after he gets the job, he recuses himself. was that a mistake? >> well, sessions should have never recuse himself. . >> that was president trump back in july talking to the "new york times." now the "times" is out with a new report saying the president personally directed the top person in the white house to convince to persuade, pressure, attorney general jeff sessions to stay in charge of the russia probe. once again, trying to interfere with an investigation. we're going to be talking to a reporter who broke that story in just a minute. good morning, it's friday, january 5th. mika will be back with us on monday. today we have veteran columnist and msnbc contributor mooirk

mike barnacle, white house associate press michael le mere and host of casey d.c. on msnbc casey hunt. we have columnist and associated editor for the washington post david ignacious. white house reporter for "usa today" heidi pryzbilla and the man that broke that report on the destruction on donald trump struggle to try to get a grip on the investigation, michael schmidt of, of course the "new york times". i want to start, though, david ignacious, with you. i didn't get a chance to speak with you yesterday about the revelations that came out in michael schmidt's back, revelations of course that so many people in washington have been whispering about, michael wolff book. in fact, i had somebody say last night. what's the big news about

wolff's new book? it's what everybody in washington has been writing or saying the past year? they say wolff is more dramatic in his writing. be that as it may, it caused a firestorm and i'm wondering with north korea and iran and news out of pakistan, it can be unsettling. what is your take on a new explosive set of relevations coming outing talking about the dysfunction in the trump white house when there is so much on the line across the globe this morning. >> joe, i can give you a simple anecdote what it's been like the past several days. on thursday afternoon, when the revelations of the wolff book and the response to it came out. i was on my way to a major fwees talk about precisely the problems you are mentioninging

what's happening in north korea and what's happening in iran. i found the diplomat i had gone to see hadn't been able to spends any time the whole afternoon looking at those big issues because he was pre occupied reading into the details of the wolff revelations. it was a sense as if there had been an implosion at this trump team led by we thought the insurgency that bannon represented. so i think the whole of washington, embassy, cabinet positions took a deep breath wednesday afternoon and thought our world is different now. trying to sort out exactly what the implications are. it was even in a capitol that you think at this point people couldn't be surprised by something that comes out of a white house feud, this just stopped the clock for a couple hours. >>ient to overstate it.

in talking to leaders across the world, i can say what micah and i hear and -- mika and i hear, diplomat, we are suspended in time t. united states, the leader of the free world not only in the hard power but soft power just right now things are frozen and these world leaders are not looking to the united states of america to lead over the next three, 3.5 years. >> joe, again, we have a perfect exam. the united states, president trump not unreasonably said to our european allies, let's have a xhan statement of what's happening in iran. people are in the straets calling for freedom. shouldn't we say something jointly to hold the iranian regime responsible. it wasn't a crazy request. but the europeans didn't want to do it. they didn't want to do it because they've gotten so gun shy so burned by these trump

statements that are so inflammatory, my button is bigger tan yours. so they backed. it was the biggest breach really between the u.s. and allies since trump came into office in terms of specific policies. that's one small sign this is taking a toll. >> but an important sign. we want to talk about your iran column, in a few minutes. really remarkable what's ha happening there it happened in 2009, we have it in 2017. it looks like the united states may not be able have a leading role at least in sending a strong message to the iranian people right now. let's go to the held and casey hunt, reaction yesterday from everything that happened. >> joe, i think you saw from some republican leaders barely contained glee over steve bannon's basic self emulation.

he essentially took himself off the playing field. that was something republican leaders on the hill, while they may not have been excited publicly, privately, i certainly heard from a lot of them and aids this is something that is a positive development they felt for hill republicans, but i think david ignacious' point is well taken. there is a book store that stays opened 24 hours. they put the michael wolff sale on at midnight because of such intense demand to get a chance to read through all these revelations for themselves. this is in many ways, though, not a surprise. i think leaders on capitol hill have been privy to pieces of this as they have traveled up and down pennsylvania avenue throughout the course of doing their work and i think it's driving a lot of the concern about exactly what the future of not just the party is, but the country. >> you know what the future of the party is, or the future of the country s. i got to say, for

republican leaders and others who see this as a positive development, a book where all of donald trump's cabinet members or most of them deride him, mock him, ridicule him, where others in the white house more than suggest he's not fit to be president of the united states that he's not temperamentally capable of being the president of the united states, he's not mentally strong enough to be president of the united states. mitch mcconnell sees that and he does, that says things about mitch mcconnell and how low the bar has gone on capitol hill. let's bring in michael schmidt. breaking news last night, of course, coming from you. why don't you jump in on donald trump desperately trying to get control of a russia investigation that he saw sort of slipping out of his hands and dreaming, dreaming of having another roy cohl-like figure to

go around washington, d.c. and brutalize an independent if an . >> he views his attorney general as a protector, as someone to be a buffer and safeguard he had his white house counsel, his top lawyer, go to the attorney general in march and say, look, don't recuse yourself in the russian investigation. there is no reason to do that. after the president found out he was going to recuse, he got extremely angry. he said, you know, barack obama had eric holder, jfk had rfk. where is my roy cohn, referring to his long-term personal law enforcement where is this person to protect me? and that for us really provided a window into how he viewed the top law enforcement position, the top person underneath him at a time that the russian investigation was accelerating. >> michael.

not just that, but how he viewed lawyers as basically hitmen of so roy cohn again a man who disgrasd himself time and time again when he was alive. he disgrasd himself during the mccarthy hearings. he disgrasd himself through the '60s and the '70s. he disgraced himself so much that he was disbarred and died in disgrace and this is who -- there's so much with your story that i think is significant with breaking news that's significant and i do believe and i'll ask you this, but this is another line for mueller's team. part of the time line on how donald trump was trying to obstruct justice, trying to obstruct it's investigation. but how telling that donald trump actually looks to roy cohn as a model for what a lawyer should be doing. for what an attorney general

should be doing. >> yeah, it's an obsession with loyalty. it's an obsession with their devotion to him. not a devotion to following the facts or the rule of law. and if you want a personal lawyer to defend you, that's one thing. but this position, the attorney general, is a far different position than that. it's about allowing investigations to go and the facts to be the most important thing and to be the determining factor in everything. so he didn't seem to appreciate that and that has not changed. he has been consistent about that. and he has been open about that. he has said it publicly. he said it in that interview clip that you played. this is something he is still upsettle about. he doesn't appreciate the nuance and importance of recusal. >> yeah. mike barnacle, i remember readinging where he ties his book for the washington post reviewing it for washington post

a couple summers ago and in it, there were large sections where bobby kennedy was working in the justice department i believe or actually working in the senate and would work in the same office with roy cohn and roy cohn was sloppy. he didn't -- he ignored facts. he let cases pile up. he made unsubstantiated charges. he didn't care about the truth. and as i was reading this two years ago, i said, my god, the parallels between what i'm reading about roy cohn in the 1950s and what we know about donald trump in 2016 is remarkable. and then you have bobby kennedy always getting the best of him. bobby kennedy, of course, worked around the clock, had the best staff and actually was stuck to the facts. again, this is important

breaking news for the prosecution, possible prosecution of the white house, but the fact that donald trump believes the united states attorney general should act like roy cohn is actually the most damming of all statements coming out from this very disturbing story. >> well, the link there, joe, was robert kennedy and roy cohn, the same as michael smith explained donald trump expecting loyalty to himself. not to the presidency. not to the nation to himself. roy cohn's loyalty in the 1950s, during the senate mccarthy hearings was to joe mccarthy to protect his patron joe mccarthy. so he would lie, cheat, trim the edges of the law on behalf of joseph mccarthy, senator mccarthy from wisconsin him but michael schmidt, i would like to ask you with regard to this brilliant piece of reporting in the "new york times," two questions, if you could explain

to us the july plane trip where the president is returning from europe, the role of mark sxar ollo. if you could explain to the viewers who mark carollo is. then a back-up question, did we know, did you know, reens priebus the then chief of staff took apparently copious notes that apparently robert mueller has? >> so on the second one, what happened is last year the produces produced a bunch of do you means to mueller. this was e-mails, mem morks handwritten notes. in them were handwritten notes from reince priebus. one was a conversation he had with the president on april 11th. the thing that makes this significant is priebus' notes about his conversations with trump back up comey's memos. comey's memo, he describes a call where the president calls him and says we need to get out the word that i'm not under investigation. comey details this, when he

testified before congress last year. usually priebus' notes show how trump was telling him about that conversation, instructing him what to do to get that word out. in and of itself it's not the most reveltory thing. it goes to substantiateing comey. comey has been called a liar repeatedly by the president f. there were to be any type of obstruction case against the president the comey would be an important fact our in that. on the air force one flight this summer. the mr. president was coming back, in july, the "time's" was preparing meetings don jr., his sons, had had the previous summer promising dirt on hillary clinton. in that flight, the new book that came out the michael wolff book says the president dictated a statement, a misleading statement about the nature of those meetings. and the president at the time

had this outside spokesman named mark carolla, working outside the white house, who was very unnerved by that and thought that the president's efforts to put out this misleading statement was trying to throw sand in the wheels of the investigation to try to throw off the investigators and if you are trying to throw off the investigators, you are potentially obstructing justice. >> heidi, let me bring you in here. you know, as we turned to the new year, there were some republicans that were talking to me. i'm sure you heard them as well. they said, hey, you know what, it looks like we finally have a little wind behind our back going into the new year. we passed a tax cut. isis is back on their heels, the stockmarket, record highs. regulations have been cut, in record ways. there is, yeah, we may be able survive this. and then boom. the michael wafflef book comes out. then last night, boom, another

example of the president of the united states doing everything he can to get in the way of or obstruct an investigation. i wonder if republicans on the hill are starting to get the sense from ones that you talked to, sort of the same sense we had during the campaign that hillary clinton's campaign was never going to get a chance to take off because every day there was going to be another story, it was going to be a death by a thousand cuts and you were never going to have hillary clinton talking about issues. because just like donald trump, every day it's another book it's another article, it's another breaking news story. >> there was some sense, joe, before the new year and when taxes were very much in doubt that the entire party could implode in the new year that steve bannon somehow had this wind at his back and he was going to go and challenge republicans across the slate. now, you do have this michael wolff book coming out, all this

erratic tweeting by the president, but you also have steve bannon who was the biggest mortal threat to this party essentially imploding. i think this is something that reason under appreciated within the past couple of days here, is that steve bannon is really losing his financial benefit factors and the mersers. >> that this has been percolateing under the surface and if you think about the threat and the pressure that looks like mitch mcconnell were feeling before the few year within they thought that steve bannon could have some wind at his back, i think, despite everything, all things considered that there are republicans feeling some sense of relief. because, joe, yes, you and i as outside observers, see these things very troubling about the president talking casually, joke about nuclear war on twitter, but in some ways, it's more of the same and in terms of raw politics and the raw political calculation that this party is making about the threat that it

