans have embedded artillery positions hardened 12,000 guns capable of delivering in the first hour 500,000 rounds of artillery or mortars including chemical weapons, shells to the city of seoul. we have 230,000 u.s. dependents living in korea, american citizens. we look at the incompetence of this administration with the relief efforts in puerto rico, i think that i'm certainly skeptical of their ability to competently exit those americans. and so with a real lack of imagination in this country after 70 years of relative peace and prosperity in the post world

war ii era despite the great tragedies of vietnam and the first korean war, we have not seen a global catastrophe. but this period of peace and prosperity, this is not the default setting for the world. it is an exception to the history of the world. and when you look at the accumulation of his deficiencies as commander in chief, we've now seen -- >> what are they? go through them, what are they? >> the lack of probity, of rectitude, dishonesty, fundamental assault of values of the country, the to stand with the combatant commanders, the four-star officers into talks so loosely, so frivolously about u.s. military action in korea is recklessness the likes of which we've never seen before. and what history teaches us is

that men believe that they are able to control events. what we know though is it's the events control leaders who miscalculate. we don't know a great deal about kim jong-un. we don't know if he's a rational actor. it's all assumptions. there is no world leader that we know less about. there is no regime we know less about with regard to their intentions. and the ability for a miscalculation to occur that causes a tragedy for the ages is a real thing. >> carrie, but you essentially predicted this. >> well, so here's the thing, this is not even the first time -- the tweets you're mentioning, this is not the first time the president has tweeted about nuclear weapons and north korea. he did it the week of charlottesville and then went by the wayside because charlottesville was a national incident. >> discussion point, right. >> so it's like a few weeks later everybody forgot that the president was tweeting about

nuclear weapons and north korea. i thought that was if nothing else that is probably the most dangerous act that he has taken in his nine months, going on ten months, of presidency is tweeting about nuclear weapons. the fact that we're even having the conversation -- >> well -- >> i just want to add to something steve said. you know, brinkmanship is hard when you have eisenhowers or reagans at the helm, right? brinkmanship is extraordinarily dangerous when you have reckless people at the helm. you know, people ought to read -- you were talking about history, go back another 30 years. how did world war i start? the best book recently written about world war i was called "the sleepwalkers," showed how european leadership just kind of stumbled into this and it happened because of an incident on the periphery of the world stage. >> right. >> so we're talking about korea, but this involves the chinese, it involves the russians, it involves japan and south korea and of course it involves us.

>> i want to be understood. if senator corker is to be believed that there are a number of senators raising these questions, it would seem at some point this matter would rise to a level and if it is to be believed that there are those in the white house who are everyday worried about the president creating something in the situation room and having to contain him, at some level when does the situation rise and the points that have been made by all of us around the table, but which is his fitness. is this the person we want sitting there that could, again, lead us to a point where a brinksmanship triggers something that to say massive tragedy doesn't even begin to capture the level of danger that would come our way. >> robert costa, is the white house aware of the ripple effects of bob corker's comments? do they understand that he is now said out loud what dozens of people have said to any reporter who covers this white house on a

daily basis and that this is now a new phase for them in terms of what sort of president faces the world on twitter and in meetings with foreign leaders and sort of in the public space? >> they're very aware of the consequences of senator corker's comments. at the same time, they look at the reaction today among other senate republicans and they see a lot of silence. they see senate majority leader mitch mcconnell not really trying to wade into this altercation between a senator and the president. and they also know at the white house that the republican party even if they fume privately, some of them fume publicly, they know that the party's bought in with president trump whether they like it or not. they've chosen to work with him to try to get what they believe is their agenda on taxes and maybe on health care and immigration. and because of that they don't see the leadership really trying to wrangle themselves away from the president at this moment because they're so entrenched already with trump. >> that is the most depressing thing i've heard all day, steve schmidt, they want to get their

