after turning tables on the republican judiciary chairman and releasing the testimony of a man who commissioned that steele dossier to help him clear his name. >> because people don't know what was said and the lawyers also wanted it released. i see no problem with releasing. and fired and fury. after dishing the dirt on the president and his family, steve bannon's billionaire backers get him fired from breitbart news. >> the president at this moment in time was much stronger than steve bannon thought he would be. i think steve anticipated my book would appear and that would begin to precipitate his break with donald trump who, frankly, he thinks is an idiot.

thank you for being with us. i'm andrea mitchell in washington. we expect to meet with president trump after his unprecedented hour on camera with lawmakers. seemingly disspelling the growing impression he's disen gauged and out of touch. after indicating he's wide open to compromise, the white house tried to quiet immediate outcry from conservatives with a tweet last night saying a border wall must be part of any dhaka proaca daca approval. also the fallout of a judge ordering a temporary halt on daca, refusing to accept any new applications for green card status. we're still waiting for the pool of reporters with their cameras to go into the cabinet room, as we understand it. it's his tenth cabinet meeting, kristen, and again, there seems to be an effort by the white house to show the president is in charge and on top of his

game. >> reporter: that's right, andrea, and according to an administration official, the focus of that cabinet meeting will be infrastructure. of course, what we saw yesterday surrounding the negotiations over immigration were just remarkable because they were televised. so you have to wonder, how much will we actually get to see of the president's cabinet meeting today? will the president, the white house, allow cameras in for an extended period of time, or will it be a short period of time, which is what typically happens? we'll have to wait and see, butun doubtedlbu but undoubtedly, he will get questions on a whole host of issues, particularly where he stands on that immigration deal or package which they're trying to get, trying to hammer out. president trump yesterday, during that meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers, seemed to be all over the map in terms of what he was willing to agree to. at one instance even indicating he was willing to agree to a pathway of citizenship. but overnight as you pointed out, andrea, making it very

clear in that tweet that any deal has to include construction for funding of a border wall. i spoke to a senior official late last night who reiterated that but also said, andrea, this is a president that has consistently shown he is willing to compromise on some of these issues related to immigration. so there are four different areas that they're trying to hammer out, jeff flake tweeting recently that a potential deal may be coming together. so we'll have to wait and see what happens, but this is high stakes on a critical issue, and as you said, dreenandrea, it co after that judge moved to block the administrations move to halt daca recipients staying in this country. how will that impact the negotiations? we'll have to wait and see. >> in fact, if they come up with a legislative solution, it might may the whole court lawsuit moot. but the president, as you were pointing out, kristen, he was all over the place yesterday. >> reporter: right. >> here's part of what he said about the wall.

>> we don't need a 2,000-mile wall. we don't need a wall where you have rivers and mountains and everything else protected. but we do need a wall for a fairly good portion. >> so that's acknowledging some flexibility. he also said he would take the heat for whatever they decide, he would go along with whatever the legislators decide. that's not something his base wants to hear. >> andrea, it sparked a fierce backlash. ann coulter, for example, tweeting that what the president said during the bipartisan meeting yesterday was worse than what was in the "fire and fury" book, because, of course, that was his key campaign promise. he was going to build the wall, he was going to make mexico pay for the wall. now, of course, we know that american taxpayers will likely pay for the wall with the president seeking to have mexico reimburse taxpayers for the wall. but yesterday, yes, you're right, andrea, he raised a lot of eyebrows when he said we need to at least build a portion of the wall.

i think this is the difference between being on the campaign trail and actually being in the oval office trying to get a deal done, and we know that they are trying to get a deal done, trying to come up with a fix for daca, which is what democrats are pushing for. they say that has to be a part of this package but then also deal with these other issues, funding for some portion of the border wall, and then, of course, the other thorny issues the president has talked about. the visa lottery program, chain migration which the president said he wants to see in this deal. so the president showing a real willingness to compromise, even breaking with his base on some of these big issues, andrea. >> kristen welker, thanks for starting us off, and we'll wait to hear what comes out of that cabinet meeting. joining me now, msnbc contribute tore and columnist darrell peters, and editorial page editor ruth marcus and michael steele from the republican national committee chair.

