that's sunday 12:30 eastern. i'm sorry. it's saturday. saturday. i am taking over sunday at 12:30. saturday at 12:30. "deadline: white house" starts right now. >> hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. donald trump today re-upped a favorite front in his war with his own administration today. attacking the justice department and fbi both led by trump appointees for failing to look into crooked hillary and the democrats. one longtime justice department official who served several republican presidents told me the president's attacks are extremely unproductive and that they can do serious and irreparable harm to the presidency and the rule of law. here are some highlights from the president's morning tweet storm. everybody is asking why the justice department and fbi isn't looking into all of the dishonesty going on with crooked hillary and the dems. people are angry. at some point, the justice

department and the fbi must do what is right and proper. the american public deserves it. pocahontas, that's the president's nickname for senator elizabeth warren, just stated the democrats, led by the legendary hillary clinton rigged the primaries. let's go fbi and justice department. before departing for asia this morning, the president said this. >> would you pardon jeff sessions if the justice department doesn't -- >> i would like to let it run itself but honestly, they should be looking at the democrats. they should be looking at podesta and all of that dishonesty. they should be looking at a lot of things. and a lot of people are disappointed in the justice department, including me. >> here he is last night in a radio interview putting an even finer point on it. >> i'm not supposed to be involved with the fbi. i'm not supposed to be doing the kinds of things i would love to be doing, and i'm very

frustrated by it. i look at what's happening with justice department. why aren't they going after hillary clinton with her e-mails and with her -- the dossier and the kind of money? >> the public rebuke of the justice department and fbi at the end of a week that started with his campaign aides being indicted by the special counsel and a terror attack in new york city was described by a close trump ally as a sign that trump's capac peration with his attorney general has reached a new level of dysfunction. constant need to tweet about the doj and fbi issues now goes beyond the president's anger over sessions' recusal in the russia investigation. and at least in terms of the president's tweets about wanting the death penalty for the new york city terrorist, now also threatened, the first terror prosecution of trump's presidency. to break down all of the latest developments, let's bring in our reporters and guests. ken dilanian is here, "the washington post" white house bureau chief phil rucker. michael schmidt, washington

correspondent for "the new york times" and former chief spokesman for the justice department matt miller is also here. matt, i'm going to start with the tweet that you sent out this morning that gave me a jolt. trump's doj tweets are like wattergate, out in the open instead of hidden in secret. the fact we could get used to it makes it even more dangerous. i heard from a longtime former senior justice department official who had served in the reagan justice department, both bush justice departments that this was the thing that this president has done that most reminded him of the nixon era and the damage being done to the presidency is serious, he says. >> the difference is richard nixon did all this in secret. president trump is doing it kind of right out in the open. there are the two biggest abuses of power that any president can do is try to use the justice department to persecute his political adversaries or try to get it to back off investigations into his

political allies. he's already tried to get it to back off into an investigation into his allies, trying to get them to back off into firing flynn and now turning to the justice department wanting it to prosecute his political adversaries. wanting it to go after hillary clinton. this is a gross politization of the justice department and the troubling thing is you don't see any pushback at all from the leadership there. you don't see jeff sessions coming out and saying this is inappropriate. he seems to be trying to cling on to his job. and it really leads to a broad loss of faith among the american public that justice is apolitical. which is the most important thing that that department has always stood for. when they make law enforcement decisions, they are based on the facts, based on the law. never on politics. and trump has just been trampling all over that. >> and phil rucker, you wrote up the president's stunning comments this morning on departure for his trip. this isn't a slip of the tongue

or an inadvertent comment. he's driving a message of railing against the justice department and the fbi. both agencies led by men that he selected. jeff sessions and christopher ray. and i wonder if anyone at the white house has sort of nodded and celebrated or offered any sort of justification for the president's attacks on his own agencies run by his own appointees. >> you know, there's not much of an explanation for this beyond just the simple fact that we've known now for many months, which is that trump is really bothered by the performance and decisions and judgment of attorney general jeff sessions. he's been bothered by sessions over the russia matter. but this extends beyond the russia matter. he feels sessions is not tough enough getting out front, going after the democrats, applying the same scrutiny to hillary clinton and tony podesta and all of these democratic figures that

