fighting for this country. i'm sorry that donald trump yesterday suggested john kelly hadn't received a call from president obama invoking an unthinkable tragedy for the kelly family, one they've sought to keep far, far away from politics, and i'm sorry today mrs. kuwanda jones jr. who lost her son david t. johnson in an ambush near niger two weeks ago feels that president trump disrespected her family during a call with her son's widow by saying that the young soldier knew what he signed up for. donald trump disputes that account but the soldier's wife, the woman who raised him and a democratic congresswoman who were all witnesses' to the widow's side of the conversation confirm the family account. there are plenty of reasons to believe the grieving family instead of the president, even if you are part of the unshakeable 32%. trump has enjoyed strong support among the military since the early days of his primary campaign. the military doesn't make up any

sizable portion of what he surely views as a resistance. two, the fact that we're talking about this story and leading our program with this story for a third day in a row is because the president is incapable of letting any perceived slight, in this instance, the question about whether he'd handle the deaths of four service members in an appropriate manner. thirksd every single story, be it a natural disaster, the death of his chief of staff's son, the death of four kroung myoung men their lives in danger in niger is always somehow about how he sees himself reflected in the only mirror that seems to get through to him. the coverage of his presidency in and by the media. here's the president this morning pushing back against the congresswoman who was the first to describe the family's reaction to the president's call. >> i had a very nice

conversation with the woman, with the wife who sounded like a lovely woman. did not say what the congresswoman said and most people aren't too surprised to hear that. >> [ inaudible ]. >> let her make her statement again and then you'll find out. >> she's saying that you said this. >> let her make her statement again and then you'll find out. >> here's "the washington post" confirmation from the fallen soldier's mother about what trump now denies. president trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband. jones-johnson said. the post putting it into broader context with this analysis this afternoon. this was an avalanche of mistakes that trump himself created. mistakes that compounded mistakes. let's get to our guests. nbc news white house correspondent peter alexander, heather mcgee, phil rucker for "the washington post." pete wayner, my old white house colleague, former deputy

director speechwriting for president george w. bush, now a senior fellow at the ethics and public policy center and msnbc military analyst, medal of honor recipient colonel jack jacobs. you have been covering this story as reluctantly as we all have since monday. can you bring us up to speed? again, i used this word yesterday. seemingly surreal developments of the white house in a bit of a dispute over the way this call went down with the family of that soldier who paid the ultimate price. >> a remarkable back and forth over the gravest of presidential obligations, their contacts, their communication with gold star families. the families who have lost a loved one at war, serving for this country. the president earlier today, essentially saying that this congresswoman had, in his words, totally fabricated the account of the call saying it was sad, saying there was proof to show otherwise.

sarah huckabee sanders pressed on that proof. turns out no recordings, no tapes. the proof is the series of other individuals, aides to the president in the room. among them, the president's chief of staff, general john kelly who lost his own son in afghanistan in 2010. a topic that he's been reluctant to talk about, understandably, given the unthinkable loss that you describe those families suffer when a child loses their life serving for this country. so i asked sarah huckabee sanders today specifically about general kelly and his thoughts at this time. take a listen. >> can you describe how general kelly feels about it? is he comfortable? >> i think general kelly is disgusted by the way this has been politicized and that the focus has become on the process and not the fact that american lives were lost. i think he's disgusted and frustrated by that. if he has any anger, it's towards that. >> obviously, general kelly -- sarah huckabee complaining about

how this whole issue has been politicized. she accused congresswoman wilson of being appalling and disgusting in her politicizization of this. but it was the president who earlier this week on monday, and i was standing right there in the front, who volunteered the names of past presidents and the way they handled these types of calls saying in effect they didn't make calls like this. and then just yesterday, revisited this topic by invoking the memory of general kelly's own son by saying he'll have to ask president obama if he ever called general kelly. >> and peter, i know you pressed sarah huckabee sanders on this, but when she says he's disgusted with the way this has been politicized, is she capable in any private moments of acknowledging that it's her boss, the president, who injected general kelly's loss into the conversation by offering it up in an interview yesterday and suggesting he gave the president a direction and donald trump likes his directions to be followed. he directed the press to ask