welcome, all. first, jeremy, to you. the whole bannon fallout from the book. we interviewed michael wolff yesterday just beforehand, and a question, of course, of how much steve bannon is excommunicated from the president. he said he's still going to be in politics, but without that platform of breitbart news, he's sort of left on his own. >> without breitbart, without the backers who thought he had a path to the president and without the base via the president. this is a big deal, andrea. i do think we need to look at this in more than just a context of a personality feud and a personnel falling out. >> this is the republican party. >> this is the fight for the soul of the republican party. does steve bannon's departure and, subsequently, donald trump's decision to go to davos, his alignment with mitch mcconnell and paul ryan, his display of willingness to

negotiate and compromise on immigration, show that donald trump is foregoing, rejecting the populist national sentiments that really got him elected as president? is he moving in a more mainstream republican direction? as the establishment and the swamp, as steve bannon called it, won? i don't think so. donald trump is one that is very much susceptible to pressure, very much susceptible to the last person he spoke to, and the display we saw in the cabinet room yesterday may have been just that, a display. >> you don't get much more global, ruth marcus, than with davos. >> i've been with davos, and it is the last place on earth that you thought somebody running on donald trump's platform, someone as his campaign adviser would have. but i think jeremy's supposition is probably correct.

this is not illustrative of a kind of grand scheme and major shifting in idealogy from president trump, it's just a little bit davos sounds like a good party, sounds like he can hang with a lot of interesting people there. it's where the action is and he likes to be the most important guy in a room full of the most important people and might as well go under those circumstances. how the base responds to this, certainly they have not recoiled, ann coulter aside, at anything else, so my guess is he gets away with it. >> i guess it's kind of mar-a-lago in the swiss alps. >> nice phrase. >> i would go. >> i would go, too. >> when you say it like that. >> michael steele, let's look at some of the comments from the photo opportunity yesterday, which was a q urks arks squasi-.

i think diane feinstein tried to make it a negotiation. >> she set up a trap and he walked into it. it was complicated for republicans because he took a position that is anathema to where republicans have stood on daca and immigration, and the impact of that was immediate. it was not something that was a delayed response by conservatives. it was immediate realtime. you saw the majority leader come up out of his seat to clarify the record for the president that this is not something that we're going to be negotiating for, this is not what diane meant, and you heard others like, oh, no, that's what she meant. >> we'll get to this later, the president tweeting against diane feinstein on the whole steele dossier. i wanted to play a little bit of the president's expansive remarks that probably set ann coulter's hair on fire. >> this should be a bipartisan bill. this should be a bill of love.

truly, it should be a bill of love and we can do that. if we do this properly, daca, you're not so far away from comprehensive immigration reform. if you want to take it that further step, i'll take the heat. i don't care. i'll take all the heat you want to give me. i'll take all the heat off the democrats and republicans. my whole life has been heat. i like heat. >> he can't take the heat. andrea, time and time again that he is as thin-skinned as they come. people were mocking him yesterday to michael's point for invoking the jeb bush love, that immigration is an act of love. >> which he derided during the primaries. >> exactly. the right is going hysterical over this. i don't think trump can stand that heat. >> in the past when he has moved towards the pelosi, you know, schumer position, then he goes and does a campaign rally for luther strange, and all of a sudden satisfies the base by

going, you know, postal, if you will, on the nfl players taking a knee, which was only a handful of players at the time. makes that into a big base issue. >> not being deeply immersed in the details of legislative negotiations, it's very easy for him, and he's the art of the deal guy. part of being a deal maker is you say things that people want to hear until you are at the sort of sign on the bottom line thing. so we had that chuck and nancy moment several months ago. where did that go? nowhere. he was busy attacking them just a few months, if not a few weeks, later. so i thought yesterday's negotiation and his clear legislati legislative mi legislative missteps on that was not taking this as the new improved, from my point of view, donald trump. >> the chuck and nancy was being played out yesterday in that meeting.