weeny tax bill done so badly they're not going to listen to bob corker screaming at the top of his lungs that we are at risk of world war iii. >> the tax bill isn't going to happen -- >> and who cares if we're all dead? i mean, it's crazy. >> look, one of the things in some of the coverage with corker, well, now that bob corker has retired he can speak freely. no, no, he can speak freely before he announced his retirement. and you would hope that a united states senator, and i understand bob's analysis, i mean, he's 100% correct, that's exactly what they're thinking. but if you're a united states senator and you're saying behind closed doors what bob corker is representing united states senators is saying behind closed doors, you have an obligation to this country, to your oath, to defend the constitution of the united states, period, full stop. if you can't do that because you're too timid, too scared,

you're too small, whatever incapacity it may be, then get out. then get out. >> right. >> but when we digest what bob corker's saying, it would behoove everybody, i think, and as many republican senators as possible to go read dulles mcarthur's address given on the battleship missouri on the occasion of the japanese surrender. when he talks about the magnitude and cost of the second world war and he talks about that since the beginning of time we've tried to have treaties to stop killing each other, but now in the nuclear age this isn't an option anymore for disputes to be settled between countries with nuclear exchanges. it's a very sobering speech. and the loose talk on nuclear weapons isn't just staggering to comprehend. it's so profoundly dangerous there's really not a word for it. >> yeah, i'm not going to put robert costa on the spot here, but i would bet my last dollar

that he knows that donald trump hasn't read any of the books you've all talked about in this segment. thank you so much for starting us off. when we come back, pence's prankster. it looks like a white house stunt gone bad. pence walks out of an nfl game after a peaceful protest. and it's the taxpayers who are left with the bill. and white house exodus, the biggest fear in d.c. is that john kelly and other adults may be pushed to the breaking point. also ahead, trump takes a victory lap, assembling a highlight reel of his great job in puerto rico and saying he wasn't treated fairly by the media. and about those paper towels? well, trump says i was having fun. we'll get an update from san juan. stay with us. shawn evans: it's 6 am.

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for mike pence it was a directive from the president of the united states himself. if any players kneel, you leave. we're talking about yesterday's colts-49ers game where the vice president stood up and skipped town right after about two dozen players exercised their right to protest during the national anthem. it took a matter of moments for pence to tweet about it. quote, while everyone is entitled to their own opinions, i don't think it's too much to ask nfl players to respect the flag and our national anthem. a short time later trump tipped his hand, quote, i asked vp pence to leave the stadium if any players kneeled, disrespecting our country. i am proud of him and second lady karen. then today, quote, the trip by

v.p. pence was long-planned. he's receiving great praise for leaving game after the players showed such disrespect for the country. and after all that some new reporting from politico's josh dawsey, sense in the white house, is pence made a mistake, tactical error by telling trump in advance he was going to an nfl game. peter alexander joins us from the white house. peter, you and i talked earlier in the day about white house logistics. and it seems this has now broken down even further since we talked. the white house basically acknowledging that you can't tell trump anything or he'll tweet about it. which ironically is also their russia defense. and also, the cost of this trip. you could just google the 49ers, they've been having peaceful protests at all their games for years now. >> they are the team. >> right. so break it down inside a white house scandal. >> well, so let's walk you through this a little bit. i've been speaking to folks at the white house and the v.p.'s,

obviously folks think this could have been handled better obviously. at this point right now, bottom line from the vice president's office the goal all along from this trip was planned for weeks they would go to the indianapolis colts game where they at halftime would be honoring the future hall of famer peyton manning who played for them for years and won them a super bowl. but then of course it would make a lot of sense they should expect the 49ers would take a knee and if the vice president would be offended by it and doing as he did departing the game this would cause a big deal. this is exactly what's provided us by the vice president's office. the vice president was not going to miss the las vegas memorial prayer walk on saturday which he was honored to attend on behalf of president trump. if the vice president did not go to indiana for the colts game, he would have flown back to d.c. for the evening which means flying directly over indiana, instead he made a shorter trip to indiana for a game that was on his schedule for several weeks. now, a couple other elements to this right now obviously, nicolle, a lot of people