faces, well, that looks a lot more neutralized today than it did a few weeks ago. >> jonathan le mere, talking about the president. talking about this book, you met some of the president's allies yesterday, wondering why he was doing everything that he could to draw more attention to this book. i think in new york in the washington person said there is nothing donald trump could have done more to help michael wafflef's book and his political enemies than to become the guy, the president, who was trying to stop the publication of a critical book. you know, read the book, that the president of the occupation doesn't want you to read. it's a publisher's dream. i just, again, you wonder, you wonder what grasp donald trump has, not only in his office but on politics. you wonder what the game is. this entire book is, again, it's restated a lot of things we knew about donald trump all along,

but it seems that his tendencies have become exaggerated and are causing people that are closest to him grave concerns and again, i just don't know how my opinion mcconnell is cheered by the fact that h.r. mcmaster and steve mnuchin and rex tillerson and everybody around him believes he is not fit to be president of the united states at a time we may be going to war with north korea. >> that's right, joe. at this point some of the president's comments will be on t blurb on the book's jacket. it's the best advertisement. the publisher moved up its publication date. it was supposed to come out next week. it was out today, at midnight last night in some places. the last thing for the president to not read this book will drive people towards it. it speaks deeper about this president's personality where he

can let no slight go. it is not in his nature at all to sit back, keep his mouth shut and let something roll over him. she going to hit back, fight back, punch back, which it must be said brigg bannon into this is one thing that drew bannon and trump towing. it's ideology but the fighting spirit, something trump liked in bannon that he would hit harder if he took a shot back, he would shoot that much more in the other direction. now we have seen that relationship disintegrate to the point where trump is calling him sloppy steve on twitter last night which is not as good as a nickname as lying ted. >> fought bad. >> not bad. i think that knowing trump as we all know, in trump's world, even when are you out, you are never really out to the point -- >> you are never really out. you know what -- >> ban isn't still telling people despite taking all this heat in the last 48 hours that he fully expects after a cooling

off period. he and the president will start talking again. >> that's exactly what the president does, they will start talking. i'm sure they will start talking again. he started suck up to him yesterday morning, bowing, skrang. that's what's required of donald trump. so they can turn michael wolff into the bad guy. anybody that thinks that steve bannon and donald trump's relationship is over has not been paying attention to donald trump for the past several years. david ignacious, i know you want to get a question in on michael schmidt. before you do that, i want to ask you what is happening in iran? in this morning's column you have a fascinating line where you say tehran when you visited a few years back in 2013 was somewhere between a mix between pyongyang and los angeles, which is something really that we saw in 2009. what i was struck by in 2009, during the protests, was the

fact that you had a red state iran and you had a blue state iran. it was split down the middle. red state iran wanted to keep the mum las in charge. blue state iran wanted to move iran into the 20th century so they can move into the 21st century and you say, because it is so divided, that this is a regime that just can't keep winning. they can't keep pushing back the tides of history. talk about it. >> so what has been fascinating this last week is the red state iran which loves the mullahs and blue state iran, young, secular, wanting change, supporting president hassan rouhani have both been in the streets, you know, in conservative cities, like in the elite areas of tehran, soil i same thing, same phenomenon. so iran has converged i think in a trussstration with the

regime's inability to deliver. that's why this is important. i think the regime is very much on its back now. this has been a cocky confident iran pushing its weight around in the middle east. i think for the moment they will be pre occupied with severe problems at home. i do want to take a. >> is it all about economics, david? is it about the fact that they are still struggling economically? >> i think economics is the central issue. eastern should be the richest country, the most dynamic xi in the region. it has brain power. it has pretty good schools and universities. it has an entrepreneurial class that is ready to develop products and sell them. it could be a real regional hub. and that hasn't happened and it deeply frustrates iranians, they

have a belief in their culture and their sort of natural ability to be a dominant player in their part of the world. so i think increasingly, there is a little of a make iran great again, forgive me for borrowing the trump slogan, but this sort of sense, our country really should be doing better than it is, that's come out. it's one reason it's so widespread. joe, if i might, i just want to turn to michael schmidt with a last question. michael, we have been watching bob mueller on his back foot the last couple weeks as conservative media, conservative members of congress, attacked his investigation, do you think after your revelation suggesting new possibilities of obstructing the investigation after michael wolff publishes bannon, calling the trump tower meeting treasonous, unpatriotic and bad bleep. do you think that this means mueller is now on his front foot and a lot of that criticism will go away?

>> i don't know. the republicans did a very good job at undercutting him publicly at the end of the year. they took the text message issue where the top agent expressed anti-trump views with an fbi official. they used that to raise questions about mueller's credibility. mueller had really good standing in washington. someone on both sides of the aisles, but republican, even main stream republicans were really going after him. now, if you are a republican do you look at this and say wow, maybe mueller has really good cards? do i need to back off? i don't think so. there are so many revelations that came out about this president. republicans have continued to stand by him. i think they saw the success. if you look on fox, there is a constant drum beat against mueller and about his prosecutors being democrats and such. so i'm not sure this will really change anything. >> all right. we'll see. michael schmidt. thank you so much. we greatly appreciate it. just one note, yeah, there are

no prosecutors for our viewers of fox news at night, there are no prosecutors that work for bob mueller that gave as much money to the democratic party as donald trump. the man that they're all investigating. so, anyway, mike, we will be reading your bombshell reporting of the "new york times" this morning. greatly appreciate it as always, we love having you here. still ahead on the show, this. >> has steve bannon betrayed you, mr. president? any words about steve ban season. >> i don't know, he called me a great man last night. so he obviously changed his tune pretty quick. thank you all very much. i don't talk to him. i don't know. i don't talk to him. that's a misnomer. >> but it's the last thing he heard, he called me a great man last night. inside steve bannon's horrible no, good, wait, no, it was a bad week actually. he's bleeding republican allies.

mitt romney is gliding towards the united states senate t. voter fraud commission axed and an alabama democrat joined the u.s. senate. we will be talking about that with two of washington's top reporters ahead. monday we will be joined by the author of the book that is tying the white house in knots. i wonder if they could stamp the book with read the book, the president doesn't want you to see. we'll ask michael wolff when he joins us here on set on monday. but first, here's bill kierans with a check on the forecast. bill, i have been trying, along with mika, both under the weather, but have been trying to get home to new york for the past two days. today, tomorrow, when does it look like we will be able actually land at an airport in the new york area? >> yeah, they're going to play catch up today, joel tomorrow, hopefully dramatic improvements over the weekend t. storm was as

advertised, joe, it was very windy. we had the real high tide surges up in the area of boston, especially on the cape. let's show you if irs the wind. we didn't have a ton of wind damage. this was in new jersey. these things act like kites. you always see these videos when we have hurricanes, even blizzards, too, they blow up. most important to me all the damage done at high tide yesterday, up around the boston area, they said this topped the 1978 blizzard for the amount of water that came up over land that high tide with that storm surge, yeah, it looked completely different with the blizzard than a hurricane t. snow, typical nor'easter. banker, 18 inches of snow, boston over a foot. hartford at ten points. new york city at 9.other areas to the south. philadelphia 4 inches t. storm is now completely gone. in its wake we have 140 americans in either wind chill warnings or advisories. we're as low as 2 in atlanta.

>> that doesn't happen, 19 negative in detroit. we're at minus 4 in areas like new york city. freeze warnings for florida. it continues to be cold down to miami. right now the temperature in miami is 47. west palm at 41. now we're down to freezing in orlando. that's when we start to get damage to crops there, especially the oranges in the region. the coldest weather is through the weekend. a big warm-up for much of the country next week. our january thaw is on its way. you are watching "morning joe," we'll be right back. i'm on the move all day long... and sometimes, i don't eat the way i should. so, i drink boost to get the nutrition i'm missing. boost high protein nutritional drink has 15 grams of protein to help maintain muscle and 26 essential vitamins and minerals, including calcium and vitamin d. all with a great taste. boost gives me everything i need... to be up for doing what i love. boost high protein. be up for it. save seven dollars. look in sunday's paper.

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steve bannon in a new book is reported to say a contact that took place in meetings between trump associates and russian is at least unpatriotic. do you agree with steve bannon? >> i like to associate myself with what the president had to say about steve bannon yesterday. >> i'm sure he would. welcome back to "morning joe."

casey, i was just reading something interesting from jim roberts just tweeted eight minutes ago. and it's about the book. and he's quoting from an axios report. he talks about an axios report. he says in the past 24 hours, the michael wolff's book has done a 180. many saying the book episodes are accurate or ring unambiguously true. it was interesting yesterday morning we saw that a lot of people come out and say michael wolff makes up stories. but then as the day went on, i started calling up my friends who you know just like you and people that have had access to the campaign and everybody goes, yes, they all ring unambiguously true. there is, of course the john boehner story where he apparently didn't know who john boehner was. that doesn't make sense unless

he is completely losing his mind. but, yeah, that seems this morning to be the fact that michael wolff may not have gotten every quote exactly right. but it's the same thing we all have been hearing and politicians on the hill have been hearing for over a year now. >> gentleman, that i think goes to the heart of this. while on the one hand everybody is anxious and devouring the salacious details in this book. no one is fundamentally surprised. >> right. >> i think even the quotes that were attributed to steve bannon i think were things he was saying off the record privately. now "wall street journal" reports that breitbart's board members are weighing whether to fire bannon after all of those comments and president trump's tweet late last night, he told people to quote watch what happens to michael wafflef, the author of a critical new book and floppy steve. he is referring to his former chief strategist.

bannon's krichls of treason behavior and money laundering led his alliess to denounce him, the mercer family that helped bank rom breitbart feuds that bannon is chairman of. joe, we know the mercers may have been considering pulling this, bannon was talking so self agrandize about his own potential political future. >> yeah, unbelievable. ly bring in a couple reporters in one minute. first, mike barnical, i want to go to you. for those of us who have been around more than a couple of weeks, one of the things that shocked me and shocks a lot of my friends, at least in new york media, was that anybody in the white house ever trusted michael wolff. they didn't know. and when i say this, i am not talking about michael wolff as the journalist, but thinking he

was going to do a puff piece on donald trump. most of the people in the west wing actually didn't know who michael wolff was. they didn't know his background and it's just like, i now, we are now learning that reince priebus took copious notes. there is not a chief of staff in the white house that wouldn't put their hand on an aid and say, hey, don't take notes. we've all heard that for the past 20, 25 years. so i'm hearing that reince priebus like a good student is taking copious notes in the white house. that's white house 101, you don't take copious notes for a variety of reasons and so they're letting michael wolff just hang in the west wing for months is, it means it's just amateur hour at the white house. nobody knows nothing in there.