that chuck and nancy moment he threw to the congress. it's in their court right now. and yesterday he aided the democrats in framing and shaping the argument on daca, which is what's driving republicans nuts right now, because the democrats already figured they had an advantage going into this cycle on this issue tied to the budget and the debt and shutting down the government. >> my question is how long it lasts, to jeremy's point about taking the heat. >> speaking of taking the heat, let's look at another administration decision which is offshore drilling. every governor of every coastal state east and west objecting to this. they're all dependent on tourism, they're all concerned about another oil spill. the one state that seems to get a break in all of this is florida. what's going on in florida? let me just play a little bit of mark short, the legislative director from the white house, on fox business with maria bartiromo today. >> obviously the governor of

florida didn't want it and pushed back, and the president agreed, we don't need to do it off the shores of florida. >> reporter: there is a lot of local politics involved there in florida, no doubt. i think that's one where the secretary of interior is going to have more information for you, maria, about the decision they made. >> michael steele, the white house legislative director doesn't understand the politics of who is running for the senate in florida. the one red state involved in all of this. >> it's like picking up the trash. they'll figure that out. no, this was very clearly a play to entice the governor into a senate race in florida this year. it's also recognizing the setup for beyond this year to make sure you do nothing to harm a relationship in 2020 with the state of florida. you have virginia. we're very concerned here on the east coast with this decision, is to you also have in california the governor expressing not here, and you have elsewhere governors showing

their concern. and yet they don't seem to get the same level of hearing and interest. >> i just also want to point out, darrell, i saw yet another republican, a former chairman, not a current chairman, the chairman who are stepping down. they are terminated, they are giving up their gavel, in states that are in blue districts. >> yeah, and he was going to have a particularly tough race. he had a tough race the last time around, and that abolition of the state and local tax deduction really hits california very hard. >> you want to talk about a sea change in the way that congress is run, he's the seventh chairman, ed royce was, when he announced the other day that he was stepping down, seventh chairman not to seek reelection this time around. that's extraordinary. people did not expect to give up those jobs. >> i want to ask ruth about the paid disparity of women in hollywood and men in hollywood, the reshooting of those scenes. the movie that kevin spacey had

to be eliminated from. michelle williams, the lead actress, the actor mark wahlberg apparently was paid more than a million dollars. she was paid a thousand dollars for reshooting her scenes and didn't know about it. >> yes. >> and it's the same representation. >> there are many potential people at fault here, and it would be nice if we could tell ourselves, but we would be wrong, that this is just a hollywood problem. it may be a particular hollywood problem because the market power of male actors may be greater than the market power of female actors in hollywood, and clearly, you know, there is something wrong with the agents negotiating differently, but this is a wake-up call, i think, to women everywhere in many industries, including my own, that we need to make sure -- our employers need to make sure that they are paying people equally

who are doing the same jobs, whatever their genders. >> amen to that. >> thank you. >> thank you all so much. thanks for being with us. coming up, rogue 1. the senate judiciary committee's top senator diane feinstein releasing hours of testimony from the trump dossier. we'll have details coming up next. next. you're watching reports" on msnbc. are you raising your hand? good then it's time for power e*trade the platform, price and service that gives you the edge you need. alright one quick game of rock, paper, scissors. 1, 2, 3, go. e*trade. the original place to invest online. you're smart.eat you already knew that. but it's also great for finding the perfect used car.

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the top democrat on the senate judiciary committee diane feinstein defending her position to go rogue and releasing hundreds of pages of testimony from the head of the firm behind that dossier on president trump. >> to my knowledge, there has not been a single fact in that report that has been proven to be incorrect. steele brought this information in to the fbi, and it's quite amazing that you get punished for providing information. >> president trump fired back against her today on twitter, calling the california democrat sneaky diane, accusing her of possibly breaking the law by releasing the testimony. joining me now is ken delanian, security reporter, and barbara wade, former msnbc contributor. you've gone through this transcript that the head who

hired the former spy to do the dossier, he asked for it to be released because it was going to be selectively released by republicans who then did a criminal referral to the justice department, asking that he and christopher steele, the former spy, be investigated and alluding to classified information on them. so he wanted it all out there so he could clear his name, and she did it. >> reporter: that's right, andrea, and that's one of the biggest takeaways is that with this act, the committee has broken down the bipartisanship, and it's the latest investigation to do that, so really the only bipartisabipart that remains is in the cabinet committee. he reached out to the fbi of his own volition. the democrats who were paying him didn't tell him to do that. he sat down in rome and laid out

