and not outside the door. these are sort of bubbling up but i think more indicative of how people are starting to throw each other under the bus. as bannon is seeing that he's been distanced from the whourks he is distancing himself. and that explosive statement from the white house is trying to discredit bannon. much in the same way they've tried to discredit anyone attacking them. >> we'll have to let that be the last word. that's going to do it for me this hour. my thanks to everyone on the panel. i'll see you back here tomorrow at 3:00. find me on twitte twitter @chrisjansing. "deadline white house" with nicolle wallace starts now. >> hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. i've covered the trump white house every day since inauguration and the trump campaign every day before that. today is a day that can only be described one way. total meltdown. in conversations with four individuals in and closely aligned with the white house, insiders describe a president who is beyond furious and aides

who are frantic to know what's been written about them in a scathing new book by michael wolff called "fire and fury inside the trump white house." it's based on 200 interviews and more than a dozen visits to the white house complex. one of his key sources was dismissed chief strategist steve bannon. among the most damaging revelations are ones like this about russia and that infamous trump tower meeting with russian lobbyists. the three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside trump tower in the conference room on the 25th floor with no lawyers. they didn't have any lawyers. even if you thought this was not treason us, unpatriotic or bad bleep, and i happen to think it's all of that, you should have called the fbi immediately. and this one about potential financial crimes. you realize where this is going. this is all about money laundering. mueller chose senior prosecutor andrew weissmann first, and he's

a money laundering guy. their path to bleep trump goes right through paul manafort, don jr. and jared kushner. it's as plain as a hair on your face. the president responding with a lengthy statement suggesting steve bannon was less important than he would have people believe. and that he's crazy. quote, steve bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. when he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. steve was a staffer who worked for me after i had already won the nomination by defeating 17 candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the republican party. steve pretends toobt war with the media which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the white house leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. it is the only thing he does well. steve was rarely in a one on one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with whom

he helped write phony books. the subject overwhelmed the white house press briefing today. sarah huckabee sanders facing questions like this. >> did the president's son donald trump jr. commit treason? >> i think that is a ridiculous accusation and one i'm pretty sure we've addressed many times from here before. if that's in reference to comments made by mr. bannon, i'd refer you back to the ones he made previously on "60 minutes" where he called the collusion with russia about this president a total farce. >> the president's statements suggest that steve bannon had very little influence in the white house. but the president himself elevated him to the same level as the chief of staff and put him on the national security counsel. how do you reconcile that? >> i wouldn't say he elevated him to the same level of chief of staff. and in the actions that steve took, the president was clear that it doesn't have a lot of influence on him or the decision-making process throughout his time here at the white house. >> joining us from 1600 pennsylvania avenue, "washington post" white house reporter

ashley parker, republican strategist and msnbc contributor steve schmidt. and with us at the table, zerlina maxwell, direct aror of programming for sirius xm. elise jordan, "time" magazine columnist and former aide in the george w. bush was and joel bennison is back, former adviser to the clinton campaign. ashley parker, so i heard from four folks in and close to this white house. i heard that the president was, words i can't say on tv. i heard the statement released was dialed back from his gut reaction if you will, and one of the first things they did was produce those logs that sarah huckabee sanders revealed. it was discovered of the 17 visits that the author of the book michael wolff made, at least 14 of those were instances where he was waved in, which is the process for applying for a

security clearance for a guest by steve bannon. what do you know or what have you learned in that briefing and since then about how shocked the white house really seems to be by what steve bannon has had to say about the president and his former white house colleagues? >> that's a good question, and i heard many things that were similar to what you picked up. the white house had known this book was coming for a while and they were intermittently nervous about it. but it landed like a ton of bricks this morning when the excerpts started leaking out. as you pointed out, the president was furious. one interesting thing is even when our reporting shows on a number of issues that the president is furious and steaming and fuming, the white house often pushes back and said he wasn't that angry on a number of issues. it was striking to see sarah huckabee sanders from the podium say president trump was furious and disgusted. they canceled meetings, scrambled themselves and working on coming up with a public