even about basic facts about media members. i could never figure out, i talked to michael wolff in this book, what? oh, yeah, they're letting me hang out and talking to steve. what? why? it's shocking that they were so ignorant about the fact that this guy wasn't going to write a puff piece on donald trump. >> joe, you put our finger and to many people the biggest unanswered question about this book. how is that it they allowed michael wolff basically to live in the west wing of the white house for months on end, did they not know -- two people i submit knew him. the president of the united states donald j. trump and steve bannon. they both knew him. one of them, steve bannon had an agenda he was using michael wolff to fulfill. when you read this book. i have the book. i started reading it last night. skimmed through most of it. all of the unsourced quotes,

it's clearly coming from steve bann bannon. >> right. >> the book is trump world as told by steve bannon through michael wolff. but the mystery of letting him have access and sitting there is astounding. >> we see this time and again with eager administrations. the clintons did it with would be woodward and gave bob woodward a lot more access than was expected. bob woodward puts out a book that absolutely shocks them in '93. it's happened here. it happens all the time. people, these politician and people get elected and put in the white house. they think they will be able to schmooze their way into a puff piece of a book. it just never happens. >> you got google on every one of your computers in the white house. google michael wolff and see if

he will give you a puff piece. the answer, of course, answered in dramatic fashion yesterday. when we come back, we will be talking to jonathan swan and julie pace about steve bannon's bad day and if there is a way back for the embattled breitbart editor when "morning joe" returns.

e. prevagen. the name to remember.

let's go back to washington, bring in national political reporter for axios jonathan swan and also washington bureau chief for the associated press, julie pace. jonathan, let's begin with you. take us inside bannon what do you do huddled up in the breitbart embassy. he made the first move to suck up to donald trump. the president said, whoa, he said nice things about me last night. donald trump knows he and trump will probably be talking by

mid-week next week what's happening in bannon world right now? >> they actually dropped a statement on the morning when this all exploded. bannon's allies were working with him. the thing they were most worried about was bannon was on the record trashing don jr. because don jr. is popular with the breitbart readership and the bays and obviously the president's eldest son, calling them treasonous. they were in a state of panic about that. they worked on a statement. it was going to come out and describe don jr. i believe as a patriot and anyway when they were all ready to get the statement out, trump puts out the blistering statement about bannon. of course, bannon's own pride and ego kicks if and that statement never saw the light of day. there is actually a lot of donald trump in steve bannon. when he's in these situation, he doubles down, triples down, and pre tends everything is fine and

everyone arnold are in various states to find a way out of it. >> the pile on bannon is not just limited to his tensions with donald trump. it's not just that he may be losing his financial backing with the mercers. i think he does some reporting as well on what we are seeing from the bannon-aligned candidates like michael grim. like kelly ward in arizona. can you talk a little bit about whether these candidates may be starting to distance themselves from bannon? >> reporter: right, it was a few months ago we saw these insurgent anti-republicans flocking and posting pictures with him on twitter, trying to line him up for a fundraiser. some of the shine had come off bannon after roy moore's defeat if alabama. but when we were talking to some of these candidates yesterday to some of their advisers, we started to hear interesting comments, michael grim has gone

the furthest and tried to distance himself and realign with the president. we heard steve bannon is not the only person endorsing me or i was going to run and run this anti-government establishment before bannon came along. perhaps taking the back seat doesn't solve this problem of people challenging sitting senators in the primary certainly for a mitch mcconnell and his allies, taking bannon out of the picture and perhaps the breitbart audience and breitbart money out of the pick will be a huge benefit going forward. >> hey, jonathan swan, it's jonathan lemire. we know he took a hit by the presidents. the mercers announced they were withdrawing funding. the idea of breitbart, itself, we know some of the leaders were huddling last night trying to figure out whether they wanted to cut ties with bannon. >> right. >> what are you hearing in terms

of his latest status there and what he and his allies are doing to perhaps make a pitch to have him maintain his hold on power? >> well, as of last night, it was very uncertain. yes, there is a board at breitbart. but the mercer family decides he needs to go, he will go. the mercers will make the final call on breitbart. and then we really get to test the premise of steve bannon's self conception, which is that in his own mind, he is a revolutionary figure and can stand on his own. he believes, he has the force of, you know, his own fame and celebrity and idea. we will test that, frankly, bannon has had the benefit are the last number of years of a very powerful family, a billion fair hedgefund family in new york, funding his political activities. funding breitbart. he's had the mutual benefit with donald trump, really now he has been cast out on his own, he

will have to sing for his supper. we will learn whether steve bannon can exist and survive on his own. >> julie, we have been talking obviously for 48 hours of steve bannon, michael wolff, bob mueller, obstruction of justice the trump administration in disarray. while all of this is happening, i'm wondering, do you pick up any vibes, comments, feelings from people on both sides of the aisle, republican and democrat, about all the little things and they're not little slipping under the flesh hold, like the front page story in the "new york times" giving away both coastal waterways, atlantic and pacific to the gas and oil companies for drilling, things leak that? the environment. things like that? immigration, things like that? do you pick up any vibes on that? >> yeah, actually in the last 48 hours, we've had some major policy news that has gone under the radar.

we had the drilling announcement yesterday. we had jeff sessions with the justice department moving to give u.s. attorneys power to i don't have rule states that have legalized marijuana. we've had the step toward trying to sell health insurance across state lines. so there is on the one hand, a frustration among some republicans who support policies that they're not -- there's no oxygen for those policy changes to get any attention. the tax bill, for example. what has the president done this week to sell the tax legislation that came off the floor of congress pretty unpopular? what has he done to sell that to the american people? that's what americans need to be the foundation of their american campaigns. on the democratic side what you hear is a belief that some of this is strategic, that the president wants to create this chaos or at least is happy to let the chaos reign so that some of these more unpopular decisions don't end up being what we're all talking about and

what the american people are hearing about every day. >> all right. julie pace and jonathan swan, thank you very much. still ahead, president trump looks to pivot back to policy this weekend. he's going to be hosting republican lawmakers at camp david. heidi has new reporting on that. plus howard dean says older members of the democratic party should get out of the way. joe biden has some thoughts on that. he has thoughts on a lot of things. we'll hear from joe widbiden wh "morning joe" comes back. jimmy's gotten used to his whole room smelling like sweaty odors.

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another jim roberts tweet. this is friday with jim roberts. he says a picture of people lined up at midnight to buy fire and fury. he said it was like a harry potter release as buyers lined up at bookstores overnight for the release of "fire and fury".

it's unbelievable. we have mark coming up to wrote "the town ". there's a great line in the jodie mitchel song where she was talking about stoking the storm maker machinery behind a popular song. here we're having the town doing this behind a book. it's pretty remarkable. a cottage industry. we'll be talking to mark about that. also "the washington post" eugene robinson says the revelations in michael wolff's book if true are gob smacking. pretty much what everybody in washington already knew. we'll talk about that coming up with our guests. maybe we'll bring in the whole washington post news room. we'll be right back.

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message to the press corps from president trump when he was apparently just down the hall. welcome back to "morning joe." it's a long walk down the hall. anyway, with us we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, also kasie hunt, david ignatius, heidi przybyla, and chief nation -- mark leibovich, and eugene robinson. we'll have mika back on the show on monday. a lot less rambling mercifully from me. so, mark, i wanted to ask, i thought it very interesting yesterday. you've written about the town. you, of course, wrote "the new

york times" piece, "this town melts down" about trump coming into town, and i'm just curious. i thought it was fascinating that so many people around the white house would allow michael wo wolff to just hang out in lobbies and have complete access and think that they were going to play this guy. i was also struck by how many people in the trump white house was asking who is michael wolff. that shows at the end of the day this town you write about so much actually is in its own way, very provincial. >> it is very provincial, and there's a subset to this which is the kind of inherent provincialism of donald trump. which is his world view and what he knows and who he thinks he can play should govern all big level decisions. first, there are so many layers here. who is playing who? i am convinced that michael

wolff getting in there, writing the book he did -- anybody reading him over the years and following books like this over the years could have fully expected -- sees how easy it is to play donald trump. how easy it is to win his affection and to win the trust of those around him. you have to wonder are these people in the white house who are allowing him full access, who are talking to him as they are, do they deviously, fully know what is going to happen and they're using this somewhat -- using him as a vehicle as a cry for help that they know they are disseminating privately every single day? i think there are many layers at work here. ultimately anyone who has been reading him and living here and watching white houses and watching donald trump should not be surprised by any of this. >> well, you know, i'm sure just like with woodward books there's always a staffer that thinks they're going to settle some scores using bob woodward to do

that, but in this case, though, donald trump should have known. above all else, who michael wolff was and that he was not going to write a puff piece on him. i'm just absolutely -- i'll use one of gene robinson's words. i'm gobsmacked that there wasn't one person in the white house that couldn't say wait, wait, why don't you just read michael wolff's last articles or his last books? he's not going to be played by us. >> right. >> i'm stunned. >> i'm not. because here is -- here's the play. michael wolff's last few pieces about donald trump and steve bannon has been fairly complimentary. that's how easy it is to play him. you can sort of get him to think that because your last story about him or the last thing you said or the last conversation you had with him is the defining sensibility on what you're going to bring to him. why not give him full access?

i mean, again, anyone who knows how this game is played should not be surprised by it, and anyone savvier would not have allowed this. donald trump gets parochial. >> they're certainly not savvy inside the white house. again, a lot of people didn't know who he was. i know reince priebus had no idea who he was while he was hanging out on couches in the west wing. that would be gene robinson, probably the last person if i were donald trump and had donald trump's policies that i'd want hanging out in the west wing, and also, gene, you bring up a great point. i'm not exactly sure how everyone is shocked about the revelations of the books when everybody was saying behind closed doors including republican senators and congressmen what were written on the pages of michael wolff's book. >> exactly. it's exactly what you heard. what you've heard from day one

from before day one of the trump administration about the president, about the people around him, about what it's like. and the thing is it is stunning, and jaw dropping to see it all sort of codified and to hear it in the voices of the people who are right there sitting behind him with names attached or clearly a lot of it is from bannon who we know was right there, and so there's a certain authority there, but, yeah, it's what everybody has been saying, and it is absurd that anyone wouldn't know that michael wolff is a shark. that's been his reputation since -- for many, many years in new york. >> but you've seen this with bob woodward. >> it's true. >> president of the united

states, and i'm going to let woodward in. >> exactly. it's true. >> he's going to tell my story, and then there you have bill and hillary clinton shocked and stunned and deeply saddened at bob woodward's first book. and the bush people said wait, he wrote a critical book on me too, and the obama people said wait, he wasn't really fair. i mean, come on. come on. they're going to write their book. they're not going to be your friend. >> they all talk to him. it's like why does anybody talk to bob woodward. right? since water gate, but they all talk to him and think they're going to be the one that sort of gets it over on woodward. everybody in the white house clearly thought they would be the ones to get it over on michael wolff, and of course, we know the result. and every -- every page rings true, doesn't it? i mean, doesn't it ring true to you? >> it does. it really does.