what he found, and they told him they had information along this line. so this is in the face of what we were told about the dossier being part of the investigation. he thought the fbi wasn't acting on his information. he started talk to go reporters but that didn't really break through, and voters went to the polls in november not really knowing what steele and the fbi knew about allegations behind trump and russia collusion, andrea. >> this, in fact, was really unprecedented. barbara, i know we're going to be interrupted in a moment. they're going to play back the president's comments at the cabinet meeting, but i want to quickly say the whole idea of there being anything illegal about this in the president's tweet about diane feinstein, there was nothing at all confidential or classified in this transcript. >> no, i don't think there was anything illegal about it. i think there was an understanding that they would keep these readings confidential

so nobody could read it and t l tailor it. welcome back to the studio. nice to have you. do you want to close that door when they're finished, please? good morning and welcome to our first cabinet meeting of the new year. 2017 was the year of tremendous achievement, monumental al achievement, actually. i don't think any administration has done what we have done and what we've accomplished in its first year, which isn't quite finished yet. you never know what's going to happen over the next few days. and the achievements for our country, our people and for our standing in the world have been very monumental. we confirmed an incredible new supreme court justice and more circuit court judges in our

first year than any administration in the history of our country, and we have many more coming. we've set a new record on reducing regulation and all forms of stopping growth and stopping jobs that were crippling america's economy. again, the records that we set, 22-1. nobody has ever come close. and the amount of regulations that we've cut is a record also in our country's history, as reported by many newspapers, in particular the "wall street journal" did a big story on it. and before christmas, we passed the largest tax cut and reform in american history, including anwar and including the fact that the original mandate was terminated, which is a tremendously important thing and a very popular thing, i must tell you. people are supposed to pay for

the privilege of not having health care. that was not good. unfortunately the courts didn't cut it but we cut it. so in addition to the largest tax cut and reform in history, we have one of the great oil sites that's now been approved. they've been trying to approve anwar. i don't know if people know this. for over 40 years. ronald reagan tried to get it approved or exploration and for drilling. and for 40 years they've been trying to get it approved. that was in the bill, an individual mandate in the bill. since that tax cut was enacted, more than 1 million workers have already received a tax cut bonus, something that frankly nobody even thought about. we didn't think about it, nobody thought about it, we just knew a lot of good things were going to happen, and i must say at&t was at the first one and they did it $1,000 per employee. they have hundreds of thousands of employees.

and many companies followed immediately thereafter, and now they're following -- i guess the employees are saying, what about us? millions of employees in this country are getting $1,000 and more in some cases tax bonuses because of the tax cuts. hard-working american families will receive tremendous tax relief. we lowered our tax rates, nearly doubled the standard deduction, and doubled the child tax credit, which ivanka trump was pushing very, very hard, i will tell you that. and so was marco rubio. and i will tell you that the republican senate, we had no democrat support, zero. they didn't want tax cuts, they want tax increases. they want to raise your taxes, they don't want to cut you taxes. but the child tax credit has become very important to the

american family, and they're very happy about it. historic reductions to the business tax will raise annual household income by an average of $4,000. that's a tremendous number. the amount of money that's going to be brought in, we think it's going to be close to $4 trillion because of our tax reform. it will be a number that this country has never seen pour into our country. that's going to create more jobs and more investment. the stock market is shattering one record after another. unemployment is at a 17-year low. and i'm very proud of this. african-american unemployment reached its lowest level in history. think of that. and on the campaign trail, remember i said, and would constantly say, what do you have to lose, meaning, what do you

have to lose if you vote for trump? and now it was just reported african-american unemployment is at its lowest level in history. i'm very proud of that. we're also making america safe again. yesterday we had a bipartisan meeting with house members and senators on immigration reform, something they've been talking about for many, many years, but we brought them together in this room, and it was a tremendous meeting. actually, it was reported as incredibly good, and my performance, some of them called it a performance. i consider it work. but it got great reviews by everybody other than two networks who were phenomenal for about two hours. then after that they were called by their bosses who said, oh, wait a minute. unfortunately, a lot of those anchors sent us letters saying

