one final check of the stock market which is at record highs. looks like it's about to close over 25,300. we'll keep our eye on that. that's going to do it for me. i'm chris jansing. "deadline white house" with nicolle wallace starts right now. >> hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. today's top story, where is my roy cohn? that was donald trump's angry reaction to top white house lawyer don mcgahn who he directed to stop attorney general jeff sessions from recusing himself in the russia probe. cohn was a one-time fixer for donald trump and trump clearly thought he needed one at his justice department. this account part of some stunning new reporting that potentially gets directly to the president's state of mind at the time of sessions' recusal. all of it from michael schmidt who also reveals, quote, the

lobbying of mr. sessions is one of the several previously unreported episodes that the special counsel robert s. mueller has learned about as he investigates whether mr. trump obstructed the fbi's russia inquiry. schmidt's reporting also casting this nugget from his sit-down interview with mr. trump at mar-a-lago last week in a new light where donald trump said, i don't want to get into loyalty but i will tell you tharkts i will say this. holder protected president obama. totally protected him. when you look at the things that they did and holder protected the president. and i have great respect for that. i'll be honest. i have great respect for that. donald trump undaunted by a news cycle dominated by questions about his judgment added this to the conversation in an early morning tweet. quote, well, now that collusion with russia is proving to be a total hoax and the only collusion is with hillary clinton and the fib/russia, the fake news media, mainstream, and

this phony new book are hitting out at every new front imaginable. they should try winning an election. sad. let's get try to it with the reporter who broke that story last night. michael schmidt, as well as ken dilanian and "the washington post" white house reporter ashley parker. michael schmidt, let me start with you. i e-mailed you as soon as this story broke. this, to me, seems to be the most perilous part of the investigation for all of the people in the white house who have been questioned about the statement crafted on board air force one and who were testifying at the same time that their aides are testifying and not made aware of exactly all of the minutia to which they've testified. so if you can lay out the significance, the seriousness and where you think the mueller investigators are in the potential obstruction of justice investigation. >> obstruction of justice is a hard case to make, and it's not clear that any of these things we wrote about today, in and of

themselves, would get to obstruction. the president, as the chief executive, has broad authority to do a lot of things. to hire and fire and have influence over the justice department. whether or not that is politically appetizing to people is a question for the political realm but not necessarily the criminal one. nothing is clear evidence of that. but at the same time, these are the things mueller has found. and interviewed white house officials. he's gotten to the central question of how the president was obsessed with loyalty. how when he learned that sessions was recusing himself that he said he needed an attorney general to protect him. this gives us great insight into how the president sees the way his top law enforcement official should act. perhaps someone more beholden to him than to following the facts and the rule layoff. >> when i spoke to three elected republicans who are allies of this president about -- about

this part of the mueller probe, about the obstruction of justice question, they pointed to donald trump's patterns in business and the quote that you have about roy cohn in there so revealing. this is to donald trump's friends, his greatest potential legal exposure. that he wanted a roy cohn, a ray donovan if you want to go to a fictional version. a fixer to run the justice department. can you talk about how that collides with don mcgahn's body of professional work and his reputation as a longtime attorney to many other politicians before landing in trump world? >> well, mcgahn has been repeatedly thrown into these situations where trump has blown up about something, gotten very upset and wanted to do something. mcgahn has had to figure out how to follow the president's orders while not getting him into trouble. so mcgahn went to sessions and made a nuances argument saying

there's no decision on your desk. you don't need to recuse yourself yet and if you recuse it doesn't get to the questions congress is raising about your testimony. mcgahn time and time again has tried to take a square and put it through a round hole with the president. trying to get these through. he did this with the comey firing when the president wanted to send this letter that was a rant that referenced the russia investigation, that called it politically motivated and mcgahn had to figure out a way to come up with a rationale for it and to get the justice department to take what the president had and put it in something more kocoge. >> the special counsel has received hand written notes from mr. trump's former chief of staff reince priebus showing that mr. trump talked to mr. priebus about how he had called mr. comey to urge him to say publicly that he was not under investigation. the president's determination to fire mr. comey even led one white house lawyer to take the extraordinary step of misleading mr. trump about whether he had

