i'm so sorry we ran out of time. could have gone another hour. my thanks to steve schmidt, matt miller, jeremy bash, joyce janus and evan mcmullin. that does it for "deadline." i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts now. >> i know what you're stuck doing at 8:00 thom with mark. >> exactly. >> all about the you. >> comeback. if it's friday, it's official. michael flynn flipped. tonight -- the president's former national security adviser flips on the president, and pleads guilty to lying to the fbi. >> the process is working. the special counsel has a mandate. >> what has bob mueller already learned? >> this is clearly not the last shoe to fall. >> does mike flynn's deal leave president trump and his inner circle exposed? why is he so desperate to have this investigation stopped? >> finally, it's decision day on

taxes in the senate. >> i think it's a very good piece of legislation. >> this is "mtp daily" and it starts right now. good evening. i'm chuck todd here in washington. welcome to "mtp daily." folks, this is a five-alarm fire for president trump. no other way to put. former national security advisers pleaded guilty lying to the fbi last year. the guilty plea, that's the tip of the iceberg. noe most importantly, he's cooperating and seemingly very willing to talk to those above him. taking instructions from senior or very senior people in the trump transition team. we're about to find out who they

are. we can report one is jared kushner. according to two people familiar with the manner. it isn't hard to speculate who the others could be. because there weren't many people on the trump transition more senior than flynn, except for, perhaps, mike pence or donald trump. this is a five-alarm fire for the president because mike flynn sits as the nexti icxus of the allegations facing trump. in cahoots with the russians and second tried to ob struct instru obstructs justice. dramatic incite who flinn was talked to when advising mr. trump and who he's now willing to talk about with bob mueller. flynn's value is made even more apparent when you look how the president has continually tried to protect flynn from prosecution. in fact, even tried to potentially shut down the fbi's investigation into flinn when he took office.

>> i understood him to be saying what he wanted me to do was drop any investigation connected to flynn's account of his conversations with the russians allegations. what he's talking about in the clip are what flynn just pled guilty to lying about. the president's outside counsel ty cobb today says "nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than mr. flynn." okay. technically right, frankly, we think he's wrong here. pretty much everything about this guilty plea implicates the president and his inner circle. look at the court documents themselves. read like a road map to people above flynn. "a very senior member of the president's team directed flynn." "discuss what ifnig to communicate to the russian ambassador about the u.s. sanctions." folks, those were the sanctions

we imposed on russia for interfering in our election. we're going to cove the story from all of those angles tonight. frankly more. we have ken delanian, nbc news intelligence and national security reporter, d.c. district court today and hallie jackson and speak to anne milgramilgram former federal prosecutor breaking down the legal ramifications. ken, start with you. flynn cut a deal. it's a serious charge to lie to the fbi, but he avoided what could have been much more devastating charges here to the point where people williams said, this is a pretty sweet deal for mike flynn. explain. >> reporter: it is for now, chuck. of course, nothing prohibits robert mueller from bringing charges in the future. for right now, yes. we've been reporting for weeks that robert mueller's examining flynn's work with turkey and a

potential quid pro quo around gulan, the turkish dissident. none of that is mentioned in the documents. a single charge of lying to the fbi carrying with it a five-year prison term and a lot of factors suggest he would never do a day in prison. the main factor, whether robert mueller is satisfied with his cooperation, that he tells the truth about everything that he knows. not only about these interactions with the russians during transition but any collusion with the russians to interfere in the election campaign. about this transition, we've long known mike flynn didn't tell the truth about interactions with sergey kislyak. the documents today show he did it with coordination with senior officials in the trump transition, one of those being jared kushner. >> the white house is going ahead, folks confirming it, they have a different sort of caveat. it's jared kushner and others, that what they were directing him to do had nothing to do with

russia and everything to do with the united nations and israel? correct? >> reporter: that's right. there are actually two different episodes lloyd out in the court documents. one, december 22, 23, 2016, u.n. resolution condemning israel for settlements in palestinian territories the obama administration planned to abstain on and let pass. the israelis hated that resolutions and the trump team hated it, wanted to stop it. according to these documents, one of the things flynn called the russian ambassador sergey disl kislyak and we reported directed to do that by jared kushner. 9 second thing laid out, response to the obama sanctions. flynn saying, don't worry about it. don't react. we'll going to be in office soon and take another look at this. both of those things aren't violated american tradition of we have one administration at a time.

