rucker. good to see you. brazil describes this d dysfunctional mismanaged campaign. what was it about september 11th and that anniversary day that made her consider replacing hillary clinton? >> that was the memorial event in lower manhattan where hillary clinton had a bit of a fainting spell that was caught on camera. we later learned that she had a butte with pneumonia over that period of time. but donna brazil who at the time was the interim chairwoman of the democratic national committee writes in her memoir that she spent two days whether to initiate the process at the dnc of trying to replace the nominee. she would not have been able to do that unilaterally, but she explains she could have initiated that process. and she considered about a dozen different candidates or combinations of candidates, rather, and settled in her mind, according to her memoir on vice president biden as the

presidential nominee and senator cory booker of new jersey as the vice presidential nominee. this never got off the ground. she writes in her book it was something she had considered confidentially, secretly, and decided on monday, i believe it was monday september 12th, that she felt she couldn't do this to clinton, to the millions of women who were supporting clinton and decided from that point forward that she would not make any attempt to change the ticket. >> i guess the bottom line, though, phil, she was thinking about it, even though she couldn't, as you point out and folks have pointed out to me this afternoon on social media, she couldn't do this unilaterally. but let's talk about the dynamic. she also complained you report about the clinton campaign not giving her money to do her job. he said, i'm not patsy the slave, brazil recalls telling them, the reference to the character played by lupita nyong'o. y'all keep whipping me and whipping me and never give me any money to do my damn job.

i'm not going to be your whipping girl. does brazile blame the campaign for democrats' poor showing last year? >> she does. and that quote is reflective of the tone in this book. brazile is putting a lot of blame at the leadership of the clinton campaign, in some places at the candidate herself. she paints a picture of a dysfunctional campaign that was mismanaged with a weak message and described sort of going around the country in the fall, during the general election battle and detecting an alarming lack of enthusiam for clinton as a candidate. now she claims in her book that she tried to, you know, register some urgency at the brooklyn headquarters and was dismissed, in large part because the clinton operation was so focused on data analytics and sort of what the analytics were showing them about the voters. and donna brazile felt like there wasn't enough attention paid to the passion of politics,

the emotion of it. >> because the dnc can't replace the candidate on her own unless the candidate has died, is injured or resigns, because she couldn't do it, is that the only reason that you found out, phil, that she didn't act? >> no. she says in the book, she doesn't say that she could have acted unilaterally. she said she was contemplating this process. she said whenever she would get into disagreements with the clinton campaign, she would sort of remind them that she had the power to try to initiate this process at the dnc as the interim chair. but she says she thought about it herself. i don't think that this ever got serious beyond sort of what she was contemplating in her mind over those couple days. but she felt like the campaign was being poorly run at that point and was fearful of a loss. >> i think it says a lot about what donna brazil thinks or thought about hillary clinton that she considered replacing them, with joe biden and cory

booker. why them? and why ultimately did she settle on joe biden and cory booker? >> she felt like that was a combination that could win over the working class voters that donald trump at the time seemed to be appealing to. you know, she doesn't get into a lot of detail in her book about what other combinations she considered, or how much she really analyzed the politics of this, but she just describes that she felt a hundred percent certainty that biden leading the ticket and booker as the running mate, could defeat trump. >> what's in it for donna brazil other than selling books and speaking out about this now? >> you'd have to ask her that question. it's a pretty remarkable book. we say in our story at "the washington post," i don't think there's been a political tell-all from a campaign strategist quite this savage since george stephanopoulos in the late '90s wrote "all too

human" about his experience working for bill clinton. this is a remarkable book in terms of her taking everybody to task. she's blowing up the democratic party here and airing a lot of dirty laundry. and i know there's a lot of hurt feelings all over the party right now because of what she's doing. >> if you could stay with us, i want to bring in our panel, former bush-cheney senior adviser, president of washington strategy group and visiting fellow at carnegie melon university. robert, what's your take on this bombshell? >> i'm not surprised. donna is an old friend of mine, and two things, she does not like to be disrespected in any way, shape, or form. donna brazil has been a long-time democrat party activist for many years, starting off on capitol hill as chief of staff to eleanor holmes norton and being a super de delegate and interim chair a couple years ago. throughout this process, donna was told on more than one

