donald trump's legal fate may now rest in the hands of a 29-year-old woman donald trump is reported to have described as having as much experience as a coffee cup in politics. that's according to corey lewandowski, his former campaign manager who writes that description of trump's views on hope hicks in his new book. hicks is currently serving as the white house communications director, and she may have just become one of the most essential fact witnesses about the president's role in crafting a press statement that was almost immediately proven to be false about why his son agreed to meet with russians at trump tower in the summer of 2016. nbc news now reporting a source with knowledge of donald trump jr.'s testimony to the house intel committee wednesday tells nbc trump jr. said it was hope hicks who he spoke with on the day of the 2016 trump tower meeting became public and she acted as an intermeediary to relay comments to the president.

hope hicks has never in the now well documented span of donald trump's political career been known to do anything other than carry out the boss' directives. she is not known to free lance, and there are no reports of her acting on any consequential press matter without the president's approval. reporting at the time confirms that the crafting of the president's statement aboard air force one consumed the president's staff and divided his communications team. from "the washington post" on july 31st, quote, the strategy the advisers graed to be for donald trump jr. to release a statement to get ahead of the story. they wanted to be truthful so their account couldn't be repudiated later if the full details emerged. but within hours at the president's direction, the plan changed. flying home from germany on july 8th aboard air force one, trump personally dictated a statement in which trump jr. said he and the russian lawyer had primarily discussed a program about the adoption of russian children. when they met in june 2016.

trump jr. also raising eyebrows from the ranking member of the house intel committee for exerting attorney/client privilege to explain why he refused to discuss conversations with his father. neert neither man a lawyer. about the trump tower meeting. >> he acknowledged having discussed the june 9th meeting and e-mails that went into establishing that meeting after those e-mails became public. he acknowledged discussing that matter with his father, but refused to answer questions about that discussion on the basis of a claim of attorney/client privilege. in my view there was no attorney/client privilege that protects a discussion between father and son. >> just last hour, democratic senator richard blumenthal issued a statement saying trump jr. must be subpoenaed since he won't answer questions. former florida republican congressman david jolly, "washington post" columnist and msnbc analyst eugene robinson.

zerlina maxwell, now director of progressive programming for sirius xm, republican strategist and msnbc contributor steve schmidt. in washington, white house reporter for "the wall street journal" and msnbc analyst eli stokells and former obama deputy campaign adviser stephanie cutter is here. i think you and stephanie are the two attorneys at the table. can you first just address what donald trump jr. is sort of holding out as his rationale for not sharing with the committee the substance of his conversation with his father? and then tell me if you think that will hold up with bob mueller. >> he's claiming attorney/client privilege. context is also important. we can't overlook that this is a family business for donald trump. and donald trump jr. and the entire trump oerlrganization. and there is no personnel they'll ultimately protect if it

means getting to the trump family themselves. we also know that this family knows that bob mueller is encroaching on them. so what we've seen is something very interesting. you have a 29-year-old white house communications director. it is not an entry level job, as you know. this is a very difficult job. and they are serving her up right now. republicans control congress. they control the congressional investigation. and they may go light on how they approach the trump family and hope hicks but bob mueller won't. bob mueller can actually begin to litigate whether or not there's an attorney/client privilege claim that donald trump jr. can reliably assert. i don't think there is but this is a very nuanced area. this is where the operations of the special counsel are very different from congress. it's a side show right now. bob mueller can -- >> we'll talk about the caliber of legal advice the trump family may be getting in a moment.

i want to hone in on hope hicks. i read that today -- i saw it got a lot less attention than the invoking of attorney general client privilege and i thought instantly having held that position of white house communications director, having understood that role is -- and you and i both had that job, stephanie cutter had that job, too. having served as a spokesperson, you are the least rogue actor on the white house staff because you speak for someone else. you don't have your own views and everything you convey is on behalf of somebody else. you are the staffer least likely to say anything without not just the chief of staff's approval, not just the white house counsel's approvapproval, not je president's personal lawyer's approval, not just input from political and strategic advisers but the principal's approval. there is zero chance that hope hicks made up that lie aboard air force one and told everyone to release a statement on her own. >> zero chance. that's exactly right. people are focused on hope