before you take office you don't make a deal with a foreign power. a law on the logan act seems to make it illegal. 1799 law never prosecuted. one law enforcement official today told me he believed they lay out a conspiracy to violate the logan act. you have a conspiracy, chuck. >> ken, sirens, let you go. appreciate it. let me go now to chief white house correspondent hallie jackson. hallie, got to ask yous in the white house, saw the ty cobb statement. we haven't seen today? a president's tweet. >> reporter: donald trump. correct. >> what's going on? >> reporter: listen, no tweets. no pool spray. right? supposed to see the president, albeit briefly earlier this morning around lunchtime. that was abruptly canceled. no reporters allowed into the oval office as originally scheduled. those are opportunities when we get a chance to shout questions at the president. you know the name mike flynn would have been shouted. i can tell you in four words that the mood is according to at least one person who is close to

the president talking to our team. very, very, very bad. i think there was a real sense among the people in the president's orbit that this could have real implications for donald trump in some way. that said, the public facing response, only come from ty cobb, no sarah huckabee sanders yet or any other faces you might expect to see on this harks been, hey, everything's okay. we're moving along. what flynn did implicates only flynn, cobb says, and this investigation -- remember, cobb has been saying this. the in-house white house lawyer, saying this all along. that we expect this investigation to come toonclusi. the issue, two of them. briefly, one you know, this is the closest person to the administration. this pen was in the administration. not a campaign adviser or transition person the white house can try to distance itself from. somebody with the highest level of clearance who was in the inner-most of inner circles for donald trump from inauguration

day. sure, only 24 days, but mike flynn was there. that cannot be erased. other question i think one of judgment. donald trump promised to hire the best people. brought on mike flynn, now charged in this special counsel investigation and who knows what other shoes will drop. i think that as we've been asking for a while, is donald trump standing why in? does he regret that? donald trump so far stood by mike flynn. you know, chuck, mike flynn, one of the few national security folks came out early, stood for donald trump. for the president that counts for a lot. >> the most frequent traveling companion who wasn't a paid staffer on that campaign with the president. got to ask you about the issue of flynn and when we learned via the "washington post" that he discussed the sanctions issues with the russian ambassador, because both the vice president to another sunday show, mike pence and reince priebus to me on "meet the press" both said they knew nothing about this.

they grilled mike flynn and mike flynn at the time basically were denying it on mike flynn's behalf, later saying mike flynn lied to priebus and lied to pence. this -- this plea deal seems to imply at least some people in the transition knew this. could it really be mike pence and reince priebus were left out of the loop? >> reporter: hitting the nail on the head where the story goes from here. an interesting conversation i just had in the last hour with somebody at the white house. this source. pressing them on this particular point. the pence part of this is significant, remember, that's the reason president trump said that mike flynn was fired in the first place. not for misrepresentations to reince priebus, specifically because he misled mike pence. it appears to turn out based on these documents that other people knew that flynn was misleading pence. the response i got was interesting. no comment. in the middle of a conversation about a number of topics, but

this sort of shut at least this one official down and appeared as though that this source at least didn't want to get out ahead of some of these developments you are now bringing up. in a little reactive way to some of this news, chuck. i think it's a sign that the white house and officials are treading very, very carefully here. i think that there are a few people who want to stick their necks out on this and would rather -- digest, see some of the headlines. see how it plays and go from there. it will make "meet the press" sunday real interesting. >> appreciate that promo for sure. try to get a better understanding from the legal perspective. hallie, thanks. joining me, anne milgram, a former federal prosecutor and former attorney general in the state of new jersey. thanks for coming on the show. >> thank you for having me. >> let me start with what did we, what did you learn today from this plea deal and what's the bigger deal? that mike flynn pled guilty or