that was one of the greatest meetings they've ever witnessed. and they were great. for about two hours, they were phenomenal. then they went a little bit south on us, but not that bad. it was fun. they probably wished they didn't send us those letters of con grags lagsz. i'm sure their ratings were fantasti fantastic. if trump didn't win in three years, they were all out of business. you guys will be out of business but the boomholders will still be there, so that's good. those are the people i like. we agreed to pursue four major areas yesterday of reform, securing our border, including, of course, the wall, which has always been included. never changed. cancelling the visa lottery and addressing the status of the

daca population. we want to see something happen with daca. it's been spokenn are now adult many cases. the numbers are very different, very varying. a lot of people say 800,000, some people said yesterday -- the first time i heard 360, i also heard 3 million. the fact is our country was such a mess that nobody knew what the numbers are, but will know what the numbers are. above all else, any bill we pass must improve jobs, wages and security for american citizens. the people who elected us, all of us elected us, we have to take care of them. we have to have a strong military. we can't play games with our milita military. whether we're democrat or whether we're republican, that's

not a strong negotiation. we can't say, oh, we'll give you money for the military but you have to give us something that is frankly a lot less important than security. we have to keep our country strong. our military was badly depleted over the last long period of military was very, very ma, i badly depleted. i just spoke to president moon. he's very thanks -- thankful. he felt the original talk was extremely good. i had a lot of good comment. rex was on the phone and nikki has been totally briefed. we had a very good conversation and we'll see where it goes. he was very thankful with what we've done. it was so reported today that we were the ones without attitude or that never would have

happened. who knows where it will lead. hopefully it will lead to success for the world, not just our country but for the world. we'll be seeing over the next weeks and months what happens. on a separate front, we are going to take a strong look at our country's libel laws, so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts. if somebody says something that's totally false and knowingly false, that the person that has been abused, defamed, libeled, will have meaningful recourse. our current libel laws are a sham and a disgrace and do not represent american values or american fairness, so we're going to take a strong look at that. we want fairness. you can't say things that are

false, knowingly false, and be able to smile as money pours into your bank account. we're going to take a very, very strong look at that, and i think what the american people want to see is fairness. finally, as we begin the new year, i want to thank my cabinet for working tirelessly on behalf of our country. every single day, every hour, i'm on the phone with almost all of them all the time. and we have a lot of exciting things to go. i'm just looking at alex. what a job you've done with our health care. he's secretary of labor, but he's very much involved in health care, and i think those rules and regulations will be out around february 1st, alex, as i understand it, and this is health care through association and associations. and i think that millions and millions and millions of people will be signing up.

it will be highly competitive. he has been able to totally get rid of state lines so there will be tremendous competition. and that will be a phase of health care that people don't talk about, but i think ultimately you'll have more people than you actually had even in obamacare and it's just a segment of what we're doing. so i just want to tell you i read a lot of those papers last night and it is really great work, brilliant work. i think it is something that people don't talk about, but it's something that's going to be very exciting and very great. it will be great health care at a very competitive price. there will be tremendous competition and it will cost the united states absolutely zero. so we're very proud of that. thank you, alex. and with that we'll start our cabinet meeting, and we appreciate your being here, and you've gotten very familiar with this room. i appreciate your nice comments yesterday. thank you all very much.

>> confessions but no responses that we're aware of as the president concludes that photo opportunity and welcome back it o -- to our studio. you saw kristen welker rejoining me now. he opened his photo opportunity by saying, welcome to the studio, certainly signalling what their intention is in terms of these white house photo opportunities in the wake of "fire and fury" and all the reports he's taking more personal time, and the residents coming to work later and all the criticism from michael wolff. >> reporter: that's right, clearly aiming to thwart those headlines, and they were let in for an hour to see the presentation and the lawmakers over immigration. that was certainly a striking way to start this tenth cabinet meeting, the first one of the new year. a couple top lines, andrea, that

i noticed. one, you heard him talk about his conversation with the president of south korea. south korea defining the diplomatic talks between north and south korean officials that will be talked about. things have cooled in the wake of those talks. i thought it was notable that he said he would take a look at the lirk libel laws in the wake of those talks. clearly indicating he wants to take some type of legal action after the legal action that was threatened really didn't hold water. and finally he talked about the border wall after sending so many mixed signals on the wall, saying his desire to see the wall built has never changed.

so really trying to clarify that point today, andrea. >> a big reset from the president in his studio, as he put it, the cabinet room. >> back with me, nbc news intelligence barbara mccabe, a former cia officer from adviser to. barbara, bring her back in. i interrupted you with the reading of the release of the transcripts which diane feinstein as the ranking democrat on judiciary, clearly not happy that she had been blindsided with the chairman and lindsey graham's referral to potential prosecution of both crystal steele and fusion gps.