general kelly if obama called him. any acknowledgment of reality or is that not what happens in that room? >> the bottom line, the way the media has characterized this story, the narrative that she blames on the media is, in her words, a disgrace right now. this is a white house, like the president, that doesn't back down. even in a situation, nicolle where it would make sense to you, me or lindsey graham, who golfed with him just a matter of days ago if things were misconstrued, to reach out, say i'm sorry and move forward. those obviously would have been easy ways to go forward, but it's simply not the way that this president works. and as a result, it's not the way that his aides work. i went back and forth with them privately about this. they blame the media. i said i'm just using the president's words. he's the one who volunteered those thoughts. >> peter alexander, grateful that you spent time with us

again. phil rucker, your paper had two stories. ashley parker with the story that was painful to read, just about the lengths general kelly has gone through to keep their family's loss out of the media. is there an awareness behind the scenes that it was injected into the conversation by the president who, as i said, directed the media to, i have the quote, ask general kelly if obama called him. >> i think there is. privately, i was talking to some white house advisers last night who said this was not any part of an orchestrated strategy that was cooked up by the white house staff. this was the president riffing in that interview yesterday morning as we could all safely assumed, to bring up general kelly's situation. the loss of his son as evidence in his case against president obama. and we should remember that this whole conversation began with trump on the defensive monday in the rose garden mean was asked why he hasn't commented on this loss of life for 12 days. 12 days the greatest loss of life in combat in his presidency

that he didn't have a single thing to say about. so he was on the defensive and brought up the obama attack as a way to get out of his hole. >> and yet you also, and i believe it's your byline on the story this morning, the family now, who i think it's been just two weeks since they lost their son in this ambush, having to rapidly respond to the leader of the -- i don't know how else to respond it, but having to clarify their point of view that it was their experience that they felt disrespected. and your paper did some exclusive reporting on that. >> congresswoman wilson, i talked to her last night on the phone. and she was in the car listening to that phone call when the president called the widow. and said she was crying. the things the president said in that phone call, only a few minutes long, but brought her to tears and she was so disgusted by the tone and tenor of that conversation. >> i want to ask you about the

annihilation of what i thought might have been the last sacred thing. the one thing that trump wouldn't destroy. and that would have been -- he clearly has some regard for generals. he surrounded himself by some. but even the exercise of projecting the gratitude and empathy, not that he feels or doesn't feel, but of the nation for those who protect us. the reason we have soldiers around the world in points far, far away is so those threats don't gather here. can you talk about what's been lost this week? >> it's interesting you mention about the nation because the president of the united states speaks for the nation. and when he talks, you would think that he would emote in a way that reflects how we feel about whatever he's talking about, but that's not the case here. i received a number -- it's unusual that i get e-mails from anybody about anything useful,

but i have had -- >> somehow i doubt that. >> you are constantly getting these things that you don't want to hear about. i once took a ride on a submarine for two or three days and we had to turn off, obviously, the phone and had a thousand e-mails when -- erased them all. nobody ever called me up. >> unsubscribe. >> but received quite a number of e-mails from people who would never otherwise send me a note saying they were -- military people, former military people, saying that they were appalled by this performance. that the president of the united states is in the business of refluctuating the mood of the nation, the feeling of the nation. on something like this, in particular, that he failed miserably. >> general kelly is a friend of yours. i don't want to put you in an awkward position, and no one can know his pain, but we do know that he sought to keep it private. what do you imagine his reaction

was when yesterday, in just a round of radio row, where maybe he'd go check his e-mail or caught up on work he learned that the president of the united states invoked his son's death as a way to attack president obama. >> there 24 things that might come out of this. the first is a prooft conversation with the president of the united states telling him just don't ever do that kind of stuff again. >> you think a threat to resign. >> i think it's hanging in the air even as we speak. but second, his dedication to the job. if you were to ask john kelly, why is he doing this job, he'd say because in the old, as hill l. would say, who's going to do it if not me. i think those who are around the president, i think general mattis feels the same way. i think -- and i don't know tillerson. maybe he feels the same way. the president of the united states beat tillerson up and he came back totally unscathed.

