>> hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. down in washington, the trump white house is still digging out from a crushing dump of unflattering an eecdotes about president trump and his dysfunctional white house. as aides and allies pick apart individual passages from michael wolff's new book "fire & fury -- inside the trump white house" which was recorded from two dozen interviews and more than a hundred visits to the trump white house. trump now issuing a cease and desist letter to wolff, steve bannon and the book's publisher. the white house call the book fiction but reporters who cover the trump white house confirm that much of the reporting from wolff corroborates some accounts they've either reported on or learned about on record or off the record from some of the very same aides. in a new account from the hollywood reporter today, wolff writes this about the president's tendency to repeat

himself. quote, everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. it used to be inside of 30 minutes he'd repeat word for word an expression for expression the same three stories. now it was within ten minutes. indeed, many of his tweets were the product of his repetitions. he just couldn't stop saying something. this description matches something a source close to the president told me today that he'd noticed over the last five to six years that trump indeed repeats himself. it also matches an account senators who met with trump shared with "new york times" columnist david brooks in october. brooks wrote this. quote, republican senators greeted trump on capitol hill and saw a president so repetitive and rambling, some thought he might be suffering from early alzheimer's. and members of both political parties have publicly questioned trump's fundamental fitness to serve. >> 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. >> i don't know when i've listened and watched something like this from a president that i found more disturbing. >> are you questioning his fitness? >> yes, i do. i worry about, frankly, you know, access to the nuclear codes. >> here was sarah huckabee sanders today on the question of the president's mental fitness. >> what's the president's reaction to the growing number of suggestions both in this book and in the media that he's mentally unfit to serve as president. >> the same we have when it's been asked before that it's disgraceful and laughable. if he was unfit, he probably wouldn't be sitting there and wouldn't have defeated the most qualified group of candidates the republican party has ever seen. this is an incredibly strong and

good leader. >> next week when he goes to his physical, are there mental acuity tests that go along with that or is it purely physical in nature? >> we'll discuss when i announce he was going to be doing the physical, we'll have a read out of that after that is completed and we'll let you know at that time. >> let's get to all of this. from "the new york times," chief white house correspondent peter baker. here at the table nbc news and msnbc national affairs analyst john heilemann. he's also executive producer and co-host of showtime's "the circus." jonathan lemire, an msnbc analyst and republican strategist and msnbc contributor steve schmidt is also with us. peter baker, let me put you on the spot. have you ever heard donald trump repeat himself? >> well, certainly. but i've heard a lot of presidents repeat themselves but this president does, in particular, seem to, you know, keep circling back to the same information that he's got.

same claims he's got. sometimes the same words he's used. i don't think that's a new observation. what that means, i couldn't tell you. i'm not qualified to tell you but he does stick to certain regular themes. we've seen this over the last year. even if it may not be the best use of those words. what to make about that, i'll leave to others but it's certainly true he has a particular set of vocabulary, certain set of ideas that he likes to impart on more than one occasion. >> you're talking about message discipline. i worked for at leefts one of my old bosses really fond of message discipline. the other not so much. that's why you all loved him so much. but let me just press you because an account a heard from reporters who spent a lot of time aboard air force one where sometimes you get to see this president not behind a posium, not reading from a teleprompter.

there was a tendency to repeat the same stories or political messages but the same phraseology. have you ever witnessed that? >> yeah, i wouldn't say message discipline. that's not a phrase i'd use with this president. he falls back on the same stories and the same, you know, factoids he has in his head, which are sometimes not always accurate. and he does repeat them, sure. >> jonathan, same question to you. have you heard donald trump repeat himself in a way that this rings true? >> i mean, like peter, i won't suggest to analyze it. >> i'm not either. >> but sure, of course. he is someone who does fall back on certain catch phrases. nicknames. and some of it is you can interpret it as the trumpian branding. it's crooked hillary. always crooked hillary. it's not just hillary clinton. and some of it, you know, perhaps it's reflective of something else. no the kquestion that compared s predecessors is ot the orator or does not display some of the

vocabulary that barack obama did or george h.w. bush or whoever you might want to pick. but he is, you know, he is someone who falls back on familiar -- sometimes they are clearly talking points but other times they are just things he has that he likes to say, he feels like he's driving home a message. >> i spoke to a friend of the president's, not someone who covers him in the capacity you do and he noticed in the last five to six years an incessant penchant for repeating himself from donald trump. >> i've said on the show before that i thought if you ran into donald trump at a backyard barbecue you'd find his adult children and ask what they were doing to treat him for memory care. that's the case. these are not things about message discipline. some of it is. the no collusion thing. repeating there is no collusion. that is an attempt to drive a message home. >> low-energy jeb. >> nicknames for sure. there's method to that madness.