the authority to remove him. so one of mcgahn's deputies lied to the president about whether he had the right to remove him, something that you have said just this hour the president clearly had the authority to do? >> yeah, so after comey testified before the house intelligence committee in march, comey wouldn't say at that hearing the president wasn't under investigation. the president got very upset by this, and started talking openly about getting rid of the fbi director. this lawyer told the president that he needed a reason to fire, a cause to fire the fbi director. but what happened was that when dylan went back and talked to the white house junior lawyers in the white house counsel's office, they found that you didn't need cause. you could simply get rid of him. but dylan was very concerned about what could happen to donald trump's presidency if he fired the fbi director with the russia investigation going on. this would be something that the justice department would have to look into, potential obstruction of justice. so dylan never went back and

corrected the record with the president. in subsequent meetings. and he never told him that you didn't need cause to fire the fbi director. >> does dylan still work there? i'm just curious. sounds like a smart lawyer. >> does dylan still work in the white house counsel's office? >> he still works in the white house counsel's office. >> good. i hope he has job security for life. he was right on this question of comey. let me bring ken dilanian and ashley parker into the conversation and keep you here, too, michael schmidt. ken dilanian, let's go back to comey because i think we have some information from michael's great reporting that builds on a lot of what you and ashley have reported on which is sort of the origin of smear jim comey, which is the origin of smear the fbi, which is the origin of smear the whole damn department of justice. michael reports "the new york times" has also learned four days before mr. comey was fired, one of mr. sessions' aides asked a congressional staff member whether he had damaging

information about mr. comey. part of an apparent effort to undermine the fbi director. it was not clear whether mr. mueller's investigators knew about this episode. i want to ask you ken dilanian, we know from donald trump telling lester holt he was going to fire jim comey the whole time, that that was what was in his mind, at least at the time he was interviewed by lester holt. but we also know there was a lot of consternation about not just the optics but potentially the legal exposure for the president if he fired the man running the fbi while it was investigating potential ties between trump's orbit and russia. can you speak to whether what in this new reporting sort of builds on and adds to your understanding of how much exposure there is for the president and his aides around this firing of jim comey? >> i think it absolutely does. this is great reporting and hats off to michael schmidt. it absolutely adds to the picture. and one of the questions it raises is, can you bumble your

way into committing the crime of obstruction of justice? at every turn here, people around donald trump were trying to prevent him from doing the wrong thing, and they apparently didn't succeed. i've been speaking to legal experts about this and michael is right. this is a tough case and it's particularly tough involving the president and there are going to be people who argue the president had the absolute right to fire his fbi director for any reason. even with evil intent. but there's another side to that argument. and it says that if the firing was done corruptly with the intent to get rid of the russia investigation, that becomes part of a conspiracy to obstruct justice. and then all these other acts that we're learning about become -- even if they were legal or not, become acts in furtherance of the conspiracy. the drafting of the incorrect statement on air force one. the asking of your intelligence chiefs to say there was no collusion and that it was something they refused to do because they didn't feel comfortable doing it. all the other ways in which

donald trump has seemed to impedes this investigation could become acts in furtherance of the conspiracy. we're a long way from that, but that's what some legal experts think. that's the course they see mueller pursuing if he's going to go down the obstruction path. >> ashley parker, what we know suggests we're a long way from that, but most former prosecutors will sort of posit and we don't know what we don't know in terms of how far along mueller is. and we do know don mcgahn spent at least one full day, was scheduled to spend a second full day, no objection on mcgahn's part to doing so. the last time i understood the facts around that it was a scheduling issue. reince priebus has spent time with the special counsel. just take this information about reince priebus sharing through the course of, i guess, his document production, hand written notes pertaining to the decision to fire comey with the special counsel. it suggests that bob mueller is

going to get to the bottom of why comey was fired. >> from the outside, it certainly seems that way. and while there are many things we're not going to know until this investigation is over, one thing that is clear is bob mueller sort of methodically working his way through president trump's staff. and one thing that mike's great reporting showed is that one of the areas that may prove particularly fruitful for him, although it's, again, unclear what keys he can potentially bring is this obstruction of justice charge. when you talk to aides in the white house, they all universally say there was no collusion and we've heard a lot. we were too incompetent to collude. one thing they're more concerned about is what happened once they were inside the white house trying to prevent this from moving forward. when you have reince who took copious notes and sean spicer who took detailed notes. that's a rich area for mueller to probe. >> and let me go around all of you one more time on don mcgahn