robert mueller is applying to the trump campaign. the difference is that robert mueller is investigating possible collusion with the foreign government with the trump campaign, not a joint fund-raising agreement between the trump campaign and the republican party. these are two very different issues and the president seems to be wanting to conflate them to sort of muddy the waters and make it seem like there's a scandal over here and a scandal over there. >> you're right. this idea, he's always pushing this false equivalence between, i may have done bad things but, look, they did, too. it's entirely different to have potentially coordinated with an american adversary than to have done what he's accusing the democrats of doing. we first learned in your paper under a headline, trump denies knowing about russian connections. your paper reported it at a

march 31st meeting, mr. papadopoulos introduced himself and says he had connections that could arrange a meeting between mr. trump and president putin. mr. sessions opposed the idea. mr. gordon has also confirmed directly with nbc news this account. can you speak to how much trouble jeff sessions is in up on capitol hill where he has always sort of had a backstop on capitol hill. his former senate colleagues were really the ones -- really in both parties that rushed to his defense when donald trump started cyberbullying him a couple months back. can you speak to the pressure now to get some sort of account that is truthful on the record from sessions? >> so this is now the second time that there's been questions about sessions' testimony. the earlier one was about his

own contacts. now it's about contacts that he knew about. we haven't really heard from republicans on the hill yet that democrats drummed hard on this yesterday. at some point it will be up to grassley whether to bring him up or whether sessions sends another letter up to the hill to try to clarify his testimony for a second time here. what's interesting about all of this is there's been a longstanding fear in the white house and at the justice department as the russia investigation heats up that the president would go after sessions, once again target him. three indictments this week and the tweets today and the comments as he was leaving the country. that has been a longstanding fear that sounds like it's coming true. what we'll see is if the president follows through and does something about it. >> what sort of backstops are in place? you is there anything sort of set up to protect them or to sort of insulate them from the

political firestorm that might ensue if he abruptly fires sessions or mueller for that matter? >> well, no. they are political appointees. that's why they are there. they are all -- >> they are all political appointees he's attacking. they're all people, other than mueller, that trump picked to run the justice department. there is sort of this fantasy land. steve schmidt described it that way yesterday. he's engaged in a twitter war against people he picked to run these agencies. >> it's interesting he's had this thing, obviously, with comey, he went directly to him and says please move past the flynn investigation. in this case, he puts the messages out on twitter. i'm not sure if he's trying to abide by leaving the justice department alone and not directing it, doing it from afar. it's not really clear. i'm not sure the founders contemplated anything along these lines. >> ken dilanian, let's listen to what we now know to be, at best, inoperative, at worst a lie. this is jeff sessions and donald

trump on trump campaign contacts with russians. >> you don't believe that surrogates from the trump campaign had communications with the russians. is that what you're saying? >> i did not and i'm not aware of anyone else that did. >> anyone who advised your campaign had contacts with russia during the course of the election? >> well, i told you general flynn obviously was dealing so that's one person. he was doing as he should have. >> during the election? >> nobody that i know of. i had nothing to do with yaush. to the best of my knowledge, no person that i deal with does. >> so den dilanian, where we are now? >> nicolle, that first clip where he was talking to al franken was clearly untrue. in later testimony before the congressional committees, jeff sessions was much more careful and more lawyerly and what he denied was any conversations with russians about collusion. and so for that reason, i still think he is somewhat in the

clear in terms of this papadopoulos meeting. obviously, he's in hot water on the hill. they want to talk to him and clear it up. we need to know more evidence. we need to know, what, if anything, did he know about what papadopoulos was doing with his russian handlers, essentially the russians offering him dirt on hillary clinton. and thousands of her e-mails. obviously, we know that he was in the room and he nixed an idea that papadopoulos was floating to have a meeting between vladimir putin and donald trump. what jeff sessions would probably say is that's not collusion. i think what he's saying is, i don't recall that specifically. so the question of how much hot water he's in, i think is an open one at this point. >> matt miller, he may not have thought it was collusion. but the two parts that, one, collusion isn't illegal, which is what they say to you privately, and that we didn't try to meet with any russians when we now have at least -- more than half a dozen former campaign officials who did, in fact, either meet with russians