relations strategy to undermine and trash steve bannon. i think we saw that. >> the other thing that seemed to be going on today, ashley parker, and i'm sure you were on the receiving end of much more of this was that everyone was in typical trump fashion concerned about their own image. concerned about what had been written about them. that seems to underscore the central and fundamental crisis of the trump presidency. that he is not loyal to any of them and that in a moment of crise, i and i've been through tons of them. steve schmidt has been through tons of them. all of us are campaign veterans. the central problem of his presidency is that at a moment of crisis, they're not worried about him. they're worried about themselves. >> that's exactly right. the president is someone who demands absolute loyalty, but doesn't necessarily always return it in kind. and you see his aides and advisers behaving that way on a range of issues from the russia probe to an unflattering book. they're all worried, what is my visibility. what do i have to do with this? one thing that's quite savvy

about their tragedy is that by dismissing this entire book as pure fiction, it sort of ale alleviates some of the problems for them if they're quoted as saying or doing something unflattering to the president they can go to him and say, we all agree this book is simply not true. >> steve schmidt, our friend matt miller tweeted something that seemed to me to get at the heart of why this book matters. he tweeted the rivalry and dysfunction inside team trump has always been mueller's biggest asset. if they can't maintain a united front for a book, imagine what an investigative counsel is able to do. we worked on presidential campaigns that were the fodder for three books. many books were written about sarah palin. you and i came out well in some of them and terribly in others. but what never happened was a fundamental flipping on the principle. if you think about scott mcclellan, he was my closest,

sort of the example that was given to me by a couple of folks inside the trump white house. the difference in my mind is that nothing is sacred for this team. when you read through page after page of michael wolff's retelling, and even the note about how this book came to be. things that were shared off the record, which is usually a tactic people like us, people like all of us deploy to sort of shed light. it was weaponized. and this was a team of people. this is still a team of people very much at war with one another. >> absolutely. whether it's amrosa, whether it's this newest feud in the relate tv show that's the west wing of the whourks we see the utterly sham bollic nature of donald trump's management style, the personalities of people who have positions of power around an office where life and death decisions are made. and today my question would be,

who is representing america today? we have a situation where the president is engaged in digital mccarthyism with his implications of the intelligence community as some kind of conspiracy. we have revolution on the streets in iran. we have his nuclear blustering with regard to north korea. his antagonism toward another nuclear power, pakistan. the world is boiling. the president continues his assault on fundamental institutions of the government and, of course, we're all distracted today by the never-ending soap opera of the quality of characters that surround this man in the oval office. at a dangerous hour in the country. so we see so many things through this, not the least of which is the damage and the distraction caused by this president's thin skin, by his narcissism and, frankly, by the freak show of people that he's assembled

around the oval office. >> elise jordan, i guess as a former west wing staffer with, you know, we had the highest level of security clearances. we dealt with a president who was constantly under attack. george w. bush had very low approval ratings because the thing he's had done were among democrats, very unpopular. but never did the west wing staff turn on him or one another. i cannot imagine -- i cannot come up with an analogy in the bush era to the sort of politics of personal destruction among one another. and i cannot adequately articulate and many of the conversations were off the record but the reaction today. not one person called me and said donald trump deserves better. he should fire everyone. not one person. and the staffer in me sort of fumed at what steve is saying. who is looking out for the country? >> in donald trump, no one has loyalty to him, even those who

are closest to him. at the end of the day, they have no loyalty. i think back to the george w. bush white house and even in the days of the leak investigation, the aftermath of hurricane katrina, everyone was so loyal to the mission, to the man, to the cause, to service. and there wasn't this back-fighting going on where literally knives are pulled out at the trump white house for everyone. and that's something that's captured in this book about how so many of these top advisers demean the president on a regular basis. it's like, if you really do think he's a moron, if you think he's unfit if you think he's unhinged and crazy, why are you working for him and attaching your reputation to him? >> and joel, some of the more serious allegations in here, it doesn't matter what sarah huckabee sanders says about them. she calls it a fiction but it doesn't matter because just about everybody in here will be asked to testify under oath with the risk of jailtime or