because the original way that a lot of people not intimately familiar with the lawyers around donald trump during the campaign got to know who don mcgahn was was through the revelation that it was don mcgahn who received sally yates. when she traveled over to the white house to warn the white house that mike flynn could be a target for russian blackmail. so don mcgahn's original involvement in the messiest aspects of what we know about the trump presidency come and being the recipient of the information about michael flynn's conduct or misconduct if you will. he's now pleaded guilty. it's probably safe to call it misconduct, vis-a-vis his communications with federal law enforcement. michael schmidt, can you talk to don mcgahn's general legal exposure as both the recipient of sally yates' original information, the sitting white house counsel at a time that mike pence went on tv and lied about mike flynn's contacts with

russia? we understand that to be because he was not aware, but there are open questions now about whether the president was aware. and take us all the way through your reporting from today. just the body of don mcgahn's potential legal exposure or interest to bob mueller. >> yeah, i've never seen anything or heard anything in my reporting that raises questions about whether mcgann has legal exposure. that's not been something mcgahn has gone in and been interviewed by mueller, a sign he's a witness. he was providing legal advice to the president. so i don't think there's anything there. i think mcgahn has had a very difficult job because he has a very difficult client. a client that will do things that are not typically things that a president would do. and that are difficult to sort of square into either -- square with the law or sell to the public. and the president has put him into very, very difficult situations. and people say don mcgahn has a very good sense of humor and has

had to rely on that a lot in the past year as he's tried to figure out how to get the president through these different things. some are surprised he survived this long. look, he's incredibly important to mueller because he was there for all the important decisions. he can speak to what the president was thinking about the comey firing. what the president knew about flynn. these things that mueller is looking at and trying to understand where trump was. now the interesting thing about mcgahn, and mcgahn's ability to talk to mueller is that the white house has not exerted executive or attorney/client privilege on anything. that's allowed mcgahn to tell mueller a lot of things and answer a lot of questions that a lawyer typically wouldn't answer to an investigator because the white house has waived those privileged. by waiving them and allowing mcgahn to talk, embarrassing things about the president have come out. and that's why we learned about them. >> yeah, so he also has a very

good lawyer. let me ask you something about white house counsels in general. i remember during the valerie plame special counsel investigation, the white house counsel was the white house's lawyer. and george w. bush had a personal lawyer. is -- and obviously that's the case here. don mcgahn is the white house counsel. and donald trump's personal counsel is ty cobb and john dowd. do those two functions representing the white house, represent the president ever diverge, and do you see any signs they could diverge in where you understand this investigation to be now and where you think it's heading? >> we haven't seen that publicly yet, but there's a lot we don't know, nicolle. for example, when don mcgahn was called as a witness, did he assert any privileges? attorney/client privilege or executive privilege? conversely, has robert mueller tried to invoke the crime fraud exception which he did in the manafort case to get a lawyer to come and testify. you can do that if the lawyer has information about what you

think is a crime. so this is a secret investigation. there's a lot we don't know. we haven't seen any signs in public that the interests of donald trump the client are diverging from the interests of the united states government. but it's an interesting sort of line of inquiry to pursue. >> and ashley, there's never anything more interesting than the internal politics of all these decisions. and if you -- the book we've been talking about all week, "fire and fury" from michael wolff, there are copious passages about the skepticism that steve bannon had about the decision to fire jim comey. he certainly seems to place that as one of the original political sins, if you will. we'll find out if it's a legal sin. can you talk about the ongoing ripple effects, politically speaking, about that decision and the people who advised and supported the president's desire to fire jim comey. >> sure. i think the ripple effects are tremendous. we know, obviously, it's

something that is being looked into by mueller. but as we mentioned earlier, there's two focuses, which is if something illegal has hand or just something politically unappealing or unappetizing or unacceptable and while president trump sort of has so far on a lot of fronts shown himself impervious to the rules of traditional political gravity, there is a real reluctance on the part of members of congress to accept things like this. a lot of them were unhappy with the firing of comey. and you see that when we hear these rumors now that the president may fire jeff sessions. certain things that are not necessarily illegal but that make even members of his own party and his supporters very uncomfortable. >> and they always make their way into your paper and into michael schmidt's. and for that we're grateful. michael schmidt, ashley parker, thanks. ken dilanian is sticking around. donald trump versus michael wolff. day four of donald trump's losing war against an author who