or attempt to set up meetings with russians or attempt to set up a meeting between donald trump and russians. roger stone, paul manafort who has been indicted, rick gates who has been indicted, michael flynn, under investigation, jared kushner, under scrutiny, jeff sessions, carter page who has been before all the committees, george papadopoulos who plead guilty and donald trump jr. who is under investigation. how does this idea that because jeff sessions meant the conversations about and with russians aren't about collusion which they don't even think is illegal, how is that a defense in any sort of legal context? >> it's not. look, the one thing that all these people have in common is when they are asked about their contacts with russians, whether it be in interviews, under oath to congress, they all lie about it initially. and then sessions comes back several times and tries to clean up the record. each time it's clumsy. you have him saying, i don't were this conversation with

george papadopoulos but i know i shut down the suggestion that the president have a meeting. these two things don't square. one thing that's interesting about sessions we've learned, there have been a lot of people surprised when he told congress two weeks ago that bob mueller had not yet asked for an interview. mueller has interviewed rod rosen stein about the obstruction of justice question. everyone thought jeff sessions would be an early witness for that same issue. it's now looking more and more like jeff sessions probably knows a lot about what happened, not just about -- not just in the white house with relation to the firing of jim comey but also what happened in the campaign and any potential collusion with russia. jeff sessions looks more and more like a witness at the heart of this investigation, and i think that explains why he's not been interviewed early. you always get to the top people, the people high up. the people with most exposure late in the investigation. >> phil rucker, if jeff sessions is, indeed, a witness at the heart of the investigation into russian collusion, does that

complicate what we all have heard to be donald trump's desire to make a change at the highest levels of the justice department? >> yeah, it certainly would. it would complicate things for sessions legally in terms of that investigation. but certainly with his relationship with president trump and by all accounts, jeff sessions is trying to do his job as he knows to do it, which is to be the independent -- largely independent attorney general based on the kind of separation of powers that we have in this country and the system within our executive branch and trump seems to be pressuring him to do things he's not comfortable with and are not the norms of our democracy. >> michael schmidt you said something earlier in the hour about the sort of wheels of justice churning. it strikes me that donald trump doesn't know what that's supposed to look like so he may not have any idea how wholly

inappropriate his comments in that radio interview where he said there are all sorts of things i'd life to do with the fbi and justice department. i guess like investigate my former political opponent and other democrats but people won't let me. this idea of the id, of what he wishes to do out in public, in some ways is really stunning to see. you wonder what nixon would have sounded like. and i heard from some former justice department officials that some of hearing that out loud is double-edged. you know his intent but it also speaks to state of mind when they go digging around in the obstruction of justice investigation. >> what we've heard time and again about the president is that he doesn't necessarily listen to the legal advice of the attorneys that work for him either in the white house or outside the white house. and he sort of charts his own course. he's a 71-year-old man. i'm not sure he's going to change much at this point. he ran for president sort of doing what he thought was right. and not really listening to other people. and for him, it worked out with

him getting elected president. i can't imagine he's going to change his behavior at this point, and it just seems like no lawyer would tell him that it's okay to really say the things that he's saying. >> but everyone on his team on his cabinet is now on twitter. my thanks to michael schmidt and phil rucker. behind the president's bizarre and erratic attacks on his own justice department. a former official tells me mueller could have flipped a half a dozen people just like george papadopoulos. what would that mean for the trump campaign's now-debunkt theory that the campaign had no contact with russians. a mystery is solved. donald trump reveals why so many state department jobs are still unfilled. the answer might keep you up at night. plus, donna brazile's bombshell and how it landed her in a twitter war with donald trump. it's what this country is made of. but right now, our bond is fraying.