also anecdotes he tells over and over. in the course of the election for the bloomberg show we did for this network we interviewed trump a half a dozen times and he'd often tell the same stories over and over. he has a limited vocabulary. he has a range of stories he likes to tell to exemplify or illustrate certain points he likes to make. they are chronic and the more significant thing in this book is not just that. it's that this array of people that michael wolff has in the book trotting out an extraordinary number -- i didn't know there were as many words for stupid as there are used in this book among the senior people on trump's team. this is also consistent with what i as a reporter and many other reporters have heard. the people who work with donald trump think he's an imbecile in many ways and their way to handle that is kayte walsh is quoted as saying it's like a child. everybody looks at home and says he has these issues of mental

fitness and these questions of intelectual capacity. and both of them trouble people around him, and all of them handle it the same way which is they infantilize him. there are a million things about this white house that is unlike any white house you and i have ever covered or worked in. that's a unanimity of people who are supporters, his friends, allies. not enemies, not democrats, not people in the fake news media. people trying to get his business done who have a common view which is in various ways mentally he's not up to this job and we have to treat him like a little child because his attention span is too small. he knows nothing of the world, and we must kind of basically treat him like a little kid so he doesn't get into too much trouble. >> steve schmidt, politico's annie carney reporting today washington's growing obsession, the 25th amendment. lawmakers concerned about donald trump's mental state summoned a yale university psychiatry professor to capitol hill for

two days of briefings about his recent behavior. in private meetings with more than a dozen members of the congress held on december 5th and 6th, lee briefed lawmakers, all democrats, except for one republican senator whom lee declined to identify. her professional warning to capitol hill, quote, he's going to unravel. and we are seeing the signs. let me give you two other factoids before i asked you to respond to all of it. his tweet that i believe you and i talked about on this show and at 11:00 this week about the size of his button and his twitter taught. would someone please inform him, i, too, have a nuclear button but it's bigger, more powerful than his and mine works. in his inresponse to that tweet. that tweet resuscitated the conversation about the president's mental state and the 25th amendment which allows for the removal of the president from office if the vice president and a majority of the cabinet deem him physically or

mentally unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. steve schmidt? >> well, first off, i think there's a misunderstanding about the 25th amendment. it does not remove donald trump from office. it removes the powers of the presidency from the president because of his incapacitation. and then when signed on by mike pence or majority of the cabinet, those powers would be restored. so it is a temporary emergency solution. its application has been, for example, when the president is under a general anesthesia. president bush undergoing a colonoscopy, for example, invoked the 25th amendment and the powers of the presidency were transferred temporarily to dick cheney. but the larger issue here is that if this book was written about the obama administration or the bush administration or the clinton or carter or kennedy, you would know immediately that every word of it wasn't true. but that's not the case with

this administration. we know that basically the book is entirely true because we've seen with our own eyes and have read with those eyes and have listened with the ears, the incoherrent ramblings of this president for nearly a year now. so the chaos in the white house, the infighting, that nest of viper are in close proximity to where life or death decisions are made. we know this. there's nothing surprising in this book that we haven't known for a long time about this president. and there is, i would say, a conspiracy of silence around the question of his fitness by the people who work in the white house who serve at the president's pleasure but work for the american people. they seem to know how manifestly unfit he is. they seem to be highly aware of how dangerous he is yet whether it's through their ambition, they like the white house restaurant, the flights on air

force one, they are abdicating their duty to the american people to the constitution of the united states to bring clarity to this situation. that's what we need to figure out. gary cohn, dina powell, every one of these people needs to be put on the record and asked directly whether they back up or walk away from the things they said in the book. and we'll find out because it does seem that the author has hours and hours of tapes of the conversations. >> peter baker, we should point out that nbc news, as a news organization, has not corroborated every passage in the book. some of the individuals who are described to have said things have pushed back on the specifics of their conversations. but in my conversations over the last two days with four white house aides, three inside the white house, one a close outside adviser and ally of this president, no one has pushed back on the big stuff.