took up residence in the west wing for hours at a time. sloppy steve and donald trump engaged in a messy separation of belongings. but who owns the heart of the trump voter in the swing states that put donald trump over the top? hint, it might not be the guy who signed tax cuts for big businesses into law. anna, do you have those plans? yes! i just wanted to show you something i've been wor... ♪ james r. and associates. anna speaking... ♪ james r. and associates. anna. ♪ [phone ringing] baker architects. this is anna baker. this is what our version of financial planning looks like. tomorrow is important, but you're ready to bet on yourself today. spend your life living. find an advisor at northwesternmutual.com. oh, it's actually... sfx: (short balloon squeal) it's ver... sfx: (balloon squeals) ok can we... sfx: (balloon squeals) goodbye! oof, that milk in your coffee was messing with you, wasn't it? try lactaid, it's real milk, without that annoying lactose. good right? yeah.

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everyone around the president, senior advisers, family members, every single one of them questions his intelligence and fitness for office. >> let me put a marker in the

sand here. 100% of the people around him. i will tell you the one description that everyone gave -- everyone has in common. they all say he is like a child. and what they mean by that is he has a need for immediate gratification. it's all about him. i mean, this letter for the cease and desist letter, i still have sources in the white house, and i know everybody was going, we should not be doing this. this is not smart. and he just insists. he just has to be satisfied in the moment. >> that was michael wolff, the author of the explosive new book "fire and fury" which describes the widespread concern among president trump's top aides that he may be unfit for office. we should point out there's been little pushback from those aides about the way they reportedly characterized the president behind the scenes.

evan mcmullin, my friday regular, rev al sharpton, host of "politics nation" and president of the national action network. nick confosore, for "the new york times," and kim atkins for the boston herald. both of them msnbc contributors. happy new year. what a first week. and i have to say, i'm going to sell you out. you were watching that. you said everybody's heard that. >> not only that. people have reported about his need for gratification constantly. it's been a hallmark of his presidency. if he has a button on his desk to order a coke, the book has been written on his need for gratification. it's a hallmark of how he's operated as a president with no slow deliberation. he doesn't like briefings. he hates written material. that's been out there for months. >> there's a line between no slow briefings and mentally

unfit for office and possibly illiterate. in the depiction of michael wolff, it's far harsher than someone who simply is disinterested in details. michael wolff paints a portrait of someone who is mentally unfit for the presidency and to put it the most generous way i can think of, of highly dubious intelligence. >> there is more color in this book and he goes farther in saying he's losing his memory. he can't recognize people. that his faculties are diminished. so absolutely, he's gone farther there. and those are serious questions. and if that's true, if that's how he is operating as president, then it's a concern for everybody in the country. >> and i don't mean to pick on you. i'm going to try to pull up something chris ruddy said. here he is. this is a surrogate and a friend trying to disprove all of this. watch this. >> i saw the president every

other day over a ten-day period during the holiday. i conversed with him numerous times. i saw him interact with people. he was remembering things, he was on point. he was following up on discussions. i brought to the golf club a well-respected "new york times" reporter who had a half hour sit down interview with him, michael schmidt. now i don't want to speak with michael. you should interview him, but i don't believe michael walked out and said this man is crazy. this man is unfit. so this is just an absurd allegation by someone who has talked to a lot of disgruntled people at the white house. >> can't interview him because he works for us, but i appreciate the sentiment. you real quickly. he was remembering things. he was on point. he was following up on discussions. a president who is 100% doesn't need his surrogates saying those things. >> absolutely not.

it's ruddy who brought a reporter in to mar-a-lago which i imagine he took some heat for so i'm not surprised he'd be throughout defending the interview. even if "the times" interview, the president was not super on point. many holes in that interview. places that might make you question if he's fully there, fully engaged. i'm not a doctor. i'm not going to diagnose him. >> none of us is. and we're only talking about what is public. and what is public is a david brooks account from october where senators describe him as potential in the early stages of alzheimer's but it's public and you and i have been on the air for a lot of these corker public statements where he suggested that donald trump lacks the fitness and competence or the competence and stability for the office of the president. what is public is clapper things he shouldn't have the nuclear cloeds. what has not been pushback on other than from the press secretary's podium, not always a sanctum of truth is there are