. she released the transcript so everyone could see it. >> reporter: there is nothing that's wrong with releasing this transcript. i think there was an agreement between the senators that the transcript would remain sealed to avoid any concern that people are tailoring their testimony based around what they've seen. but people were selectively leaking and suggesting things about the testimony that was untrue. so i think that diane feinstein decided that let's let the public see this for themselves, and she accepted whatever negative consequences she might receive as backlash from her colleagues as a result. >> stay with us, because i want to bring up a report years after russia tried a covert threat.

based on president trump's denial of the existence of the putin intervention in the election, the meddling, for the failure so far of this administration to protect upcoming elections here at home. >> today the current president of the united states still barely acknowledges the threat posed by mr. putin's repeated tacts on government institutions. his leadership is found to effectively counter this kind of attention. never before have they clearly ignored this threat and a growing threat to national security. >> we already heard from h.r. mcmaster this week to say that mexico is trying to undermine. they failed to change the french election. >> the use of disinformation and

active measures by russia goes back decades. the most recent is the guard ying of e-- >> we've used it in ukraine, georgia and we certainly don't see an end to this any time soon. >> and you were just clicking on your tribune story about this. there was a link to amazon, but this was misspelled. what you discovered, amazon spelled with two ms, this is a classic case of somebody trying to trap you into a hacking. >> it did appear to be a trap of some sort. when we were researching this story and trying to understand what happened in the environment, we encountered this ad that was on a chicago tribune story, and when you dick being.

>> barbara, a lot of this has to do with home security back jeh johnson who warns there needs to be some proactive measures to protect the infrastructure, the election infrastructure. 21 states had to ward off russian hacking last time around. >> and to ignore the threat, noto minimize the threat i don't think is a good idea for the american people. hacking into our election system is really bad on our ability to hold fair elections. the security department and the justice department really should be making this a very high priority, and it concerns me that this administration, i think perhaps for personal reasons, is trying to minimize

this threat. >> is the intelligence community concerned about this, j.d.? >> i think it is intelligence community has already voiced its concern about this by issuing multiple reports, so yes. i don't speak for them, but i've seen them. >> from your experience you still talk to people back in the community. >> yes, absolutely. >> thank you for joining us today. barbara mccabe, ken delanian, thank you very much. did trump's immigration meeting bring bipartisans closer to a daca deal? you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. make a u-turn... u-turn? recalculating... man, we are never gonna breed. just give it a second. you will arrive in 92 days. nah, nuh-uh. nope, nope, nope. you know who i'm gonna follow? my instincts. as long as gps can still get you lost, you can count on geico saving folks money.

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even without methotrexate. ask your rheumatologist about xeljanz xr. president trump appearing to take a range of contradictory positions on immigration during that nearly hour-long televised negotiation session yesterday. both democrats and republicans making their pitch to the president who found himself in a tug-of-war over a so-called clean daca bill. joining me now is democratic senator mazie horono. thank you for joining us. >> hello to you. >> the president's photo opportunity, welcome to the studio. making it clear they saw yesterday's photo opportunity, today's as well, as an attempt to be in charge. did you feel like an actor sitting around that table, like

you were a prop? >> i went to the meeting today knowing fully well he can take one position one day and you never know what position he'll take the next day. with regard to daca, there was consensus around the table in a bipartisan way that we needed to support the daca participants. but at the same time, you know, what else are we going to need to negotiate, and i would say that after some discussion, there was a moment when i thought the president was going to go ahead and support diane feinstein's request for a clean daca bill, but kevin mccarthy, i believe, quickly stepped in to make sure the president remained on track, their track, with regard to what we needed to do. so i think the biggest concern that i have with regard to our negotiations would be what constitutes border security, and he went back to a wall, although he had said two days or three days ago that he wants 18 billion, which, by the way, is only a down payment on a wall