criticizing this as a taxpayer funded publicity stunt. the reporters traveling with the vice president were told at the stadium to stay in the van because they should expect an early departure, aides to the vice president say of course he'd have to leave early. we always leave games early. separately, beyond that, as we've just reported right now it was obvious for the 49ers, the team that started this, the team that colin kaepernick formerly played with, they'd be taking a knee. what did this all potentially cost? here's what it looks like to travel from las vegas to indianapolis and indianapolis and back is a combined total of about 3,800 miles. this is our estimate based on the reimbursable rate of use of air force 2 roughly $16,000 per hour just shy of $100,000, nicolle, not including security and other responsibilities needed on the ground. >> peter, stick around for this block with us if you can. keep me honest. harold ford, you have probably a better pulse on this sort of the

nfl fans at large. and you don't see this debate as one that's necessarily a loser for this white house. >> yeah, i think that there are a number of people. i happen to think the players have every right to do what they're doing. i would not kneel if i were in the nfl, but they have that right. and the president sees this is a winner for him amongst his base. i mean, i'm wearing puerto rico and america's flag, we're not talking about puerto rico today, we're talking about this. and i think they like that at the white house. the other reality is the reason these guys are kneeling is because they're concerned about racial injustice. and i think emp can agree we have some issues there need to be reconciled. i would hope that at some point even some of the players who want to continue kneeling, maybe they ask for a meeting at the white house with the president or vice president to bring to find some resolution to the kneeling and to get some action on the issues that clearly need to be addressed on this side of injustice in this country. >> but this also, bret, is a story about the white house the reach of their incompetence sort of knows no limits. they can't even pull off a stunt with confidence and pi nosh.

the better way to do this would have been for the president not to preview it on twitter. for the vice president not to make abundantly clear that he wasted the amount of money that peter just revealed that it's easy to calculate he spent flying there to leave after five minutes. and, i mean, the whole thing, it would have been more effective for pence to just say i wanted to be there. >> so it's the transparent -- -- >> i love that. >> this is a guy who wants to project. >> which is more offensive? >> i think the latter because there's an insanity excuse to the former. or insanity defense. i think the thing that's so upsetting here is that pence is constantly trying to project this image of himself as a kind of straight shooting all-american guy with strong, you know, profound values. now, he's also a religious

liberty guy. so that's freedom of conscience. what the players are doing is an example of freedom of conscience. it might not be politically sympathetic to the administration, but it is freedom of conscience in all the ways that pence would otherwise represent if it were coming from the right. >> when did the first amendment become a right/left thing? i stand so that any one of you could kneel if you wanted to. and george bush before trump was inaugurated sort of time out of his schedule to defend the first amendment and everything it stands for. >> why do they have to bring this subject up again? i mean, this was yet another thing ruined by the trump administration, football. and in this case honoring a pretty good quarterback, so-so -- well, all right. >> he was pretty good. even i think he's good. >> you a brady fan? >> no, no, please. >> deflategate brady. peter, let me bring you back in on this. i talked to republican operatives who were in close contact with the pence orbit who sort of see pence as the break

glass in case of emergency solution to the trump presidency. there are a lot of people in washington, republicans, who are, you know, in lots of instances never-trump republicans who are interested in protecting pence's brand. how about the political fallout in the pence circle? >> you know, that's a good point you make right there. it's so striking as you travel with the president see the way he would handle something and watch the vice president the next day do it so differently, so traditionally perhaps. in the fact the president came out and said i asked the vice president, in fact i directed the vice president to leave the game if he saw anybody take a knee just gives the sense to those paying attention that this is basically the president's pet, in effect, in this moment right here. when the guy wants to demonstrate that he's his own man who stands up for the president but also can be an independent thinker. i think it sort of undermines that thought right now. >> just a little bit, steve schmidt, i mean, it's pathetic.