there are so many things in the book that we've said on this show over the past several years and people have been shocked and stunned and deeply saddened in the white house that we've said those things and they're written out on the page exactly how we said it. it's just -- i mean, he's been doing the same thing for a year and a half or two years. the white house has been protesting and yet there it is in black and white, and nobody on the hill can come out and say it's a lie that's spent any time with donald trump because it's not a lie. it rings true. >> what's striking is just the level that this white house is going to try and discredit this book issuing cease and desist orders and it just speaks to the level of concern about what is true in this book, the level of information that is true in this book, that the white house is taking it so seriously including yesterday that is no coincidence that this order came down from the white house to confiscate

all the personal cell phones of staffers. now, they're saying this is just a coincidence? this happens on the day that the book comes out that this is just some new security precaution. and so i think that does speak to their concern within the white house right now about this book. >> david. amateur hour, amateur hour, amateur hour. you could say it was amateur hour when it came to letting michael wolff hang out on sofas in the west wing for the first several months, but also let me just ask you, david. how much would your publisher pay the white house to put out a type of press release like donald trump put out yesterday and have lawyers trying to ban your book? so your publisher could say read the book that the white house wants to ban? >> this is the press release that writers dream about. this book is so dangerous. i'm going to issue a cease and desist order.

don't even think about reading it and the lines formed before midnight. as we talk about this, i'm struck by the word that greeks used to describe a quality of arrogance that leads people to make catastrophic mistakes. yes. hubr hubris. it's a quality that people have that you see in bannon and trump that they think they're bigger than washington. they think they're bigger than the laws of political gravity, and they're brought to tragic falls. joe, you wrote a piece this morning in the washington post talking about an american tragedy that's playing out. if it's an american tragedy, it has a quality of hubris at its center. >> no doubt. >> we have on the screen today with this cast of characters on "morning joe" this morning, probably about 40 0 years of

newspapering and reporting assembled together, and i would submit, and i'm asking mark leibovich about this. one of the most interesting aspects of gathering and writing news is the unending interest, the topic of human nature. and this that this story like so many stories through centuries comes down to human nature. and the human nature of people gathered in the white house who now, many of them, behave like hostages, or inmates of certainly people with legitimate grievances so everything they dump out in michael wolff's book is neither surprising or shocking, but when it's assembled, it's an incredible example of the administration spiraling down. >> i think it is. part of the human nature is the people in the middle of this thinking that they are going to be the ones to charm the

uncharmable reporter, the ones who are sitting there. they are going to be the ones who will get their truth to be conveyed to the public by this dupe they have sitting on their couch. again, as someone who has built part of a career on finding people like this and sort of trying to win trust, you know, there is always trust involved but it's also a complicated dance. you see this play out over and over again. i think donald trump is an extreme example of humanity, of hubris, of people thinking they can get away with more than they can happening in realtime. and michael wolff writes a wickedly fast and fun book about these things and he has a very incisive style. i think that again, human nature is probably the most important and certainly the most common story in washington on wall street, in silicon valley. every other power sector you'd

ever want to come across in america. >> joe, david mentioned your piece in this morning's washington post which you titled, quote, i asked trump a blunt question. do you read. you wrote we're a nation that spent the past 100 years inventing the modern world, defeating hitler, winning world war ii and liberating half of europe by beating the soviets in the world war, but today we find ourselves dangerously adrift at home and disconnected from allies abroad that made so many of those triumphs possible. i ask what will finally move republicans to deliver a n nonnegotiatable ultimatum to this unstable president? will they only end this tragedy when there's nothing left to use. joe, they're not going to do

this until their own political interests line up with what you say the country's interests are. >> yeah. and gene, you wonder if they wait until the party is wiped out in 2018. you wonder if they wait until 400,000 people are dead on the korean peninsula. including maybe 50,000 to 100,000 americans. you wonder exactly what's going to make mitch mcconnell and paul ryan stop fearing a segment of their base back home, or a segment of their members. you just -- what exactly will it take? you have -- this is extraordinary. this has never happened in american history before. you have the national security -- forget all of his staff members that are already -- have already pled guilty and are cooperating or are out on $10 million bail. you now have his current national security adviser, his

secretary of state, his treasury secretary, gary cohn, everybody around him saying that he's not fit to be president of the united states. i have been saying for some time now, for over a year, that you had people running his campaign who believe that he was in a state of predementia. you have reports now that over the holiday weekend he was in mar-a-lago heavily made up repeating himself, not recognizing people. what is the triggering event? because i've got to say throughout most of history, the triggering event would have already occurred. what exactly will force republicans if not to remove him from office, to go there and say, mr. president, you have two weeks. you have two weeks to stop tweeting. you have two weeks to start acting responsibly and acting

rationally and stop threatening nuclear war. two weeks to fill out cabinet agencies. you have two weeks to begin acting like a sane and rational human being or we'll take the action that every fortune 500 company, every college university, every public interest group, every high school football team would take, and we will move to get you out of office or recommend to the cabinet that you do that. why can't the republicans do that when so much is at stake? >> well, that's the most important question before us right now, and the answer -- look, i despair that they will ever do that. i would at this point wish they would just fulfill their constitutional responsibility. congress can constrain and restrain an out of control president in various ways. congress has the power to investigate the power of

oversight, the power of the purse, and can do a lot of things do exert pressure on a president and try to keep him between the guardrails, but this congress won't do its job and won't do its duty, and i see no reason to expect that to change. look, i think the duty of the american people is in november to elect a congress that will, and let's hope we get to november. but to elect a congress that will and this is not in terms of partnership, they can be democrats. they can be republicans. they can be independents, whatever they are, that they are patriots, that they are willing to do what clearly is their job, their constitutional role right now in this extraordinary situation. >> all right. gene, thank you so much. and we'll be reading your column in the washington post. david ignatius, quickly, i wrote about the gains that we have

made as a country over the past century with the help of allies. but what happens if we continue on this trajectory for another two or three years to everything, all of the alliances and organizations that we created after defeating hitler? what happens with the power dynamic between china and the united states if china is handed the advantages over the last three years that donald trump has seated to them over the past year? what does the next president of the united states do? how does the next president unring these bells? >> the structure of american power that donald trump and steve bannon very deliberately set out to try to deconstruct is weaker. they have had some success over the last year. u.s. alliances are weaker than they've been in my memory. our relationships with key

traditional allies, britain, germany, not where they should be, and china in particular is moving aggressively to take the place that the united states has held in the world since 1945. is this damage going to be permanent? will it -- could it be repaired by a president who follows donald trump? that's the question we're all wondering. i would know one thing. our military is around the world. it's in relationships with every major military. it continues to exercise, share information, plan. same thing with our intelligence agency. it's the biggest most powerful intelligence agency in the world. it conducts liaison every single day. somebody comes to visit mike pompeo at his head quarters from a foreign intelligence service, and they talk. the structure of american power is pretty durable, and although it's getting terrible attacks in this period from the white house, i think we should

understand that there's a lot of momentum that continues. >> all right. david, thank you so much. also enjoyed reading your column in the washington post this morning. thank you so much for being with us. and heidi, what are you going to be reporting on today on the hill? >> i had a story out today, actually, joe on white house officials who briefed me yesterday on the president's plan to meet with congressional leaders at camp david this weekend. the president is trying to start out 2018 the way that many analysts think he should have began 2017 which is on a populist economic proposal of his own infrastructure. he spent 2017 on taxes, obamacare repeal. that is ripped straight from the traditional republican play book. what i'm told by white house officials is that when he gets congressional leaders in that room, he's going to say to them, look, mitch mcconnell, i know you have your own priority, a two-year spending bill. paul ryan, you want entitlement

reform, but this is my priority and this is 2018 and this is what you're going to do. there's a big stumbling block, funding. where are they going to get the money for the infrastructure proposal? the tax bill that created a $1 trillion deficit, the repatriation money as part of the tax bill that trump's own economic adviser talked about using toward infrastructure, gone to lower corporate rates and here we are talking about approving $81 billion in new spending on hurricane relief. so i don't know how they're going to get even some of these red state democrats to go along with what should have been many argue in 2017 his top priority. >> all right. we'll see this weekend. heidi, thank you so much. mark leibovich, as always, thank you as well. it's always great having you on the show. still ahead on "morning joe," michael wolff is speaking out to nbc news about the president's reaction to his new book. he wants to know, quote, where do i send the box of chocolates

for helping him sell so many copies. steve bannon's comments have cost him. the white house says maybe it should cost him his job at breitbart. peter alexander has more reaction from the west wing coming up next on "morning joe."

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morning. good morning. the president's lawyer sent a cease and desist letter threatening legal action against you and the publisher to which you say. >> and they sent that yesterday before they had read the book, but actually what i say is where do i send the box of chocolates? >> you think he's helping you sell books? >> absolutely, and not only is he helps me sell books but he's helping me prove the point of the book. i mean, this is extraordinary that a president of the united states would try to stop the publication of a book.