prosecution or perjury if hay l they lie. if they lie to bob mueller, they'll go to jail. let me go through some of what's in michael wolff's book about russia. here's a piece about mike flynn. mike flynn had been told by friends it was not a good idea to take $45,000 from the russians for a speech. well, it would only be a problem if we won, he assured them. you start at the beginning of this book and there's a scene about kellyanne conway trying to line up a job for herself in television which was something i had heard second hand at the time. >> all of us did. >> right. so i wonder if you can take us back in time. you were on the other side. you thought you were going to win. but imagine the inverse of that. knowing -- these folks thought they knew they were going to lose so they did things like take $45,000 for the russians for a speech that would only be a problem if we won. they are acknowledging to michael wolff had having won,

certainly a problem to have been paid by the russians. >> look, everybody knew that they thought they were going to lose. they were talking openly about it with journalists, people like yourself, colleagues. >> we were all here in the green room. everyone's phones were blowing up from the expectations game. >> so what you have here is a ship that has run aground long ago. this lack of loyalty is going to play out over the next few days in a way that is going to affirm, i think, a lot of what's said in the book. people are going to talk about this now. they're going to validate it. you'll not have a lot of people in that white house backing up sarah huckabee sanders. they'll be backing up themselves and covering their own tails because this is not a president who has ever made them feel like they matter. he's treated them like he treated bannon. this is a man he put in the white house as his chief strategist. people who actually were chief strategists, karl rove, david

axelrod. he is going to come out of it with a lot less and it's going to be compounded, i believe in the next few days by the people who are quoted blindly in that book and will continue to talk about this. >> let me get into more about what's in this book about the russia investigation. trump legal spokesperson seeing no good outcome and privately confiding that he believed the meeting on air force one represented a likely obstruction of justice -- quit. the jarvanka side would put it out that he was fired. this is at the heart of the obstruction of justice investigation being conducted on a parallel track to the investigation into whether or not there was collusion between trump's campaign and russia. and this seems to me that again, we have no way of knowing if what michael wolff writes is the truth but we know -- it is a known known that bob mueller knows whether or not that is true. and that seems like a damning piece of information in both the timeline and the fact pattern

about that cover story that was told from aboard air force one. >> absolutely. and jared and ivanka were also on the fire comey side of that debate going on where bannon was on the other side. it's clear that jared and ivanka were behind some of the more problematic decisions because they're amateurs. they don't know in terms of what decision making when you're in public service you can do and what you cannot do because they didn't consult the appropriate lawyers to figure out what they can and cannot do and they have no idea because they've never done it before. so when you look at the timeline, certainly in terms of the june 9th meeting and then lying to the public after creating this statement of air force one, that, to me, seems like a consciousness of guilt. there is a reason why you're lying. there's a reason papadopoulos lied. there's a reason why michael flynn lied. why did they lie and what did they lie about? when you're looking at all of these put together, it's the fact that trump knew about what

was going on behind the scenes with russia interfering and that is what we'll find out at the end of this. mueller is going to give us all of the evidence to back that up. that's where all of this is pointing. >> ashley parker, you've done some great reporting on that. you and your colleagues at "the washington post" have done the best reporting on what went down on that flight. they were coming back from europe. they got the account from two publications. "the new york times," everyone was chasing this account of don jr.'s meeting with russians, the ones we read steve bannon's quote about and very colorful language. this flight is at the heart of the legal exposure for the six aides listed by bob mueller. many of them press aid whoes had jobs like mine and steve's and elise's. this trip, this flight could be the difference between going to jail and not going to jail,

getting fired and not getting fired, and it would seem to me that everyone's account of what went down on that flight is very fraught for everyone that was on that manifest. do you have any reporting today that recasts any of what you understood at the time about what took place on that flight? >> that's a very good question. it's certainly something we're curious about. when we were reporting that story and even now today, it's a topic that white house aides are incredibly, incredibly skittish about and hesitant to even address in the most oblique manner. but, look, our understanding is that what we reported is absolutely true and we also know that this is one of the key issues that mueller and his team are looking into. just how that statement that we understand the president dictated for his son to put out came to be. >> ashley, let me ask you one more thing before we let you go. you have lots of reporting to do. and this is sort of the