questions about his mental fitness. >> if it's true that people within the white house have concerns about his mental fitness as public servants, it's incumbent upon them to consider that and consider taking some action to deal with that. absent that, though, i'd caution against what some, for example, democratic lawmakers meeting with the professor from yale to sort of get an idea about, look, once this becomes politicized, what that will do is lay down a marker and next time there is a democratic president, republicans will start interviewing psyche loological experts and using this. what's good for the goose is good for the gander kind of thing. that's one thing you need to be careful of about politicizing the idea of mental fitness. if people within the white house have general reason to believe the president is unfit it is incumbent upon them to act on that. >> let me show you something else in this morning's interview about his enablers. michael wolff asked about the

role of jared and ivanka. let's watch. >> jared kushner, his son-in-law, ivanka, question his fitness for office? >> every time i -- and i want to be careful about who i spoke to because the nature of this kind of book is you kind of grant everyone a veil. but having said that, certainly jared and ivanka, in their current situation, which is a deep legal quagmire, are putting everything on the president. not us. it's him. >> rev? >> you know, i think that, one, i agree with kimberly. we should be very careful how far we go in terms of his mental stability. clearly, it's no shock he doesn't read. here's a guy that got the evangelical vote and couldn't quote a bible verse. they asked him his favorite bible verse. any senator i know can just make

one up, if you ever read the bible. so that's no shock. i think, though, we ought to be putting this under a security concern, not under a partisan concern. if, in fact, he's having serious mental problems, that's a security risk. this goes beyond -- and i agree with her in the sense the democratic members of congress ought not play this partisan. we ought to be saying, wait a minute here. we're dealing with some very serious problems globally. can he effectively think through these things? that's one. second, you have to deal with the competence of the staff in the white house, and you've been there, that at one level, even talk about this, and at another level, have a guy like michael wolff hanging around the west wing. what kind of shop are you running when you would let michael wolff just hang around like that? that scares me as much as anything else that i'm hearing. >> speak to the security question. and add a layer of donald trump

as a commander in chief who was sworn in on inauguration day in the midst and the throes of a hot war with his own intelligence community and is who now goosing an equally hot, combative, ugly smear campaign against his own doj and fbi. >> absolutely. i think all of that speaks to the temperament of the president and to his vulnerability, his political and legal vulnerability. related to the russia investigation and the obstruction of justice. that's a potential part of that. but i agree with the statement we need to be careful about making a judgment about his mental health but also as american citizens, as voters, we're required to make judgments about a whole slew of things about which we're not experts. and one of those things is about the fitness of a president. and so whether the president has -- is mentally unwell or if he just has extreme personality defects, these are things that impact national security. of course, yes, they do. and we need to be good as voters

about making judgments in the protection of our national interests against such leaders. either way, whether there's mental illness or just extreme personality defaults or defects. >> we have to sneak in a break. i want to quickly tie this up with you, nick. there is, at the beginning of this me, too, movement, there was the same sort of, well, i don't want to say anything. i don't want to accuse him of anything. he's been good to me. he's someone revered in the community. and the conversation, the tone and tenor and the caution was almost exactly the same as it is around this question of mental fitness. i'm not making a parallel between the action, just between the public conversations. but it is a fact, a cold, hard fact that people around donald trump and bob corker is the only one that's done it publicly, have wondered whether he is fit for the office of the presidency since before he won the gop nomination. and i wonder what you wachalk i

up to that people are so afraid of having this conversation in public. >> i think there's an unwillingness to call somebody crazy. >> it's not crazy. mental illness is a disease. >> there's an unwillingness to do what a lot of doctors associations forbid which is to diagnose remotely from far away. look, the constitution does give a safety valve for this. the cabinet is empowered to remove the president by a vote. the people close toast to him a seeing him the most. if it's accurate, there's a lot to be worried about but there's a solution here and it lies with the people already there closest to him. >> all right. that's going to have to be the last word on this topic. the first congressional cruminal referral and the investigation into russian interference is out. and the author of that infamous dossier, someone who tried to expose the meddling could be the one facing charges, not russians. details, next. beyond is a natural pet food