hicks' age and her inexperience. she's an assist apt to tant to president of the united states. that carries a military equivalent rank of three stars. it's a senior position. and she's in quite a predicament. one of the things that we know for sure in this administration, again, at every instance, where anybody is asked a question about russia, the campaign's involvement, the white house has lied about it. the president, the vice president, the attorney general. everybody on down the list 100% of the time. what we're seeing in this stage of the investigation is the unraveling of all these lies. and the movement of this investment closer to the oval office itself. it's certainly now within the perimeter of the proverbial trump family's compound. >> eugene, we wanted on this show two days ago that three senior republicans all having served in previous republican

administrations have acknowledged that it is obvious to them from their contacts and conversations with people in the trump white house that bob mueller is assembling an obstruction of justice case. can you talk about how essential the actions taken aboard air force one are to that case if there is one? >> they're totally essential because they were obstruction of justice -- >> we know they were lies. >> they were lies. they were an attempt to throw everyone off the scent and to minimize or mischaracterize, really, this meeting with the kremlin tied russian lawyer which -- whose purpose was to obtain dirt on hillary clinton. that was what got them all excited. that's why manafort was there and why kushner was there. in the middle of a campaign to, you know, for all of them to assemble for a meeting, it had to be something really good. it wasn't russian adoption, obviously. but that's just an element of

the potential obstruction of justice case that goes up to and including the firing of james comey and then telling both lester holt and the russian ambassador and foreign minister that it was because of the russian investigation. and that's what donald trump did. and trying to slough all this off on hope hicks really isn't going to work. >> eli, let me bring you in on this and ask you, one, if there's any example you can think of hope hicks going rogue and acting without the explicit direction or approval of her boss. even to the extend of, i remember in the days of the short but beloved tenure of the mooch. i think he was there when hope hicks arranged a 45-minute on the record tape recorded meeting with "new york times" reporters maggie haberman, peter baker and michael schmidt. just her and the president. no one recorded it except the times and maybe a personal

recorder. in a normal white house, the stenographers would be in there. i mean, she is by the president's side. i'm sure she has an impressive skill-set. we wouldn't know because the president seems to carry out his own communications objectives, but can you think of or tell us about a single example that your reporting has turned up of hope hicks going off script or deafiating from what the president has had her to do? >> no, not a single one. i can think of instances in which hope hicks has gone rogue sort of within the west wing and gone around other people before she was communications director. she was still very close to the president. she knew when he wanted to talk to somebody, a reporter, she could set that up. there were numerous instances where she'd arrange phone calls her bring reporters into the oval office without the then communications direct oppress secretary being aware of it but she has never run afoul of the president. for all her inexperience at the outset of the campaign, she was

loyal. this president values loyalty over experience above everything else. and she has learned on the fly. she never gets out over her skis. and she always does what she knows the president would want her to do. she never speaks a word that she knows the president wouldn't be okay with. and because of her proximity to him, i think that's the thing that makes her of the most value and interest to bob mueller. the fact that she has been party to pretty much everything that this president has talked about and has done since the beginning of the campaign. that's a span of nearly three years at this point. and she has been there the entire time. people come and go in the trump world. she has stayed put. her loyalty and closeness to the president makes her a very important witness. >> stephanie, we know that bob mueller sent over a list of aides that he wanted to talk to. and the thing that those aides had in common were they were mostly press aides and they were all fit people. they were all staffers who were on board air force one july 8th from that flight to germany back

to the u.s. it was on that flight where the president crafted this statement with a phony story that fell apart -- i don't think it even took days. it was within hours "the new york times" came up with e-mails and don jr. ended up in a jiujitsu e-mailing them himself that he'd already have proven to lie about the substance of the meetings. before the president got on air force one to leave germany, he had an unscheduled sidebar conversation with vladimir putin. his cover story was that they talked about russian adoption. so what are the chances these are all coincidences that donald trump told his advisers in the press that he and vladimir putin in an unscheduled sidebar conversation with only the russian translator present and then on a flight that he gets on hours later, he overrules some press staffers who thought transparency was a good approach so they weren't proven to be liars. he overrules them and dictates a