that mike flynn is cooperating with bob mueller? >> there are a couple things. first, you've already said. this is an enormously important plea and cooperation agreement. so there are, a very small consent trico conse consentric circle. it's enormously significant. the second point, which i think you touched on is that people don't cooperate against themselves. they cooperate against other people. so here someone like michael flynn is going to have to offer the united states government a significant amount of information that the government finds truthful about other people who are involved in this whole question of ties to russia and influence in the campaign. so it is very significant, because we know that flynn is cooperating and that he will have been in the room and that he will have a great deal of information about what took place during the campaign, during transition and 24eeven i

the white house and i add as much as we've learned today, chuck, there is still so much we don't know. this is a among the slimmest plea documents i've seen, cooperation agreements. >> interesting. i was curious about that there. from what you have read in this, what clue does it give you about the direction where it's going? obstruction of justice direction? or in the collusion direction or is this frankly, both paths and this takes him down both. >> could be both. difficult to know based on what we have and the only thing i think we know for sure, mueller is a lot more than he's given us. keep in mind, this investigation into flynn has been going on essentially a year. they knew he falsified his statements about his conversations with the russian ambassador. they knew that in february of 2017. so we're now in december. it's taken them a long time, i'm sure investigating a lot of different aspects of flynn's business dealings and other dealings, but still, we know

that they have something in mind when looking at something like this. >> in the middle of bingeing billions flo s now. en episode somebody flips, essentially the hedge fund guy buys off the flipped guy. now, the president can't buy off anybody. but the president can pardon somebody. could somehow the president blanket pardon mike flynn to the point where then he could walk away from cooperating with mueller? >> i mean, i'm someone, a former federal state and local prosecutor. very hard for me to believe that the president of the united states would blanket pardon someone like michael flynn. the whole point of flynn, and entire united states of america now understands this that he is cooperating against other members of the trump inner circle and of the administration. i think the american public will want to know. what information does he have to give? and who is he cooperating against? i think this is really the first chapter of a book where all of

us are going to want to see the future chapters. i think it's hard to imagine just pardoning someone at this point. hasn't been convicted. there's not a legal basis. >> interesting you said you can't believe it, sounds like he could do it if he wanted to. >> as a rule, you can only -- >> i know he's president. we'll dealing with a president that loves the unprecedented. >> none of us should say nothing could ever happen in the current circumstances but i would be very, very skeptical that will come to pass. >> and the at this point, is paul -- interesting to me, because somebody asked me, well, hasn't paul manafort flipped? nope. he hasn't flipped. flynn has. is paul manafort less useful now that mueller's gotten flynn? i mean does that make -- >> i don't think so. remember -- >> could he still be equally helpful and eventually cut a deal limbs? >> still helpful. remember, these are sort of, again, sort of concentric circles related to the same question of, did the russian

government -- what did the russian government do with our election and do it in conjunction and in partnership with the trump campaign? manafort is an incredible important part of that conversation when it comes to his ties with russia and work as the chair of the campaign for a period of time. keep in mind, he can walk in at any point. flynn walking in before charged by a grand jury. walked in, will plead guilty. the government showed a lot of evidence against him and convinced him to plead. to cooperate. but manafort may still come in. >> all right. anne milgram, waiting for the next chapter to read or watch or unfold. appreciate it. coming up, the limits of loyalty and the flynn/trump dynamic. of course, if it's sunday it's "meet the press." talk to senate intelligence committee member susan collins, dianne feinstein as well as former trump campaign officials including cory lewendowski and david bostic. stay tuned. is in full swing. ( ♪ )

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welcome back. president trump values loyalty but doesn't always exhibit the same loyalty to his people he demands from them. flynn the exception to that at least so far. immediately after flynn was fired, the president came to flynn's defense. and he's barely wavered since. >> general flynn is a wonderful man. i think he's been treated very, very unfairly by the media. as i call it, the fake media in many cases. >> i said i don't think he did anything wrong. if anything he did something right. >> you know, he was just doing his job. >> i do feel badly for him. he served the country. he was a general. >> like it had to be done immediately. this man has served for many years. he's a general. he's a, in my opinion, a very good person. >> folks, you can make a convincing argument we wouldn't have a special counsel named bob mueller or any special counsel if it wasn't for president trump's attempt to protect flynn

from james comey. now that flynn pled guilty, will the president's statements stay intact? referred to flynn as a former obama administration official. what do you think? more "mtp daily" in 60 seconds. more people shop online for the holidays than ever before. (clapping) and the united states postal service delivers more of those purchases to homes than anyone else in the country. ( ♪ ) because we know, even the smallest things are sometimes the biggest.