no one has said he doesn't repeat himself, which is why we pulled that out and started the. we've looked for intersections on what is in this book based on 17 visits. i don't know if george w. bush's twin daughters made 17 visits to the west wing. they were certainly in the residence to see their parents but 17 hours-long stops in the west wing certainly gives you a window into something. but i want to ask you -- i haven't heard any pushback about this claim that he repeats himself. you and jonathan both confirmed it. neither have i heard pushback about the second point that john heilemann raises that he is intellectually not curious. that he is difficult to focus in on any of the most dire tasks and policy questions of the presidency. but even where he has managed to

achieve an outcome on foreign policy that is in the national interest or in the interest of, i'm thinking of the strike on the airfield in syria. it hasn't been because they were able to deeply educate him. it was because they were able to persuade him to do what he thought was right. can you enlighten us if you've heard any reporting that contradicts anything i've heard or if you've heard anything on the national security side of how he goes about doing his job that suggests that he has a deeper knowledge than anything we've read about so far. >> i think the book, you know, has certain episodes, certain passages that one might take with a grain of salt. certainly disputed by the people in them. but the broader portrait is one that i think is consistent to some extent with reporting done by a number of news organizations and a number of journalists that this is, in fact, a president who is, at times, a volatile personality, who is not particularly informed about the issues across his

desk. doesn't seem to be as interested in learning about them and mastering them as some of the aides would prefer that he be. that he is somebody the aides feel they have to handle or manage as best they can. all of those points are things that we have seen, i think, in other reporting over the last year. i think this book brings it home in a more vivid and visceral way perhaps. but certainly that's in keeping -- i would add one other point to steve on the 20th amendment. it's not just that it would require the approve alf the vice president and majority of the cabinet that donald trump picked. it has an appeals clause to it. if the vice president and the cabinet said we think he is incapacitated and ought to have the powers removed to the vice president, the president himself, the president who would have been stripped of his powers, can appeal that and can say, no, i think i'm fine. then the issue goes to congress where it requires a two-thirds vote by both houses to take away

his powers. so it's not an easy process. i think when people talk about the 25th amendment, it's a liberal, wishful thinking at this point. and i just think that people ought to recognize the complexity of that amendment. >> jonathan, same questions to you. >> yeah, there's no question that this president is staffed differently. that he is given memos that are mostly pictures and maps and such where his name is highlighted knowing the president has a very limited attention span and that he's going to be more drawn in if he sees something that personally pertains to him. there's been complaints behind closed doors in the white house of his sort of shaky grass about policy details. they felt he got in the way from the health care push and they were relieved he took a little more of a back seat on taxes. there's no question if you look back, he if you listen to some of the interviews when he was a new york real staeestate develo he sounds like a different person. is some of that deliberately

changing your speaking style because he's moving into politics and trying to appeal to a certain demographic? it's possible. have you heard that explanation? >> people think, yes, sometimes people around him say he's tailored some of his message in order to resonate with people. he feels that plainspoken -- >> talking about his speech. you're talking about his speech. >> and -- but it also raises other questions. i think what we're all saying here is the conversation about the president's mental health is going to be one that dominates 2018. >> i commend people to go and look at the interviews he's done with print publications over the last year. look at the transcripts, particularly what he's tried to do conversations with "the wall street journal," "the new york times." they are incoherrent. >> "the washington post" editorial. he does not string four or five sentences together in a coherent way and ten years ooh 15 years ago, he did. >> it must be noted he's been shielded from widespread media exposure. he's only done one traditional

press conference. almost all of the television interviews have been to friendly fox hosts. >> give me your thoughts on what you thought of the president's pretaped video message in the briefing today. >> well, you know, it's a long walk from the oval office down to the briefing room. may not necessarily want to have to go all that way. so i say beaming in is more convenient. you'll not have to answer any pesky reporter questions. >> it certainly took longer to do that. >> i'm a little surprised no one has tried that before, but it doesn't fair well for the future of the briefing room. >> it's another example where he was shielded. he could have walked out and addressed the tax victvictory, e wanted to, but they didn't want to put him in front of reporters who would ask him questions. >> eating cheeseburgers, looking at his three screens.