statement saying that don jr. was simply meeting with russians about adoption. >> well, i don't think it's a coincidence but i also think it's not very smart. this investigation is trying to determine whether there was collusion between the trump campaign and russia and influencing the election. and the -- this meeting that now don jr. admits that he spoke about with his father. so his father knows the content of the meeting. it's evidence of that collusion. so they are trying to cover it up. so when it becomes public this meeting occurred, the president has a distinct interest in making sure that the real topic of that meeting never becomes public and dictates a statement about adoption. so when i said they're not very smart, this is like death by a thousand cuts. all leading back to one simple fact that there was collusion. and i think the thing that is

ultimately going to bring them down is that they are step by step trying to obstruct the justice being sought here. and that is where mueller and his team are, i think, eventually going to nail them. >> i was 29. i worked in the white house. i wasn't communications director yet, but i took my job very seriously. i was honored to have it. but the white house in which i worked came under investigation for the leaking of -- i talked about this before. the leaking of valerie plame's name. and to a person i remember everyone -- i wasn't swept up in that because i was at the campaign. i didn't have clearances at the time, but i never would have lied to protect anyone. do you think that hope hicks, who i've never heard a single sort of person malign her character or her morality, and people can draw whatever conclusions they want by the jobs she's held in the trump

orbit. do you think she'd lie for the family of this president? >> she is very loyal to the president but there are consequences when she's lying to the fbi. we've already seen the two plea agreements that show if you lie to the fbi, it's difference than when you lie to the public or when you lie to the media. >> it's a crime. it's not a crime to lie to us. >> prison time attached to this. that's going to be a test of her loyalty. it comes to doing the right thing. i think that too often we look through a political lens when we're talking about telling the truth about something. certainly there is spin when you're trying to promulgate policy or having a debate. when it comes to a foreign government interfering in the election, there's such thing as patriotism. and i think she should tell the truth regardless of the circumstances. >> i think about the fact there are now four families with two generations, at least, under scrutiny. paul manafort and his son-in-law who have been questioned. you have donald trump and his son don jr.

you've got donald trump and his son-in-law jared kushner involving the kushner family. and you've got sort of these kids, these second generations. and you have mike flynn, of course, and his son. so you have four families with two generations ensnared in a criminal investigation, criminal probe. i wonder sort of what kind of man subjects all those young people to something that could ruin their lives. >> first off, this is why we have nepotism laws in the country. none of these kids should be in any of these -- any of these positions. certainly not the president's children, number one. we do know this about hope hicks. i don't know whether she will lie for donald trump to the special counsel with criminal liabilities attached. she certainly was complicit in the lie to the american people that she was a party to crafting aboard air force one. she certainly didn't resign her seat. i think it bears mentioning how abnormal all of this is.

the obama presidency at some level seems like it was an eon ago. but it wasn't. and for eight years -- eight years -- there were no indictments around the white house. there were no serious investigations of people around the president of the united states. we see in this administration 11 minutes in. 11 minutes. the national -- >> let me put that picture up. i've got it. here he is on his phone. >> good to go. >> the national security adviser in this moment of majesty -- >> so much for soaking it in. >> i've had the opportunity to sit there watching the inaugural of a president at close range. 11 minutes in, he's talking about a russian nuclear reactor deal in the middle east that he's going to monetize. the corruption, the stench, the dishonesty. the lying around this administration. it's unlike anything we've ever

seen in this country. ever in the modern era. this is how a banana republic functions. this is what you see in some central asian autocratic republic where it's the president's son-in-law and his son and the cousin and the uncle. everybody feeding at the public trough enriching themselves. it is disgusting. >> and one thing, i have worked in countries where that was the case. i worked in banana republics. and when you lose that integrity, when you lose that respect for the rule of law, it's really hard to get it back. >> yeah. >> it can take generations. >> we're just hitting pause. when we come back, we'll take you inside the hot war against bob mueller, a former fbi director, a vietnam war hero and veteran of democratic and republican administrations. also ahead -- claiming the moral high ground in the time of president bleep grabber. they sacrifice one of their own to get a clean shot at the gop. and fit to serve. a question that's been posed