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mr. president, do you remember george papadopoulos during that march meeting? >> i don't remember much about that meeting. it was a very unimportant meeting. don't remember much about it. >> for someone who has boasted about how great his memory is, there's a whole lot of amnesia going on when it comes to the trump campaign and their meetings with russians. new court documents show the first concrete evidence that mr. trump was personally told about ties between the campaign adviser and russian officials. let's bring in our panel. with me, msnbc national affairs analyst john heilemann, "new york times" political reporter nick pomposori and national

political reporter vivian salama. matt and ken are still with us as well. just on the news today, donald trump on a two-day bender raging against his own appointee-led justice department and his own, i guess, now it's run by his own director of the fbi. >> i almost feel like i can't add very much to what your excellent panel in the top of the show said about this. >> they're all excellent. we had to space them out. >> trump loves to change the subject always. he's under scrutiny or when he has bad news. he's now had a lot of material to work with. things that his base likes to hear. crooked hillary was an effective nickname for getting him to be president of the united states. with his base it works. he goes back to his base and these accusations from the donna brazile book. he's trying to muddy the water.

there's that and the fact that he does not have any fundamental understanding of the fact that the presidency, should not be influencing, trying to influence from a distance or up close the behavior of the justice department and the fbi. he cannot stand that and it comes out every time that he tries to talk about it, issues that touch on those areas. >> he clearly can't stand jeff sessions anymore either. >> it's been a problem relationship for a long time now. >> jeff sessions' sin in his mind was recusing himself from the russia investigation because he would have expected his appointee jeff sessions to insulate and protect him from the russia investigation. >> on top of that, sessions is a guy who may implicate him in a very dire way in the actual russia investigation because the question is what did sessions know about outreach from the russians? there was a meeting where he said don't talk about this with anyone. it will leak. not only is the person who would insulate him from the investigation. he's now a target of the investigation in a serious way.

>> i understand that when miller turns to the obstruction of justice part of what jeremy bash describes as sort of two tracks in the mueller investigation that a lot of that will include state of mind. if jeff sessions had a meeting he thought was unseemly enough to not want it to leak, then jeff sessions in his mind knew something happened in that meeting that he didn't want anyone to find out about. >> that's right. there are a lot of questions right now surrounding jeff sessions in a way that is probably making him very nervous but also making the president very nervous as well given tensions in that relationship. whether or not as ken dilanian said in the previous segment, whether or not sessions actually says something erroneous under oath in terms of what he did or didn't know isn't really the question. it's more about this bigger picture of, you know, where -- what are the layers behind this whole entire investigation in terms of where sessions, you know, what sessions did know in terms of different people, different associates.

the meetings they had. it's starting to complicate matters a lot, and it's definitely making for a very tense environment at the white house. president trump at this point not really knowing who to just anymore. the people he brought on to be part of his administration. he's now questioning. and that really is starting to make the wheels get a little loose, frankly. >> matt miller, let me ask you about something cnn is reporting. they're reporting bob mueller is looking into kushner connection to comey firing. they've began asking about kushner's role in the firing of fbi director james comey. so as though we needed more evidence that this was one of the acts that was going to be thrust under the microscope by bob mueller, we now know that bob mueller wants to get to the bottom of why comey was fired and whether as the president sort of came out and said in an interview with lester holt, i fired him because i didn't like the way he was handling the russia investigation. is this going to be another piece of evidence or piece of

proof that's hiding in plain sight? >> absolutely. there are a number of pieces that relate to the obstruction of justice part of this investigation, but the core act by the president was the firing of jim comey. we know that his son-in-law, jared kushner, was one of the people that encouraged him to do it. thought it would go down with no controversy, which is, obviously, a monumental misjudgment on his part. and i think one of the things a lot of people have missed, there's always been this question of whether the president could be criminally charged with respect to obstruction of justice or any other charge or whether that's just a question that would be left to impeachment. we don't know the answer to that, but without a doubt, jared kushner and others could be charged with conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice, if the special counsel finds they were trying to obstruct the investigation by help -- by urging donald trump to fire jim comey. that's a very real possibility for all of them that they have to be very much worried about. and i think we've been talking a lot about the kind of bad wind that's blowing from the white