>> it is. absolutely premeditated stunt using the american flag -- >> botched -- >> as a prop to divide americans. costing it's not $96,000. it's a seven-figure price tag to move that c-32 military version of the 757 back and forth around the country. >> we're giving a concerted -- right, you're talking the secret service. >> of course. look, he flies from las vegas to indianapolis. i wonder how many pregnant moms on their way to delivery were held up by the motorcade, or someone trying to get to the emergency room, or maybe a police officer responding, or maybe an ambulance on top of the tens of thousands of fans who were inconvenienced. and once again he's really going to sit there and represent that he's offended when the president of the united states goes out and tags the service of john mccain, winner of the distinguished flying cross, the silver star, three awards of the

bronze star who attacks a gold star family, who refuses to condemn by name and makes false equivalencies with white supremacists? i choose to stand in silent reverence when the american flag passes, but i will defend to my dying breath the right of these players to assert their first amendment right. and by word indeed it is a nonstop assault by this administration on the first amendment and the free expression of opinion. it's constant. there is no desecration including burning that you can do to that flag than to assault these foundational values on the hourly basis with which this administration does it. >> all right. peter alexander, thank you for spending a little bit of this block with us. we love having you. >> thanks, nicolle. >> when we come back, fema says it is filtering out pleas for help from puerto rico from this

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we did a great job. and we weren't treated fairly by the media because we really did a good job. i mean, one example they had these beautiful soft towels, very good towels. and i came in and there was a crowd of a lot of people and they were screaming and they were loving everything. and i was having fun. they were having fun. they said throw them to me. throw them to me, mr. president. and so i'm doing some of -- so the next day they said, oh, it was so disrespectful to the people. it was just a made up thing. and also when they had -- when i walked in the cheering was incredible. >> i'm sorry, we have a lot of guests, but i got to talk to you. it was a package of paper towels. they weren't beautiful soft

towels, bret. >> they were double ply. >> i'm losing my mind. what is he saying? harold? >> the more disturbing thing is how do you reconcile that with how people are living without electricity and without water? you listen to the mayor and even as you listen to the fema director who i believe -- have to believe on every account is trying his hardest. but rhetoric versus reality how people are living is very different. and if i were the president, i couldn't in good conscience, in good faith say we're doing everything we can. because if we are doing everything we can, that says a lot about our country that we're unable to respond to catastrophe on a level like we've seen. >> but also it's about him. >> it's clearly about him. >> we were treated unfairly. the whole story is how has the press treated me. not are we getting supplies to the 20% or 30% of puerto rico that still doesn't have access to clean drinking water. >> it's more than that. >> this to me is the most pathologically disturbing, more than two weeks after maria made landfall recovery efforts are still ongoing with most of the island still without power and

40% without clean water. as the death toll continues to rise on the island, the mayor of san juan has remained a vocal critic of the administration's response, tweeting, quote, increasingly painful to understand the american people want to help and u.s. government does not want to help. we need water. brock long, the head of fema, hit back against the mayor's criticism in an interview with abc "this week." >> we filtered out the mayor a long time ago. we don't have time for the political noise. the bottom line is that we are making progress every day in conjunction with the governor. >> joining us now by phone is new york city council speaker melissa in san juan right now. she has family on the island. she's become a friend of the show. and we want to know what you're seeing and hearing and what the latest is. >> you know, it really is pathetic that this is being politicized on the trump administration, not on the mayor who's serving as a voice of concern and a voice of outrage to the lack of attention.

