which you have no power to fight. >> i should note there is another moment melissa mel llano started this me, too, hashtag. particularly men should check out that hashtag. it's extremely upsetting and also eye opening about how profoundly ubiquitous this is. that is "all in" for this evening. the "rachel maddow show" starts now. >> thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. david hackworth served four tours in vietnam. before that he did hard combat in the korean war as well. he was a commander of an army raider's unit in the war. he got a battlefield commission in the korean war. that means they made him an officer in the field in the middle of the fight. he became the youngest u.s. captain in the entire korean war after he got that battlefield commission. he was 20 years old when he became a captain.

before those four tours in vietnam, before that remarkable tour in korea david hackworth also served at the very tail end of world war ii. and the reason his career was able to span that distance, to span all those different conflicts over those decades is in part because he started really, really young. he used a fake i.d. to sign up in the first place when he was 15 years old. according to his "new york times" obituary he, quote, paid a wineo to pose as his father to certify he was old enough to join the u.s. army. he signed up at 15. in his career in the army david hackworth was awarded ten silver stars and eight bronze stars and eight purple hearts. david hackworth was his name, one of the most decorated soldiers of his generation or of any generation. david hackworth was just 40 years old and a full bird

colonel in 1971 when having just served those four hard tours in vietnam he decided back in the united states that he would go on tv as a serving u.s. army colonel because he felt like he had something to say to the american public about the vietnam war that this country was still in, that he had been fighting in for all those years. on june 27th, 1971, david hackworth appeared on an abc news show called "issues and answers." he called vietnam a bad war. he said the united states should get out. he basically made the case that it was unwinnable. it is a powerful thing in our country when a veteran, especially a decorated veteran like him decides to speak out about a war that america is currently engaged in. when david hackworth went on tv in june 1971 and called vietnam a veteran at that point, i wasn't a veteran. he was still in the army. he was still serving as a very,

very highly decorated u.s. army colonel. so that decision from that position to make that dramatic pronouncement about war on the tv news, that was how the u.s. army lost the best battalion commander i ever saw in the u.s. army. after he made those public remarks criticizing the war david hackworth got out of the army in 1971, he had to after criticizing the war as a serving officer in that way, at least he believed he had to. gave up his medals in protest although they were eventually reinstated years later. david hackworth moved halfway around the world. he lived in australia and became a successful businessman there. then he started writing books, acclaimed books about the u.s. military and about our modern wars and ultimately he ended up coming back to the u.s. to become a military journalist. for a long time he served as defense editor at u.s. news

magazine and he started to write a syndicated column for king features. in november 2004, a year and a half into the iraq war, david hackworth in one of his syndicated columns, he broke the news that donald rumsfeld was using an auto pen, a machine or stamp to automatically sign more than 1,000 condolence letters that the bush administration had to send to families of soldiers who had been killed in iraq. they were machine signed, form letters. pentagon initially denied it and then they repeatedly denied it, but david hackworth turns out had him dead to right. he had great sources. he had interviews with a dozen family members who were next of kin to family members served in iraq. he found two pentagon concerns who were said to be indignant about rumsfeld's decision even

after they decided on anonymity. once david hackworth broke the story, other news organizations were able to follow his reporting, track down those letters. in fact, he was proven to be right. it was november 2004 when hackworth wrote that column. the following month, december 2004 it was leo shane writing "stars and stripes," ivan med a medina, a new york resident, whose twin brother irving told "stripes," quote, to me it's an insult not only as someone who lost a loved one but also as someone who served in iraq. illinois betty sullivan whose son was killed in 2003, she was incensed when she and her son's wife and her grandchildren all received the exact same condolence letter with the apparently stamped signature. sullivan told "stripes," quote, how many signatures does this