house. with the president being increasingly angry about this investigation. we know that he's -- that there is -- at least i think there is going to be a reckoning at some point where his anger boils over to such an extent that he tries to shut this down by firing mueller, firing sessions. getting close to kushner is one of the ways that -- one of the things that can trigger that. >> and to tie this whole thing up in a bow. if you are keeping your eye on that ball, is donald trump going to try to fire bob mueller? a lot of people who are learned over time to expect that trump does not have any respect for norms. he wants to do this. in his heart, he wants to fire bob mueller. one of the ways you do that, it makes it easier to do that is get rid of jeff sessions. you can look at all of this stuff, the railing, the fantasy land stuff that steve schmidt talked about yesterday. he's attacking his own justice department, his own fbi trying to make session' position untenable. hang that man out to dry. create the context in which you can fire the attorney general who has recused himself and try

to, at least in trump's mind, get a more friendly attorney general in that job who would make it -- who would pave the way toward mueller's firing. i think that somewhere in the trump mind, complicated haunted house that it is, that there's some part of that, what he is thinking about, this is not just indiscriminate flailing. he's tried to pick the lock on how to get sessions out and how to get mueller out. >> let me get you quickly in on this jared kushner question. there's -- i don't even know, open secret is probably a bad way to describe it. but an aggressive effort to malign kushner and throw him under the bus, his role in the firing of jim comey. other sort of criticisms now, very much in the water for any reporters that are biting at that story about how he's got terrible political instincts. i wonder if you can speak to his legal liabilities at this hour. >> i still think the biggest areas of interest around jared

kushner have to do with the meeting he conducted with the sanction bank and the questions about whether he was conducting that meeting in his capacity as a trump campaign official or whether it had anything to do with his private business woes. a lot of reporting about the building that his family owns on fifth avenue that's in some financial trouble. from what i can pick up, i think that is a big area of interest. i also want to go back to president trump's rhetoric about, you know, criticizing the fbi and justice department and over one hopeful note. president trump on his own cannot start an investigation or stop an investigation. he needs u.s. attorneys and fbi agents to cooperate with him. there are a lot of patriotic, valiant, career prosecutors and fbi agents working in this government who are not going to stand for that. and that, i think, is -- so far what we're seeing is rhetoric. we don't see any evidence that trump is reaching in and trying to interfere with investigations. if he did that, that would obviously be a huge problem and hopefully we'll hear about it. but it's important to remember that career people running this

government are not going to stand for that. >> it's a good point but certainly when you have the person that sits atop the sort of chain of command undercutting you on talk radio, on television, on twitter, it does send sort of a chilling signal to the agencies. >> absolutely awful. i agree. >> he's been blasting the fbi lately. he's been blasting the entire justice system of this country. he is clearly like in a state. and it is the bergdahl stuff, the russia probe. and he's flailing about it. i think john is right that he's trying to figure out, is it the right time, and will he benefit and win the fight if he tried to set in motion getting rid of mueller? but i think right now the odds are against him. i'm not sure it will play out the way he might think it will if he tries to go in that direction. >> trump misjudges a lot of things a lot of times. again, i think there are not that many, right now, we've seen senate republicans and house republicans give trump a wide latitude to do all kinds of

crazy stuff. one of the few clear trip wires where you would go very quickly into the realm of discussions about impeachment would be if he were to remove mueller. i think senate republicans, that's a place he cannot go. i think today or any day. >> all right. we're going to have to sneak in a break. everyone is staying put. ken dilanian leaves us. thank you for starting us off. still ahead -- was justice served. president trump calling the sentencing of bowe bergdahl a disgrace, but is the president the reason he's not facing prison time? casual fridays at buckingham palace? surprising. what's not surprising? how much money nathan saved by switching to geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more.