i've got nothing about eating cheeseburgers or watching television. the fact he wants to do like phone it in, video it in, makes perfect sense. easier to keep eating those cheeseburgers and keep sitting in bed. >> peter baker, thanks for starting us us off. when it was reported rex tillerson called president trump a moron. the assessment was a widely held one among donald trump's senior advisers. where the rubber meets the road. the most salacious passages of the new tell -all deal with stee bannon's suspicions about the trump kids with connections to russians and money laundering. we'll get a check on whether any it of matters to robert mueller. the alt-right version of you complete me. is there a bannon without trump? and for that matter, who stokes the trump base without bannon? . my 30-year marriage...

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one of the more remarkable stories many of us covered was an nbc news report that the president's secretary of state rex tillerson had called donald trump a moron. nbc news stands by the reporting and tillerson never personally denied the account, although his spokeswoman did. we were reminded of this report when we read this passage in wolff's new book "fire and fury." insulting donald trump's intelligence was both the thing you could not do and the thing drawing their but for the grace of god guffaws that everybody was guilty of. for steve mnuchin and reince

priebus, he was an idiot. for gary cohn, he was dumb as bleep. for h.r. mcmaster, he was a dope. the list went on. i spoke to a close trump ally about this who was slightly more diplomatic describing him as having zero intellectual curiosity. he's also never been known to read a book. joining us is white house press supporter jill colven. john heilemann has interviewed the president about some of this. so let me go to john heilemann and then i'm dying to hear your thoughts on all of this. john, you have interviewed the president about his favorite book. >> there's a lot of reporting about this. various stories about his lack of reading that go back years and years. never really liked to read and people would give him books. famous in the 2016 campaign. his favorite book other than "the art of the deal" was the bible. he was appealing to evangelical voters. did so quite successfully. >> what was his favorite? >> yeah, we asked him at one

point about the bible. he said he loved the bible. what's your favorite scripture or verse. he said i wouldn't want to say which one i like the most. so i then asked him if you won't -- if you don't want to pick one, are you new testament or old testament? he said i like them both. 50/50. >> it's straight out of -- >> i'm not sure he knew the difference between the old testament and new testament. >> straight out of "curb your enthusiasm." jill, weigh in on two things. one, we're talking about symptoms. we're talking about the symptoms being the revelations in this book, the lack of discipline of an organization that regardless of what they say about steve bannon and michael wolff for that matter, they allowed this -- somebody -- somebody thought it was a good idea to wave in michael wolff 17 times. somebody thought it was a good idea to send out a message that

we should cooperate with this guy. he's writing a book about us. we may as well show him our goods. and let him see what it's like in here. i want your insights and any reporting you have on sort of day two of the fire and fury fallout and also jump into this conversation about all of the most senior echelon of policy advisers at the white house offering an assessment of donald trump in line with what nbc news reported at the end of the summer that tillerson thought he was a moron. >> the fact they allowed michael wolff to spend so much time. he literally just kind of behind us would sit in on the couches there in the atrium just waiting for people to stop by. stop and chat with them. spotted by reporters constantly in various officials offices. he pretty much had free reign of this place for the days he was here. if you look at the past writing of wolff and some of the people he's -- in his past life, these

were people close to members of trump's family. so it's just extraordinary that they'd allow him to be around here asking questions. certainly there were folks on staff here who believed that he would do a good job, kind of expressing their point of view. bannon's -- steve bannon was quoted heavily in this book and you can hear a lot of his perspective echoed throughout its pages. that's point one of the extraordinary elements of this whole story. talking to what you were saying before about that alleged comment tillerson calling the president a moron, these are things we've heard trickling out now for months. a lot of the things that have been referred to inning this book, despite the reputations and questions about the reporters' credibility, they nonetheless, there's a lot of reporting out there that backs up if not some of the specifics, at least a lot of the various kind of strands of reporting here. >> i want to put you on the spot. something i try not to do to any of you guys. but ask you a little bit about