journalism part of an investigation. this opened up many more threads. i wonder what you make of the use of the word treason. it seemed deliberate. seemed loaded. and it seemed to be the sort of thing that would risk everything for steve bannon. it would risk the whole media empire he seems to share with donald trump and his best and closest allies in the right wing media. it would risk fracturing that trump base that donald trump and bannon are sort of the two-headed monster that rains on top of that base. why would he suggest that the president's son committed treason. >> so i think the use of that word conveys two things. the first is sort of his utter disdain and lack of respect for the president's son and also the president's son-in-law jared kushn kushner. steve is a smart guy. he's well aware of what saying something like that means and will do in the public perception and with his relationship with the president. and we're seeing that all born out right now. the second thing that underscores is that steve

bannon, for all of his savvy and political know-how, is someone who simply can't help himself. and this may be the biggest time so far. it's not the first to see bannon say something to journalists or to the media that started a firestorm. in one case it's what got him fired from the white house. another book, josh green's book, and steve bannon is a chatty guy and likes to chat and use fun, colorful words. >> we love he and she who like to chat, and we love he and she who use colorful words. ashley parker, thank you for starting us off. when we come back, more from that explosive tell-all. bannon unloads on the trump kids and wolff reveals that trump didn't believe he would win and also didn't want to. >> and what triggered the national security investigation into trump/russia ties. spoiler alert, it wasn't the dossi dossier. and button size. yes, we're going there.

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it's not just donald trump steve bannon attacked. he also threw some punches in ivanka and jared's way. she was a movement on the campaign. she became a white house staffer and that's when people suddenly realized she's dumb as a brick. she has a look but as far as understanding how the world works and what politics is and what it means, nothing. once you expose that yorks lose such credibility.

jared just kind of flits in and does the arab stuff. wow. steve, elise and joel are still with us. steve, i want to get into something else with you. so much of this is steve bannon's effort and maybe he envisioned a second career as a psychiatrist. but so much of it is psychological analysis of jared kushner, of his father, his father's prosecution by chris christie. jared kushner, he attaches to jared kushner deep distrust of the fbi. this is from wolff's book. they write about charlie kushner going crazy because they get down deep in his bleep about how he's financed anything. the rabbis with the diamonds and all the bleep coming out of israel. he's frozen on 666 fifth avenue. when it goes under, he's wiped, gone, done, over, toast. these are unsubstantiated

attacks. nbc news has not corroborated anything that steve bannon alleges to michael wolff in this book. the white house denies a lot of what has been said about jared and ivanka. i wonder if you can weigh in on the optics of trying to smear and malign, not just the man you work for, but his kids. >> there's that famous picture of steve bannon's apartment that he vacated. and the acid that was poured all over the bath tub. it was a bit of a news story when it talked about the vandalism he had done on his way out of this apartment. and i think when you look at steve bannon, his role in american life, his role in american politics, he's a van l vandal. it's in his nature. like the scorpion on the back of the proverbial frog crossing the river and the scorpion stings the frog. the frog says why did you do

that? we'll both drown. the scorpion says it's because it's in my nature. at the end of the day, bannon has proclaimed himself a leninist. he likes to tear things down, burn them down and he's score settling on the way out of the white house. but it is significant that many of the things that white house spokespeople have said over and over again are not true. now we have for the first time steve bannon saying, in fact, they are true. and one of the things you, elise and i and other people who have been on this show who have had the honor of working in the west wing around the president of the united states, when we've been asked, what will you do if a foreign hostile power reached out for a meeting? we all said we'd call the fbi immediately. i'm just struck by that steve bannon's instinct also that we finally understand from someone inside that orbit that we're not the crazy ones. we're not the ones who think

it's somewhere between inappropriate and treasonous. is they get it on the inside, too. so you just see this confederacy of self-interest in this west wing. this dysfunction. this toxic mix of celebrity/reality show culture and, again, this is around an office where life and death decisions are made. and at this hour, we have real crises that are getting bigger and more complicated around the world, and this is what the president of the united states is focused on. >> there's an excerpt in here about the intelligence briefings that took place within candidate trump. it was during his early intelligence briefings held soon after he captured his nomination that alarm signals first went off among his new campaign staff. he seemed to lack the ability to take in third party information. or maybe he lacked the interest. whichever, he seemed almost phobic about having formal