occasion, everything is fine. the dnc is in the black. we're not in the red. the status quo. and then when she walks in, literally on day one, and she has to clean up this mess, these are her words, not mine, clean of the mess with the staffing issue, with debbie wasserman schultz making decisions from a political standpoint and a vendor standpoint and unearthing this memorandum of understanding that was unprecedented between the clinton campaign and the dnc. donna brazil felt very disrespected. so i think this is book is about clearing the air and from her perspective, telling the truth. >> joel, from the perspective of the democratic party, how badly does this hurt the democratic party? is this the right time to have this conversation? >> well, jacob, i ran for congress the last year and a half to say, this is not helpful for the democratic party right now, and frankly, it only seems to serve donna brazil. democratic party has been trying to mend its fences and advance itself in the year-term

elections, including one next tuesday. now, who's been aggrieved in this debate? bernie sanders has a credible argument. but even senator sanders, when he found out from donna brazil that there was an agreement with the dnc that disadvantaged him, he didn't go public, he didn't complain. he buckled down, advocated for hillary clinton in the general election and frankly that's the kind of approach that we need to win elections. this is just barn-burning and it's unfortunate that it's coming out in this way at this moment. it's only going to feed fuel to the fire to, as you said, to president trump and really doesn't help democrats. the party that she says she cares about, on healing our wounds and moving forward. >> phil, let me play a clip -- >> can i interrupt for a second? >> please. >> what we just heard a few moments ago is what's wrong with politics, it's all about bei democrats winning. what about a fair process

between, in this case, in the democratic primary between three people running for office, o'malley, clinton and sanders? it's nothing to do with party politics and everything to do with every vote counting and making sure the scale is not being tipped in one way or the other. >> joel, let me get you to respond there to robert. because you were with martin o'malley in the campaign. did say in the previous hour, the party did, and i believe the quote was, put the finger on the scale of the democratic primary. >> there's no doubt that there were serious problems there, but what i'm getting at is that senator sanders recognized that he would not have won the primaries, but what he wanted to do, ensure that donald trump stayed out of the white house. if donna brazil was worried about the democratic process, why is she contemplating taking hillary clinton off the ticket? that doesn't make any sense. i think we have serious issues at the dnc and clearly those have been identified, but they need to be resolved. this dnc is working to resolve them.

what is being described right now is in a sense a lot of smoke, and it's a problem, but these are problems that are not ones that aren't being dealt with. and it's troubling to me as a democrat and former candidate, because we need a strong democratic party. and i will say as well, that it's unfortunate that the dnc was left alone during president obama's eight years to have these kinds of debts. a lot of dysfunction there. it's not all at the hands of one single individual. >> elizabeth warren also has chimed in on this before, phil, your article came out. she said that she believed the dnc rigged the democratic party. let's listen to that. >> what we have to focus on now as democrats is, we recognize the process was rigged. and now it is up to democrats to build a new process, a process that really works, and works for everyone. >> so, phil, jeff weaver was here on msnbc on friday.

bernie sanders' former campaign manager. he said the democratic party should apologize after brazile claims. you have elizabeth warren talking about the dnc being rigged. what's the sense of the fall-out that you're getting? i know it's been a short amount of time since the latest revelations came out. >> the fall-out is not good for the democratic party. there's a lot of frustration and lingering anger from what was a really bruising primary battle and i think the bernie sanders campaign and his supporters felt throughout that process like they were the underdog, trying to compete against an establishment that was sort of in lock step to try to coronate hillary clinton as the nominee. so this donna brazil book is just fanning a lot of that emotion. look, we're a year now after the election. it's been one year since the election and we're still talking about the campaign which for the democrats is a real problem because they have potentially an

opportunity here in the mid terms, next november 20 anticipa18 to try to win back the house and the senate, but they're not going to be able to do it if they're relitigating this whole clintons versus sanders thing. >> a sore subject, i believe they call it. philip, robert and joel, thank you very much. good to see you guys. as the president embarks on his international journey, the baggage of the russia investigation will follow him very closely. what will this controversy here at home mean for diplomacy overseas? stay with us. tier with companies that are developing powerful batteries that make everything from cell phones to rail cars more efficient. which helps improve every aspect of advanced rail technology. all with support from a highly-educated workforce and vocational job training. across new york state, we're building the new new york. to grow your business with us in new york state, visit esd.ny.gov.