amount to? for those of his wife and children and mother, no, no, no. so david hackworth started off that reporting. the pentagon denied it, but hackworth was proven out and donald rumsfeld and the pentagon ultimately relented. december 16th donald rumsfeld put out a surreal statement which i should note never technically admitted it. i have directed that in the future i sign each letter. okay. and the surrealness of that statement and the behavior of donald rumsfeld, it was a little snapshot of the george w. bush administration on this issue. beyond that personal strangeness from rumsfeld, this is not the issue on which you find a lot of dissent. you might find denial, but once it was known what they were doing, there really wasn't anybody in the country who

didn't have the same feeling about what the bush administration had just bumbled into them there and what hackworth discovered they were doing. who thought that was a good idea? you might have disbelieved it when you first heard the reporting. once you found out it was true, callousness and impersonal treatment of soldiers killed in battle and their families back home. it is a hot third rail, not just in american politics but in american values, american ethics. the george w. bush administration had also banned any public footage of soldiers remains being transferred home on flights from iraq and afghanistan at dover airbase. they said at the time it was somehow out of respect that they wouldn't allow anybody to see those dignified transfer ceremonies. there was a fierce fight about how that decision by the bush administration also shielded the public from the cost of the war by effectively hiding the loss of those service members. when barack obama was sworn in

in 2009, he immediately lifted the blanket ban on that transfer. we are once again able to see ceremonies like this. he lifted that ban in 2009, february 2009 right after the inauguration. a couple years later in 2011 president obama changed the policy on the condolence letters further. they were sent to soldier's family members after a soldier dies in theater. president obama changed the rules around those in 2011 so in addition to writing those condolence letters to the families of soldiers killed in combat, president obama in 2011 also started sending the same kind of letter to families of soldiers who committed suicide in the war zone. since, after all, those are war deaths, too. but this is just incredibly solemn, incredibly serious stuff for all the obvious reasons, right? there's one thing a country

should keep faith about. it's the thanks and respect to the families of the people who gave their lives for this country, right? if there's something that should be handled solemnly in this country. and, you know, if there ace anything that everybody can agree should be taken with solemnity and respect, it must be this. today president trump in the rose garden claimed offhandedly that president obama never called the families of fallen soldiers. when president trump said that today nobody had actually asked him about president obama. nobody had asked him about the policy and practice of calling families of fallen soldiers at all, but president trump just threw it out there. casually asserted that his predecessor never called the families of fallen soldiers whereas he, donald trump, he sometimes does. when president trump was challenged on that plate tent falsehood by nbc's peter alexander, the president then

immediately backtracked and said it was something he had been told, i was told that. he didn't know if president obama had called the families of fallen soldiers. he had heard -- he heard maybe he didn't. how could he know? just something he had been told. who knows if it's true. don't know. whatever. so the president flippantly today throwing that out there and then half retracting it and not seeming to know or care about the truth even on that subject. that is -- that will go down in the annals of the trump administration, but in terms of the environment that we're in right now in which this white house is operating right now, there also remains the original question that actually led to that falsehood and that fl flippancy. it has been two weeks since four american soldiers, four green berets, were killed in the west african country of niger. there are still things we don't know about that ambush.

how dozens of isis fighters took them by surprise in an area of the country that was reportedly considered low risk. we don't know why it took an hour for a plane to come in. we don't know why one body wasn't recovered until 48 hours after the attack. we also do not know why president trump has said exactly nothing about that ambush or about the deaths of these four american highly deck core raided, highly trained soldiers. america doesn't lose four green berets every day. this happened almost two weeks ago. the president has not even acknowledged that it happened. you know, to be fair, sometimes there is an important reason why public officials don't acknowledge combat deaths abroad or incidents in which american personnel are killed abroad. sometimes there is something covert about the mission. sometimes there is some other reason why a civilian official, even a military official cannot acknowledge that american deaths

have happened in some country around the world. there are -- whether or not you think it's reasonable, there are explanations for why sometimes those comments cannot be made. i mean, in this case that may yet be the reason why the president has said nothing, but we've had no explanation from the white house at all. i have to tell you, i was at a national security forum this evening with the former defense secretary ash carter. i asked him if he knows of any operational reasons why the president couldn't acknowledge the deaths of these four green berets in niger. secretary carter pointed me to the fact that the current secretary, james mattis, has acknowledged and tried to explain what happened with these green berets in niger and that means, de facto, there's no reason, no prohibition on u.s. officials, civilian officials, not being allowed to talk about it. so the question remains, the question is sharpened, why the president has been pretending for two weeks now that this didn't happen. for the last two weeks he has