let me bring in tonight's panel. eugene robinson, "washington post" columnist. michael steele, senior advise and white house correspondent for the "washington post." welcome all. i have to say, obviously this is a big deal. but -- is it, like, watergate type a big deal? implications like that, anne gearan? >> i mean, we don't know yet. it certainly seems like a watershed. we've had many things that have been described -- >> watershed like, oh, okay. >> watershed meaning something changes on the other side of the shed and things happen.

this does feel different. it feels like one of those consequential friday when something big drops and the world changes. >> somebody above mike flynn? >> aren't many above him. when you look at not just the charges he pleaded guilty to, but all the stuff he was not charged with today. all of the stuff we've heard about michael flynn about turkey. you know, arrangements and dealings and all of that, and no mention. no mention of his son. that seems to indicate that he is of extreme value to bob mueller, at least bob mueller thinks he has something of extreme value. >> bob mueller didn't buy a pig and a pope. proffer from flynn's attorneys before making this very, very generous agreement. >> we still have unanswered questions. one of the biggest has to do with he did plead guilty on, that part, your newspaper break as story of this sanctions

issue. within day, within hours i think basically, apparently reince priebus and vice president pence both grill flynn and say, is this true? he denies it. they go on, reince priebus, to me, on "meet the press." mike pence to chris wallace on "fox news sunday" both deny it. left out of the -- according to this document, he is talking to people in the transition. either pence and priebus were left out, highly possible. >> right. >> or they're lying. >> yeah. i mean -- and either one of those things could potentially be really useful to mueller in his investigation. right? he can leverage either. whichever of those things is true. it is great leverage. over mike flynn and potentially over other people. and presumably all of those people involved know exactly how that next step is likely to play out. >> mike pence is one of the only experienced public servants in this room. i find it very unlikely that he deliberately went on television and lied about something this

important. i don't buy. >> it and somebody else, second most unlikely person to make a mistake like this, reince priebus. >> been around town. >> and knows, know how to, like, not say anything. right? but to do -- something other than -- >> vice president can filibuster. >> exactly. >> like a nart. >> senator. >> who's taking the most tums today? jared kushner? donald trump jr.? or is steve bannon throwing in some tums? don't forget, he was a senior transition official, too. >> and could meet the description, you know, of someone -- >> descriptions, too, at the time. yet he's not here. >> i think, look, jared kushner is on a maalox i.v. drip today. really. face it. he -- >> he's the only one in government. >> in government. very closely fits the description of the senior official. >> was he in the white house today? to your knowledge?

>> to my direct knowledge, no. i have no reason to think he wasn't. i didn't lay eyes on him, and i didn't see him at the party. >> when reading through this guilty plea. a larger story. at one point somebody pointed out, seems as if mike flynn was representing turkey. jared kushner representing the interests of israel. and you had paul manafort representing the interests of ukraine here or parts of ukraine. this is, was a -- this was not, a corruptible thing to have in your -- >> the thing is, because there was money involved in all of those cases. right? financial interests involved. >> i don't know financial aspects in the kushner but definitely the other two. the other two about money. >> billionaires, israel, that -- we don't know, no. but -- one would have to assume that bob mueller is looking into that as well. >> all right. got to throw it -- did you see

the breitbart headline? throw it up here. check it out. got it up? it says, over by thanksgiving? white house lawyer ty cobb was disastrously wrong. as we know, breitbart headlines, mr. steele, usually means, mr. bannon may be sending a message to his friend the president. he had been anti-cobb strategy the whole time. >> yeah. seems as though this talk happy, it's all going to blow over. best of all possible worlds sort of strategy, if you can call it a strategy, is clearly not something that's going to work. it's not an effective defense. you know bannon's instinct is always the bulldog. >> fight, fight, fight. >> exactly. mr. sunshine is not his style. >> and would you be shocked if the president wanted to either shake unp or add to the legal team? i'm sure that's what bannon is telling him to do, the headline and probably on the phone telling him. >> now's the time. >> more aggressive, cooperation.