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welcome back. right now, president trump is heading to japan. the president departing from hawaii earlier today. ahead of him, a very gruelling trip that will take him to five countries in nearly two weeks. but the focus this weekend is on a country he's not going to visit on this trip -- russia. with the trump foreign policy adviser carter paige confirming he met with a russian official during a trip to moscow last

year, nbc's mike vaccera is live at the white house for us. put this latest revelation in context. >> reporter: this is another episode in the curious case of carter paige, now revealing before the house intelligence committee on thursday, on cable news on friday, and to nbc news this very day, that he did, in fact, make a trip to moscow in july of last year, at the height of the controversy, the height of the campaign, over president trump's and his campaign's relations with certain operatives within russia and the russian campaign to allegedly meddle in the u.s. election. not allegedly. according to the u.s. intelligence services. paige saying he was at a conference in july of 2016. he spoke with no less than the deputy prime minister of russia. he later reported those contacts in an e-mail to an individual or individuals within the trump campaign. and he mentioned it, according to carter paige, to no less than

then senator sessions, whose memory has been spotty at best on any contacts the campaign had with russia. a failure of memory that has indirectly caused the appointment of the special counsel robert mueller who hand the out his first indictments just a few days ago on monday. carter paige, again, was on cnn yesterday and here's how he responded and revealed those contacts with high ranking russian officials. >> i mentioned that i'm heading over there and totally unrelated to the campaign. it's totally in passing. >> is he is the only one on the campaign that knew about the trip? >> i mentioned it to a few people. >> who else? >> it will come out. things keep leaking. >> reporter: so quite an enigma, quite a mystery, the questions still coming and the more he appears before the media, the greater those questions become. jacob? >> no doubt about that. thanks, mike.

for more, i'm joined by alexander nazarian, senior writer for "newsweek," john poddores, editor of commentary magazine and contributing editor of the weekly standard and betsy woodrow from "the daily beast." >> totally in passing, he said, he got together with a deputy prime minister while in russia. how significant is carter paige going to be to the bob mueller investigation? >> everybody keeps having casual meeting with ambassador kislyak, with deputy prime minister -- >> you might see one on the way out of here for all you know. >> i may have even met kislyak myself. you know, they box themselves in when they say we had no contact with russians during the campaign. >> and sessions, you're speaking of, i would imagine? >> sessions, right. and trump had a press conference in february where he doubled down, he had that long press conference, he said, we just had

no -- all this collusion is fake news. well, so is bob mueller peddling fake news? >> i have a feeling bob mueller would say, absolutely not. betsy, this comes after another foreign policy adviser, george papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi about his contacts with russia. who should the white house be more concerned about, carter paige, or papadopoulos? >> that's a good question. i think both of them potentially have information that could be of great interest to mueller's team. what we do know for sure is that papadopoulos likely provides a much bigger source of stress for the white house, because he's been working with mueller. he's been cooperating. and it's likely that he gave the white house a significant -- or mueller, a significant amount of information that could make folks in the white house look pretty terrible. an important piece of con taxten all this, particularly given the media interviews that carter paige is doing. one of the biggest and most

immediate legal risks for people in the white house isn't just potential allegations of collusion with russia, but rather the possibility that they could say something in interviews with mueller's investigators and fbi agents that could cause huge trouble for them. the reason papadopoulos was indicted, as your viewers know was not because of anything that happened during the campaign, it was because he lied to the fbi. we know that mueller has been interviewing numerous senior white house officials, methodically going through the folks at the highest level of the trump campaign and are now in the white house. those people seem to have mostly lawyered up, but if any of them lied in any of those interviews, they could end up with the same fate that papadopoulos is now facing or potentially worse. >> yeah, it's a really good point. and to paraphrase my colleague, chris hayes, who had carter paige on the show, he said, i hope you're innocent, because you're sure doing a lot of talking. john, let's get you in here, because paige's comments, papadopoulos's claims are