not admitted this happened. he has said nothing about the loss of these four american soldiers. today in the rose garden when he was asked he still had nothing to say about it. that was his chance, right? but what he came back with was this lie about barack obama never calling the families of fallen soldiers. there are hundreds of u.s. special operations forces currently operating in niger. we have hundreds of troops operating in somalia. somalia just suffered one of the worst recent attacks. the truck bombing in mogadishu, the death toll is over 300 people already. the size is 2 or 3 football fields reduced to rubble. in a civilian area. nobody has claimed responsibility. al shabaab said they would increase their attacks on civilians after the trump

administration announced the stepping up of u.s. military operations in that country. there is news that the u.s. military will be running an evacuation drill for americans in south korea next week. this is a drill called courageous channel. you know, tensions are so high in the korean peninsula right now that they felt the need to issue what the "new york times" called a rare news release stressing that the noncombat tanlt exercise is a routinely scheduled drill. it's scheduled from next monday through friday. it's aimed to train people to respond to a wide range of crisis management events such as noncombatant evacuation and natural or man-made disasters. what could that possible whether i be on the korean peninsula. that drill evacuation of american noncombatants will take

place alongside military experts that will involve a u.s. submarine and aircraft carrier. nothing to worry about there. nothing to see. "new york times" is also reporting today that north korea has become very, very good at offensive cyber operations now by which i don't mean good for north korea, but good. the north korean military a top tier cyber opportunity now. now i have to cough for a second. actually, i have to cough for more than a second. allergies. i'll be right back.

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i'm very embarrassed to have had to have taken a coughing break. now it looks like i've been crying for an hour and a half. you know what, i didn't have allergies until i was in my 40s. i got them in my 40s. i have no ability to cope with them whatsoever. not that i envy people who have had allergies for their entire life. i feel like when you got them when you were 8 you figured out how to deal with them. now every year whatever happens that brings on my allergies comes on in the fall. it's like i'm a goldfish swimming around the bowl seeing that castle for the first time. oh, my god, castle. shocks me every time. i have no ability to deal with it. so forgive me. i know i sounded terrible on the show on friday night. i realized i had to take a break for coughing, but keep hope alive. all right. as i was saying, "new york times" had a remarkable report today on north korean national security issues unrelated to their nuclear program and their

threat on being able to rain artillery down on south korea. one of the things that north korea is very, very good at now is cyber operations. we've known that north korea has maintained a hacking operation, a state-supported hacking operation for a long time now. just ask sony pictures. but as a military operation north korea is now considered to be a top tier cyber operator. quote, north korea's army of more than 600,000 hackers is undeniably persistent and improving. the north koreans have also quietly developed a cyber program that is stealing hundreds of millions of dollars and is proving capable of unleashing global havoc. one former british chief says the take may bring the north as much as $1 billion a year, which is 1/3 of the value of the nation's exports. so all the things that north

korea's able to export to the world, they're able to get a third of the value of that economic behavior. hacking and information worker has always been an effective tool of actors that are weaker on other fronts. if north korea got good at it at the international level, the lack of transparency that we have, the opacity in terms of their goals as a country and their military operations makes the possibility that they have a very strong weapon in cyber a whole new level of threat from north korea that we sort of haven't had our hands around yet and one for which they've never paid any price thus far with everything they've done up until now. so scary new reporting in terms of north korea's national security capabilities. we're also simultaneously getting fwran granular detail to