>> just can't do it. it really is extraordinary. it's shortsighted and suggests that donald trump doesn't know what's in his own best interest. this morning axios is reporting the president is so furious about michael wolf of's new book, that they're trying to avoid him. they said key aides tried to keep him from making the legal threats against the author and steve bannon, but trump was, quote, insistent on following a tactic that he frequently used in business, rattling cages with lawyers. letters that resulted in no legal action. and michael wolff will be joining us next week on monday. right now let's go to the white house and talk to peter alexander. the white house still in damage control. what more can you tell us this morning? >> reporter: their effort to try to shut the book down even

threatening basically suit, trying to get them to stop publication, demanding an apology for the defamatory statements thus far as the cease and desist letter indicated is only backfiring so far. the bottom line is how is this for a marketing line, here's the book the president doesn't want you to read, and for consideration, look at this picture from last night at kramer books. this is shortly after midnight when they opened their doors. 75 of them selling out right away last night even in the frigid temperatures in this area. what's striking to watch at the white house is the fierce pushback not just from the president but also from some of his aides, sarah huckabee sanders yesterday trying to convince us she wasn't aware that the president and steve bannon ever had any kind of close relationship. ignoring the partnership the two men shared that helped propel him to the presidency. president trump saying i don't talk to him.

we know they spoke as recently as last month. the white house calling this complete fantasy and tabloid fiction. he's what the president tweeted overnight basically taking on michael wolff. he writes i authorized zero access to white house. turned him down many time for author of phony book. full of lies. misrepresentations and sources that don't exist. look at this guy's past and watch what happens to him and wait for it, here's the newest nickname he's invented, sloppy steve, his new reference to steve bannon. >> peter, thank you. greatly appreciate it. with us now let's go to alabama -- before that, i have to say, i have to go to joyce vance in a second and talk about alabama football, but what the white house said last night, what the president said is, again, just a lie on its face. a lie that's easily disproven.

a lie that everybody that works at the white house, every reporter that has covered the white house from the beginning knows that michael wolff had the opposite of zero access. the question that was hanging out there all last year was why is the white house granting michael wolff so much access? why is the white house allowing michael wolff to hang out on couches in the west wing? so, again the, the president tweets and lies. again, he's not even, again, bringing up david gefen who said the clintons are unusual ly goo liars, this president isn't even a good liar. anyway, he believes it which is actually even more disturbing which actually proves the point that michael wolff and all of his sources made in the book. let's go to the great state of alabama, joyce vance is with us.

also republican strategist and political commentator susan d l delpursio, and jonathan is here as well. joyce, there's so many disturbing things that donald trump has done this past week. there's so many things that donald trump's done this past week including taunting the leader of north korea talking about a nuclear war and how his nuclear button was bigger than kim jong-un's nuclear button but also at home i want you to talk about how disturbing it is that the president of the united states is actually seeking out for attack a former political rival, or even not eve an political rival. somebody that worked for his former political rival, a private citizen talking about

prosecution. can you talk about how retched this is and how it goes against just the basic tenets of our constitutional norms? >> we should all be deeply disturbed by this, joe, i think you're referencing the president's tweets and efforts to say that hillary clinton's former aide should be put in jail, and this has become an administration that's far too quick to talk about jailing or prosecuting its political opponents. that's not what we do in the united states. it's what they do in russia. it's what they do in dictatorships, but because in founding our country the founders carefully crafted a constitution that was designed to protect people from exactly this kind of attack by political leaders, these sorts of shrill attacks the president is making are increasingly alarming constitutional scholars,

lawyers, former prosecuters, and really my hope is that all of the american people will come to understand that this is not normal. we need to protest this. we need to push back against it. >> and susan, let's look at the last week. you have the president of the united states violating constitutional norms, trying to seek out a former political opponent for jailing. you have the president threatening nuclear war against an unbalanced dictator in north korea, and then, of course, you have basically the confirmation of what everybody in washington d.c. has been saying off the record for the past year and a half, that this president is unstable, and he basically acts like a child inside the white house and can't be controlled. >> and he can't be controlled. and it's going to be -- fall upon that republicans in the house and the senate need to if they're not -- which i doubt they will, will go after impeachment. they need to create an agenda which blocks him out. they have to show the strength

now. we know of several dozen republican legislators who are not seeking reelection. i think if they were to start something, maybe others would follow. let's face it, when in the tweet donald trump said he granted michael wolff access, he offered zero oversight. there's no oversight of this administration, and now it's time for the house and the senate to do what they're supposed to do and keep that executive branch in check. these are very difficult times. we talked last week about how he gave that interview at the grill room with michael schmidt. another incredible interview, and the thing that's so concerning about that is he did it so offhandedly. he set policy. he's doing these things that do not allow serious people to do their work in the white house, and there are some like general mattis and general kelly. it's now time for people to step up and hold him accountable. >> and jonathan, that's what's so disturbing. if you want to get away from the

stories that give the media a sugar high about personalities and certain anecdotes that are shocking, you look at the fact you have a president that everybody says doesn't read. he won't even read one-pagers. he gets up in the middle of meetings with world leaders because he's bored. his staff does the same thing. they can't figure out what policies to pursue or how to organize the place because this is a president that refuses to be disciplined. this is a president that refuses to focus. this is a white house that refuses to move in any particular direction, and you have sarah huckabee sanders like yesterday, again, just stating something that she and the entire world knows is a lie that donald trump never really had a personal relationship with steve bannon, when everybody inside the white house including the president's own family were concerned that steve bannon and donald trump were wandering around the white house alone for the first couple of months having dinner just about every

night. >> there's no question that the president and steve bannon had a tight relationship during the stretch run of the campaign, although they knew each other before that. and certainly in the first few months of this administration when bannon was a power player in the west wing. it faded over time, but that relationship did not end. they continued to speak even after bannon was fired or left the white house this summer. and i think you're right about this president. he's staffed differently. aides, you grew frustrated over the summer with his scatter shot approach to the health care reform. the republican health care effort and feel like the president hurt as much as he helped. that when they brief him it's often with -- he prefers briefings orally rather than with written documents. when it is a written document, that they've grown to learn to highlight his own name in them, knowing that would draw his attention. i reflect back to a story i was part of during the summer when he was at the pentagon in the

room known as the tank when tillerson and mattis and others explained to him the importance of a robust american presence overseas, why that mattered, and they did so in part by suggesting this is how these american interest help american businesses overseas and in particular, the trump organization. because they knew that would be something that resonates with him. and to fact check the access issue, as a white house reporter, michael wolff was in there all the time. he wasn't given a temporary appointment pass. he had a blue one which allowed him far more access to the west wing. >> joyce, the late truly great senator daniel patrick monohan defined deviance down. it meant what was once shocking at one time, after a period of

time, similar events are no longer shocking. let's talk about michael schmidt. don mcgahn approaches the attorney general of the united states and tries to convince him not to recuse himself from a pending investigation of elements of the presidency. so you're a former u.s. attorney. did you work for the president of the united states or did you work for the letter of the law, the constitution of the united states? and what is your understanding of the role of the white house counsel? is he the president's personal lawyer or bound to represent the office of the presidency? a once revered and respected institution? >> president obama made it clear to his u.s. attorneys that although he had appointed us, that we didn't serve him. that u.s. attorneys served the american people, and that his expectation was that we would do exactly that. the white house counsel currently don mcgahn has a very

similar obligation. he's not the president's lawyer. he serves the presidency and the american people, but he does not serve a specific sitting president. so the idea that he would like orders from the president about something that hinges on a doj ethics issue is really pretty ala alarming, and i think it's important to say it was clear to everybody with the justice department background that jeff sessions was going to have to recuse from the russia investigation. the appearance of impropriety if he participated would have been too high. and at doj folks value not just avoiding actual conflicts of interest but avoiding the appearance of a conflict of interest, because it's so important for the american people to be able to trust the neutrality of the justice department. >> joyce, if you are as a former prosecuter, if you are putting together a case for obstruction of justice, and you have

somebody, let's just go ahead and just stay with the facts, donald trump has now said he knew that michael flynn lied to the fbi and he had to fire him because he knew that michael flynn had committed a crime. when you have the president of the united states going a step further and going to the prosecuter and saying time and time again, pressuring him to not pursue this investigation of michael flynn lying. and then you have the president of the united states going to his lawyer -- not his lawyer but the white house counsel saying go over to the justice department and pressure the attorney general to not recuse himself so we can maintain control of the investigation. what is the legal import of that? or is that just something that you put in a time line to show a grand jury in proving an overall

case? >> so this is where i have to put on my prosecuter hat and say not so fast. there are a couple of hurdles that mueller would have to clear here. first off, and we've discussed it before, there's this idea that you don't prosecute a sitting president. a little bit of controversy on that and we'll have to see how mueller calls that one. even if he got past that and decided to pursue an obstruction indictment, the charge would have to fit into one of a couple of varying narrow statutes. you would have to find that the president specifically did one of engaged in one of the types of obstruction the law prohibits with a corrupt motive. he would have to try to influence a witness, for instance, would be one of the easiest ones to prove. so mueller will, in fact, fit all of this into an order of events and determine whether or not there is specific on justice

in the statutes. another would be obstruction as used as an article of impeachment where congress would not be required to find obstruction within the meaning of a specific law but the president obstructed justice within the more common meaning of the phrase. >> all right. joyce, thank you. and your prediction for monday night, of course, alabama over g georgia? >> alabama all the way. >> roll tide. >> coming up, we're hearing more from joe biden and whether howard dean would stand a chance in a cage match against the former vice president. >> howard dean said this morning, he said the old people in the party need to, quote, get the hell out of the way. >> tell howard i can take him physically. okay? this is something that i'm

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you say he was at mar-a-lago and didn't recognize life-long friends? >> i will quote steve bannon. he's lost it. >> and michael wolff joins us. "morning joe" here on monday morning. still ahead, we'll be talking to

steve about where a weakened steve bannon leaves the kdss he's -- candidates he's backing in the mid terms. we'll be right back. steyer: the president's national security adviser -- guilty. his campaign chairman -- under indictment. his son-in-law -- secret talks with russians. the director of the fbi -- fired. special counsel robert mueller's criminal investigation has already shown why the president should be impeached. you can send a message to your representatives at needtoimpeach.com and demand they finally take a stand.

this president is not above the law.

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now you can get it, too. welcome to the party. joining now, politics editor at national journal, josh krosh shar. in his latest piece josh writes that inexperienced candidates along with a slew of well-funded primary challenges could cost democrats winnable seats in the 2018 midterm elections. josh, i've got to ask you, one of the complaints about the trump administration that you hear from democrats is that they came in with no plan to replace health care, something they've been talking about for eight years, that they really haven't thought out anything they want to do for an agenda. couldn't the same thing be said now about the democratic party, basically all they talk about is donald trump instead of answering the basic question, what's your plan, what are you going to do?