directly, as alexander was saying, contradictory to the attorney general in his sworn testimony that he did not know of anybody in the trump campaign communicating with russia at all. this is not the first time that his testimony has been called into question either. where does jeff sessions stand at this moment? >> i honestly don't know. what i do know is what you could have here is a series of second-level people who are picked off as betsy intimated for perjury or making false statements or something like that. none of that adds up to a conspiracy to have russia help trump win the election. those are people trying to cover themselves in some fashion and making mistakes when they sit before the fbi or mueller's prosecutors. so the real issue here is, these dots have to connect for this story to get worse for trump. meaning, it's already bad -- >> obstruction of justice, right? >> no, no.

what i mean by this, he has to -- the story has to be that there was a conspiracy to, you know, have help -- have russia help throw the election to trump. and collusion's not a crime. conspiracy is a crime. so if paige says this stupid thing, papadopoulos is caught making false statements, sessions says something bad, none of it adds up to a specific effort, and manafort and gates have their hands dirty with russia and ukraine. none of that adds up to a conspiracy that involves the actual effort to win the presidency. it involves people lying about meetings. so it's very important to separate these two out. because people are getting over their skis here. >> but, john, just to be really clear, if the president in some way is found to have tried to stop the investigation into people lying about meetings, as you say, that's big trouble for

donald trump. >> of course. but that's a whole set -- that's of course the ultimate purpose of the mueller investigation. right? the whole thing started because the president said to comey, please leave mike flynn alone. but all i'm trying to say here is that there are a lot of little bits of smoke, do not add up to fire, except politically. meaning, it's already had an affect on trump. nobody understands why he never said anything negative about putin during the primary, or the election season. and it looked bad and we all want to understand why on earth that would be, and whether or not there was an illicit motive that led to that. but without some effort to connect, carter paige has a meeting here, this guy has a meeting there, this guy calls somebody there, flynn talks to ambassador kislyak five times. all of that is true and it's weird and it's disconcerting. it doesn't add up to a conspiracy to have russia help throw the election to trump,

with knowing intent on the part of trump and his people, as yet. >> and john, that's certainly what the president will say, and in fact, what he did say when he was asked about the investigation during this interview. i want to play part of it now. let's all listen. >> well, i hope he's treating everything fairly, and if he is, i'm going to be very happy. because when you talk about innocent, i am truly not involved in any form of collusion with russia, believe me. that's the last thing i can think of to be involved in. >> have you been told to expect to be questioned by the special counsel? >> no, nobody's told me. as far as i'm concerned, i have been told that we're not under investigation. i'm not under investigation. >> so the president is sticking with that line that john had brought up earlier, that, look, even if it's all these people in my orbit, it doesn't mean i'm under investigation. should he expect to be

questioned? >> i think so. i think bob mueller is going to do his homework, and i can't see how that doesn't involve talking to the person who was head of his own campaign. ken starr investigated a land deal at arkansas, that much later turned into "i did not have sexual relations with that woman." he told "the times," if bob mueller looks at my finances, that's the red line. that's not the red line. if he needs tohose records from the trump organization, the tax returns, that's well within his mandate. it would be very difficult to stop him, short of firing him and setting off another saturday night massacre. >> which is something -- richard painter was on in the last hour, he thinks jeff sessions might be the fall guy for this. we know the president is on a trip to asia, how much will these problems at home overshadow the president as he lands in tokyo in the next couple hours? >> obviously this will come up

as he's on the road talking about reporters. that said, what he said in that interview is a useful foreshadow of what we can expect him to say while he's in asia. p my understanding is that the view within the white house, the message communicated to the president and to the media from the legal folks who are in trump's orbit, is that he needs to lay off mueller, because mueller may actually end up exonerating him if he did nothing wrong. that's the message that we're hearing from the white house. and i think that's a big part of the reason that the way president trump talks about mueller has changed so dramatically since the first weeks after the probe was kiblgd off. once the legal team of the president changed, when marc kasowitz was pushed out and replaced we've seen a marked shift in how the president himself talks about mueller. we've also seen the president's legal team being fairly open about the fact that they're helping mueller set up