rebalance its relationship with the great powers in the world. russia's cyber operations, including the one last year against our elections. yahoo! is talking about a former member of the sbrer net research agency. that's the st. petersburg so-called troll factory. they're asked to troll. it was a key part against voters last year. it's part of where the russian election facebook ads came from. the trolls who worked at this russian spam factory were required to watch the tv show, house of cards. also learned to undermine it, also learned never to sleep with your biographer. what we learned is interesting in terms of understanding how

this all worked. everybody who worked on the american election at the st. petersburg troll farm apparently had quotas for how many comments they needed to post on mainstream news stories. according to this guy who worked at the troll farm, they were told they were paid specifically to complain about hillary clinton in three ways. to complain about hillary clinton in terms of bill clinton's scandal. to complain about hillary clinton being wealthy and to complain about her using a private e-mails. they were paid to complain about these things in the comment section of u.s. newspapers. all of these things they were told to harp on, all of these comments that flooded news sites, social media, any time you had a political discussion, that online discussion was immediately flooded with the same antihillary clinton

complaints. even when they have no relation to what was being discussed. that constant online odd cacophony that so many of us have tlifd, we now know was that was a russian funded government effort to help him win from abroad. >> the investigation continues into whether that got any cooperation. cnn reports on the folks who tried during the campaign to contact the russian hammers. that effort was let by a long time remember can. those helpers have now reportedly been interviewed. one analyst recruited by peter smith told the committee that he believed peter smith was close

to mike flynn. he told the intelligence committee that he, quote, believes peter sate may have been working, he was contacting government hackers trying to get more stolen stuff from hillary clinton so she could run into stuff. the investigation continues. it continues amid a national security environment. or to even bother to get the basics right. i'm talking about the most serious solemn stuff that a government does is like notifying the families of the fallen. >> on the rush shah investigation we did just get some news, who is bearing the cost of this administration and the trurk administration? >> the dollars and cents costs. that's very counter strategic

for the president. that story is up next. when you think of saving money, what comes to mind? your next getaway? connecting with family and friends?

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we've been wondering if this is true for a while now. today we got new reporting, new filings that show that, in fact, the trump re-election campaign and the national republican party are paying the legal fees on the russia investigation for the billionaire president. and also for the president's eldest son but they're not

apparently paying the legal fees for anybody else. in july we first learned that the trump campaign, not the trump family, the trump campaign, campaign donations sent be in by regular americans, that's when we first learned in june, that the trump campaign was paying for don jr.'s russia legal fees. we learned they had repurposed campaign donations to pay for don jr.'s lawyer. then last month we learned the rnc was also chipping in to pay for the lawyer's for donald trump jr. and also for his father, the president. now today new filing from the campaign and, indeed, more money to pay the russia-related legal fees for people named donald trump from the trump campaign coiffeurs to go along with the national republican party headquarters as well. maybe if you are writing checks to the republican party or buying red make america great again hats from the trump campaign, you are happy to be footing those russia legal fees for the billionaire and his son. at least we can hope you are

happy about that, because they are using your money for that. it's a remarkable thing. so far as we can tell, despite the large number of current and former trump officials who have had to hire expensive lawyers to help them in the russia investigation, everybody not named donald trump, jr. or sr., has to pay their legal fees themselves. the president and his son are using other people's money to pay their lawyers. everybody else, hey, if your kid's got a college fund -- vice president mike pence is famously not wealthy. jane mayer's new profile says president trump was reluctant to bring pence onto the ticket when he learned he had no money at all. he has a d.c. lawyer and we asked him and his spokesperson how the vice president is paying that lawyer, how he's paying his

russia legal fees which are into the month, but we got no answer. on friday reince priebus stopped for an all day interview. he used to be the head of the national republican committee. they have not answered for us whether party funds are helping him or anybody else who works on the campaign pay for their lawyers as well. maybe he, too, is on his own. so far as we know, the republican party and the trump campaign paying for trump and trump jr. that's it. the campaign and the rnc are paying for donald trump jr. and sr. so far as we know. so far as they will not tell us, but think about it for a second from the president's strategic perspective, right? seems like an awful lot to ask people who surrounded you, people who worked for you, people who worked for you and fired, potentially asking them to bankrupt their own families in this investigation into the