will the president take away from, cooperation hasn't worked? >> well, and saying that there's nothing here hasn't worked either. so now that there clearly is something. >> i agree. might well shake it up. >> does this impact some business on the hill? how compartmentalizing can your party guys get? >> thinking about this. remember the '90s, talked about the split screen. monk ica lewinsky and whatever else. in the middle of passing tax reform in the middle of this. >> weird. >> doing it ever since the president rode down that escalator in trump tower. republicans on capitol hill continue to focus on getting things done for the american people. all they need, enough functioning digits to wield a pen. >> this all came, biggest story happened with the russia probe 12 hours ago had to do with the president trying to convince senators to end the intel probe.

to me this flynn flip actually makes that story 1,000 times worse. >> it does. does it not? >> hadn't thought about that, but you're right. talk one second about the other part of the -- the flynn news today about the israel thing. that is fascinating. this is the first we're hearing of it. not an consequential legally bas fascinating what he was asked to do. weigh in changing policy under the previous administration. >> certainly unprecedented. probably not illegal. >> probably not. yeah. >> we'll see. >> exactly. >> all right. stick around. we have a lot more to unpack and might get to taxes. coming up, moments away from that senate vote on the tax package that only can change the lives of every single american. that's all. we'll be right back.

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any minute now the senate votes on the republican sweeping tax overhaul. looks like it will pass. majority leader mitch mcconnell says his party has the votes. susan collins announced support late this marafternoon, they wi have 51 votes, looks like. a sign this is going to pass. a trump official tells msnbc news, while the president is monitoring they don't expect he

is to be needed on capitol hill to pass a vote, the vice president. and a conference committee ironing out differences between this and the version passed by the house. there are some semisignificant differences. there are small hurdles still ahead. we'll update you with the latest after this.

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welcome back. of course we continue to follow today's big news of former national security advisers michael flynn flipping, agreeing to plead guilty lying to the fbi and avoid for now prosecution on worst crimes. the fourth person on the trump campaign charged in the mueller investigation. joining us now to put some of this in context here and what it's like when a white house is under siege like this, a man who's worn many hats in washington. leon panetta. mr. panetta, welcome back to the show, sir.

>> good to be with you, cluck. >> so let me start with that. okay. you've been in a white house that's been -- had a deal with a special counsel investigation, a deal with staffers worried about their personal legal fees and things like that. and when key witnesses suddenly flip or turn or new information, everybody gets nervous. explain. how bad is that to a staff's morale in a white house? >> well, it certainly has an impact on operations, that's for sure, because you know, it casts a shadow over the white house. and members of the staff are aware of that. and at the same time, you're trying to stay focused on the mission of the white house. on the issue that you want to draw attention to for that particular day. on the issues you're working for for the president, but when these kinds of stories break out and it appears that an investigation is moving, it is

going to detract from the attention of that staff to the job they're supposed to be doing. no question about it. >> the other aspect of this, of course, it's intertwined with the national security issue, namely, russia, at a time when we've got a lot of tricky diplomatic crises around the globe. some of them have to do with russia, and i guess what is the -- how do other -- how do you think other countries are reacting today to what they're seeing? do they view this as an opportunity to move against the united states a little diplomatically? does this mean they will view the president as weak? what do you think they're thinking today? >> well, there's no question that there have been a lot of

bad messages going out to both our allies and adversaries regarding our commitment, whether we'll stand by our word, whether this whole america first kind of approach. i think our allies are asking a lot of questions about whether the united states will play a role in terms of world leadership. this issue clouds the whole issue that much further, because now the question becomes, is there, is there a link here between the president and the russians? was there involvement with the russians in terms of interference in the campaign? and if that is the case, can this administration be credible when it comes to dealing with the russians on a series of other issues? whether they're going to move on countries that are the former soviet union. what are they going to do in

syria? what are they going to do with regards to nuclear proliferation, with regards to a number of different issues including cyber? so the credibility of the united states, i think, as a result of this is very much at issue. it isn't just a concern about what happens to the president. it's a concern about what happens to the united states of america at a very difficult time. >> let me ask you about one of the specific allegations in here that has been sort of, i think there's a gray area whether, is it illegal or simply unethical. this idea that the incoming administration before they took over was strategizing about a united nations vote involving israel, and you had, of course, one part of what we learned here in this plea agreement. that jared kushner among others directing mike flynn to make these outreaches, which many in the obama administration thought was an overreach, but there's overreaching and doing something illegal.