your craft. so -- and steve and i have been on the other end of this. >> a little bit. >> right. there was that book. >> a little bit. >> so we all now are in the business of gathering information from often reluctant sources. in the trump orbit, they are often frightened and reluctant. and a lot of what you learn is shared with you as someone who covers them to give you a fuller picture. and the intention usually isn't to make the president look stupid. but in the process of, i dont know, for example, trying to reassure the public about north korea, they sometimes make clear that the president isn't read in on a particularly granular level about what they're seeing if it's in terms of specific intel or something folks have been down in the situation room dealing with. one analysis i heard from a couple white house reporters was that wolff simply put on the

record and into a book what a broad sloth of white house reporters already know to be true. your thoughts? >> first on the craft. jill and i are going to try to get pissed off in the -- >> good luck. i love to. >> first off, that is right that certainly there have been stories out there, the tillerson was the first one by nbc. others have matched it. there's been other chatter. certainly we have not had multiple sources confirm. you are always in the room, you are hearing things, talking to people on the phone. trying to paint that picture. there are certainly people around the president -- >> and you wrote this story about the foreign policy intervention over the summer. i'm not going to ask you what you learned off the record but i have to imagine for all those people to share with you the dramatic intervention where they essentially -- not locked donald trump, but they took him to the tank at the pentagon where very sensitive briefings take place and they sought to keep his attention for the purposes of

educating him. >> they took the president to foreign policy school and suggested this is why america has a robust presence around the globe. and as part of how they did that, they said this is how it impacts american businesses and in particular highlighted the trump organization. because they knew that would resonate with him. and that's an illustrating moment where that shows you how people around the president have sort of pitched important things to him knowing it would get his attention. of course, the white house has pushed back against a lot of these stories. also, in this white house in particular, there have been different factions with different agendas. moments you know you're being fed information that's not entirely true because someone is trying to get their own point across. and it's the reporter's job to go to other places to confirm or not confirm that moment and then if you can confirm it, you don't use it. >> when you were in the white house, i've done a lot reporting

at the white house in the last 25 years. i've had interviews in the white house with very senior officials where it's just been me and that official. i've also had a lot of interviews for books and other things where i've sat with a minder, the communications office person. you had people come into the bush white house, did you generally, like you knew where they were at most times? you knew their schedules, who they were seeing, when they were there. often you'd probably send yourself or someone else from your office to record the interview, to listen so you'd know what was going to be coming in your book. that was probablyior standard practice? >> that was a standard practice. not 100% always but often. >> that's right. >> you think about this. even if you -- you take the point that michael wolff has a history of -- that would lead a cautious white house staff, one that was fully in control, to be wary about giving him free reign. but i would say that any normal white house would be cautious of letting any reporter have free reign in the white house. and i on one hand find it

astonishing, and on the other hand, this white house made michael flynn national security. so their vetting abilities were pervasively poor on a variety of fronts. if you let michael flynn be national security adviser, it's how you get michael wolff with free reign of the white house. >> of course, you think michael wolff would be a great biographer. >> we're going to sneak in one break. we will be right back. don't go anywhere.

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special counsel robert mueller doesn't leak, and he's insanely private, but i bet a pack of gun and six dozen hot doughnuts he has not read and is not following press coverage of wolff's tell-all "fire and fury." here to explain why that may or may not matter in terms of why the allegations leveled at trump's children is chuck rosenberg who worked on the staffs of robert mueller and james comey at the fbi. he's an msnbc contributor. we're grateful to have you every

day, but especially today. i'm going to do something. i'm going to read you two passages. one was written by the founders of fusion gps on the topic of money laundering. one is in the book "fire and fury," a quote from steve bannon on the topic of money laundering. we told congress that from manhattan to sunny isles beach, florida, and from toronto to panama we found widesprd evidence that trump and his organization had worked with dubious russians in raemtss that often raised questions about money laundering. likewise, those deals don't seem to interest congress. and here's the other one. 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 bleeping trump goes right through paul manafort, jared kushner. it goes through deutsche bank and all the kushner bleep. the kushner bleep is greasy. they're going to go right through that. they're going to roll those guys up and say play me or trade me.