demands on his attention. he stonewalled every written page and balked at every explanation. he's a guy who really hated school, says bannon, and he's not going to start liking it now. i remember hearing a similar account when i asked why before the debates he couldn't be more conversant, why he couldn't get beyond i'm going to destroy isis and speak to how he would go -- it seemed like an opportunity. we all know. i mean, coming down as someone who is hard on terrorism is an obvious opportunity for anyone running for president. hillary clinton had a lot of national security experience. but something like this explanation was given to me that he can't read anything. i sent over a book that listed the bin laden road to damascus and this person laughed at me. there's no reason donald trump will ever read this. he only reads press clippings about himself. it seems if there was alarm this early on, it's almost a miracle it's at the one-year mark from the election that revelations like this come out. >> but it's not the first time

we've heard similar revelations. just in the recent reporting there was an incredible "new york times" summation of the first year foreign policy by mike landler where it describes chancellor merkel and the german officials who dealt with president trump and how they were shellshocked by his complete inability to grasp the issues at hand and the gravity of the office. and a similar rendition of this story was told in "the new yorker" about his engagements with china. and how the chinese officials realized that they could very easily appeal to his ego and that he didn't care about the actual policies so they could just run end game around him. >> it's also in susan glasser's piece who makes another great report. it's not only about his ability and unwillingness and lack of interest in policy matters but you can tie that to the crises we face. that iran right now is a tinderbox. that north korea, the white house press secretary today out of one side of her mouth said

the leader of north korea is the one mentally ill, not donald trump but tweet taunting him will have no impact. they're incoherrent of foreign policy. >> he has a complete lack of understanding of how to work with your allies. south korea is sending a signal, maybe we should talk about this situation. they are most proximate to where the missiles purpose he's alienating south korea now. he's alienated our allies in europe. he has never had a respect for the job, the knowledge it takes. remember, this goes back to shutting down the transition. he wasn't interested in the details of this. has no idea how vast this was. i know people who are in the white house when he went in for his first visit and he was clearly taken aback when people were telling him how big the operation is. if you don't wantgo to school quickly when coming in as a novice, he's going to implode day after day, alienating the

people he needs. we're way past the point of thinking he's going to get this right. he just isn't. he doesn't encourage loyalty. not intelectually curious and it's impossible to think in this world, in this environment that we have a president of the united states sitting there who was so ignorant about the world and so incapable of deal with geopolitical threats with our allies. he knows nothing about getting deals done, how to bring people to the table. zero. and we're at a perilous moment because he's in that oval office right now. >> add to that dynamic the fact that he distrusts his own political appointees. the war he's engaged in against the justice department is a war against racial brand, rod rosenstein, jeff sessions because they are the four people who run the justice department. they are lifelong republicans. they served for past republican presidents. and if you look at sort of the things coming out on twitter and assume that like-minded people, people who think like rachal brand and rod rosenstein and

jeff sessions but who are at liberty to speak. talk about his hot war against the justice department is against his own appointees, life-long conservatives trying to execute the agenda he ran on. >> that's why we've seen the quantity of leaks we've seen because when he is attacking the intelligence community, they are going to go to reporters and essentially give them nuggets that tell the public the great state of alarm we should have about this walking, talking national security threat. the thing that bothers me and has bothered me is that donald trump essentially ran for president on the presumption he knew what he was talking about. even though there was no evidence to back that up. he didn't speak in substance. he's talking about foreign policy in platitudes. he's saying we're going to win, not lose. everything is going to be big, not small. i have a secret plan to fight isis. when we're talking about life and death as steve schmidt mentioned earlier, we need to know the details. the devil is in the details.