interviews with white house officials, helping to provide documents to mueller's legal team. so that may keep the president for the time being from going after mueller or firing him, but any sort of pr efforts being pushed out by the president and his spokesperson have zero bearing on what mueller is actually doing. and as the indictments from monday indicate, mueller's taking a broad view of his probe, looking at crimes committed after the election, crimes unrelated to russia, unrelated to campaign issues whatsoever. that means it's pretty safe to guess that he will have some questions about the president's finances. >> go ahead, john. >> if mueller is investigating manafort and finds evidence of illegality in manafort's behavior, he can't just say, this is not in my mandate, it's fine, let it go. that's part of what happens when you have investigations. you can stumble onto things and he's a prosecutor, that's his literal title here. so he can't just say --

>> prosecutor is actually not his title. his title is special counsel. >> i'm aware of that. forget title sh mightel. >> the special counsel is governed by the u.s. attorney's rules and if mueller finds something outside the scope of his mandate, he has to gate approv -- get approval for bringing those charges from rod rosenstein. >> if you're in the middle of an investigation if you find something out about $130,000 worth of rugs, you can't just say, that's not me. if it's right there in front of you, on a sheet of paper, you don't have much choice -- >> not necessarily. >> you can use prosecutor's discretion, but not against what appears to be open and shut case -- >> i've talked to a number of attorneys who have worked on probes like this, my clear understanding from doing all that reporting is that if mueller finds a crime that was outside the bounds of his

mandate, either rosenstein could tell him he could prosecute it or it could be handed off to any of the number a federal law enforcement agencies. it could be handed off to a different u.s. attorney's office. >> that doesn't matter. >> my point is -- >> that's a distinction without a difference. i'm sorry. the problem here, there is jigsaw pieces and they're not yet assembling into a puzzle. you cannot assume that the things that we have seen suggest that there's a relentless forward march direction into something -- >> i didn't say that. >> i'm going to put a pin in it for here. john, i think a lot of people would disagree with you that the pieces of the puzzle are not coming together. before we go, because the president is traveling to asia, and this is something i wanted to talk about, if you've ever traveled to asia, you know how physically demanding that can be. imagine traveling to five countries in less than two weeks, while holding meetings that could help decide the fate of millions of americans. that's what the president is doing right now.

you'll remember the last president to embark on a trip this arduous. president george bush h.w. bush in 1992, a trip that gave us this memorable moment. the president getting sick on the japanese prime minister's lap. i want to ask all three of you, start with alexander before we go. do you think in all seriousness, the president has the stamina to pull this trip off? >> they must think he does, given how they're scheduled it. and he went to hawaii today, obviously to acclimate to the time change. i think it might be good for him to -- hopefully it will wean him off twitter. >> we'll see about that. john, let me ask you. he couldn't stay off twitter on several of his other international trips. is he going to do it now? >> elder bush had a vaseo vagual incident that ended up on tv. >> i can relate. i've had one myself.

>> if trump wants to ruin his trip, it's up to him whether or not he ruins his trip by blathering on twitter about things he should be silent about. >> betsy? >> we know he doesn't sleep a lot and wakes up early to tweet. so maybe he'll be up to the time zone challenges. >> president trump tweeting in a different time zone stresses me out more than you could possibly imagine. that's a lot of late nights. good to see you all. coming up, president trump versus the justice department. this week's tirade against the doj, now raising questions about how his criticism could compromise investigations. we'll discuss how some of his comments could actually impact prosecution right after this. >> but honestly, they should be looking at the democrats and a lot of people are disappointed in the justice department, including me.