chuck, i'm guessing you are an elegant enough person to guess which one was steve bannon and which was fusion gps. first one was from an op-ed in "the new york times" by the founders of fusion gps. the second a quite by steve bannon. these 24 camps in what's become a highly politicized war between the -- not a war because bob mueller isn't engaging but a war of words about the special counsel and steve bannon is squarely on the other side. what is your thought about the fact that he has the same concerns about potential money laundering on the part of people inside trump's orbit as the fusion gps founders who investigated trump? >> i think you'll win your bet. your pack of gum and six doughnuts. bob mueller is not curled up reading this book with a cup of hot chocolate in his hand. it's not surprising that everybody understands the first

principle of criminal prosecution, particularly in what is essentially a white collar case is follow the money. you follow the money. so everybody knows that. that's what they're doing. we shouldn't be surprised. >> let me ask you about so something that was says to me by two white house officials. i called them about the russia sections of the book. steve bannon's quotes about, you know, he suggested don jr. may have committed treason. i called them and said the gravest effect of those comments is that they have enraged the president. but the most troubling thing when it comes to the russia investigation might be that these were just people as john heilemann has said in their offices dishing to a reporter on or off the record. when they're in a witness room, how would you evaluate this group of individuals who talk so freely and so invitingly about

one another as witnesses when they are sworn, when they are under oath and when the threat they could be facing if they don't tell the truth to bob mueller's investigators is a perjury charge and potential jailtime? >> that's a great question. so first thing. you probably don't spend hours, if not days, with a lawyer preparing to talk to a reporter. you will spend hours if not days with counsel, with your lawyer preparing to talk to bob mueller. here's what a good lawyer will tell you. you listen really carefully to the question. you think about it. if you don't know the answer, you say you don't know. you don't speculate and you don't guess. you'll be a lot tighter, if you will, when sitting down with prosecutors and agents. on the other hand, a conversation with a reporter may last a few minutes. you're not going to have a conversation with bob mueller's team that lasts a few minutes. it's going to last a few days. so you'll be more guarded. you'll be more careful.

more circumspect but you'll also be there one heck of a lot longer. and so it sort of cuts both ways. >> let me ask you about another topic that's raised. mark parallo is someone who worked in the bush administration in the george w. bush administration, the very respected adviser to then attorney general ashcroft. he went on -- he left the administration. he went on to serve as karl rove's private public relations adviser during the valerie blame investigation. he was there from the beginning to the end. the book suggests he quit after news accounts revealed it was possible that there was an obstruction of justice investigation taking place after that cover story was crafted aboard air force one. can you speak just to the public body of information about how exposed those individuals may be and how an obstruction of justice inquiry or investigation will take place about what may or may not have happened on air

force one. >> let me first tell you, i worked with mark. i know him. i like him. i respect him. he's an honorable guy. and so i am a little biased when it comes to mark. but he saw something that bugged him. and he punched out. and i get that. now with respect to the folks who are there when that happened, obviously, they are key witnesses. mueller knew that long before any of us did. and so he's going to have all of them in front of his agents and prosecutors asking them, you know, who is there. what did they say? what role do they play in crafting that statement. did anyone push back. did anyone argue. did anyone walk out of the room or into the room when all of this was going on. i don't know about the details in the book. i can't vouch for them but all of these people are going to be of keen interest to the mueller team. >> let me press you just a little bit. >> sure. >> you said that something bugged him.