i think at some juncture, however, this conflation of what is really genuine talent in kind of a talentless administration might eventually feel the pressure of it. and you're liable to lose one or more of them maybe over something like this. very dangerous thing for the president to do. >> i remember during our old boss's presidency, there were a lot of protests and the wars in iraq and afghanistan were increasingly unpopular. cindy sheehan was a mother who lost her son. i remember when she was protesting in crawford, not only was there never any conversation about engaging her, but there were conversations about whether she had water and food and -- the idea that the -- one of the only people, to not only get a platform and save space to criticize a commander in chief is a mother or father who has lost someone seems to me to be the most devastating thing that

we've lost during this presidency. >> yeah, i think you're right. some of us talked about the crossing of moral and cultural guardrails. we haven't seen anything quite like this. it strikes me -- >> why does it matter? explain why it matters, the protection and we saw it with the khan family. this isn't the first barrier. this isn't the first time he did this. this already wasn't sacred, a parent that had lost someone. but it's somewhat more jarring now that he's president. >> that's right. it's because a country, and individuals live by norms. there are ways in which we live and interact with each other which matters. it's part of what it means to be in a society and to engaging relationally and as a human being. there are things you have to respect. and the more i see donald trump, the more i'm struck. i don't think there's anything sacred in his life or world. and there's almost nothing that he doesn't touch that he doesn't degrade. this is the worst thing a woman

being can go through, which is to lose a child and the one thing you'd ask of a president is to be able to spend some kind of healing grace, but to not only not do that but to go the other way to politicize it, to take a gaping wound and rip it open and pour salt on it is amazing. the other thing i'd say about it and why it's also alarming, even apart from the transgression of norms is i just think this has to be seen as a piece in a larger psychological puzzle. all of these data points we've seen and have seen throughout the campaign and for the last ten months shows that this man is emotionally and psychologically not well. he's not fit to be president. in this case, it shows he doesn't have an empathy gene but acts in ways that are so jarring. i just don't think he's equipped. and to have a president who i think is that psychologically

unsteady is really a worrisome thing. it's what a lot of us felt like, why we couldn't support him. that was the main thing we felt he was not equipped to be president of the united states, and this is just another glaring example of that. >> one of the pieces that i think this reveals for a lot of people in communities of color in this country is that the one thing that the khans and johnsons have in common is these are gold star families of color. and the reflex that donald trump has to make an us versus them, that it falls along racial lines is so, so jarring. you know, the "saturday night live" commentator michael che said when there's a tragedy and it affects a person of color. it was around the ongoing tragedy in puerto rico and how quickly that fell into the same thing where it was making it worse. actually, you know, doubling

down and victimizing and demeaning the people of color in this case puerto rican families and children who are, you know, really struggling at this moment. >> dying from dirty water. let's not sugarcoat it. >> americans of color who are still, to this day -- >> can i press you on this? he's now in a fight with a democratic congresswoman of color. she immediately became a target. it seemed like from the moment that she, and we'll give everyone the benefit of the doubt. he did his best in this call. his best came up short, according to the family, and her representative in congress told that story. but he immediately went to war with a black member of congress. >> because i think it's become clearer and clearer to him, even more so now than in the campaign that his -- that he sort of sees people color, his -- the approval ratings among people of color in this country are very low. as not his base. and he is -- sees that he wins

when he gins up parts of his base who want to see -- who have a sense of racial resentment. ment to see people of color and they are primed to do this from conservative media, seeing people of color as people who are asking for too much, who are always going to be angry who are unpatriotic, who are disrespectful, who are criminals. that narrative is something that he thinks he wins every time he does it. and i think the nfl is another example of that. and so i'm not saying that he bungled the call because he knew it was a black woman on the other side. i don't know. but i think his ability to see he could get out of the mess, the political mess of not having talked about the loss of these lives by attacking a democratic congresswoman who is an african-american woman. i think it plays into that psychology that he has and that political strategy. it's very calculated on his part. >> he doesn't mind getting into a public battle even with people who support him. i think it's -- everybody is

fair game as far as he's concerned. he'll pick a fight with anyone. >> even with parents who lost loved ones. your paper and this network have been all over this story. where do you think -- it seems to me some of the questions that are unanswered are whether there was any contact from president obama and anyone in the kelly family. he's now asked us to go look into that. do you know the answer? >> i don't. i know the white house said yesterday there was no sort of call immediately but then it came out through the obama white house veterans that kelly actually sat at a table at an event honoring goa ining gold s families with michelle obama, so there was some contact, if not a phone call. where this story goes, trump has set a standard in his statements on monday in asking us really as journalists to go in and look at all of the contacts he's had with these military families and some of my colleagues at "the post" have been doing that and finding families who have lost loved ones under his watch that

he's not communicated with or reached out to, despite his claims in the rose garden. >> give us a final word, final thought. >> everybody here has suggested that you can't get any lower than this. >> is that ever true? >> no, it's never true. >> it's never true. thank you colonel jacobs. when we come back, the shiny object that donald trump waved in front of us this morning on twitter. his attacks on jim comey. well, they may have backfired. his attorney general testifying on capitol hill today about comey's firing may just become a key line of questioning in that obstruction of justice inquiry. also ahead -- spicer and his notebooks take center stage in the mueller probe. reports the president's former press secretary spent hours with the special counsel investigators. may have the president rethinking the mooch move. the president lashes out at the nfl again today while the league tries to buy itself more time. we'll be right back.