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we've got some breaking news to report this hour, a kentucky man is in custody accused of attacking senator rand paul. police arrested this man, 59-year-old renee boucher, they say he assaulted paul at his

home in bowling green, kentucky, yesterday. the senator suffered minor injuries. now as the russian troubles pile up, president trump again showing his frustration with the justice department, and in tweets and remarks this week, calling for hillary clinton to be investigated. joining me now, shawn henry and danny savalas. danny, let me start with you. the president has not shown any signs of backing off the doj. is this going to help him? >> it's strange because in a way the president is the doj, if you believe in a unitary executive. so for him to criticize the doj seems odd to begin with. but moving forward from there, each time the president criticizes a doj investigation, he runs the risk of creating pre-trial publicity and a prejudice that may benefit future defendants down the road if they're ever indicted. so this could create the exact problem that trump does not want to happen, which is frustrating

his own doj's investigation and potentially prolonging it. >> well, let me follow-up with you on that, danny, because the white house insists bob mueller is not going to be fired by the president. richard painter says that jeff sessions is getting set up as the fall guy and this all very well might happen. what side do you buy? >> well, the side is that the president can't really fire the special counsel. that has to come from u.s. attorney rosenstein, because jeff sessions recused himself. however, trump could get rid of the regulations that create those rules, bypass them, and theoretically thieve t theoretically achieve the firing of mueller another way. but to do so would be a political problem as well. as it stands, mueller can only be removed for cause. if he's fired politically, that would create an even bigger fire storm. >> shawn, let me sask you about trump calling for the death

penalty for the suspect behind the new york city terror attack. there's a marathon of course in new york city tomorrow. how is the city preparing for all this? >> this is such a wide-scale event. you're going to have more than 50,000 runners from 120 countries, going across 26 miles in new york city. certainly on the heels of what we saw earlier this past week, with the truck attack on the bike path, new york city police department, along with the joint terrorism task force and the fbi, there will be hundreds of law enforcement agents from the task force that will be engaged, i'm certain. looking for any indicators that there's a pre-planned attack. certainly these pd and the other officials within new york city will be developing protocols. they'll use trucks of their own to block certain areas. they'll be ensuring that they've got full visibility onto the entire route and they're working very long and hard to look for any intelligence about an attack coming forward.

>> the president, danny, was tweeting about the suspect here in the terrorism attack in new york, saying he wanted to see him go to guantanamo, then he backed off of that. the other thing he's been tweeting about, no prison time for bowe bergdahl, but a dishonorable discharge. the president called bergdahl a traitor and said the sentence was a disgrace. did that have an impact on the sentence? >> not directly. at least the judge in the case said that it would not have an impact, even though the statements might be considered at sentencing. but here's what you need to know about military sentencing. the judge has almost complete discretion to fashion a sentence. and another thing that you don't see in civilian courts is the concept of unlawful command influence. the president's statements can create an improper prejudice on a criminal trial in the military context, because the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces and it's been happened before.

a judge found unlawful command influence based on president obama's statements involving a prosecution in a military court in hawaii. so unlawful command influence, uci, and a real thing. what may have happened in this case is that in the face of all these controversial comments by the president, the judge may have said, i will not let these affect me, but maybe there was that subtle gravitational pull which resulted in a no-confinement sentence for bergdahl. >> is this, shawn, uci, as danny is saying, in the instance of bowe bergdahl, and what about the in the terror case in new york, is it helping or hurting, the president's tweeting? >> any time you have undue influence, it can be problematic. we'll see going forward if there's an impact or not. but certainly as danny describes some of those influences on potential jurors, on the judicial process, certainly not helpful. >> we'll leave it there. shawn and danny, great to have you both with me.

appreciate it very much. coming up, social media giants under scrutiny. the biggest names in silicon valley answer to congress about how russian web ads went undetected in the 2016 election. stay tuned. i love you, couch.

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accused of obstructing justice to theat the fbinuclear war, and of violating the constitution by taking money from foreign governments and threatening to shut down news organizations that report the truth. if that isn't a case for impeaching and removing a dangerous president, then what has our government become? 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. welcome back. silicon valley came to washington, d.c. this week as facebook, twitter, and google face tough questions from congress on how russia used their platforms to meddle in the 2016 presidential election. . as ranking member of the house intelligence committee democrat adam schiff reiterated what he calls evidence the trump campaign colluded with russia to influence the election point by damning point. our friends at the rachel maddow show put together his greatest hits and it's something to behold. >> we now know as a result of the guilty plea by trump campaign foreign policy adviser george bpapadopoulos that the russians approached the trump