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president trump today slamming a military judge's decision to spare sergeant bowe bergdahl from prison. trump tweeting, the decision on sergeant bergdahl is a complete and total disgrace to our country and our military. this just a week after trump referred to the whole u.s. justice system as a joke and a

laughing stock. our panel still here. we also this week had a terrorist attack in our own city. tragically took the lives of eight people. >> two blocks from my house. >> two blocks from your house? i'm glad you don't jog or bike. >> you can assume that's true. >> pretty sure it's true. >> i was doing some trick-or-treating that evening. >> an unspeakable tragedy. the president floats the idea of sending him to guantanamo. >> and then the death penalty. >> and tweets twice about the death penalty which even the most conservative judges have said could impair the prosecution's ability to actually have him receive the death penalty. >> another iteration of the same conversation we were just having. goes not to just institutional norms and how the separation of powers works and the independence of the judiciary and so on we were talking about

before. it's just the rule of law. it's that the president does not get that how the rule of law works. and doesn't even really understand that by doing some of the things he's doing, he's not even helping himself. if he wants to see the guy get the death penalty, the worst thing to do is for the president of the united states to stand up and say this guy should get the death penalty because it's going to absolute plooollute the proc. the president has been in a lot of civil litigations. i don't think he understands the nature of the criminal process or anything of the history of richard nixon, the manson family, reasons presidents steer clear of these things because they do harm by shooting their mouths off in terms of what their own preferences are. they just get in their own way. he's done that to himself here. >> matt miller, this is central to the trump brand. the president ran as someone who will be tougher on isis. he was the first person to get his thumbs on that twitter account after a terrorist attack. the two attacks that occurred while he was running for president and now this is the

first tragedy, the first terror attack on his watch as president and he may have botched the prosecution. >> yeah, it's absolutely right. and, look, there's a very real chance that his comments about the bowe bergdahl case, for example, led to bergdahl getting the very light sentence he got today. he violated -- >> explain that. we know that to be true because the judge, right? >> yeah, because the judge talked about the defense made a big part of their tragedy. a thing called command influence. everyone in that chain of command from the prosecutor to the defense lawyers to the judge are all members of the military. all of -- eventually report to the commander in chief, donald trump. so through his comments, he has polluted the process and, you know, figured very heavily into defense motions that, because of that, bergdahl deserved a light sentence. the judge didn't explain why he did -- why he gave that sentence today but in the past few days talking about it he said he was going to take the president's comments into consideration. so they very much played a factor in that case and could

play a factor in the new york terrorist case as well. it would not surprise me. we have seen u.s. attorneys, attorneys general, others from the justice department sanctioned by federal judges for making comments similar to the ones the president made. it wouldn't surprise me if we see the judge in the case actually sanction the president for his comments which would be very harmful to the department's efforts to get a decent sentence. >> i feel like the conversation about all the forms that he obliterates is one that you could -- trump allies and aides could suggest is just elites wringing their hands about people they elected to be a disruptor in chief. however, if he is now a weak -- if he is weakened in his ability to prosecute a terrorist who carried out the deadliest terror attack in this city since 9/11, that seems to strike at the heart of his presidency and his purpose for running. >> i agree. it's amazing we're seeing a pretzel. like his own flouting of the

guardrails is going to compromise his ability to do something he wanted to do. >> it's going to be his own guardrail on -- >> exactly. this president often seems to think of governing as basically a television show and he is the producer and the host. everyone else is supporting cast. that's his basic sense of like how politics works. he has no experience in government and it shows. and he doesn't have a lot of respect for these things that we think are important, that a lot of people think are property. they have a purpose. and we see right here with both the bergdahl case and this attack in new york city, my hometown, that they are really actually very important. >> they are important so terrorists actually do get the death penalty. matt mill ethank you. the president's mad obsession with hillary clinton and the democrats. he's seizing on new revelations about the dnc. will his latest attempt to distract from russia work?