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to the president. senator feinstein, i don't think it's been fully understood the significance on the error that mr. comey made on the clinton matter. >> uh-oh. attorney general jeff sessions was standing by president trump's initial justification for firing the fbi director. we're like three explanations beyond that, mr. attorney general. the original one, though, was that comey mishandled the investigation into hillary clinton's e-mails and was so unfair to her when he spoke about it during the campaign. the only problem is the president's no longer standing by that explanation. within a few days of firing comey, donald trump told lester holt he wanted to get the russia investigation off his back and just today, he tweeted, quote, as it has turned out, james comey lied and leaked and totally protected hillary clinton. he was the best thing that ever happened to her. so that's the opposite of the

point sessions was pushing today. maybe they really are talking. here now is a reporter with "the new york times" and op ed almostist brent stevens and kent delane and our man on the russia probe. what say you about what went down today? and i have to say, poor attorney general sessions. >> yeah, i mean, look. it's not illegal, and it's certainly not even uncommon for presidents to not tell the truth about why they make decisions. >> he said i was going to fire comey all along because i didn't like the way he was conducting the russia investigation. we heard it like seven times. >> obviously, that's the issue here. the issue is whether he fired comey to make the russia investigation go away. that's what mueller's investigating and trump's tweets do not help his cause there. i thought it was really interesting that jeff sessions

would not answer the question about whether trump told him he was firing comey to make the russia investigation go away. he didn't want to talk about his conversation with the president but you'd think there would be a way to communicate to the congress that, no, the president didn't ask me to do this very inappropriate thing. he wasn't able to do that, nicolle. >> nick, it seems like when we spend so much time talking about collusion, was there collusion, collusion may not be illegal but it may be yukky. the undercover element of the mueller investigation. i'm not a lawyer, but if you're looking into obstruction of justice, that means covering things up, why is the cover story, which we know was a lie, still being testified to under oath? >> it's their only game they can play right now. >> but trump outed them. >> this is a weird investigation for the most important piece of evidence actually to emerge in the first three days. and the rest within secondary

elements. the president said on record in an interview with lester holt why he did it. it's over. and bob mueller is now circling, i think, his net. he's going around to everybody who may have had a hand in the effort to create a decision after the fact or to draft statements. sean spicer was interviewed. reince priebus was interviewed. he is going to get the entire paper trail of how they constructed this argument, but i suspect the end is only going to make it more obvious that what the president said the first time is what he really meant. >> brett stevens we've talked about three events, and we know that they are things bob mueller is asking questions about. one of them is this cover story. this ruse of the rosenstein memo that comey was fired because he was mean to hillary clinton. the other is this cover story, a set of lies told to explain don

junior's meet with russians. don junior said i love it when he was offered dirt on hillary clinton. i wonder if you can tie together or see any data points that suggest spaghetti being thrown on the wall this morning by the president on twitter because one of those two things came up in this morning's testimony or if that's giving the guy too much credit for strategery. >> i think you're giving him a little too much credit. >> doesn't happen often. >> this is a president who we know is governed by impulses. i've always found with comey the interesting story for me, an interesting detail in the question of the president's relationship with comey isn't why he fired him but why he kept him on. a lot of editorial voices when i was there had urged trump to fire president comey -- excuse

me, fbi director comey as a first order of business because he was detested by democrats, by republicans. he really sort of lost trust. and it was interesting to me, at least, that he had kept comey on board and seemed to want to have him as a loyal subordinate with the idea that comey, sensing that he had damaged himself with his positions on hillary clinton's e-mails, both in july and in october, would be a pliant fbi director. he fired him only when it became clear that comey wasn't going to play that game and there was going to be a russia investigation all the same. that's something that people have not understood about this relationship. that it was trump's sense that comey was not going to be loyal and dependent that led to the