president and his campaign, an investigation which the president and his very wealthy family aren't paying anything themselves while all the stock papers and little people are told to suck it up. it's hard to justify the decision. financially i'm sure it makes perfect sense to the president and she covers the issues. ms. scouton. thank you for joining us. >> pleasure to be here. >> do we know if anybody else besides president trump and his son are getting their legal fees paid for by anyone else? >> we have no evidence of that. the rnc's next report comes out in a few days. they've previously acknowledged that the funds that they have paid in september were to help donald trump jr. pleep for his testimony before the senate judiciary committee. we do know that some of the

other people who got caught up in this, such as michael flynn, his family members have started a legal defense fund to -- >> on the rnc particularly, donald trump jr. has no official role on the campaign and it's hard to see if he was cut up incidentally, if he got swept up into this inquiry, the way that so many other staffers and supporters did, it's hard to understand why the rnc would feel there was an in perfect rative to pay the legal fees for the president's son while not paying the legal fees for reince priebus, sean spicer or don mcgann who would seem to have more of a connection to the rnc. >> try to think of their

thinking here. although donald trump jr. did not have a decision making decision. the younger trump has said that he met with that russian lawyer because he thought that she had information that was useful about his president's rival. so he was -- i think that their thinking is he got caught up in this because he was part of the campaign whether he had an official title or not. he wouldn't have taken that meeting and wouldn't have testified before the senate judiciary committee had his father not been running for president. >> do you know if the president's family has been involved at all in terms of the rnc going. if we know anything about the negotiations that led to this. >> there has been a lot of reporting back and forth about the internal conversations. i don't know to what extent the president and family reported

the greenstick. whoever the president is. when there's a republican in the white house, the republican's partying is there. the party has to act based on his wishes. >> finance reporter for "usa today." i appreciate your time. it's going to be proved to be a big dream. thank you for helping us understand it. >> you're welcome. we've got much more ahead here tonight. "the new yorker's" jane mayor. i might be having another coughing fit. you at home in the break. we'll be right back.

helen: fand every year,, we get a giwe split it equally. except for one of us. i write them a poem instead. and one for each of you too. and one for each of you too. helen: cool. that actually yours... that one. yeah. regardless, we're stuck with the bill. to many, words are the most valuable currency. last i checked, stores don't take words. man: some do. oh. (alert beeps) not everyone can be the poetic voice of a generation. i know, right? such a burden. pay back a friend day is october 17th. get the bank of america mobile banking app today. by listening to an thiaudiobook on audible.ame and this guy is just trying to get through the day. keeping it together. losing it. upgrade your commute. ride with audible. if you have moderate to severe ulcerative colitis or crohn's,

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well, it'sonce again.eason >>yeah. lot of tech companies are reporting today. and, how's it looking? >>i don't know. there's so many opinions out there, it's hard to make sense of it all. well, victor, do you have something for him? >>check this out. td ameritrade aggregates thousands of earnings estimates into a single data point. that way you can keep your eyes on the big picture. >>huh. feel better? >>much better. yeah, me too. wow, you really did a number on this thing. >>sorry about that. that's alright. i got a box of 'em. thousands of opinions. one estimate. the earnings tool from td ameritrade. i tabut with my back paines, i couldn't sleep and get up in time.

then i found aleve pm. aleve pm is the only one to combine a safe sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. i'm back. aleve pm for a better am. zwroo set to get a bhig boost from the president of the united states. washington post writing that mike pence threw his weight behind ed gillespie by

campaigning with him on saturday. the trouble though is that apparently mike pence's weight may not register all that well in southwest virginia. washington post describes that rally between pence and gillespie as only half filled. organizers expected around 1200 people to show up but only about 600 people did. trump administration right now is being sued over stopping obamacare subsidies. they're being sued over daca. they're facing international pressure for disa vowing the nuclear deal. in addition to all of that, the trump campaign is under investigation from three congressional committees and the fbi special counsel for possible collusion. that's an investigation that has expanded to include trump business dealers. he's under investigation for obstruction of justice. there's more to report every day on these investigations and the