i don't think he should get the prezumpsumption that he underst the policy details. >> steve schmidt, let me give you the last word on this conversation. this was described to me by two white house insiders today that he does not behind the scenes pretend to understand policy. it's explained to him, but the hurdle isn't that he pretends to understand policy. it's that he is indifferent to policy. he simply wants to win. and republicans are at a fork in the road right now about what to do next. it's my understanding that donald trump is largely ambivalent about whether to pursue paul ryan's desire to do something on welfare, whether to pursue a bipartisan path like the senate would like him to do, on infrastructure and that is rooted in complete and utter indifference. >> well, i would say that this book is just one more drop in the ocean of evidence that suggests that donald trump is utterly unfit to sit in the oval office and serve as president of

the united states. and there's a larger implication here, and i do want to talk about his attacks on the rule of law and on the american justice system for a moment. when he talks about the deep state, this is a conspiracy theory. and at the heart of all autocratic and totalarian regimes, at a foundational level is the presence of this conspiracy. the insidious group of hidden, evildoers who are working to undermine the protector of the people. the protector of the nation. this is fundamental. it's autocratic one on one. so it's a much bigger deal than just the total incoherence and incongruity of his attacks on his own appointees. it's a much more significant attack. it's on fundamental institutions to the country. it's digital mccarthyism.

it's alleging that inside the american government there is a fifth column working against the american people. and he does this all for the purpose of consolidating and increasing his political power. and at the same time, we see a republican majority that has made its bed. they have bought into the cultive personality. they have abdicated their article one responsibilities. and i think they're going to have a hell of a price to pay come november 2018, but a lot of damage can happen to this country between then and now. >> really quickly, do you agree with john fedoritz that there will be a wave in the midterms against the republicans? >> i think there's going to be a wave election, tsunami-like out of the movie "armageddon" when the asteroid hits. that type of tsunami. one that hits the pacific coast and doesn't stop until it nearly covers off the peaks of the

rocky mountains. big tsunami coming. >> joel is smiling. when we come back, the fo d founders of the firm that authored the trump/russia dossier. (burke) at farmers, we've seen almost everything

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the founders of fusion gps, the firm behind the explosive trump/russia dossier out with an op-ed today in "the new york times" detailing their investigation and the information they have testified to before three congressional committees. saying they hire british investigator christopher steele whose sources in russia were not paid who reported on the extensive and now confirmed effort by the kremlin to help elect mr. trump president. mr. steele saw this as a crime in progress and decided he needed to report it to the fbi. they also weighed in on what originally set off the

government's investigation. we don't believe the steele dossier was the trigger for the fbi's investigation into russian meddling. as we told the senate judiciary committee in august, our sources said the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the trump camp. the founders voiced their frustration the committees have not released full transcripts of their testimony. now chairman of both the senate intel and senate judiciary committees, senator grassley and burr, said they are open to additional public testimony from the founders. nbc news intelligence and national security reporter ken dilanian joins the conversation now. ken, i was dying to to you last night when this broke. i was filling in at 11:00. and i want to know two things. one, how is it possible from today forward for republicans aligned with the trump white house to continue their phony story that somehow the dossier was this corrupted piece of

information that set this whole thing in motion? >> that is a great question. but they are continuing to do that. the republicans sent out a blast e-mail today basically pointing out that fusion gps at the same time they were working on this dossier was also working for some russian defends in a new york case involving the magnitsky act and raising questions about whether that meant that russian disinformation contaminated the dossier. that's all true but fusion gps' story is that they kept those things completely separate. there are a lot of interesting things in the op-ed. as you said, it's been obvious to those of us who closely follow this that the dossier wasn't what triggered the investigation. by the time christopher steele went to the fbi in late july to his fbi contact in rome, they'd already received information from foreign intelligence agencies about troubling contacts between trump campaign operatives and russians. the other interesting thing is that in this op-ed, glen simpson

and his colleague talked about things they told the committee about a potential mann laundering. this is where the bannon story links up with the fusion gps story. we told congress that from manhattan to sunny isles beach florida and toronto to panama we found widespread evidence that trump and his organization worked with a wide range of dubious russians and raem arrangements that often raised questions about money laundering. republicans in congress didn't seem very interested in that and the only bank records subpoenaed are the fusion gps bank records. >> this seems like a really important point. let's stop the tape and play jim jordan questioning jeff sessions from november and laying out this, what is now clearly the whackadoodle conspiracy theory. >> we know the clinton campaign, the democrat national committee paid for through the law firm, paid for the dossier. we know that happened. and it sure looks like the fbi