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i'm tom steyer, and like you, i'm a citizen who knows it's up to us to do something. it's why i'm funding this effort to raise our voices together and demand that elected officials take a stand on impeachment. a republican congress once impeached a president for far less. yet today people in congress and his own administration know that this president is a clear and present danger who's mentally unstable and armed with nuclear weapons. and they do nothing. join us and tell your member of congress that they have a moral responsibility to stop doing what's political and start doing what's right. our country depends on it.

all i can tell you is this. there was no collusion. there was no nothing. it's a disgrace, frankly, that they continue. you ought to look at hillary clinton and the new book that was just put out by donna brazile where she basically fought the dnc and stole the election from bernie. >> he's officially obsessed. president trump has already tweeted about the donna brazile story eight times today. if you've seen one, you've basically seen them all. here's one. the real story on collusion is in donna b's new book. crooked hillary bought the dnc and then stole the democratic primary from crazy bernie.

never mind the fact that it appears he's misinterpreted the actual story. here's how donna brazile responded on twitter. quote, today's lesson being quoted by donald trump means being misquoted by donald trump. stop trolling me. #never said hillary rigged election. mr. president, please go back to attacking me. it's better than having my own words scrambled and spewed out by you. thank you, mr. president and a few other trollers for translating my book into trump speak, #not what i said. watch this week abc for my views. vivian, can you sift through what donna brazile wisely described as the trump translation of the actual story. >> so donna brazile came out with this astonishing preview to her book about what took place, essentially her promises to bernie sanders to investigate when she took over as head of the dnc after the convention last year what took place with these hacked e-mails and whether

or not hillary clinton played a role and sort of swaying the party to nominate her. and what she basically found in sort is, yes, she had evidence -- she found evidence that that took place. in her political report she said the heart-wrenching conversation she had with bernie sanders when she had to call him up and tell him this was swayed in hillary clinton's favor due to funding campaign funding that was siphoned off to the campaign versus to the dnc itself. and so those revelations, obviously, not so shocking because a lot of people already started to suspect that when the hacked e-mails came out last year. however, obviously, further devastation to a party that's really struggling to get back on its feet ahead of the 2018 elections and 2020. you have ripe battleground situation where you have a president that's leveled at fairly unpopular levels since the beginning and the gop on the hill that really can't pass

legislation and has struggled since day one since the election last year. really it could be a ripe battleground for them but these revelations are going to hurt in the long run. >> it strikes me the dysfunction in the democratic party doesn't get all the attention it probably deserves because you have folks like bob corker and george w. bush and jeff flake calling donald trump essentially unfit for the office of the presidency and suggesting he's debasing the office. but there is a difference. there's a distinction between what happened at the dnc and an investigation into russian meddling. >> the collusion thing. collusion is now a polluted word. i earlier on said this thing about how there was some collusion between the dnc and hillary clinton's campaign. there was. collusion with the russians is way worse. it's of global consequence and violates all historic precedence. way worse thing. but there was in fact, the dnc was trying to help hillary

clinton and was not playing -- deal with a low level deck. that's what we've learned from donna brazile. there are factual disputes about the fund-raising agreements, whether she may be confusing two different agreements. there's a lot of fighting going on between the partisans here and by partisans the clinton partisans and sanders partisans. but donna brazile's biggest problem is not that donald trump is saying that hillary clinton and dnc rigged the election. it's that elizabeth warren came out and said it multiple times yesterday. that's what's fuelling it on the democratic side. donald trump, everyone ignores among democrats. on this issue, he has no standing to talk about the democratic nomination process. elizabeth warren has a lot of standing. she's fighting a little bit of a paper tiger there in trump. her bigger problem is a lot of people like elizabeth warren who also has political -- trying to get right with the sanders base.

this is a genuine story here. whether hillary clinton -- whether this mattered, like is this why hillary clinton won the democratic nomination? i don't think so. i think hillary clinton even with the dnc leaning in her favor, she won this outright. but that doesn't make what the dnc did right. >> and this just to be really clear, you follow the money. this was about how they structured party fund-raising dollars, isn't that? >> two questions here. the first is, how the party and the hillary clinton campaign shared money that she raised for the party. she and bernie sanders both had joint fund-raising graeme ining with the party. she raised a ton of money for the party. he did not. her campaign imposed certain rules about how the money would be spent and shared. the second issue is whether they also had some veto authority or power over staff appointments, other issues. i'm investigating that myself. i may get some answers in a couple of hours. but the most important issue here, hillary clinton is never