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republican lawmakers made their first known criminal referral today after a year of investigating russia's interference in the 2016 election. who do they want investigated? christopher steele, the former british intelligence officer who authored the russian dossier. they told the justice department they had reason to believe that steele lied to federal authorities about his contacts with reporters regarding information in the dossier. and they urged the department to investigate. fusion gps, the intelligence firm that had hired steele responded with a statement. after a year of investigations into donald trump's ties to russia, the only person republicans seek to accuse of wrongdoing is one who reported on these matters to law enforcement in the first place. publicizing a criminal referral based on classified information raises serious questions about whether this letter is nothing more than another attempt to discredit government sources in the midst of an ongoing criminal

investigation. we should all be skeptical in the extreme. nbc investigative reporter ken dilanian is back with the panel. ken, this seems like the first big, huge, giant test of christopher ray, the new director of the fbi, in the time of trump. is there a justice department, is there a law enforcement agency in the time of trump that is truly blind to political persuasion? do you know the answer? >> well, you know, look. the fbi gets a lot of criminal referrals and they don't have to do anything with them. they get them all the time. and this one is classified. so we don't even know the actual details of it. we know that the committee is alleging false statements. and also statements have to be made to an official body to either the executive branch or congress. and steele didn't talk to the judiciary committee. we're assuming this is about statements made to the fbi because they've been demanding

all these documents from the fbi. look, these are credible people who work for this committee. i'm prepared to believe there is a disparity and they found some misstatement or something that was wrong that didn't jive with something he said earlier. but to file a criminal referral really has democrats, you know, sort of rolling their eyes and wondering, like, is this -- this is the first criminal referral in the russia investigation? this is how you are going to play it? it really sort of raises the question of, what is the motivation here? >> so a republican who is familiar with the reputation of fusion gps before their entanglement in the 2016 election reminded me that it was billionaire -- is it phil sanger or paul sanger who funded oppo research done through the free beacon to be conducted by "wall street journal" investigative reporter glen simpson. all these people have one thing in common. very trusted by republicans.

and that the irony that now republicans are engaged in this almost with reckless abandon this desire to criminalize the work of fusion gps. that the irony was breathtaking. >> and they have really brought the substantial resources of a major congressional committee to bear on this. and it's remarkable. hours of testimony. they've, you know, who knows how many hours of staff time, all into -- in pursuit of essentially trying to discredit the dossier, christopher steele and fusion gps. and i think taxpayers really need to ask the hard questions about why that is happening, nicolle. >> so i wonder if the founders of fusion gps knew this was coming? they published an op-ed where they write mr. steel's sources in russia reported on an extensive and now confirmed effort by the kremlin to help elect mr. trump president. mr. steele saw this as a crime

in progress and decided he needed to report it to the fbi. anything you've heard before today's referral of criminal referral of -- to bring criminal charges that suggested that there was any criminal conduct on the part of mr. steele? anything you picked up in all your conversations with law enforcement and intel sources before today? >> no. to the contrary. christopher steele is a known quantity to the american intelligence and law enforcement community. he was a russia expert and former british intelligence officer who helped the fbi investigate corruption in international soccer. the fbi was prepared to pay him as part of the russia investigation. those talks broke down. and it's true that the dossier was not the trigger for the fbi's counterintelligence investigation. but the fbi has always taken steele and his material very seriously, nicolle. >> okay. i held up my finger because i want to get one to the panel. and you stay with us, too. i spoke to, at the time that the

dossier started to be something that, obviously, triggered donald trump, i spoke to a british national security official who is almost like a petraeus-like person in the uk. someone -- a retired military person who had consumed a lot of christopher steele's intel when they were both in the government. and he said the effort is so misunderstood that as someone who is now out of an intelligence organization, what he did was collect information and hand over leads. they were never meant to stand as corroborated. they were leads. they were tips. and that he did everything proper in the british system at least by turning them over to the appropriate law enforcement agencies which appears to be the same thing that the australians did when george papadopoulos was in a bar bragging about having hillary clinton's e-mails before they were public. are we in a situation now that the uk is watching how american law enforcement and justice treats christopher steele or the australians are watching how we deal with their tip about george

papadopoulos and we risk looking like the true banana republic. >> it's the brits, the australians, the israelis who are all looking at how the trump administration handles the intelligence we provide them. and they have to wonder about it. you were saying earlier paul sanger paid for the dossier first. we also know the mercer family who are very close to trump were paying for oppo research on trump when they were supporting cruz. >> and kellyanne conway was disseminating it on tv. >> it is quite commonplace. the question is, what are the facts and who did he give them to? if he wants to hand over raw leads to the proper authorities to further pusue, i have no problem with that. if he lied to the fbi, that's a bad thing. and -- but i would say, if what he lied to them about was which reporters he contacted about the dossier, it is hard to understand the hierarchy of important things in this whole probe, how that rises to the top. >> and i'm sure we'll -- >> and how that becomes the

first referral they're making for criminal -- >> not the person who leaked all the text, right? >> you're going to try to bring criminal charges against -- i mean, come on. they should know how that looks to everyone, not just democrats. >> we need to sneak in a broadcast. don't go anywhere. we will be right back. it's a small finger...a worm! like, a dagger? a tiny sword? bread...breadstick? a matchstick! a lamppost! coin slot!