>> that's right, mike. the political environment is so favorable for democrats that a lot of strategists are worried there are so many candidates running on this anti trump message, they haven't really vetted the candidates. they don't have a clear set of policies they've been articulating, and the prospect of these very heated primaries. you have very winnable races for democrats across the country and you have almost a dozen candidates or more in many of these democratic primaries. it's good news for the democrats. it suggests there are a lot of outsider candidates with little elective experience that want to run, want to come to washington. not a lot of vetting and scrutiny. we don't know where they stand on a lot of the big-picture issues. >> josh, it's kasie hunt. i've been doing reporting about this as well. some people suggested to me that part of the reason why this problem is potentially being created is because democrats don't have the resources to deal with the sheer volume of people that have come up out of the

woodwork. i'm wondering if you think that's the case here. >> definitely, kasie. this is a good problem to have. i was talking with a strategist from emily's list, the group that tries to elect democratic women to run for office. they said last year they had about 900 women interested in running for public office. in the last year they've gotten over 22,000 candidates looking to run for congress or some other type of office. that is an exponential increase. it's hard for groups that vet candidates that try to promote candidacies, the democratic national campaign committee responsible for guiding the process and picking the best candidates, in some cases through trees primary, it's challenging when you have so many candidates to figure out who the strongest candidate is to take on some republican congressman. >> josh, jonathan lemire.

you write these candidates have not been appropriately vetted. aren't there cautionary details about this, john ossoff last year, in an extreme case, roy moore where he was not vetted as well as he should have been. are democrats trying to correct the eshoo and vet these canned dts before the midterms? >> they're trying. one of the stories i write about is the race involving darrell issa, one of the most vulnerable house republicans in the country. one of the leading candidates is trying to become the youngest woman congressman ever elected to congress. two years ago she started her career in politics, working in a low to mid-level commission on the hillary clinton campaign. she told me she was trying to get a job working on a campaign trying to get her feet wet in the world of congressional politics. a lot of people looking for a candidate to run against darrell issa said why don't you run. she didn't have a lot of experience in government and

she's one of the top candidates in the country looking to run against one of the most vulnerable house republicans. what democrats are worried about, you could have the john ossoff effect, you coupled have good candidates, impressive resumes, u but they're so inexperienced, so young, don't have a lot of experience, it could cost them in some of these very winnable districts. >> josh, susan del percio. another place i know democrats are looking to pick up seats are swing districts in blue seats. democrats are at an advantage there, but tend to go very left in their primaries, especially in states like new york and california. how concerned do democrats have to be of putting candidates too far to the left in some of these swing districts? >> the big battle ground dire s districts are in suburban districts that voted for hip or swung away from thing party in last year's presidential election. the one thing that keeps democratic strategists up at night, some more to the left or

supported bernie sanders in the primary, positions are unknown and don't have policy expertise, they could win these nominations. all of a sudden they're one of the top candidates running for the house and exposed as being too inexperienced or not ready for prime time. it's a good challenge to have, to have so many candidates. this is a good political year for democrats, their lead on the generic ballot is like 15 points in some polls, but the downside to that is, boy, there are so many candidates, you don't know who is who. >> and it's only january. josh, thanks very much. still ahead, new reporting from "the new york times" lays out another avenue of investigation for bob mueller concerning possible obstruction from the president. we'll talk to the author of that bombshell piece, michael schmidt. apparently, this is the magazine cover that helped grant michael wolff such unfettered access to the white house. we'll talk to the former part editor of the hollywood reporter and now part owner who says she

can personally corroborate key parts of the blockbuster book. "morning joe" will be right back. so, that goal you've been saving for, you can do it. we can do this. at fidelity, our online planning tools are clear and straightforward so you can plan for retirement while saving for the things you want to do today. -whoo!

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>> that was president trump back in july talking to "the new york times." now the "times" is out with a new report, saying the president personally directed the top lawyer in the white house to convince, to persuade, to pressure attorney general jeff sessions to stay in charge of the russia probe. once again, trying to interfere with an investigation. we'll be talking to the reporter who broke that story in just a minute. good morning, it's friday, january 5th. mika will be back with us on monday. but today, we have with us veteran columnist and msnbc contributor mike barnicle, white house reporter for the associated press jonathan lemire, nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of kc dc on msnbc, kasie hunt, columnist and associate editor for "the washington post" david ignatius, white house reporter forusaprzy

man who broke that news last night on the report of the obstruction inquiry and donald trump's struggle to try to get a grip on the russia investigation, michael schmidt of, of course, "the new york times." we'll get to that in one minute. i want to start, david ignatius, with you. i didn't get a chance to speak with you yesterday about the revelations that came out in michael schmidt's book, revelations that, of course, so many people in washington have been whispering about, the michael wolff book. i had somebody say last night, what's the big news about wolff's new book? it's what everybody in washington has been writing or saying for the past year? well, wolff is more dramatic in his writing. be that as it may, it caused a firestorm, and i'm just wondering with north korea and with iran and with news coming

out of pakistan, it can be unsettling. what is your -- what's your take on a new explosive set of revelations coming out talking about the dysfunction in the trump white house when there is so much on the line across the globe this morning? >> joe, i can give you a simple anecdote to explain what it's been like the last couple days. on thursday afternoon when the revelations about the wolff book and trump's amazing response to it came out, i was on my way to a major embassy to talk about precisely the problems that you're mentioning, what's happening in north korea, what's happening in iran. and i found that the diplomat i had gone to see hadn't been able to spend any time the whole afternoon looking at those big issues because he was preoccupied reading into the details of the wolff revelations. it was a sense as if there had

been an implosion at the center of this trump team, the governing team led by we thought the insurgency that bannon represented. i think the whole of washington, embassies, cabinet positions, took a deep breath wednesday afternoon and thought our world is different now, trying to sort out exactly what the implications are. even in the capital, you think that at this point people couldn't be surprised from what comes out of the white house, this stopped the clock for a couple hours. >> i don't want to overstate it, but in talking to leaders across the world, i can just say what mika and i hear, from diplomats and others, we are suspended in time. united states, the leader of the free world not only in hard

power but in soft power, just right now things are frozen. these world leaders are not looking to the united states of america to lead over the next three, three and a half years. >> joe, again, we had a perfect example of that this week. the united states, president trump i think not unreasonably said to our european allies, let's have a common statement on what's happening in iran, people in the streets calling for freedom and shouldn't we say something jointly to hold the iranian regime responsible. it wasn't a crazy request. the europeans didn't want to do it. and they didn't want to do it because they've gotten so gun shy, so burned by these trump statements that are so en flam tore, my button is bigger than yours, they backed away. the biggest breach between the u.s. and its allies since trump came into office in terms of specific policies. that's one small sign this is

taking its toll. >> let's go to the hill and kasie hunt. reaction yesterday from everything that happened. >> joe, i think you saw from some republican leaders, barely contained glee over steve bannon's self 'em lags. took himself off the playing field and i think that's something republican leaders on the hill, while they may not have been excited publicly, privately i certainly heard from a lot of them and aides that this is something that is a positive development, they felt, for hill republicans. i think david ignatius' point is well taken. a book store stays open for 24 hours, put the book on sale at midnight because of such intense demand in town to get a chance to actually read through all these revelations for themselves. this is in many ways not a surprise. i think leaders on capitol hill have been privy to pieces of

this as they have traveled up and down pennsylvania avenue through out the course of doing their work. i think it's driving a lot of the concern about exactly what the future of not just the party is, but the country. >> what the future of the party is, what the future of the country is. i've got to say, for republican leaders and others who see this as a positive development, a book where all of donald trump's cabinet members, or most of them, deride him, mock him, ridicule him, where others in the white house more than suggest he's not fit to be president of the united states, that he's not temperamentally capable to be president of the united states, that he's not mentally strong enough to be president of the united states. if mitch mcconnell sees that as a good day, and he does, that says very disturbing things about mitch mcconnell and exactly how low the bar has gone on capitol hill. to michael schmidt, michael, breaking news last night coming

from you. why don't you jump in on donald trump desperately trying to get control of a russia investigation that he saw sort of slipping out of his hands and dreaming, dreaming of having another roy cohn-like figure to go arounded with and brute lies an independent fbi. he views him as a protector. he had his white house counsel, top lawyer, go to the attorney general in march and say, look, don't recuse yourself in the russia investigation. there's no reason to do that. after the president found out he was going to recuse, he got extremely angry. he said, you know, barack obama had eric holder, jfk had rfk. where is my roy cohn, referring

to his long-time personal lawyer saying where is this person to protect me? that for us really provided a window into how he viewed the top law enforcement position, the top person underneath him at a time that the russia investigation was accelerating. >> michael, not just that, but how he viewed lawyers as basically hit men of sorts. roy cohn, again, a man who disgraced himself time and time again when he was alive, who disgraced himself during the mccarthy hearings, who disgraced himself through the '60s and '70s, disgraced himself so much that he was disbarred and died in disgrace, there's so much with your story that i think is significant, with the breaking news that's significant, i do believe, and i'll ask you this, but this is another line for

mueller's team, part of the timeline on how donald trump was trying to obstruct justice, trying to obstruct this investigation. but how telling that donald trump actually looks to roy cohn as a model for what a lawyer should be doing, for what an attorney general should be doing. >> it's an obsession with loyalty. it's obsession with their devotion to him and not a devotion to following the facts or the rule of law. if you want a personal lawyer to defend you, that's one thing, but this position, the attorney general, is a far different one than that. it's one about allowing investigations to go and the facts to be the most important thing and for it to be the determining factor in everything. he didn't seem to appreciate that. that has not changed. he's been consistent about that. >> right. >> he's been open about that. he has said it publicly.

he said it in that interview clip that you played. this is something he's still upset about. he doesn't appreciate the nuance and importance of recusal. >> mike barnicle, i remember reading larry tighe's book, reviewing it for t"the washingtn post" a couple summers ago, in it there were large sections where bobby kennedy was working in the justice department, i believe, or actually working in the senate and would work in the same office with roy cohn. roy cohn was sloppy. he ignored facts. he let cases pile up. he made unsubstantiated charges, he didn't care about the truth. as i was reading this two years ago, i said, my god, the parallels between what i'm reading about roy cohn in the 1950s and what we know about

donald trump in 2016 is remarkable. you have bobby kennedy always getting the best of him. bobby kennedy, of course, worked around the clock, had the best staff and actually was stuck to the facts. again, this is important breaking news for the prosecution, possible prosecution of the white house. but the fact that donald trump believes the united states attorney general should act like roy cohn is actually the most damning of all statements coming out from this very disturbing story. >> the link there, joe, robert kennedy and roy cohn is the same that michael schmidt just explained about donald trump expecting loyalty to himself, not to the presidency, not to the nation, but to himself. roy cohn's loyalty back in the 1950s during the senate mccarthy hearings was to joe mccarthy, to

protect his patron, joe mccarthy. he would lie, he would cheat, he would trim the edges of the law on behalf of joseph mccarthy, senator mccarthy from wisconsin. michael schmidt, i would like to ask you, with regard to this brilliant piece of reporting in today's new york times two questions. if you could explain to us the july plane trip where the president is returning from europe, the role of mark kur ral low, and if you can explain who that is -- and then aing baup question, did you know reince priebus the then chief of staff took apparently copious notes that apparently robert mueller now has? >> on the second one, what happened was last year the white house produced a bunch of documents to mueller. this was e-mails, memo, handwritten notes, and in them were handwritten notes from reince priebus. one of them was from a conversation he had with the

president on april 11th. the thing that makes this significant is that priebus' notes about his conversations with trump back up comey's memos. in comey's memos he describes a call where the president calls him and says we need to get out the word that i'm not under investigation. comey details this. when he testified before congress last year, and the interesting thing is that priebus' notes show how trump was telling him about that conversation, instructing him what to do to try to get that word out. now, in and of itself, it's not the most revelatory thing, but what it does is it goes to substance eighting comey. comey has been called a liar repeatedly by the president. if there were to be any type of obstruction case against the president, comey would be an important factor in that. on the air force one flight this summer, the president was coming back from europe, it was in july. "the times" was preparing the story on meetings that don junior, his son, and jared

kushner had had the previous summer during the campaign with russians who were promising dirt on hillary clinton. in that flight, the michael wolff book says the president dictated a statement, a misleading statement about the nature of those meetings, and the president at the time had this outside spokesman named mark corral low working outside the white house who was very unnerved by that and thought the president's efforts to put out this misleading statement was trying to throw sand in the wheels of the investigation, to try to throw off the investigators. if you're trying to throw off the investigators, you are potentially obstructing justice. >> our panel is staying right here because we have a lot more ground to cover, including what's left of steve bannon's insurgency. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ♪