fema today tweeted that it has 14,000 people on the ground. i've been saying consistently that we need to triple that number. the distribution line of getting supplies out to the hospitals, to the people on a consistent basis is not happening fast enough. some of the images that i've been posting because debris has not been cleaned up there's serious flooding happening in very vulnerable communities. we've had to evacuate sick and elderly people. i was with the mayor last night in one of those communities here. again, to bring this and make this about the president because of his fragile ego is a disservice to the islanders that are suffering each and every day to try to make ends meet. the is incapacitated. i put some pictures up of roads that have been obliterated. there is negligence here. there's work happening. the video feed that the president put on his -- the video that he put on his twitter

feed we're not saying and i'm not saying that there isn't work happening here, but there is not enough. and it's not happening fast enough. and i want to thank you for bringing attention to this issue. and we definitely don't want this to go by the wayside. it's like death by thousand cuts, right? like all these things that add up. there's inconsistencies here. and people are suffering. it's not easy here right now. >> melissa, you describe the mayor as the voice of the indignation of the island when you were sitting next to me here last week. and i wonder how you feel or how she feels when she hears the top federal official in charge of fema say we're not listening to her anymore. >> no, they're not. and that's the politicizing of this issue. but i was here saturday night participated in a meeting with the mayor, with volunteers, they're on their own going there and helping communities out doing wellness checks and giving

assistance and help. and that dhs representative basically didn't have anything to say. she was explaining the needs that arise, the needs that she has, the needs that other cities have because she's not serving only san juan, she is being helpful to other cities because those mayors are coming to her asking for her assistance because they're not getting the assistance from the central government. and they can't respond with definitive answers as to when the help is going to be provided, when water's going to be provided, when the food is going to be provided. and so that's important. it was very frustrating to me to hear that. it's been very frustrating all around. now, you have to recognize and i need to say this that there are volunteers coming from outside of the island. there's also self-sufficiency of people on the island. there is a lot of grassroots organizing and work that is happening. people are coming together. people are rallying around their communities and neighbors and that's important. and there has to be support to

those efforts because it is us who's going to rebuild this island. but we need the support. we cannot do it alone. that's what we've been saying and i've been saying consistently. >> all right. new york council speaker melissa, come back and join us when you get back from your trip. we'll share more pictures and have more information about how people can help. thanks for spending time with us. see you very soon. steve schmidt, i don't know what it is about him and the paper towels just gets on my last nerve, but it's this lack of humanity is the word that joe scarborough used when he talked about this trip the day after. it's that combined with this inability to view anything without himself as the lead character. >> none of this takes place in a silo. so you look at that interview with mike huckabee. it's notable for how delusional it is that the people were happy, the people in the shelter and it was all in good fun throwing the towels.

>> the quote, um, i was having fun, they were having fun. they didn't have power or water. >> and so after charlottesville where we see the death of a young woman by the hands of racist neo-nazis and the collapse of any moral authority in this administration with his equivalence, now we see for the first moment in this administration some 200 some odd days in we see actual americans dying, dying, losing their lives because of the incompetence of this administration. these are our fellow americans in puerto rico. there's literally nothing that could conceivably make us look weaker in the eyes of our adversaries around the world. the indifference of the president of the united states to our fellow citizens. and the complete ineptitude, right, the response here, is staggering to behold. and certainly it's the case that i think that there's still a

general lack of information about what is going on down there. this is not on the other side of the world. >> right. >> by the way, the same delusional guy in the paper towel interview is also the same guy talking about loosely nuclear war on the korean peninsula. it's terrifying. >> one final thing. listen to the fema administrator was disturbing on another level. this is an elected official in san juan, puerto rico. whether you agree with her politics or not, you don't filter out somebody elected by the people. the president has made an ugly habit throughout the campaign even where he picks the party he likes and the person he likes that he wants to work with and minuses out everyone. now, the president might be able to do that but shame on the fema administrator. he job ought to be called into question if he's saying he's not going to pay attention to an elected official on the ground trying to deliver emergency services, recovery efforts or relief efforts. hope somebody reprimands him for that. >> he should absolutely never be confirmed by the united states

senate -- >> he's active. >> again, i believe that's a confirmable -- >> the scene of the paper towel, what does that remind me of? it's a scene out of edward gibbons decline and fall of the roman empire. every conversation we've had whether it's about corker or this, we're talking about tearing at the fabric of what makes american society whole. he wants to talk about beautiful towels, but he's destroying them. >> oh, you guys make me want to drink. when we come back, some breaking news on harvey weinstein scandal. i really need a drink after this. and what's being reported as a desperate last-minute plea to save his job. (avo) when you have type 2 diabetes, you manage your a1c,