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mueller's credibility is in the gutter tonight with these new discoveries. his conflicts of interest, his clear bias. the corruption are on full display. mueller is, frankly, a disgrace to the american justice system and has put the country now on the brink of becoming a banana republic. >> speaking of banana republics. and disgraces. sean hannity just one soldier in

the republican army taking on special counsel robert mueller. as "the washington post" writes, republican activists and lawmakers are engaged in a multifront attack on mueller's probe of possible connections between trump and russian agents. trying to curtail or stop the investigation as it moves further into trump's inner circle. mark meadows adding, quote, the question really is, if mueller was doing such a great job on investigating the russian collusion y could he have not found the conflict of interest within his own agency? well, when he did, he fired him. but not all members of the gop have taken up the cause. bob corker defending mueller. i can't imagine him being terminated. eli, is there any indication other than the president's twitter feed which drips with vitriol toward his own justice department, toward his own fbi, is calling these plays? >> i think the tweets are an

indication that what happened last week with the flynn indictment got in his head a little bit. they also believe he's internalized this idea that he's impervious to consequences that everything will work out in the end and he really does believe his attorney ty cobb when he says just cooperate. things will work out just fine. this will all be over soon. now there's obviously some tension within the president's legal team about the strategy and the president is having a lot of conversations with people outside the white house. steve bannon and other close friends who are warning him. you need to be defensive about this. this is serious. this is not just a collusion case. this is about obstruction of justice as well. and you really need to be defensive about this, whatever they think that means. but, clearly, the president sort of goes back and forth. he, obviously, wants this to go away. he does get agitated. the official white house line we heard it from sarah huckabee sanders is that the president is cooperating and asked specifically about his tweets about the fbi being in tatters,

she said that, no, he doesn't believe that. he thinks director ray is doing a great job. he's mainly referring to the former political leadership and jim comey. a nemesis of the president it's safe to say at this point. one thing bannon and these friends outside of the white house are urging him to do and sending the signals to other people in that network to do and like you saw with sean hannity, they are saying it's time to go after mueller and to smear mueller and to raise those questions about the credibility of this ongoing special counsel probe because they believe if charges are brought if they find an obstruction justice case that the president's way to get out of it is going to be if public opinion, those 35% of americans who are with him if those people still believe what trump is saying. and they discount mueller and believe that mueller and the media are on this witch hunt. if they can convince enough people of that, trump may survive whatever mueller finds.

>> i see republicans who are well aware of bob mueller's record. sean hannity knows what bob mueller has done for this country. leave his war record aside in vietnam. he protected this country after 9/11. and the hypocrisy of the party who clapped really, really, really loudly when donald trump gave his bat bleep crazy convention speech about law and order attacking the top law enforcement officials in the country is staggering to me. >> a couple points. prosecutors in this country have tremendous power. and they should not be beyond criticism. but this isn't criticism. this is a premeditated, deliberate, dishonest smear of robert mueller, a man who has spent his entire life in public service, who is known, if for nothing else, his probity and his rectitude. and we should talk about his war

record because he's put his life on the line for this country and he's conducted himself at all times as an honorable servant of the american people. he's a recipient of the bronze star with the valor. he's the recipient of the purple heart. he was wounded in combat for the united states. what you're seeing on fox news is from the type of propaganda that you would be subjected to if you lived in belarus or if you lived in russia. it is dishonest. it is purposeful. it is misleading. and to see republicans tie themselves to the mast on this to bring some disrepute to the conservative movement, to the republican party, the assault on the rule of law on our institutions. this will get worse before it gets better and there's a moment coming where these important institutions and who we are,

what we stand for, what we believe in, the defense of the inheritance that was given to us by generations who have sacrificed so much is coming to the line. and what you saw sean hannity doing, it's wrong in the most profound way. it's very, very wrong. >> it was pointed out to me that it's also dangerous. a former diplomat said -- he proceeded in that segment to put up the photographs of the entire mueller investigative team. men and women who have served this country who have made probably, you know, far less in government than they would have made in private practice. he put up all their pictures and all their names. but i want to show you the tweet that gets at what i was asking eli about whether this is a strategy being orchestrated from the presidency. donald trump tweeted this. after years of comey and with the phony and dishonest clinton investigation and more running the fbi, its reputation is in tatters, worst in history, but fear not. we'll bring it back to

greatness. here was chris rey responding to the president. >> there is no finer institution than the fbi and no finer people than the men and women wro work there and are its very beating heart. almost 37,000 men and women with a fierce commitment to protecting the american people and epiholding the rule of law in all 50 states and in about 80 countries around the world. men and women who face the darkest that life has to offer with unyielding integrity and honesty and dedication. and i am both humbled and inspired to be back in public service working alongside them. >> that was beautiful and powerful, but that he had to do that is a disgrace. >> this is a heartbreaking moment for republicans but for the country as well. this is the moment where the republican party, led by donald trump, is attacking the law enforcement community.