firing. >> wasn't without effort. donald trump tried to woo comey big time. a lot of gripping and grinning. a lot of one on one candlelit dinners. not sure if there were candles, but there were dinners. it wasn't without a grand effort on his part. he had him over for dinner by itself within a week of the presidency. the awkward video. comey writes about wanting to disappear into the big drapes and pulls him in for an awkward man hug. he wanted to try to enlist him as a loyalist. he wanted him to let the flynn matter go. >> that's right. and i think -- so much so that comey said i don't want to be alone with him anymore. obviously it was getting to that point. two things here. one, i think in his -- >> such a layered statement in the climate of -- my brain is just -- sorry. >> women were saying that at the time. the way that he was putting pressure on him, it felt like

harassment. but i think there are two pieces here. one is that donald trump sees things in very tactical. comey torpedoed hillary's campaign. that's what he thinks. >> good guy. >> so he's a good guy. it's obviously like russia on my side, right? and so i need to keep him close. the fact that he just went completely off message and had that jarring moment with jeff sessions not knowing what he was saying is that he feels like impeachment, which is what this is all about, is a political case. if he can remake comey into someone who was too soft on the democrats, someone on the democrats' side, then i think he thinks he won't be able to get republicans to say the firing of comey was something that should

be an impeachable defense. >> we worked with jim comey. loved by some, loathed by others but respected by all. it's fascinating to watch this. he's not someone lacking a pretty finely tuned moral compass. >> some people didn't like what comey did, but there was never any talk about the man's character. it's funny. i get the sense with donald trump that he ran into something he's never encountered which is a person with integrity. >> who he couldn't turn. he assumed he had power over him and he's going to flip. comey said no and trump couldn't figure it out and then decided to fire him. so i think donald trump's world, he probably encountered people like that very much. at the end of the day what sessions said today is meaningless and irrelevant. what matters is what robert mueller is going to find and

what mueller thinks about what jim comey said and what the facts testified to. so all of this stuff is just, you know, the white house throwing sand up in the air. they are trying to distract and some dass it may work. but in the end, it won't because it matters what robert mueller produces, and they'll not stop him. >> ken dilanian, thank you. when we come back, sean spicer became famous for a whole lot of things. those who knew him best knew him as a realtime diary keeper filling volumes of notebooks with contemporaneous notes of his time in the trump white house. what could this mean for the mueller investigation now that sean spicer has reportedly spent time with the special counsel investigators? baa baa black sheep, have you any wool? no sir, no sir, some nincompoop stole all my wool sweaters, smart tv and gaming system. luckily, the geico insurance agency recently helped baa baa with renters insurance.

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politico is reporting that special counsel mueller's team met with sean spicer. during his sit-down, spicer was grilled about the firing of former fbi director james comey and his statements regarding the firing, as well as trump's meetings with russian officials, including one with foreign minister sergey lavrov in the oval office. this latest development in mueller the investigation coming just days after we learned that mueller interviewed another one-time trump insider, former chief of staff reince priebus. the panel is back. brett stevens, i always wonder when i read these stories about reince and spicer and i guess scaramucci wasn't there long enough to pick up much. he was busy swearing and yelling at people. but do you think any of it makes donald trump question the way they exited? >> reince priebus dumped aboard air force one. they called him an uber and tweeted out his replacement. sean spicer unceremoniously

rejected for the wild, flamboyant and very wealthy scaramucci. they've now spent hours and in spicer's case, shared volumes of notebooks about their time in the trump white house. >> you could expand that to what he said about mccain in 2015 and how that came back to haunt him later on. most people in management know that if you have to fire someone, fire them really nicely because -- >> because you never know where they're going to turn up and when they might be your boss. so it's a kind of management -- >> sort of a breakup maxim, too. >> his chief selling point to the american public here was a guy who knew how to manage a business, was itself the central fraud of the campaign because anyone who knew about trump's methods of running businesses knew that that contention was a grave mistake. it's kind of, from a shotten

freud perspective, it's coming back to haunt him from those who were incredible loyalists and would have walked on coils for the president if only he'd kept them ashd. it's almost like out of macbeth. your character ends up haunting you. >> i've heard from trump loyalists that what bret described was just that. it was a mirage. it was talent. he was on a tv show. >> he comes out of a business where he was in charge of everything. he was incredibly powerful in the four walls of his business and as former employees would be loaded down and everybody played nice. the white house does not work that way. you can't wave an nda at a former chief of staff, if congress wants to speak to them. and, two, reince priebus and sean spicer are not original trumpers. they are the guys who crafted