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we're back. unless you've been living under a rock or bouncing back and forth between donald trump and bob corker's twitter, you would note harvey weinstein is out of

the hollywood for sexual harassment. most recently former editor and co-president of the hollywood reporter, janice is now a strategist for eldridge industries which runs the hollywood reporter. thanks for being with us. >> thanks for having me. >> tell us the breaking news, big story coming. >> so this morning i got an unexpected phone call from a very, very angry, i would describe him top hollywood mogul here in hollywood who wanted to share with me after a little bit of coaxing the e-mail harvey weinstein sent out yesterday to all the top players, i would say probably exclusively male, in hollywood, begging for their help. this is before the board meeting was convening where his fate would be decided. so he writes in the note, my board is thinking of firing me. all i'm asking is let me take a leave of absence and get into heavy therapy and counselling. whether it be in a facility or somewhere else, allow me to resurrect myself with a second chance. a lot of the allegations are false, as you know, but given therapy and counselling as other

people have down i think i'd be able to get there. if you can, i need you to send a letter to my private gmail. the letter would only go to the board and no one else. we believe what the board is trying to do is not only wrong but might be illegal and would destroy the company. if you could write this letter backing me getting me the help and time away i need and also stating your opposition to the board firing me, it would help me a lot. i am desperate for your help. just give me the time to have therapy. do not let me be fired. if the industry supports me, that is all i need. with all due respect, i need the letter today. obviously he was fired shortly thereafter. >> janice, what kind of heavy therapy does someone get in hollywood for saying, watch me shower? what's he talking about? is this a thing? let me ask you to respond to this is something i read about this in national review that sort of put it in terms that i was able to relate to a little better. harvey weinstein, roger ailes and bill o'reilly weren't powerful in the way dictators

are powerful. what they could do was rob a person of her dreams. this is women. he preyed on women. >> yes. >> is hollywood ever going to let him back in? >> this one, you know, hollywood's really good at one thing consistently which is turning people, figures into persona non grata, that is what's going to happen to harvey weinstein. i don't know if that's going to be forever. right now the winds have blown in a way that will make him such, but let's remember this is a town where 100 people signed a petition in support of roman -- in 2009 admitted child rapist. i would never count him out. anyone who has dealt with weinstein knows he is the most tenacious human being, the most bullying human being you could ever imagine. and he is a survivor. but right now i think the person who read this to me today, the

e-mail, weinstein sent out, was very concerned among many other things about the reputation of hollywood in general as it relates to this. that it's not just weinstein on trial right now in public opinion but also hollywood publ opinion but also hollywood on trial and this person who said, i'm not on twitter, on social media, i don't really know how to get a statement out it's feeling frustrated. that's the sort of handwriting we'll see in the coming days and weeks out of this town about how do they actually respond to all of these accusations that they were complicit. >> i mean, one of them is coming from meryl streep, who said that, everyone didn't know. you know, that seems sort of hard to believe. it's sort of like bob corker saying out loud what everyone whispered about donald trump in his white house being an adult day it care. the kind of story everyone in and around hollywood certainly

gossiped about. >> look at that two ways. either meryl streep or completed the best acting role of her life or truly didn't know. >> how do most women, especially young women, looked at her as the most accomplished actors in the industry? >> i guess we'll never know. it's hard to think that she didn't know, but, again, powerful people are incredibly insulated from things that they don't want to know, that their team doesn't think they should know. it's hard to say factually who knew what when. the scuttlebutt, certainly people in the entertainment press has been bad things followed harvey wherever he goes. nailing down those specifics was not something easily done until the "new york times" did it, though. >> all right. janice, thank you so much for spurneding time with us. for enlightening us on the story and for bringing us that breaking news and hope you'll come back and keep us posted as