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if yor crohn's symptoms are holding you back, and your current treatment hasn't worked well enough, it may be time for a change. ask your doctor about entyvio, the only biologic developed and approved just for uc and crohn's. entyvio works at the site of inflammation in the gi tract and is clinically proven to help many patients achieve both symptom relief and remission. infusion and serious allergic reactions can happen during or after treatment. entyvio may increase risk of infection, which can be serious. pml, a rare, serious, potentially fatal brain infection caused by a virus may be possible.

this condition has not been reported with entyvio. tell your doctor if you have an infection, experience frequent infections or have flu-like symptoms or sores. liver problems can occur with entyvio. if your uc or crohn's treatment isn't working for you, ask your gastroenterologist about entyvio. entyvio. relief and remission within reach. we're back. we had to jump to a commercial, but i wanted to get your thoughts on the last conversation. >> christopher steele's reputation as an intelligence officer and a friend to the united states is stellar. this is somebody who has had a relationship with the cia, the fbi for years in a variety of capacities. his information, his work, his judgment are highly trusted. he was collecting as a private person, working as a private investigator, doing work for fusion gps. in the act of collecting that information, he realized that he

had something that was of vital interest to the united states national security, and he made the decision himself to take it to the fbi, as a favor to the -- >> something that the trump campaign didn't do when the russians came to them. but more on that tomorrow. all right. from the sublime to the surreal. in some ways, this is donald trump's third public divorce from a one-time soulmate with whom he'd fathered something beautiful. in this case, he and the man he now calls sloppy steve birthed a rowdy coalition of disenfranchised republicans, men and women who responded to the call for a resurgence of the forgotten men and women. where do things stand at this hour? julie, national political reporter with "the wall street journal," joins us. we covered your piece yesterday, and i wonder if you can confirm any of the new nuggets we're hearing today that steve bannon was warned not to go there on jared kushner. steve bannon considered apologizing with the statement but once trump went nuclear against him, he ripped that statement up and at this point, it's very much a house divided

between donald trump and steve bannon. >> yeah, i would just add that not only did people warn steve bannon about not going there with trump's children, but it's fairly obvious that that is a very sensitive issue for the president and most human beings. so you have to wonder what he was thinking all those times he spoke with michael wolff in the west wing and it seems like beyond in the formation of the book. and the divorce has been extremely messy. and really kind of caught in the crosshairs at this point is breitbart news. conservative website that was very influential all throughout the republican primary election last year. was kind of on deck to play a really important role in the 2018 midterms. now the breitbart board members, as we reported yesterday, are trying to figure out what to do with this mess that's sort of landed in their lap. they are trying to choose between steve bannon who has

really become sort of a face of the site and donald trump who most readers of breitbart are very supportive of. and there's no easy way out of this puzzle. >> let me just press you a little farther on this. i mean, steve bannon, when he was there, love him or hate him, love trumpism or hate trumpism, steve bannon did preside over the execution or the attempt at following through on the most campaign promises from the muslim ban to the withdrawal from the paris accord to heading over to europe and poo-pooing climate change and article 5. these were the most polarizing aspects of the trump presidency. i've interviewed three dozen trump voters, democrats who flipped and voted for trump. those were the things they wanted. and they wanted economic isolationism, which is not exactly reflected in the end of the year tax cut for big business. >> i think you're right. it's a really open question, what happens to trump's base at

this point? and that's going to play a huge role in the 2018 midterms. now there's such a cultive personality around this president that his supporters, some of them it just feels like they're with him no matter and you know, even as you pointed out, the tax cuts may not be real popular among the populist base, but donald trump still has just such incredible buy-in from his supporters i don't think any of us really know where this is going forward. especially with the base and now with this new rift, it's unpredictable how everything will play in to the 2018 midterms. >> and it's not like he just left. i mean, steve bannon was run out of the white house by john kelly when he took over, one of his first acts after getting the crazy man's -- next person fired was steve bannon, and the idea that -- i mean, he had been at war since the president's kids since before he got into the white house. >> the thing that is most