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welcome back to "morning joe." we're hashing out the two big stories this morning. "the new york times" reporting on efforts the president trying to sway attorney general jeff sessions and the on going fallout from steve bannon's comments to michael wolff. jonathan lemire from the ap is with us. jonathan, the president seems to actually be doing the author a favor. what's your take? >> that's right, joe. i think at this point some of the president's comments about the book are going to be blurbed on the book's jacket, the best possible advertisement for it. at this point the publisher moved up the publication date. it was supposed to come out next week. it's out today, midnight last night in some places. the last thing -- the president's intent to have people not read this book is obviously going to drive people toward it. i think it speaks to something deeper about this president's personality where he can let no slight go. it is not in his nature at all to just sit back, keep his mouth shut and let something roll over

him. he's going to hit back, he's going to fight back, he's going to punch back which, bringing steve bannon back into this, is one of the things that drew bannon and trump together, it's this fighting spirit, the fact that trump always liked in bannon that he would hit harder, if he took a shot back, he would shoot that much more the other direction. now we've seen that relation disintegrate to the point where trump is calling him sloppy steve, still not as good as lying ted, but not bad. >> nod bad. >> knowing trump, in trump's world even when you're out, you're never really out. >> you're never really out. that's a great point. >> bannon is still telling people, despite taking all this heat in the last 48 hours, he fully expects after a cooling-off period he and the president will start talking again. >> that's exactly what the president does. they will start talking -- i'm sure they'll start talking

again. he started sucking up to him yesterday morning and boeing and scraping. that's what's required of donald trump. they can turn michael wolff into the bad guy and suddenly be -- anybody that thinks that steve bannon and donald trump's relationship is over has not been paying attention to donald trump for the past several years. david ignatius, i know you want to get a question in on michael schmidt. >> michael, we've been watching bob mueller on his back foot the last couple weeks, conservative media, conservative members of congress attacked his investigation. do you think after your revelation suggesting new possibilities of obstructing the investigation after michael wolff publishes bannon calling the trump tower meeting treasonous, unpatriotic and bad bleep, do you think this means mueller is on his front foot and a lot of the criticism will go

away? >> i don't know. the republicans did a very good job in undercutting him publicly at the end of the year. they really took the text message issue, where the top agent expressed anti-trump views with another fbi official, they used that to raise questions about mueller's credibility. mueller had really good standing in washington, someone on both sides of the aisle. even mainstream republicans were really going after him. if you're a republican, do you look at this and say, wow, maybe mueller has really good cards, do i need to back off? i don't think so. there's been so many revelations that have come out about this president, and the republicans have continued to stand by him. i think they saw the success. if you look on fox, there's a constant drum beat against mueller, about his prosecutors being democrats and such. i'm not sure this will really change anything. still ahead, we're moments away from the monthly jobs report. will it help push wall street to another record high?

but first, janice min from "the hollywood reporter," she has a firsthand look and firsthand knowledge involving one of the episodes described in michael wolff's book. she was at the party. we'll tell you about it when "morning joe" returns. ♪

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coming up, we'll be joined by a reporter who is backing up one of those big claims from inside michael wolff's book on the white house. janice min was in the room during a private dinner that had steve bannon and roger ailes talking. she's going to tell us what she saw and heard straight ahead on "morning joe." but first, here is bill karins. he's got a check on a frigid forecast. bill, are we going to get a break any time soon? >> middle to end of next week, that's when we get a good january thaw. this weekend is brutal great lakes, ohio valley and the northeast. let me show you pictures from the blizzard. now that it's all heading toward the canadian maritimes. sich watt, massachusetts, comparable to the 1978 blizzard, water in homes, cars that got flooded out. look at that water, smashed up opt the roofs of some of those

houses. imagine what that freezing spray looks like today with how cold it was overnight and into this morning. we've seen snowstorms lining this, foot and a half in maine, providence, norfolk, hartford. new york city almost ten inches. charleston, south carolina, historic. that's what i'll remember from this storm, seeing the people in of charleston playing in five inches of snow. behind it it is windy and cold. wind chill warnings and advisories for 140 million people. that's almost half the population of our country. what's really been exceptional is how far south it's been cold. still at 5 in plaent, 4 at raleigh. the poor people in duluth, negative 37. windchill this morning in miami is at 38 degrees. we've had freezing temperatures all the way down to lake okeechobee. 30 degrees in plant city, florida. if you check your strawberries in the spring, a lot of them come from plant city. we'll see how that affects the crops. it stays cold over the weekend

great lakes into the northeast. doesn't warm up until monday or tuesday in some cases. again, very chilly stuff. times square, about as snowy and icy as you'll see it. it's not going to melt any time soon. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. (singing) riblets, tenders!

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president -- >> what was i doing there if he didn't want me to be there. >> let me ask you, did you talk to the president, did you interview him for this book? >> i absolutely spoke to the president. whether he realized it was an interview or not, i don't know. but it certainly was not off the record. i've spent about three hours with the president over the course of the campaign and in the white house. so my window into donald trump is pretty significant. but even more to the point, i spent -- and is really sort of the point of the book -- i spoke to people who spoke to the

president on a daily, sometimes minute-by-minute basis. >> donald trump will attack. he will send lawyers letters. this is a 35-year history of how he approaches everything. >> do you have recordings of some of these interviews and some of these conversations? >> i work like every journalist works. so i have recordings, i have notes, i am certainly and absolutely in every way comfortable with everything i've recorded in this book. >> would you release any of these recordings since your credibility is being questioned? >> my credibility is being questioned by a man who has less credibility than perhaps anyone who has ever walked on earth at this point. >> that was michael wolff talking this morning on the "today" show. he's going to be joining us onset on monday morning. but we're back with mike barnicle, kasie hunt, jonathan

lapiere, susan del percio. joining the conversation, national political correspondent for nbc news and msnbc steve kornacki, also white house bureau chief at "the washington post" and political analyst for nbc news phillip rubbing kerr, and strategist at eldridge industries, janice min. janice attended the steve bannon and roger ailes dinner party detailed in michael wolff's book. let's begin with you, janice. i love the correspondence you had with michael wolff when michael was rubbing around the west wing and you were asking him, what exactly do they think you're doing there, michael, to which he responded what? >> he said i don't know what they think i'm doing. different answers at different times would be, but i'm going to keep doing it until they tell me not to. i remember there was a key moment when kelly was brought in

as chief of staff, who is supposed to bring law and order to the west wing. i said to michael, so is the jig up now that kelly is there. michael responded to me, there is so much chaos, i think i'm last on the totem pole of the concerns. he did proceed to be in there for many, many, many more weeks even with kelly in the house. >> tell us about the dinner that's detailed in the book. first of all, is it accurate, and what were the surprises? >> everything was surprising. the details in the book are accurate. it was -- the whole dinner from start to finish was about five hours. roger ailes and his wife elizabeth arrived first. remember, this is shortly -- this is on heels of ailes being oefted from fox news. he was not allowed to speak to any media. the two of them were thick as thieves on everything, riz beth

and roger. she was his staunch defender, angrier about the way he was treated than he was. really, if you were just -- by their accounts, they simply were baffled, could not believe any of these allegations coming forward, believed people were personally motivated to get ahead in their careers, that roger was a great champion of women. they believed it so much that you could see how they could convince others that it wasn't true. he also was very candid about his feelings about rupert murdock, and i thought tellingly at dinner, roger sat to my right and we were talking about donald trump, and he said, roger said, you know, i'm a lifelong republican, but these guys kind of scare me. many days i thought, since that conversation, what would the nature of fox news be today if ailes had been kept in charge?

would it be the house news channel for the white house? i don't know. >> there's so many questions to ask. one that michael wolff asked yesterday on twitter, gabe sherman brought up that rupert murdock had such a hostile relationship with michael wolff. you had everybody in the west wing who had no idea who michael wolff was, which is mind blowing for people running the country, don't know who michael wolff was. all they had to do -- and jared kushner and donald trump and people in the west wing were in daily contact with rupert murdock. if they just asked him about michael wolff, he would have said get him the hell out of there now. >> reveals the lack of discipline that michael writes about throughout the book. let's go back to how he even got access to the white house in the first place. in june of 2016, michael had

done a cover story at the hollywood reporter on donald trump, and trump had invited michael to his house in beverly hills. the story was not flattering. this was a story where michael was questioning trump about brexit, and he was quite confused, didn't know what brexit was, didn't seem to know who peter teal was, who was about to speak at the republican national convention at his behalf. when michael brought up peter teal, he said, oh, is that a friend of jared's? so on and so on. even calling the furniture in trump's home that of a four-star hotel, not a five-star hotel. the kind of notes that would typically drive trump insane. after that, the cover was sort of cool looking and michael got an e-mail from hope hicks saying great cover, exclamation point. so shortly after that michael went in for the kill. this is michael. he is a shark. he went in for the kill and

asked for access to the white house, and he got it. the second after the inauguration he was in there. going back to the dinner party, i was blown away by the level of trust and confidence steve bannon and roger ailes had in michael. he was clearly one of them. they liked him, they trusted him and spoke openly. the repertoire at the dinner party, afterwards we were incredulous saying we just watched the formation of the cabinet, the republican agenda laid out and we really got to see who was in charge of these decisions. there was no disputing that bannon was the one driving the car at that point. when he sat down, among the first things he said, day one, we're moving the embassy to jerusalem. it was president day one. that was important to him. he talked about rudy jugiuliani.