was paying the author of that document and it sure looks like a major political party was working with the federal government to then turn in opposition research document that some national inquirer story into an intelligence document, take that to the fisa court to get permission to spy on americans. >> i have a book agent for him. always looking for great thrillers. what i want to ask you is serious. we know now from what's become public, what was in "the new york times" over the holiday that it was the -- an interaction between george papadopoulos and an australian diplomat that -- and a cable sent by the australian diplomat through the appropriate government channels back through his national security apparatus through perhaps the state department and put into the system of the u.s. national security apparatus. we know from testimony from intelligence officials given way before this was public knowledge

that what you said is true. there were interactions on the radar. we know from intercepts that were shared with don mcgahn and the white house once they became president, once they were sworn in. why keep up the scam and the lies about what put into motion and secondly, why don't they care that russia meddled in our election. >> those are all great questions, nicolle, i can't answer. it is perfectly responsible to investigate the role of fusion gps which, after all, was hired by the democratic party to do opposition research. >> only after it was hired by the republican party to do opposition research. >> that's true. and it's perfectly appropriate to ask, who were christopher steele's resources. we know the answer to these questions. we've been looking at this for months. christopher steele was a respected former british intelligence operative who had credibility with the fbi because he worked on their investigation into international soccer. we know that the -- in fact,

what jim jordan said about the fisa warrant, i've not seen any evidence the dossier played any role in the fbi getting a fisa warrant. i'd like to see some because i report is seen any. these questions have been asked and answered and it's mystifying to me why republicans -- some republicans in congress think they can get away with stringing this out. who are they fooling with this? i guess there's a certain audience, and we know who they are out there, who believe this stuff. but it's mystifying to me. >> steve schmidt, weigh in on the attempt to smear and sort of depict as corrupt the law enforcement and national security apparatus of this country. >> well, it's extraordinary to watch. republican members of congress engaged in a premeditated, deliberate smearing of robert mueller. the american justice system, the department of justice, the intelligence communities. these republicans are fakeless to their oath, to the

constitution. they have been overwhelmed by fidelity to this cultive personality that has sprung up around donald trump. that has propagated every evening on what's become the u.s. equivalent of state tv on fox news. it is deliberately dishonest. and they seem utterly unconcerned with the reality that a hostile foreign power, russia, interfered in the american election which, of course, is the consensus estimate of the entirety of the intelligence community. we know that everybody around the president who has been asked a question about russia has lied about it. the national security adviser has been indicted over lying about it. but the republicans seem utterly unconcerned and unable to distinguish this fact. it was not an attack on the

hillary clinton campaign or the democratic national committee. an attack on our elections process is an attack on the united states of america, our sovereignty. we are a government of the people, by the people, for the people. we are a government that chooses its leaders through a process where the voters get to decide. uninfluenced by hostile foreign powers. it's a profound abrogation of their duty, and they will, i suspect, pay a very high price for it. >> yeah, not to bring this conversation down from your elevated place, steve, but it is also dumb politics. ken dilanian, thank you for spending some time with us. up inext, the most alarming of the tweets the president fired off and the concerns they are raising about size and fitness.

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today's tell-all, president trump was a busy guy on twitter yesterday. among his attacks, took off after the media, credit for no commercial airline debts last year. i actually saw, the campaign, trying to defend that on another network and it was unbelievable. okay. if you're bored, look it up. and engaged, on a serious note in sabre rattling with north korea with this quote. north korean leader kim jong-un stated the nuclear button is on his desk at all times. will someone from his food depleted regime inform him i have a nuclear button but it's much bigger and powerful one than his and my button works. during the white house briefing last hour sarah huckabee sanders -- i can't believe we have to read this -- deprotect it -- deflected questions. sanders sufr erers suggested pe question the fitness of the