perplexing to most is that i don't think they understand the problem. the problem is steve bannon is a true believer. what he believes, i totally disagree with, but when you put a true believer in the room with somebody who doesn't believe in anything but themselves, the question is, how long is that going to last? that's the problem. i mean, as someone that's dealt with trump over the years where i've had to fight him and met with him, he doesn't believe in anything. so somebody that really believes in something, whether it's a bannon or those of us in civil rights, confuses him, because he's totally about himself, totally about the moment. so he has no connection at all. there's no way to get a bond with him, because you're talking about principles and he's talking about what are you talking about principles? what does that have to do with it? and that's the problem that bannon ran into. >> and i also heard that

bannon -- his punishment was to be fired. as you say, he was described as a political version of a suicide bomber. willing to die. willing to go out in a blaze of glory for the agenda he believed in. i think he said in an interview, the trump presidency died with his departure. i'm not a fan of the tactics or agen agenda, but not much progress made on nafta or in terms of what donald trump ran on and how he converted mostly white working-class voters to vote for him, those things were pretty essential. >> they were. we haven't seen movement menme that. seen the courts blocking the travel ban. a lot of bannonist aspects of that agenda stalled in one way or another, and, look, i think that steve bannon, was his importance overblown at least by

him? probably. but was he influential on this president? absolutely. there were times the president would send a tweet, give a statement, you could tell it was from steve bannon, you could feel it, the same way it was from jared kushner, but without trump, steve bannon is learning that his influence fades quickly, and this could be really, this is more perilous to him than the president. the president will still have his base. >> it's a mistake to say the president has no principles or policies. the president has the classic populist historian politics. people outside the country are screwing our country and bad people inside the country are helping it. that's his politics. i think the problem he's had and the problem bannon had, there's no structure in the white house and the president doesn't have the mentality or instinct to actually be able to follow through well on those things. i think the reason he's out is he was fighting with everybody, and he got acrosswise with the

president's kids. something most know not to do. >> nick, i would say this. you can say that the president's position is, people outside of the country dumping on us and all, but he's the guy that would deal with russia. and he's the guy to bring miss america to russia. he would deal outside the country whenever he wants. he does not believe in that. >> and i would just make a distinction, curious about your thoughts, between having instincts and impulses? i believe he has authoritarian impulses and instincts the way a child has an impulse or instinct to reach for a toy or cookie, but i'm not sure that there's a policy vision in donald trump's head. >> he's been talking about trade for 30 years. >> right, but he doesn't know the policy behind that isolation -- economic isolationism is to rip up nafta and doesn't have the wherewithal to rip of you nafta. >> i agree with you. >> i would say he may believe in a few things although i'm

inclined to agree with the rev on this. one thing that is clear. whatever policy views he may have are deeply subordinated to self-interest, and that is what in the end drives an authoritarian. they want to enrich and empower themselves. they don't want's anything to stand in their way. it doesn't have to be something premeditat premeditated, but once you decide i am going to enrich and empower myself at all costs all the other things fall in place. attack the doj, the cia, the fbi, the press. you have to do all of these things for that to work and it can be instinctual and not premeditated. >> let it be the last word. the "wall street journal's" thanks for joining us. sneak in a break. we'll be right back. 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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i absolutely smoke to the president. whether he realized it was an interview or not, i don't know, but it certainly was not off the record. >> and you spoke to him at the white house after he was sworn in? >> i spoke to him after the inauguration, yes, and i had spoken to -- i mean, 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. >> ah, i wanted more. that was this morningen the "today" show. where i can get more this sunday. chuck todd will have that same gentleman, michael wolff, author of "fire and fury" on his program exclusively for sunday's show interview followed on monday, "fire and fury" author will talk to jeend mika exclusively in the morning and in trialtime with lawrence

o'donnell. i'm watching all three because i am riveted. my thanks to you all. ken delanian had to run off for breaking news, i'm sure. i'm nicolle wallace chuck todd, i can't wait for that. >> can't wait to duct live sunday morning. it will be great. if it's friday, the white house getting devoured by a wolff. >> tonight, michael wolff fights back against president trump's criticism of his book "fire and fury." >> my credibility is being questioned by a man who has less credibility than perhaps anyone who has ever walked on earth at this point. >> plus, targeting sessions. the attorney general is facing escalating pressure on all sides. we'll talk to one of the republican members of congress calling on jeff sessions to resign. >> it's the attorney general's job to do his constitutional duty. >> finally, the trump