and let's not overlook that. it's easy to politicize the fbi. but this is a party and a president who has wrapped themselves in the law enforcement community. coming out of a lot of the cultural issues and the civil unrest across the country, donald trump was happy to wrap himself in the law enforcement community. and today, and this week, he is attacking the highest law enforcement agency in the country. and we can't overlook that. we also know the reason he's doing it. he's doing it because you know in the first segment we talked about the trump narrative that it was all about adoption when it comes to russia. the reality is adoption is one of the key negotiating points for sanctions. so that is the legal issue they're trying to obfuscate. >> even when he lies, he sort of shows his hand. >> the final piece is this. they keep turning back to hillary clinton. the last time hillary clinton held a public trust was almost five years ago. >> secretary of state. >> the reality is you can't do the what about to hillary clinton because it was five years when she held a public trust. donald trump holds a public

trust today and he's undermining law enforcement to protect and insulate himself. >> quick last word. >> the question is what will the republican party, what will the republican leadership in congress do when we get mueller's report? and when we learn what robert mueller has learned and i think that moment that steve is talking about will come, and we will see whether the party of lincoln is still -- >> you sure it will still be run by republicans on the house side? >> who knows. maybe not. >> we'll see. we'll see. still ahead -- al franken leaving the senate after a near universal push from his female colleagues. does it raise the question, do we need more women in charge? keyboard clacking ] [ mouse clicks, keyboard clacking ] [ mouse clicking ] [ keyboard clacking ] [ mouse clicking ] [ keyboard clacking ]

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united states senate. i, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that i am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the oval office, and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the senate with the full support of his party. but this decision is not about me. it's about the people of minnesota. >> senator al franken announcing he'll be stepping down after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct and just a day after 35 democratic senators called for his resignation. they "washington post" recognized how powerful these calls were and at a private event this weekend, president obama called for more women to be put in powers of position because men have been having

some problems these days. not to generalize, but women seem to have a better capacity than men do because of their socialization. let me start with stephanie and z zerlina. what do you make of president obama's comments which go further than most of the women who weighed in on the franken discussion, and do you think now democrats have a clear shot at the moral high ground with donald trump having his own me, too, moment with roy moore and the two of them basically saying, well, democracy and the votes of our bases will purge us of our sins? >> first, on whether there should be more women in charge, i think you and i probably both agree that, yes, they should be. especially in congress. we're about half of the u.s. population but only about 20% of the u.s. congress. and i think it's led to problems. not just on sexual harassment, which is a major societal issue

but also on a congressional agenda. and we have seen, and history has proven, that when there are more women at the table, when there are more women representing us in congress, we find compromise. we get things done. and we can use a little of that right now. in terms of what happens now for the sexual harassment debate and what is the franken resignation mean, i think that democrats are looking for a change on how we deal with sexual harassment. i also think that al franken remaining in the senate caused problems in terms of prosecuting the case against roy moore and the president of the united states. but the larger issue here, and i think these women speaking out yesterday, they are tired of dealing with it. if there is a zero tolerance policy in the democratic party and they wanted to make that clear. so now the issue is, as we run up to the election in alabama, are republicans and the people that elect these republicans

comfortable in supporting someone who was banned from a shopping mall, made sexual advances at a 14-year-old, has basically admitted to this in the past and want to put somebody like that in the u.s. senate? that will have reverberations for voters up and down the political spectrum in november of 2018 and november of 2020, absolutely. >> we've already seen a little bit of that in virginia. let me play you some laura ingraham. let's watch and talk about it. >> they've come down with a sudden case of feverish morality, but what it really is is nothing more than a political calculation by the dems. >> let's give laura ingraham that. let's do what they never do for us. let's give her the benefit of the doubt and say she's right. it's a smart political calculation. >> sometimes the politically smart thing is the right thing to do. in this moment you have to do

the right thing. you have to say that there is zero tolerance. there was a response to the election of donald trump nepwhite house line is, we won the election so this was litigated. it was not litigated. as i said before, they lost the popular vote by 3 million votes and won the electoral college. that is always going to be a fact. and i think that millions of women all over the country marched in january, 22,000 have called emily's list to say i'm going to run for office because they see donald trump in the white house and it disgusts them. i think that the millions of women in america who feel a sense of rage at the fact that a man can admit groping women on tape and be elected president of the country in which you live is going to put a lot of new women in the congress in 2018. >> so i think we're having a very important cultural conversation here about a couple of points. we're seeing varying degrees of sexual offenses, and they're all wrong. but there's a difference between harvey weinstein -- >> absolutely. >> and al franken. we're also seeing --