the alliance of convenience between the republican party establishment and the insurgent now president trump. he fired them both in a humiliating way, treated them badly, and now they're talking to the investigators. i would not be happy about that if i was president trump. and i might even ask a second thought about how i treated them on the way out. >> you have some insights into how this overlays the way they left, concerns about what they might be saying and donald trump's uptick in tweets and rage about the russia investigation. >> we should keep in mind that trump has no idea what they are telling mueller and his team. these are hour-long interviews. and he's got to be feeling the heat and feeling nervous about that. particularly with reince priebus because the way reince priebus managed in the white house was to constantly be in the president's presence, to be in the oval office, to lurk behind -- to always be lurking, watching, listening to what's going on to keep control of a really ka oict west wing but because thafts, he knows a lot. heard a lot. saw all the meetings. heard all the conversations.

trump doesn't know what he's telling mueller. >> what do you think about the fact there are all these people who would never have had any sympathy from any democrats other than sort of the theory that the enemy, my enemy, becomes my friend. >> i think that serious people right now aren't actually gleeful about what we're seeing. you know, this is all about obstruction of justice and pulling back from that. it's all about a hostile foreign power undermining very successfully our democracy in this country. we're learning more and more about how they did that every day. we're seeing more and more russian bots being exposed on twitter. and we're seeing how much the russians in some ways knew more about our political cleavages, along lines of race, along lines of the right to protest in all of that, than so many democrats did. and so, you know, sure. is it great that people who believe that donald trump obstructed justice are watching

mueller talk to people who have a lot of information? yes. but it's sad for democracy that we're in this place at all. >> just a quick thought. you've written a lot about that, about our divisions being better known by russians than americans. >> that's true. but one point. this is one of those moments where you feel like you wish more people spoke yiddish because there's a classic -- >> i'm up with learning new things. >> the -- if i'm a schlameel, i'll pour my soup on you. donald trump is the schlameel in chief. >> that's going to be the new open. still ahead, nfl owners met for two days and the verdict on those anthem protests is -- we'll tell you when we come back.

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desire for players to stand during the national anthem. but not going as far as instating a rule requiring them to. >> i think one of the things we need to keep a focus on is, we believe our players should stand for the national anthem. that's an important part of our game and our moment and we believe in that. i think we also have to keep focus is, we have about six or seven players that are involved with this protest at this point. and this is something that what we tried to do is deal with the underlying issue and understand what it is that they are protesting and try to address that matter. and so, let me finish, if you can. so the important thing for susto be able to do that and take that opportunity to make real differences in our community and that is really what's going to ultimately be the important aspea aspect for us long term. >> earlier today, the president made clear he was not happy that a policy hasn't been put in place. the nfl has decided it will not force players to stand for the

playing of our national anthem. total disrespect for our great country. goodell noted that he had not spoken with president trump and right on cue, as though he were watching our show and lured in by our tease, he tweeted at 4:42, nfl too much talk, not enough action. stand for the national anthem. with us now, is "sports illustrated's" peter king who has covered football for over 30 years. my own personal private 4:00 p.m. tutor. what happened today and why does it matter? >> i think what happened basically is the nfl didn't want to pick a fight with the players. the relationship between the nfl office and players is not good. >> why not? >> well, because of the players feel that they have been punished too severely by the nfl office for things that are not really that -- that are not severe offenses. and so for a long time, this has been years, this is not just a

few weeks, players and the nfl office really have not gotten along. the last thing the nfl wants to do is to pick a fight with players over this issue. i think that roger goodell understands, as do the owners, that we're better off basically telling our network partners and our advertising partners, we are just going to ignore the president of the united states. and if he wants to tweet, let him tweet. and we're not going to get involved in the back and forth with the president. we're simply going to play our game and we're going to try to form a partnership with the players that will show that we want to help the players with the causes that are important to them. >> that sounds reasonable. why did he let that sound of the president saying get those sons of bitches off the field stand for three weeks without taking the players' side. >> that weekend he did take the players' side and said they do a lot of great things in the

community. i think what's being ignored is the fact that we are responding to this bellicose guy when in reality, look at what our players are doing. so i think that the nfl has responded gently to this because, in essence, they don't want to pick a fight with the president. >> what do you think the president will do? when he picks a fight that he thinks he can win, he gloats about it. when he picks a fight and loses, as he did with john mccain, as he's done by threatening people who cover him honestly in the media by revoking their licenses, his rage builds and builds. is the nfl ready to go to war with donald trump? >> i asked two owners last night at the nfl meetings, arthur blank of the falcons and the 49ers, and they said the same thing. we're going to let thim blow himself out. i'm paraphrasing. and -- >> sounds pretty good. >> we're not going to respond to everything because the future of our country is more important.