campaign as early as april 2016 to inform them they were in possession of dirt on hillary clinton in the form of thousands of stolen e-mails. the trump campaign was informed upon russia's involvement with the stolen e-mails even before our country was aware of it. the upper levels of the trump campaign was informed that the russians had dirt on hillary clinton. it was offered as part of the putin's effort to help trump. the president's son said he would love the assistance and suggested the best timing would be in the late summer. what is clear is this. the kremlin repeatedly told the campaign it had dirt on clinton and offered to help it and at least one top trump official, the president's own son, accepted. >> joining us now for more on the hearings, twitter's former head of news and politics, adam sharp. good to see you, man. >> good to see you, jacob. >> we now know that

russian-backed contest, as many as 126 million people, during the election, half of all eligible voters. those are targeted people. not just random. how did we get to this point? >> only a segment of them were targeted. earlier you mentioned advertising. one thing we learned in the hearings was that the paid advise advertising by the russian operatives was a small piece of the pie. the bigger part was driven by organic distribution -- >> retweets? >> right, on your facebook account or your twitter account. so these ads might have been the first peek under the tent flap into the american consciousness, but it was the actions of everyday americans hitting those retweet buttons, hitting those like buttons that helped amplify these russian messages to such extreme scale. >> do we know, adam, how much

the ads actually influenced the election, whether they made a difference in the outcome? i guess you would have to presume that the american public was malleable group of people, that they don't have their own opinions and were able to be propagandaized by the russians. how bad was it in that regard? >> well, the ads themselves, probably not too much, because they were so limited and so targeted. but as i said before, the reach that then stemmed from that, from people hitting the retweet and like buttons, amplified it much further. but even then, the companies will claim it didn't have an impact. twitter put out numbers saying that all the russian-backed tweets they could identify accounted for only about three-quarters of 1% of all election tweets last year. and in terms of impressions, how often those tweets actually showed up on users' screens, they showed up less than half as often as the tweets that came from real people. so, yes, these are big numbers,

but when you multiply it by the big numbers on these platforms, 2 billion people using facebook, 330 million people using twitter, all of a sudden they get a bit smaller. >> adam, you were at twitter up until this past december, is that right? >> yep. >> you were there when this was all going down. what did you know about this then? >> very little. i don't think anyone really connected a lot of the dots until after the election was over. certainly there's been concerns at all the companies about automated bots and abuse and other types of behaviors we saw from the russians, because afterall, these behaviors are bad for users. they're bad for advertisers. so there are areas that these companies look at every day, with or without an election. i think it's only after the election, with the benefit of hindsight that the companies have started to piece together what elements of that came from russia and specifically this

so-called internet research agency in st. petersburg and what came from other types of bad actors on the platforms. >> the thing i want to know, how exactly does this even happen? do russian operatives pick up the phone and shoot off an e-mail, saying, i'd like to buy some political ads, please. this is the content? >> anyone can advise on these platforms, twitter, facebook, google. all it takes is a credit card. you can go online and for a couple of bucks buy an ad, select who you want to target it to, and start seeing incredible data about who engaged with it. this sort of self-serve advertising was the bulk of the advertising across all these platforms, the three companies each testifying that no actual sales representative spoke to any russian contacts, that this was all self-serve. in fact, facebook reported that how they track down these ads,

they were paid for using rubles, leading to a humorous moment between senator al franken and the lawyer for facebook at the hearings last week. >> over the course of the hearings, we saw congress really seem distrustful, frustrated when it comes to big tech. watch this. >> american political ads and russian money, rubles. how could you not connect those two dots? >> i hear all your words, but i have more than a little bit of frustration that many of us on this committee have been raising this issue since the beginning of issue. >> your actions need to catch up to your responsibilities. >> but i must say i don't think you get it. what we're talking about is the beginning of cyber warfare. >> adam, real quick, because we gotta run, how did you feel about the answers the companies gave at these hearings to these

very pointed questions from the lawmakers on the hill? >> well, definitely showed off the culture clash between washington and silicon valley. washington has been asleep at the switch in regulating these companies who have some of the widest immunity of any industry in the world. these companies have been steps ahead, now being frustrated they're going to be reined in a bit more. this tension will probably play out through many more hearings to come. >> appreciate it. stick around, we'll be right back. sinesses are thinking. sinesses are thinking. factories are thinking. even your toaster is thinking. honey, clive owen's in our kitchen. i'm leaving. oh never mind, he's leaving. but what if a business could turn all that thinking... thinking... endless thinking into doing? to make better decisions. make a difference. make the future. not next week while you think about it a little more. but right now. is there a company that can help you do all that? ♪ i can think of one. ♪