scandals that led to them, which churns up a lot of open speculation as to whether this president might for some reason or another get himself terped out of office before his term is up. the vice president's legal jeopardy is discussed and real. he will help with the outside investigations between trump and russia. we're trying to filling it out. his involvement in the trump campaign, his role in response to the comey fire. so the vice president has repeatedly made demonstrably wrong judgments. so the vice president may be in trouble himself in these

scandals and investigations. however long donald trump ends up serving as president, if you had to place a bet on it. the single most likely person to exceed him in office for any reason is still mike pens. that makes mine latest epic beast. she refeels that the vice president's childhood nickname was bubbles. i never knew he was called bubbles. jane mayer's piece is called a deep did i have. none of that appears to have concerned the president who has had no qualms ormocing them out there for his social conservative views. trump likes to let pens know who's boss. a staff member recalls him

mocking mike pens's relidge gi os city. when they met with him, hey, did you mike make you play? during a meeting with a legal collar trump belittled mike pens's attempt to overturn row v. weighed. you've wasted all of this time and energy on it. when the conversation turns to gay rights, trump says don't ask that guy, he wants to hang them all. i should mention that the vice president has responded somewhat to jay mayer's response. quote, "the new yorker" piece is unsubstantiated, unsourced claims that are untrue and offensive. not asking for any specific

corrections. no specific denial on the bubble thing. joining us is jane mayer. great to have you with us. thanks for being here. >> thanks so much for having me. >> let me give you a chance tonight first to respond to the statement from the vice president's office. he said your piece is filled with unsubstantiated pieces. is this something specific that they think is wrong? >> no, they are not. all i can say is we stand by our story. we feel very proud of the reporting. i have to say i feel one of the strengths to the story is how many people are on the record and how many of those people are republicans who have known pence for a long time including many from indiana. anyway, you know, i think it's just kind of a knee jerk thing they do. >> it seems to me that there are

three sort of strands reporting here. within the framework of if you're fantasizing about trump being terpted out of office. it's the general introductory framework but you describe us being very, very connect today the billionaire koch brothers and him being key to a lot that they want out of the strip administration. >> go ahead. >> no, you go ahead. >> i was going to say, you also describe him and some quotes from his family that described him as not that bright or capable and i'll let that go. the third point is that you describe his conservatism in a way that seems like it's almost surprising to you. everybody thinks of them as very conservative. you're finding that his

conservatism was more rad kalt and outside. >> that's true. everybody who knows anything about mike pens, he is the declined social arrogancism. i didn't realize until i went to indiana how far out of the mainstream his views are. there's so many of his opponents are republicans in the state. the republican business community was absolutely up in arms. he took his position on abortion, it was so far out there. he supported having women have a feet tall barrier and also gave them an abortion if their fetus had physical anomalieanomalies.

it was the far edge of things. then on gay rights, really, this is where the business community became so upset. businesses there have a hard time recruiting good staffers, good employees. they felt it was giving the whole state a black eye. there's the religious freedom. it's giving businesses the right to say for religious reasons they could turn away guy customers. if there was such an outcry that the indiana business said we can never get anybody here, we can't get employees here. pence has had to back away from it. you would think he would give it to you. it's been blind spotted by the whole thing. >> that's another remarkable part of your reporting in terms

of what dire straits he was in when president trump picked him to be his running mate facing maybe a 50-50 chance of being re-elected in indiana. people having annual lated. it seems very incompetent as an indiana governor. a state that has economic trouble before and beyond the additional economic fund that that sort of was built in. >> he was incredibly impopular. it was a fluke. i had newt gingrich saying he thinks he's a shoe in to be the republican nominee whenever trump doesn't run. next. and so it's when the other things like that surprised you, the story how close it came and

really in many ways wanted to. he kind of got pushed out of it. as someone said, led to pence. surrounded by family and about. can you sit and take a break and come back? >> sure, sure. >> an epic profiler in "the new yorker" on mike pence and pence may have brought the russia investigation upon the trump administration with one specific bad decision. and that's next. stay with us. not just being in the military, but at home. she thinks she's the boss. she only had me by one grade. we bought our first home together in 2010. his family had used another insurance product but i was like well i've had usaa for a while, why don't we call and check the rates? it was an instant savings and i should've changed a long time ago. there's no point in looking elsewhere really. we're the tenneys and we're usaa members for life. usaa. get your insurance quote today.