where do you see this fitting in? >> well, there's no question there's always been this approach that we have one administration at a time. and a newly elected president has always abided by that principle. largely because you can't have two presidents. it would impact on the credibility of the united states. so generally, incoming administrations really are very careful not to take action that could in anyway disrupt something that the current administration is doing. this was very unusual. i don't -- whether it breaks the law or not, you know, i think that's probably a stretch. but it clearly breaks the principle that a new administration refrains from doing anything that appears to impact on united states policy, and they through the plea today

and through the kind of evidence that we're getting, there's no question that they were trying to do that. >> is this any different than, say, the incoming reagan administration, you know, somehow potentially helping to orchestrate the release of hostages on the president's first day in office? is that a comparable situation? >> no. i don't think it is. because you know there obviously -- there were some efforts made to try to see whether that could happen. i don't think they locked anything up, you know, that really firmed up what the approach would be. in this situation, clearly they were -- they were saying to the russians, if you don't say anything, we're going to be kind to you when it comes to the sanctions that president obama had put in place. there was clearly a quid pro quo going on here that i think

raises some serious legal issues. >> but would it have been any different to you if they did it their second day in office? >> i think it would have made a hell of a difference. once they're in office, if -- >> they want to cut a deal with the russians, that's okay to you? >> absolutely. >> one final question before i let you go. in light of this unprecedented cultural evolution of this country regarding men and women in the workplace, and bad behavior by men in power. is bill clinton the original sin here? do you view what happened in that era differently now with hindsight eyes? >> do i view it -- say it again? >> do you view sort of it differently now, perhaps, than the way, than the lens of the late '90s? meaning, did too many of you and your fellow party members excuse his behavior too much?

>> i -- i think -- i think we're in a, in a different period now. that really raises concern about the direction of our country. i don't know whether -- you know, i'd like to believe this country can be a great country as it is, and can really be in renaissance in the 21st century, but i also think there's a chance that the united states could be in decline. you know, we have -- we have a tough time just governing the country. it's very dysfunction. there's a lot of divisions in terms of our fears and hates and prejudices, and the mere fact that this president continues to tweet and lie and undermine the whole process of government, i think all of that feeds into a concern that i have that the united states is in this kind of downward spiral. i think that's a real concern.

and a lot will be determined in these next few months as to what path we take. >> no. i understand that, but on the bill clinton question alone, having to do with this revolution that's taking place among men and women in the workplace. do you view the accusations against bill clinton in the late '90s differently through today's lens? >> i don't think there's any question that, you know, those standards have clearly changed. we've seen an awful lot change today in terms of, you know, the women that are coming forward and registering their concerns about the kind of assaults that have taken place. yeah. we've changed the standard since the time that bill clinton was in office. but i think it's moving in a much better direction, and it's the kind of direction this country needs to move in if we're going to be honest and truthful with ourselves. >> secretary panetta, leave it there. always good to have you on.

appreciate you coming on sharing your interviews. we'll be right back. is made . but right now, our bond is fraying. how do we get back to "us"? the y fills the gaps. and bridges our divides. donate to your local y today. because where there's a y, there's an us.

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it out or k.t. mcfarland, the person phoned at mar-a-lago to essentially get a read what he was supposes to do soonon sanct. did she really so can be really not. the hard this inc. to believe is they were left out of the lop. if they were, that is stunning. >> well, i think it goes to this idea that particularly during that period there was a division in the incoming administration between the quote/unquote establishment republicans represented by pence and priebus and initialled from trumpian -- and she would have been on that side of that divide on the flynn side of that divide. >> right. and it was, it's sort of a debate between do we break the crockery or not? do we do these sort of transgressive things or fought. she was on the transgressive side. >> do you think kushner end up,