what are we going to do about rudy? he's upset he didn't get secretary of state. ailes says, you know, don't worry about rudy, let him be photographed coming once or twice out of air force one, he'll be fine. ailes is asking bannon, what about georgette, talking about georgette mossbacker, new york city socialite. i don't know if this happened. oh, we're giving her slovenia as an ambassadorship. they talked about other people seeking am ba bass doorships. the only time i saw -- bannon, we picture him as this foaming mouth rabid dog. he was incredibly calm and rational. the only two times i saw him get very heated and animated at the meal is when he said, you know what? we have our chance to get three of our people on the supreme court. when we do that -- and i think he used an expletive -- the

other side is going to f'ing say we won. he was very adamant about that. the second time i saw him get very animated. he said forget about the middle east. the conflict is not in the middle east. everyone needs to be looking at china. he went on this unbelievably manic long tirade about how china is the problem, china has stolen america's middle class, i'm getting it back. he said, the south china sea is where the action is going to be. he said -- he knows an enormous amount about arcane chinese history. he mentioned some theory which i was not aware of, about conflict happening every 17 years, war happening every 17 years in asia where the greater power destroys a let ser power, but to the detriment of the greater power. >> okay. janice min, thank you so much for being with us. a remarkable recounting of what sounds like an absolutely

remarkable dinner. >> yes, it was. >> what a story. thank you so much for being with us. >> bill rucker, we can talk about how it was just dumb founding, unbelievable that the white house trusted this guy to just hang out for several months. we can also go to yesterday where the white house actually, when they did step in and try to help the president, he didn't listen. yesterday telling them don't attack this book, don't give it more oxygen, don't threaten michael wolff. don't get your lawyers out there trying to stop its publication. take us inside the white house yesterday. what was being done when they were in crisis mode and how did donald trump ignore them again? >> joe, we can go back to wednesday when the details of this book first started coming out and trump spent hours in the oval office with his closest advisers fuming over it, watching tv, and the news reports, trying to figure out

how he would respond and drafted the harsh statement about steve bannon, but advisers say he thought that wasn't enough. he was still angry about it and wanted to take further retaliatory steps and contacted the south side lawyer who helped melania trump in her dispute with "the daily mail" a year or so ago. this is right out of trump's playbook when he was the real estate baron attacking the press, threatening lawsuits that he doesn't follow through on. he's now the president of the united states, and for this entire week he's used the full force of his presidency and his legal team to try to pressure the publisher, and all it's done is sped up the release of the book and added more oxygen to it. some of the white house officials feel he's erred in doing that, he shouldn't have had his lawyers send that threat in that letter, the cease and desist letter. >> steve, through all of this donald trump has a very specific and identifiable base.

part of that base is built through breitbart and steve bannon. what's your sense, what happens to the base, his base now? >> i think bannon is sort of giving us the answer in terms of how he's reacted to all of this. it all comes forward yesterday. he's not contesting the quotes, but he's also -- he's not going forward and saying now it's war on trump, now it's me against trump. he's saying no, me and trump are on the same page. it's full steam ahead on the trump agenda. you almost zee a guy who thinks maybe i stepped in it, maybe i need to get back in trump's good graces. this is not a guy who wants any big daylight, despite all the things he said between himself and trump. i think the question about, is the base more of a bannon base or more of a trump base, i think bannon is an serpg it with his own actions. this is a base that's all about donald trump and bannon feels to some degree he's fortunate to have a piece of it and wants to try to maintain a piece of it and doesn't want to escalate this any further.

>> kind of an awkward position, don't you think, susan? steve bannon, he views himself from what you read and hear about him anecdotally as an equal to the president of the united states. >> he definitely has his puffed-up ego in check. i wonder how much effect this is going to have. back in last august, we saw almost a sea change on the verge of when donald trump went after charlottesville and handled it so poorly. there were a lot of republican lawmakers, senator corker leading the way, going after the president and how he was acting. what did the president do? he fired steve bannon. that was supposed to give relief to all the republican lawmakers out there, they were going to get back on track and bannon is gone. now, all of a sudden, steve bannon has been banished again, even though apparently the president says they don't speak very often. i don't buy the fact that steve bannon is actually gone, and i think except for maybe a convicted felon who is running

for congress in staten island trying to create some distance, i agree with steve. there's not going to be a lot of distance between the base and this foo it. >> my question here is, what is the difference between steve bannon and breitbart? if he's missing, jonathan, the money from the mercers and he potentially loses his place, his position in breitbart, does he really matter anymore? i feel like breitbart is still likely going to be able to channel this kind of energy and what has been kind of making bannon into this figure that he's become. >> this is a great test of bannon's staying power. up until this point, even after leaving the white house, he, no question, was still a rock star in conservative circles. and there was no loss of the shine around him. in fact, some people thought that in some ways he was more formidable now because he had the ability to -- his spin, he was president changing by the white house and he would be able to wage this war against the republican establishment.

but to be able to do that now without the mercers money, the breitbart platform, it would be very challenging to see if he can still do anything. >> what can he say to the candidates? they're in a tough position. they were relying on him. >> if you look at some of the senate primary challenges, take a look at tar daynian in colorado. his message is, hey, look, it's still me versus the establishment. i want to have the president's back in washington, the republican establishment doesn't have his back. if steve bannon wants some part of it, that's fine by me. that's not what this campaign is about. that message i think could have a lot of resonance with the republican base. you think back to alabama, right now trump and a lot of folks are trying to blame bannon for moore. moore had his energy before bannon stumbled -- i think bannon took a lot more credit there than he deserved for moore getting that republican

nomination in alabama. i think these primary challenges could have a lot of energy behind them. i do think, look, to the extent bannon was providing financial -- the means to get financial support for these, any sort of mechanical, organizational support, that piece could be gone now, that could be crucial. i think the energy and the base is still there. >> i think so. phil rutger, i'm one who believes steve bannon is going to have a second and third act because you're never completely out in trump world. donald trump is always looking for friends, just like he's always looking to attack those who slight him. >> also, joe, we should keep in mind that steve bannon is a household name now. everyone around the country knows who this man is. and he has a lot of ideas and a lot of stuff he wants to say. i don't think he's going to disappear quietly. he may lose the chairmanship of breitbart but he'll figure out a way to have another platform, whether it's, you know,

appearances on radio or tv or write a book or go around the country, but he'll be present in our political life. >> and, steve kornacki, a third of the republican base is hard core. they want the wall. they, they -- if mitch mcconnell is cheering the disappearance of bannon from trump world, that actually just means -- and if the media's hating ban yorne ii just means for a third of the republican base that steve bannon must be doing something right. and i just wonder if donald trump may be -- if he doesn't keep him close, may not be making an enemy of a guy that could cause him trouble with at least a third of his base moving towards 2020. >> yes, i mean, look, i think it's an open question how much of this base, how much of it is sort of bannonism, ideologically, versus trumpism,

attitude in the base. i just look at bannon's response yesterday to all of this. this is a guy who is thinking of that base you're describing and sense being the power of trump's attitude and the threat of, hey, you can make a policy argument, hey, trump hasn't followed through on the wall. trump sold us out. those policy arguments when it comes to the hearts and minds of the base may not measure up to the power of trump's attitude if you ever get into a fight with him. >> all right. phillip rutger, thank you so much, greatly appreciate it. again, michael wolff's going to be with us on set monday, talking about his new book. coming up next on "morning joe," despite a chaotic white house, the nuclear threat from north korea, the snowstorm, nothing seems to rattle the market. another record high yesterday. crossing the 25,000 mark for the first time. we're going to be bringing in cnbc's brian sullivan on why wall street is shrugging off just about everything that

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you know, let's bring in right now brian sullivan with cnbc. brian, it seems that this bull market is more stubborn than those old ring around the collar commercials. you can't get ring around the color out and you just can't convince people to stop going

big in the market. now over 25,000. how did they turn off everything they hear in washington, d.c. and just keep investing? >> i'm going to use that on our show, power lines, the ring around the collar market. i think because the underlying fundamentals are pretty good. there's a lot of stuff going on that is certainly big. it is important. however, when you go across america, we've got a 4.1% unemployment rate. corporate earnings are up. average hourly earnings are up. we've added 4.3 million jobs in the last two years. more people are buying stuff. corporations are buying back more of their stock. you've got more buyers coming into the market. ultimately stocks go up when there is buying pressure. that's pretty much it. if more people buy than sell. >> brian, yesterday we had a "time" magazine editor on whose name i mispronounced 15 times, and he was talking about that there's some reasons to be optimistic. if you really do take a look at

the united states economy versus japan which is flat, versus europe, which is struggling to get to 1%, 1.5%, to china, who's become more authoritarian and is not as safe a bet today maybe as it was five years ago, to russia, a dangerous bet, to all these emerging economies that were supposed to explode that actually imploding. the united states remains the safest bet on the globe, doesn't it? >> i know it doesn't seem like this given the political developments the last couple of years but i believe firmly we remain an optimistic nation. businesses grow when there's optimism. contractors, 75% of contractors surveyed in construction firms say they're going to add workers this year. manufacturers are more optimistic than they've been in five to ten years. in order to grow your payroll and grow an economy, you've got to believe you're going to do more business tomorrow and next week then you did yesterday. that is the upward spiral of

optimism. i understand there's a lot of reasons to be concerned right now domestically and internationally. however, when you survey a business owner, they may go home and complain about trump or complaint about politicians or whatever, but if they're making more money, maybe they'll go out and buy that new car or bigger home. >> right. steve car knakaca kornacki, the disconnect. people more optimistic. yet 80% of americans in a recent survey said they believed america was on the wrong track politically. >> look, if you took trump out of this and you described the economic conditions and described the public's attitude towards where the economy is and you said what do you think the president of the united states job approval rating is, you'd probably guess somewhere in the 50s. then you take a look and donald trump is buried there in the 30s. it's one of the political oddities of his presidency so far that old sort of logic about the economy, the state of the economy and the health, the political health of the president matching up haven't in

this case. >> all right. well, thank you, steve. want to thank everybody for being with us. thank you for watching this week. hope your new year is off to a great start. certainly we want to thank everybody. show the control room quickly. i want to thank everybody on "morning joe" working hard through the holidays. working hard through every night of the year to put on the show. happy friday. thank you so much. and let's go now to stephanie ruhle who continues the news throughout the day, stephanie. >> thanks so much, joe. good morning. i'm stephanie ruhle. guess what i'm talking about, fire and fury fallout. author michael wolff breaks his silence exclusively to nbc news in a riveting interview, defiant in the face of mounting attacks from the white house. >> my credibility is being questioned by a man who has less credibility than perhaps anyone who has ever walked on earth at