other guy's president. kim jong-un. why would somebody taunt the president like that? >> i don't think it's taunting. i think it's dangerous to ignore the previous threats. 23 the previous administration had done anything and the dealt with north korea or dealt with iran instead of sitting by doing nothing we wouldn't have to clean up their mess now. >> sorry. i did call on her. >> a taunting tweet. sow say he has a larger nuclear button. >> i think it's just a fact. >> what about the nuclear button that is actually bigger -- >> the president is well aware how the process works and what the capacity of the united states is sand i can tell you it's greater than that of north korea. >> elise, this brought me right back to hands -- my hands -- this is not about the size of his nuclear arsenal. it never is, because if it was, you know, the might, the military might of this country

is beyond question, and if you want to stick with the analogy, for he, for whom, there is no question, they don't talk about the size of anything. >> oh, this is just yet another example of president trump tweeting about north korea. the scariest foreign policy op stickle and challenge that every president, president barack obama, president george w. bush faced at the end of his administration treated it so casually as if it's something that he should joke about. that's the most disturbing point for me. that millions of lives are potentially at stake. this is going to make iraq look like a small war, if there is war with north korea, and nuclear weapons are used, and donald trump still is tweeting personalized insults at kim jong-un, something white house advisers really tried to steer him away from. don't make it personal with kim

jong-un, yet he still proceeds. >> as elise said it is the grisliest military scenario. show we have to use our military might, i guess what he's suggesting talking about big buttons that work it is the grisliest scenario. there are tens of thousands of american lives at risk. there are potentially hundreds of thousands of south korean lives at risk. a white house adviser today told me that when a tweet like this goes out, members of the foreign policy team do go in to the oval office and explain, we don't care about kim jong-un's feelings, and you probably didn't insult the size of his button, but you made south korea, back to your point, joel, very nervous. >> right. i think that that's what keeps me up at night. the fact that the president doesn't quite grasp the enormity of his responsibility. not just to the american public but also globally. i think that it's irresponsib irresponsible -- that's an

understatement. very irresponsible to tweet something like this so casually, but also -- >> we're having a -- isn't it gross? it's gross to be talking about the size of your button. can we naught throughout? it's disgusting t. is disgusting and we we need more women in public life. if women raise to this level in government we have to act like adults and the president is unfortunately failing. >> no woman would ever talk about the size of her button. >> no woman would talk about a size of a button, particularly in the context of nuclear north korea. >> i question if very few individuals male or female, would joke casually about north korea, if they are in the seat of the oval office. >> so deadly serious question, joel. sorry to do this to you. bob corker repeatedly said that the president lacks the competence and stability. this seems like exhibit d., e., f., whatever want to call it. >> well, i think he's proven it, that he does lack the competence. the question sand i think for

both democrats and for republicans at this point, frankly, in particular, why are they so silent? have we heard from any of them today? have we heard from any of them in 24 hours? jeff flake and bob corker are not enough. you are 1307responsible elected officials watching things going on disgracing the presidency and our country around the world. our approve marating across the world has tumbled in bear lay year. when is enough a enough? >> sneaking in another break. don't go anywhere. we'll be right back. macular deg, i wanted to fight back. my doctor and i came up with a plan. it includes preservision. only preservision areds 2 has the exact nutrient formula recommended by the national eye institute to help reduce the risk of progression of moderate to advanced amd backed by 15 years of clinical studies. that's why i fight. because it's my vision. preservision.

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short trip, what's your sense what happens to steve bannon as result of this book? >> look, i think what was inevitable is they would all turn on each other. that's happening. who knows? is steve bannon going to be up in new hampshire running against donald trump in the breitbart primary? we'll wait and see. >> pop some popcorn. my thanks to all of you. that does it for our hour. i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. hi, chuck. >> hi, nicolle. you can't make it up. quite the season premiere. >> did you read it all? my eyes are burning. >> it's like i don't think "house of cards" could have concocted a better season premiere. anyway, if it's wednesday, is this any way to run a country? >> tonight -- the bannon betrayal. >> furious, disgusted would probably certainly fit when you matsch such outrageous claims. >> in a n