mike parallo isn't someone bugged by bad press. he was getting tons of bad press for being associated with the trump legal team. is it possible what bugged him is the sense he didn't want to get in trouble for this team? >> it's a fair guess. i don't know. i haven't talked to him about it, nor would i, nor would he because i'm sure if he's, you know, doing what a lot of folks, do he's gotten counsel and they're telling him not to talk to anyone. that said, yeah, i think that's a fair supposition. he didn't want to be a part of it. he saw something that, to use my old phrase, bugged him. what he thought, what he saw. he thought might have been a crime. he may be right. he may be wrong. he's going to get asked about it. but that's a perfectly good reason to leave. it's not that he was being criticized. it's that he saw something that wasn't right. and mark is an honorable guy. and he made what i think appears to be an honorable decision. >> and as you and others have told us in the end, we will know

all of these answers that now burn me up with curiosity. thank you. it's a pleasure to have you on our air. >> bannon and trump. can they really quit each other? for your heart... your joints... or your digestion... so why wouldn't you take something for the most important part of you... your brain. with an ingredient originally found in jellyfish,

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...you could learn you're from ireland... ...donegal, ireland... ...and your ancestor was a fisherman. with blue eyes. just like you. begin your journey at ancestry.com he called me a great man last night. he obviously changed his tune pretty quick. thank you all very much. >> thank you. >> i don't talk to him. i don't talk to him. that's just a misnomer. >> the president doesn't talk to steve bannon? really? that's not what his press secretary said yesterday. >> i'm not aware that he was calling his cell phone but i believe the last conversation took place the first part of december. >> what's today? >> january 4th. >> as the white house tries to distance itself from steve bannon, they reassured breitbart

radio listeners all was fine but also didn't deny any of the book's claims. >> there is no one we think higher of than president trump in the agenda. >> are those comments accurate that have been reported that you have said? >> i think we've got to wait for the book to come out and let people say it and we'll comment at that time. >> i'm joined by jonathan swan. steve schmidt and the gang are all here. let me ask you about a headline that just crossed our desk. breitbart owners debate ousting bannon amid trump feud. many supportive of the move, according to a person familiar with the exchanges. among the considerations are breitbart's relationships with other entities. staffers at breitbart which bannon described as his killing machine described a chaotic day at the company. i have been asking this for two days but if bannon and trump are getting divorced, who gets what?

who gets breitbart? i guess we might know. >> well, yeah, it is a decision that has to be made by the board and i haven't been able to confirm to the level of satisfaction that i would report it. i've heard that there are those conversations are happening but again, i haven't been able to confirm one way or the other whether he's being booted out of breitbart or not. it's very hard when reporting on this stuff because people will swear black and blue one side or the other, and let's just say i'm highly skeptical of all the information that's coming to me at the moment on this particular subject. >> so jonathan swan, steve bannon does know how to push trump's buttons and went out and said something similar that vladimir putin has said. he's a great man. trump parroting the compliment in front of the press pool. it seems possible they could kiss and make up. does that seem possible to you? >> oh, i mean, look, trump is a

moment by moment operator. we saw that with so many times over the last year. anthony scaramucci who he brought in as white house communications director went on tv and said amazing things about donald trump. i think he -- i don't want to say what he -- because i can't exactly recall but something along the lines that this guy is a fraud or nobody. it was terrible. and trump, you know, forgived him because he said the nice things about him. there is -- it's not out of the realm of possibility that in two years time for political convenience and it would only be if donald trump thought it was in his self interest. i could easily see him flipping around. because, remember, people didn't realize this but when donald trump put out his statement when bannon left the white house. he's a great man. breitbart is going to be great. trump didn't like steve bannon. trump was reporting people that he was a leaker. bannon denied that at the time

but i made another round of calls and he has even said that to steve. you are one of the biggest leakers in the building. so the idea they were very close and warm, you know, when he was off, you know is a fallacy as well. >> jonathan la mmere, they swea from the same swath of that republican base. if that part of the base has to be carved up, frankly, bannon has -- donald trump was a democrat giving to democrats just a few years ago. wasn't offended by partial-birth abortion in interviews we dug d up. in terms of the nativism that animated the trump base, steve bannon is aligned more than trump it? >> the fallout of the last day, we'll see what it will yield.