kushner and ivanka, i feel they have been setting up this idea they have been thinking of leaving, a couple weeks ago, both your paper and the "new york times" both seem to have indications, something is umm here with kushner's tenure here at the white house? >> this all gets wrapped up with the fact we are hitting the one-year mark. that's sort of a logical and respectable time for people to leave either because the higher-ups want them tore leave or they want to leave themselves, it's graceful. we've done a year of getting this new ship sailing and now it's time to do something else. certainly if they want to leave on their own, that's sort of a llajical time to do it. they've told people they're not going anywhere. >> right. >> i mean, at least on the surface, there's no obvious reason that they have to. >> as we've all learned, what they tell us on the record and what we learn in our own

reporting and what they tell us turns out to be true. on the record, they're saying, we're hunting for a new mansion here in washington, d.c. at the same time we have a president with no experience in elected office who brought in two family members with no experience in government or elective office who effectively can't be fired, that's not a recipe for good governance, we have seen a few changes the new chief of staff, the best example of that to impose order and regular government on what was at least initially the worst chaotic white house in american history. >> from their point of view, though, the decision i think is is it better for us to leave and go try to protect the family brands that are having difficulty or is it better to stay and put out fires that could become conflorida dpragss? >> speaking of should i stay or should i go?

brexit is off? exit stage left, no, i love them, but i call the shots, we disagree. >> that's one tweet, did everything donald trump does in one incapsulated thing. >> confused. >> yet confirming. >> yeah, right. i mean we don't think he is going anywhere tomorrow or next week, again, he's sort of in the one-year club. the, the expectation he would leave sometime early next year. >> if i'm president trump, the last thing i need now is one more ticked off official who is wealthy enough and cares enough about his own legacy to run down the president to make himself look better roming the countryside, this is not a good time to have that. >> something else struck me, too, about, so the plea deal happens with flynn. i think flynn flipped over the last few days, the last week, but, you look at this and all of

a sudden i'm think, oh, wait a minute, they may want tom cotton to stay on the senate intel committee. they may not want to go through a fight right through this window. >> exactly. i think they may want to stand back. >> or at least buy time. >> obviously, trump and tillerson are not on the same page ever and they don't really get along. >> they confirm it. he confirmed it. >> they don't like talk or whatever. but i think the president would like to keep him there for now. >> to your point that they always say something and do the other thing. they said when it was announce thad flynn's attorney was no longer communicating with the president. oh, no big deal nothing to see here. but right after that is when the tweet storm and all of the noise started. >> right. >> that's what's going to be interesting, when he still hasn't tweet and today ty cobb is in the office. today john kelly is in the

office. saturday morning is a much different story in that west wing. >> yep. for sure, whatever the president says about what happened today. >> right, exactly. >> his mood. >> and we're likely to get an indication of that either tonight or tomorrow or certainly by sunday. >> i have a feeling it's when he wakes up in the morning and starts digesting what he sees. >> i think it's like scar face, two 82 guns bladesing. >> he doesn't know what mueller know, that itself the problem. >> all right. guys, thank you very much, happy friday. coming up, why president trump is campaigning south of the border. actually, we're going to call it east of the border. the alabama border that is. we'll be right back. morning on the beach was so peaceful.

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. >> in cased you missed it, trump has decided to campaign for roy moore and he's found a way to do it without stepping in the state. in case you missed it. he is expected to hold a campaign rally one week from today in pensacola, florida, that's four days before alabama's special election, the last time i checked, pensacola, florida, not in alabama. in case you had missed is, pensacola is so close to the border of alabama it shares the same media market as mobile, that means all local news coverage of the president's rally will reach alabama's

fourth largest city. the affiliate is in mobile. when i'm watching the mobile affiliate t. white house said earlier this week the president is not planning any trip to alabama to campaign for roy moore. so while that's technically true, it's just barely true. the reality is the president is apparently campaigning for him in the air waves of alabama. that's all for tonight. we'll be back tomorrow with more. we won't be back until monday, sunday with "meet the press." "the beat" with ari melbourne starts right now. it's all yours. >> thank you, todd. this is december 1st, december 1st, 2017. can you mark it down. this is the day that everything changed in the russia probe. this is the first time a former white house official has pled guilty to a russia-related crime. former national security adviser, mike flynn admits he lied about russia and he will cooperate. it's a bombshell coming on d