>> let me just underscore. they're all different. i mean the lumping together of all of them -- not even in the categories. they are all different. and that's been lost. >> what the democrats have gotten right, there are different responses. al franken fell on the grenade, accepted responsibility, apologized and ultimately resigned, fairly or not. there is one party that is listening to the culture in the country right now and it's the democrats. understand, we enter 2017 with a women's march in washington that had more people than donald trump's inauguration and we're leaving 2017 with this me, too, movement that is right for our culture and only the democrats are listening. the republicans are tone deaf. this is sitting in their lap in '18. what the democrats have done is said, republicans, your ball. what your going to do in '18? and what we're seeing right now is nothing. >> don't tell sean spicer there were more women at the women's march. new information about the president's fitness for office after another curious moment in

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i know there were a lot of questions on that. frankly, pretty ridiculous questions. the president's throat was dry. nothing more than that. he does have a physical scheduled for the first part of next year. the full physical that most president go through that will take place at walter reed and those records will be released by the doctor following that taking place. >> she was answering a shouted question about the president's health back in the news after he finished yesterday's jerusalem speech like this. >> let us rethink old assumptions and open our hearts and minds to possible and possibilities. and finally, i ask the leaders of the region, political and

religious, israeli and palestinian, jewish and christian and muslim to join us in the noble quest for lasting peace. thank you, god bless you. god bless israel. god bless the palestinians. and god bless the united states. thank you very much. thank you. >> you might remember back in october "the new york times" david brooks dropped this into a piece. the republican senators greeted trump on capitol hill and saw a president so repetitive and rambling. thought he might be suffering from early alzheimer's. then there was this from bob corker back in august. >> the president has not yet -- has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful. >> steve schmidt, i want to take all my personal views about donald trump and put them over here for a second and say, we

should all as americans have a right to know what's going on. >> 100%. if you were sitting on an airplane and you heard the pilot of the airplane address the passengers with the level of slurring we just heard from the president of the united states, i would immediately get off of the plane. and if i had to blow the door with the emergency exit to do it, i would do that, too. he commands america's nuclear arsenal. that is not a sore throat there. what's going on? i don't know what the answer is. i'm not a doctor, but it's not the first time. his behavior is erratic constantly. questions about his mental fitness have been raised by the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee. and what i'm listening to yesterday, just the audio of that, i find extremely worrisome. >> eli, how seriously -- i mean sarah huckabee sanders speaks from the podium. she's the public face. bob corker had a hearing a

couple weeks back about changing the way our nuclear arsenal is launched. and that came on the heels of now his pretty public body of concern about calling the white house adult day care, stating publicly the first person in the republican party to say that donald trump lacks the stability and the competence, two words that inside politics, inside the executive branch of government are extremely loaded. bob corker knows that. can you talk about whether there's anyone, not the public facing folks but your other sources who acknowledge this is a real concern? >> no one has really expressed it with a whole lot of seriousness about the president's physical health. when you talk about mental health, as a lot of his critics do publicly. when you talk to people who work around him, this is a guy. we've known his personality. it's been on display since the outset and from the american public for decades as long as donald trump has been a public media figure. people have seen the erratic behavior. most of the folks working for

this administration, they kind of shrug off those questions about mental health because they just say, look, this is a different guy. he's a little erratic, yeah. he sort of flies by the seat of his pants but they don't ever talk about mental health in the way a lot more people that were disturbed by his actions do. >> let me show you the side by side, it's pretty startling, and i saw our colleagues on "morning joe" do this. the president yesterday and the president in his tv appearance a few years back. watch. >> and finally, i ask the leaders of the region, political and religious, israeli and palestinian, jewish and christian and muslim to join us in the noble quest for lasting peace. >> they come over here, say sell their cars, vcrs, knock the hell out of our companies. i have tremendous respect for the japanese people. you can respect somebody that's beaten the hell out of you, but they are beating the hell out of this country.