steve bannon is extremely popular among many republicans. those folks you mentioned. economic populist, white nationalist types who, to him he's a rock star, and they feel they would be someone who -- turn to breitbart more. think fox news is too main stream, too establishment, and that breitbart is the way to go. we'll see if some choose to follow bannon rather than the president if this is truly a divorce. piggyback me on the point. it's a trump truism you're never really gone, even after being fired. corey lewandowski shown the door was in the oval office in a meeting about the white house's political future in the past weeks. the president is known to still seek counsel from people he has dismissed and i'll say in our reporting today, we know from people close to bannon he is telling them he believes that after a cooling off period he and trump will keep talking

again. >> it's true jonathan swan would say this is true on the basis of various people we both talked to, trump kind of hates everybody. he trashes bannon one day. trashes kushner the next day. openly hostal towards a lot of people around him. and something captured in the book. a notion of trump basically calling everyone an idiot around him. he blows hot and cold. people fall in and out of favor. and the other thing, one thing about it, forget about ideology. the thing he likes about bannon, bannon is always spoiling for a fight and so is trump. no one else is around trump as combative and willing to get down in a mud wrestling match with anybody at any moment. that thing, that connection, not ideology, not populism or policy certainly that visceral yen for the fight may draw them's back together again. not soon, but eventually.

>> steve, weigh in quickly on this idea of, one, no one ever being absolutely out with donald trump, and, two, this love for the fight. because donald trump's fights are unlike the fights our old bosses have. they have almost as much collateral wreckage, collateral carnage to use trump's word, as they do points on the board. >> look, the next reality show episode has nothing to do with the last episode. there were episodes where little john meatlower and gary bus with at each other's throats and the best of friends in the next one. the depenetration of steve bannon, spectacular though it may be, predictable though it may be is hardly irrevocable. everything is a transaction with donald trump and the people around him and they have synergies. they need each other. and the degree to which steve bannon put himself in this position a victim of his own delusions, his narcissism and

you see this "star wars" cantina of creatures around the, around the oval office at each other's throats. you know, every day. so this drama, this chaos, this is the constant of the trump administration. they'll be more books, more revelations. there will be tell-all books, but what this book does is it confirms the -- the connection of a competence of recklessness, the chaos, and all of these dangerous qualities around the most powerful man on the planet in command of the most powerful nuclear arsenal on the planet. >> jonathan swan, i'll give you the last word on this. if you could try answer this question -- the other people who are all-stars in this part of the party are folks like kellyanne

conway, jeff sessions. how are they reacting to the book today? >> i haven't spoken to either of them about the book. so i'd be lying if i said i knew how either of them were feeling, but i can tell you yesterday was quite a scene inside the oval office. it was a sort of all-in, almost a frenzy of blood-thirsty people, drafting this statement, you know that trump wanted to write about bannon. people throwing in suggestions. trump wanted it to be even longer than it was. some others suggesting it would be shorter. a sort of cathartic moment where all of these people who despise steve bannon really despise him on a personal level had a chance to finally throw him under the bus. yesterday was sort of a joyous moment to some extent with that statement that they put out. >> taxpayer dollars at work, ladies and jonathan, thank you so much. we'll be right back.

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all right. two more bits of news about this new book that's got the trump white house on its heels. one, i believe the publication date has been moved up. the book comes out tomorrow. it was supposed to be monday and part owner of the "hollywood reporter" writes i was one of the six guests at the bannon/ailes dinner party. every word is absolutely accurate. aastonishing night. steve smith, this matters because getting the small facts right help corroborate and under gird the big picture that is painted by michael wolff. >> look, here's the deal on this. he had unfettered access to the

west wing of the white house, was hanging out in the lobby 13 times, 15 times, hour after hour. guess what? this white house doesn't function like fdr's did. it's a disgrace and we all see it, we know it, and this is what the book proves. >> all right. my thanks to don hileman, jonathan and steve schmidt. that does it for our hour. we're going to sign off. "mtp daily" starts right now. hi, chuck. >> trying to figure how schmidt just said fdr. i could say william henry harrison either. >> one word can work in three wars and six presidents. >> i love it. thank you. if it's thursday is bannon banished? tonight -- the trump/bannon divorce. >> i'm not aware they were ever particularly close. >> i don't talk to him. i don't talk to him. >> the president gets the kids, but can he control them? we'll talk to a longtime trump adviser quoted through the