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jane mayer has a gonzo new profile of mike pence in "the new yorker" which includes this remarkable reporting. before pence took over the transition team, chris christie warned trump not to give a high-level job to michael flynn whose financial ties to foreign interests triggered the russia investigation. when pence replaced christie, though, the door of the white house was open to flynn. there's no indication that pence raised any objections about flynn to trump, even after congressman cummings from the oversight committee sent pence a letter warning about flynn's failing to disclose in the campaign he did paid lobbying work for a foreign government. trump not might not have been a subject of a sprawling investigation. really. this is the danger of president pence. jane mayer is the reporter in this piece. i have to ask you, if the mike

pence/mike flynn connection and the story about what evolved between them and the way that pence's talked about flynn since the investigation has broken over whether that is well understood or whether there's more to learn there. >> i don't think it is well understood. i mean, i certainly didn't realize until i did this reporting that basically there was a red flag that was being thrown when -- around flynn by christie when he ran the transition and that when pence took over, what happened was actually it was -- ivanka trump turned to mike flynn in a meeting and christie was chairing it and didn't understand that flynn was even going to be there and suddenly ivanka trump turned to him walking into the room and said, general, what job would you like? and flynn just basically said, well, you know, i'd like to be secretary of defense or secretary of state but if i can't have that i'll take national security adviser which is, of course, what he got.

so the -- all of the warning signs were ignored and ivanka trump, i think, was acting out of loyalty, loyalty because flynn had been loyal to her father and pence whose job it was to vet somebody of that -- that incredible importance to america's security, it was just a fundamental role of running the transition, is to make sure that these people are, you know, reliable, even. and not crooks. and people i talked to felt he failed that very basic job and that was kind of a beginning of some of this whole, you know, investigation. >> and the beginning of the -- even the obstruction investigation pursuant to the -- after the initial -- >> yeah. because, right. >> -- inquiry. >> one thing leads to the next and each time there's a key turning point, pence kind of goes out and misleads the public and it's unclear really, was he

doing it because he's a chump or as a kind of cover-up but he keeps making misleading statements including after talking about why it was that comey was going to be fired. and he's right in the room planning to do it, pence is talking. i mean, trump is talking about why he wants to do it and then pence comes out and said trump did it because the justice department told him to. and so, there are people, people like larry tribe, the law professor, sort of suggesting this puts pence in legal jeopardy to sort of say he might be part of a cover-up and obstruction of justice. >> underappreciated truth about the vice president. absolutely. jane mayer, staff writer for yt the new yorker," thank you for this and appreciate you being here. >> great to be with you. thanks. >> we'll be right back. patients that i see

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little bit of a heads up for

tomorrow. at 6:00 p.m. eastern tomorrow ari melber has a big get. he got a very hard to get, very provocatively interesting interview. that's specifically relating to the russia investigation. i'm a little jealous because i didn't get interview. ari did. but i'm going -- i'm impressed. and i'm going to be joining ari, actually, on his show at 6:00 p.m. to talk with him about that big interview. you should check it out. if you're not usually watching at 6:00, you should watch tomorrow at 6:00 eastern. that does it for us tonight. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." >> i would so love to make you jealous with a big get. it's so hard to do, though, because, of course -- >> no. you make me me vous all the time, big guy. >> once a year. once a year. i get somebody. >> not true. >> once a year maybe. if i'm lucky. >> you are very kind. thank you, my friend. >> cold there? just a little cold i'm wearing