going to run for president ever again. and if the dnc colluded with hillary clinton for the nomination, well, she lost the general election. she's out of here. and all there is now is who runs next against donald trump. i'm not sure many democrats are going to be spend a lot of time in 2020 talking about this. >> and a justice department -- former justice department official said investigators who would look for any crimes. i pose there could be a campaign finance violation if you look at whether or not there were any crimes committed. they aren't motivated or inspired by a book deal or excerpt being published. >> i would look closely at the structures when they were first put in place which were known to us and written about during the campaign. they were not a great deal for the dnc but they were not illegal. they took advantage of well-known ways of moving money around from state parties to federal parties to candidates. not against the law. >> let me give you one example, though, that goes outside nick's frame where you looked at what happened and really illuminating

example. there's no question that debbie wasserman schultz was trying to throw the election to hillary clinton in the way they set up the debate schedule. i wanted on this. it was a total pipe job for her. a limited number of debates. on sunday nights. it was set up to try to help her. >> football games. >> and protect him against major nfl games. set up to protect her in competition from sanders. we had a competitive democratic nomination fight and way more debates. they weren't the four or five they originally set out. nine or ten. and there were plenty of debates in the end. that's where the dnc tried to tip the scales for her but it didn't matter because sanders raised a ton of money. it was super competitive and she was a better debater than him and beat him in almost every debate in the democratic nominating process. you can imagine a situation where the dnc was trying to help her but in the end, she didn't really need the dnc's help in order to win because of the basic demographic structures and why she was able to pull it off. >> when we come back, the

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welcome back. a statement from bob corker's office, released on the independent justice system after reports president donald j. trump refused to rule out fir s

fires -- senator corker, like me most hope free of interference. president trump's pressuring of the fbi to pursue cases against his adversary and calling for punishment before trials take place are totally inappropriate and undermine our justice system and erode the american people's confidence in our institution. is bob corker going to save the democratic institution we hold dear single-handedly. >> bob corker is living his best live, totally unchained, having a great time and obviously very concerned. he can speak freerly and becoming like a one-man accountability machine within the gop. >> like a one-man guardrail against the obliteration of all democratic norths most have taken for granted before trump. >> it's fascinating. jeff sessions got nailed again

for lying again to colleagues in the senate. in annie normal universe you would see senators, democratic senators in particular calling for his head. instead they're saying you must come back to the hill and explain yourself, sir. why are they not calling for his head or want his resignation? because they understand the long game trump is playing we've been talking about. corker is adding his voice to this. senators lying to senators is bad. they're all offended by what session has done to them, but see now that sessions represents something more than sessions, and that they're all willing to put that aside, say, we're headed down a bad path to leads to mueller. what it's all about. corker is trying to lay down a marker basically saying, no, no, no, no, no. this guy, even though he's lied to us three times i'm still sanding with sessions, because something wicked comes this way if don't. >> and corker sort of cease

these things add connected. the attacks on the free press, attacks on diplomacy, averting war with north contrary. attacks on the judiciary. people are truly afraid what donald trump is doing to undermine the state of law and rule of law in these institutions. corker's one of them. abo abo >> absolutely. no one person can have unending power. you've seen from sessions a critique and attack on the president whenever he threatens to undermine those checks and balances, the way government is supposed to actually work. >> thank you, bob corker. sneak in one more break and be right back. looking for balance in your digestive system?

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because when it comes to it, that's what the policy is going to be. >> donald trump, his reason for not filling vacancies. >> the most memorable, i alone can fix it. now we have, i am the only one who matters. the bookends of trump's political life and we have the me generation, the me decade, this is the me, me, me, me, me presidency. >> is it ever. i'm exhausted. my thank you to you all. that does it for our hour. nime nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts now. hi, chuck. >> hi nicolle. >> happy anniversary. >> yeah. i don't look a day over 70. do i? >> like benjamin button. going the other way. >> thank you for that. 70 years coming this sunday. but if it's friday, mueller's russia investigation leads president trump to say, look over there. tonight -- with the russia probe heating up, president trump says the justice department ought to be investigating democrats. >> they should be