>> god bless you. god bless israel. god bless the palestinians, and god bless the united states. >> eugene, this is not a -- this part of our examination of the president and the presidency has nothing to do with partisanship. it has nothing to do with what we think of his policies. this is a legitimate line of questioning that the white house at some point has to address. >> they'll have to answer questions. >> i have spoken to people who have known him for a long time and say, this is not the same guy. this is -- that he has changed. that he is less able to form a complete sentence. he's less able to stay on the subject at hand. there wasn't as much of this rambling that we get now. you listen to -- i mean, take away the slurring, you listen just to an interview of donald trump these days, and you see the mind just sort of

flittering, flitting this way and flitting that way and something comes past and he jumps on that and then maybe he finds his way back to the main point or not. and we shouldn't pretend that it's otherwise. that's what i see. maybe others see something different. >> we observed this in realtime the day that he talked about -- he used a racial slur and said pocahontas about elizabeth warren when he had set out to honor world war ii veterans, the navajo code talkers. and we said just that. we were watching in realtime. wow, what a bizarre and startling glimpse into his mind. but he weaponized hillary clinton's health against her. let's watch an ad he ran and talk about how this may be backfiring. >> hillary clinton failed every single time as secretary of state. now she wants to be president. hillary clinton doesn't have the fortitude, strength or stamina to lead in our world. she failed as secretary of state. don't let her fail us again.

>> i'm donald trump, and i approve this message. >> at the time that that ad came out it was a coordinated hit on her. rudy giuliani was on tv raising serious questions about her stamina and stamina and health and opened this door. >> a very gendered attack on hillary clinton to say they doesn't have the stamina which he reiterated in the debates. she doesn't have sort of the fortitude to be president. those are all quoted words to say, you cannot vote for a woman to be president of the united states and commander in chief, because that's not the appropriate place and position for a woman. i mean, that's the underlying subtext of that particular ad. more alarming in terms of the temperament of donald trump which is actually the moment in the debates when hillary did the shimmy? right? he said i have the best temp everiment andlaughed because we that's not true. talking whether or not he has the competence to be commander in chief we're talking about the

future of our existence. it's not a laughing matter even though it is a little fun toy see him garble the word "united states" end of his speech. maybe his dentures i don't know. but we deserve to know in that laughable medical report letter put out during the campaign saying he was an amazing, healthy avenger. it was ridiculous. >> dr. bornstein and he wrote, about a five-minute doctor's appointment while the limo waited outside. he wrote, if elected, mr. trump, i can state unequivocally will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency. obviously, dr. bornstein has nev never -- hit a pause. stay with us. u made to your plan strengthened your retirement score. so, that goal you've been saving for, you can do it. we can do this? we can do this.

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you reminded me of another incident that, where donald trump's, it wasn't his -- leaders around him? >> sure. listen, if dry throat is an excuse for slurred speech every college kid is celebrating today the president of the united states excuse. we saw in the g-7 meeting in sicily, six of search walked up and he asked for a golf cart. grueling to be president of the united states. we see the wear and tear on the human person that is the president, but we also have a right to know about the health of our president.

>> stephanie, maybe his bone spurs were acting up. what do you make of the public displays of the president maybe not being up to, physically, at least, the job? >> well, that and cory lewendowskis book saying his regular meal is two big macs, a filet of fish or something like that. i think there are no more important points than the health of the presidency. i take from sarah sanders briefing he's going to walter reed next year. they'll give him a thorough exam and insist much of that be public. if the white house prevents important things, that the pu y lic should know it will make its way out there, i have a feeling. >> we'll be right back. ♪ give ancestrydna, the only dna test

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house and the white house still having sex harassment assault charges hacking over the president? >> brush right by it. sarah huckabee sanders said the american people litigated the president's behavior by winning the election and don't feel there is to answer those questionsly inmore. thinking about 2016. see what happens heading towards 2018. >> if virginia is any sign, could be ominous. my thanks to my guests. that does it for our hour. i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. chuck? >> hi, nicolle. some day you need have your show in this studio, so we can combine. >> i would love that. >> all right. if it's thursday, the president just wrapped up a meeting with chuck and mention that. >> tonight -- are democrats and the president hurdling towards the shutdown and would they really want it any other way? >> democrats have never supported shutting down governme