we continue to follow this. steve smith, it is not a long line to draw between electing someone who's going to grab -- i promised i would not say it, never say it on tv again, and one of the most sort of powerful figures in hollywood having what we know from the "new york times" report on friday a decades' long pattern of doing all sorts of abusive -- call them what they are -- abusive things to women. my question to you and the question i heard from a lot 6 conservative media folks today was, will democrats be as outraged by one of their biggest donors and they were by the president? and i understand the difference is he's not running for president but he is a big money donor. >> the outrage is approximate to convenience on all of these stories. you have the chairman of the rnc putting out a statement yesterday because of harvey

weinstein attacking hillary clinton, and you just had to sit there and -- who's the president again, madam chair? but there is a, there is an enormous hypocrisy angle to this story, and so when we kind of examine how we got president trump in the first place, we really can, i think, draw a straight line back to 1966 in the vietnam war. the collapse of trust in institutions. the massive hypocrisy, the massive, what about-ism. the rationalizations that take place on behavior that at one point universally people would look at and say, that's wrong. it's disgusting, and it doesn't matter who's committing it, but everything is politicized through the lens of the tribe, and you're seeing that play out. so i think the degree to which we have normal, decent people in

this country, and i think we have many, many tens and tens and tens of millions of them, they look at the behavior and they're disgusted by the rationalizations and the conveniences, whether it be on the republican side, whether it be on the democratic side, and, by the way, another part of the american economy, the tech industry, is another place where, if you talk to women executives in these companies, the misogyny they deal with, the unfairness they deal with, it's endemic. >> but if harvey weinstein was a republican, a well-known republican it would have come out a lot sooner. >> let me say this, he got what he deserved and the questions raced that the board knew of these things, if there were these settlements, and allegations we'll learn if they're true or not, this should not have gone on as long as it went on and someone has to answer that question. it's hard to say meryl streep should have known this. i don't know what meryl streep

should know. we know from the articles, the board was aware of some of these things. the question is begged at some point, how long were they going to allow him to do this? >> a massive board governance -- >> we'll sneak in a break and be right back.

a white house without john kelly could be the new reality in washington according to reporting this afternoon. "we cannot stress enough how many essential staff and officials want out if not this quarter, soon after the new year. chief of staff john kelly is one

to watch closely. he doesn't get the credit for the discipline enforced into the theious. bristles at the boss' loose, erratic ways and a lot of tells." what's your destabilizing in your view? trump with kelly or trump without kelly? >> clearly, the latter. i think we should feel blessed general kelly is in the position. we've never had a situation like this since probably the summer of 1974 when i think the country was very fortunate to, another former general, alexander haig as chief of staff in the white house. we have an unstable president, to the extent you can have serious, forceful and thoughtful men around him, you need them there. >> and to think about, egypt, we don't deal with their leaders but a strong military leader. >> i want more evidence. i was a kelly advocate from the beginning but not as convinced as my --

>> do you want stephen miller? >> i don't think it matters who it is. this guy will be whom he wants. >> this debate is going to go on and on and on. don't miss it. we'll have it every day. my thanks to steve schmidt, harry ford, "mtp daily" starts right now with the fabulous katie tur in for chuck. >> with a panel like that i will always be watching. nicolle, thank you very much. if it is monday, don't cross bob corker. tonight -- senator corker uncorked. the retiring chairman of the senate foreign relations committee sounds off on the president. and what he says is a pact to world war iii. plus, protesting anthem protests. how vice president pence's dramatic departure from this week's colts game is fueling controversy. >> it's the height of hypocrisy to say they can take their action but that the vice president of t