per sunt pursuant to his own homeland security's estimate. i said that's only a down paleontologi payment. he didn't respond, but he was talking about only a 2,000-mile-wall not having to separate mountains and streams. so it wasn't very clear, but i think he considers border security to be an important part of our negotiated suggestion to him. >> well, it certainly seems that there is a deal to be had, it's just a matter of -- everyone may describe it differently. i want to ask you about his tweet against diane feinstein today, because he tweeted against her release of the glenn simpson testimony and said, the

fact that sneaky diane feinstein who has, on numerous occasions, stated that collusion between trump and russia has not been found, would release testimony in such an underhanded and possibly illegal way without authorization is a disgrace. must have tough primary. there is so much to unpack there. first of all, she doesn't need authorization. there is nothing illegal, as we've talked to legal experts, that she had every right to do it. she had been blindsided by the chairman, chuck grassley, the previous friday. that may have or not have played a part. and she's simply saying there's been no evidence proving collusion, she's not saying it may not have happened. >> whether there is collusion, that's a legal conclusion based on investigation, and the mueller investigation must continue. the president says a lot of things that have no basis of fact, and i'm really proud of the fact that diane feinstein took the action of releasing this information, because there were bits and pieces of it being

leaked out by various other people, republicans, to cast aspersions on glenn simpson's testimony. and her release of the transcript shows that he was very cooperative and that there was to hide. i think the public deserves to know and i'm proud of the fact that dianne took this action. >> just to say that she was sitting at the table negotiating with him, in that photo opportunity, and for him to come back and accuse her of doing something illegal. calling her sneaky dianne feinstein and threatening her with the primary seems to indicate his legislative strategy is a little bit off-kilter. >> well, this is why he's very mercurial and unpredictable. on one hand when he's meeting with us he's nicy and all that, but you never know what he's going to say the next moment. and already he's attacking dianne for doing something that i think is basically very patriotic. >> thank you very much, senator. thanks for being with us today. >> thank you. coming up, deadly

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and turning to breaking news from southern california, at least 15 people are now dead, two dozen are now missing after

mudslides tearing through communities today. we're joined from montecito, california. >> reporter: that's right, andrea. there is remarkable clean-up going on. it's going to take quite some time before the 101 freeway is open. this is the 101 freeway. it's hard to imagine what this was like at 3:45 in the morning when it was just filling with this wall of mud. you've got big backhoes and tractors starting to pull things out. we haven't seen them make a dent yet. this range rover is floating. every time one of these pieces of machinery come in, they push this range rover and it floats. this is one of these areas earlier where rescuers combed through and they found a little boy who had been separated from his father. they were swept out of their home when it was pushed off its foundation. that little boy ended up down here. you can see how much debris there is and the viscosity of

that mud. it is still really sticky. there it is, that's that range rover floating there. gives you an idea of how much mud there is. that mud gets even deeper. i want to show you real fast. this has been cleaned up, but that's not the only place. over here, as we look across the way, that is the 101 freeway. andrea, back to you. >> unbelievable. i know that area very well, indeed. thank you. our hearts are with all of those people. more ahead. c. wondering, "what if?" i let go of all those feelings. because i am cured with harvoni. harvoni is a revolutionary treatment for the most common type of chronic hepatitis c. it's been prescribed to more than a quarter million people. and is proven to cure up to 99% of patients who've have had no prior treatment with 12 weeks. certain patients can be cured with just 8 weeks of harvoni. before starting harvoni, your doctor will test to see if you've ever had hepatitis b, which may flare up and cause serious liver problems

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and thanks for being with us today. craig melvin picks it up in new york. hi, craig. >> good to see you. good afternoon to you. craig melvin at msnbc headquarters in new york. what's the deal? a court strikes down the president's daca decision after he holds that open meeting on immigration, seemingly giving both democrats and republicans what they want. does anyone know what the policy will be, though? working group trying to figure that out right now. also, president trump saying the russia investigation is, quote, the single greatest witch hunt in american history as democrats call out trump for not doing more to protect russia from our elections. a deadly river of mud running through parts of california scorched by those wildfires. the dramatic rescues we are seeing as families. we'll get to those stories in a moment.