these guys would know what trump is going to do, but in my opinion, just watching this guy over time, he is going to attack because it's read meat to the people who love him. >> all right. that's one heck of a tease. my panel is bursting. we'll have to sneak in one more break. we'll continue this conversation on the other side. more break a continue this conversation on the other side. what's the secret to turning a no into a yes? do you know how to network like a champ? and when is a good time to have some fun in the office? i'm j.j. ramberg and i have great answers to all of these questions which might help you run a better business. check out the "your business" page on nbcnews.com for an exclusive online video series to hope you work fast, grow fast and go further. >> announcer: sponsored by american express. ean for purchasing? purchase. let's do this. got it. book the flights! hai! si! si! ya! ya! ya! what does that mean for us? we can get stuff. what's it mean for shipping? ship the goods. you're a go! you got the green light.

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we're back talking about the nfl and donald trump's now failed effort to bully the owners into forcing their players to stand. is this a victory for the original spirit of the protest? that they were exercising their

first amendments rights to stand up for criminal justice reform, inequality, or too incremental to declare victory? >> it's a victory that the league didn't change the rule. right? it is a victory we are continuing to talk about what is not just the symbolism of the flag and of the anthem but rather what it actually stands for, which is equality, freedom, the rule of law. in black communities right now when you see time and time again a person who kills an unarmed black person and there's no accountability whatsoever, that faith in the rule of law is being undermined. that's what the protests have been about and will continue to be about. >> you said on the show on multiple occasions the flag wasn't a fragile piece of fabric. this idea, the whole idea that you were disrespecting our freedoms and the flag by protesting the -- >> i agree with every word heather just said but will make two points. one, is this is an occasion to

stop singing the national anthem at football games i wouldn't be against that. football is a sport and it's a big business. i don't sing the national anthem when i go to the movies or buy a coke or take my kids to mcdonald's. maybe i shouldn't have to sing it at these games either. to everyone saying these great players are taking a knee and going to stop watching football i say go to it. cricket is really interesting. and australian football, amazing stuff. and go to it. >> nick -- >> just saying as a reporter it's my job to ask questions. listen to people's answers. what i find unfortunate about this whole debate is that we're talking about the right of people to protest the anthem or the standards set during the anthem. which is not what it is about. if you talk to those players, hear their words, they are not protesting the anthem. they're not protesting the flag. the country has got to get back to a conversation about the point of this, which is -- the inhumane and wrong deaths of

african-american people at the hands of law enforcement. we're not talking about that. we're talking about whether it's okay to protest the anthem. >> some of the key players, doug baldwin, the seattle sea hax. malcolm jenkins, seahawks. their point is very simplily, dissent is pat tree ariotic. that's what the players are saying. listen to us. this is not a situation where we were going to throw molotov cocktails. we want to throw words. >> we'll be right back. sneak in a quick break and be back with final thoughts.

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we're back. a prediction and final thought. donald trump hates to lose and now there is so much losing with the nfl. what's he going to do on twitter? >> my prediction, this issue won't go away because president trump won't let it go way.

thinks it's a winning issue, his crowds love it and he'll keep talking about it forever. >> and ever and ever and ever, and phil and i will have to conquer it. thank you to you all. that does it for our hour. i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. hi, chuck! >> hi, nicolle. i think the nfl, trump's the least of their problems. >> maybe the nfl's the least of trump's problems! >> both -- both statements are very true. anyway -- thank you. if it's wednesday, obamacare is dead. long live obamacare! tonight -- the president's health care flip-flop. >> the president called me ten days ago and asked me to work with senator murray to do this. >> so president trump was the key negotiator for the bipartisan deal then why is he now tweeting opposition? >> i don't respond to the president's tweets. i respond to getting the job done, working with lamar to get this passed. >> this president certainly su