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♪ everyone deserves attention, whether you've saved a lot or just a little. at pnc investments, we believe you're more than just a number. so we provide personal financial advice for every retirement investor. a the threat of north korea looms, the big question, will president trump dial down riwhi in asia. >> will the president be using the fire and fury rhetoric in

his speech about north korea when he's that close to the border? >> i don't think the president modulates his language. you have noticed him do that? >> fair enough. my next guest argues the trump's trump's to-do list in asia, listen to japan, talk to south korea and dictate to china. and author of "north korea takes on the world" and "the coming collapse of china." good to see you, gordon. explain. what did you mean, listen to japan, talk to south korea and dick katate to china? >> i think american presidents should listen to shinzo abe, the japanese prime minister, because he knows more about north korea than we do. so, there. in south korea, it's going to be a conversation. because the south koreans want to do things that undermine u.s. foreign policy. but they're a staunch ally and

we need that dialogue. china, a very different area. xi jinping no longer has excuses. china supported north korea's missile and nuclear weapons program thereby arming the north koreans. it's completely unacceptable. president trump needs to stop them from doing that. i think he has to tell the chinese the u.s. will use overwhelming leverage over china so that china uses its overwhelming leverage over north korea. this is basically a new way to deal with the chinese because the old way just hasn't worked. >> gordon, how worried should people in the korean peninsula in japan, in seoul, be about some kind of prerogative action by north korea in the president is in the region? we know north korea has done other provocative actions around the olympics for instance or the world cup. is that something we can rule out at this point? i imagine not. >> we can't rule it out. the north koreans, their foreign

minister ho in september talked about an atmospheric test of a thermal nuclear device. we heard a week ago a senior north korean official talking to one of the networks saying, look, take our threats literally. i think there's a high probability that the north koreans will do something. there are recent reports that pyongyang is moving missiles around and that is and indication there will be a launch. it very well may be after trump leaves. nonetheless, it could very well happen before. >> what do you sequences being if that launch happens whital president is in asia? >> i wish i knew the answer to that question. i think what the north koreans will be trying to do, if they do something provocative while trump is there, to show trump is all talk and no action. probably trump understands that and could very well decide to take some sort of retaliatory measure. i actually don't think so

because the south koreans and japanese our allies don't want us to do that. at this particular time there are so many imponderables. i don't think anybody knows the answer including the president himself. >> and to your point, gordon, south koreans have kept the president away from going to the dmz, a provocative action on his part. unfortunately that's all the time for this evening. i look forward to talking to you again sometime soon. we'll be right back. this guy feels like he can take on anything. this guy isn't sure he can take it anymore. unwavering self-confidence. stuck in a 4-door sedan of sadness. upgrade your commute. ride with audible. dial star star audible on your smartphone to start listening today.

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my friends back with a quick programming note. don't miss a special installment with paul manafort exposing new details of manafort's financial dealings with a kremlin-connected billionaire sunday 6:00 p.m. eastern right here on msnbc n. that does it for us at the brokaw center. you can find me on snapchat, twitter, instagram.

the news continues with "a.m. joy." help in puerto rico. jorge pa sasada helping victims the hurricane. stay with us. >> reporter: if the justice department doesn't take action? >> i'm really not involved with the justice department. i'd like to let it run itself, honestly, they should be looking at the democrats, as podesta and all that dishonesty. they should be looking at a lot of things and a lot of people are disappointed in the justice department, including me. good morning, and welcome to "a.m. joy." there is nothing more nixonian to wanting to take control of the justice department and fire your attorney general. on friday donald trump expressed frustratio