people can hear it all on your podcast. thank you. >> thank you. that's going to do it for me this busy afternoon. deadline white house nicolle wallace starts now. >> hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. donald trump's nobody puts baby in the corner impromptu press conference last night yielded major developments for the mueller investigation. the president declaring that he looks forward to testifying under oath in the special counsel investigation. >> mr. president -- >> you mean like hillary did it under? who said that? >> i said that. would you do it under oath? >> oh, you said it. you say a lot. did hillary do it under oath? >> i don't know. i'm asking you -- >> wait, wait, wait. do you not have an idea? do you really not have an idea? >> i don't remember. >> i'll give you an idea. she didn't do it under oath. but i would do it under oath. listen, i would do it and you know she didn't do it under oath, right? if you didn't know about hillary, then you're not much of a reporter.

>> you're going to do it under oath? >> by our standard, you would do it under oath? >> i would. >> what amounted to a prebuttal whether his actions amounted to obstruction of justice, the president said this. >> do you think robert mueller will be fair to you in this larger investigation? >> we're going to find out. >> are you concerned about -- >> here's what he'll say, and everybody says. no collusion. there's no collusion. now they're saying, oh, well, did he fight back? you fight back. you fight back. oh, it's obstruction. so, here's the thing. i hope so. >> the washington post jennifer rubin with the sharp est analysis in a piece trump's inability to understand obstruction of justice may be his downfall. quote, here trump is shoulting his corrupt intent, though he has no idea it's corrupt from the rooftops. he's not at all embarrassed to admit he tried to strong arm the fbi and shut down comey.

in fact, he believes he was entitled to do these things. to our reporters and experts, nbc's kristen welker at the white house, msnbc national security analyst jeremy bash, a former chief of staff at both the cia and pentagon. matthew miller, msnbc justice and security analyst, a former chief spokesman for the department of justice. and steve schmidt, republican strategist and msnbc contributor. kristen welker, let me start with you because i understand there was a bit of a walk back from the ground and the territory that the president staked out from himself in that remarkable press reveal. >> it was remarkable, nicole. i was there when the president basically surprised everyone by interrupting what was a background briefing on immigration. and we started asking him a range of questions about immigration, and then, of course, about the russia probe. as you just played, the president very definitively said he would be willing to testify under oath. then shortly after those remarks

and after that impromptu press conference ended, his lawyer here at the white house who handles all things related to russia, ty cobb, walked back his comments a little bit, essentially saying, look, the president was speaking hurriedly before he left for davos, and that his broader message that he's cooperating with the special counsel, but that the terms of any interview are still being discussed by his legal team. ty cobb stressing that point. when i asked if the president would testify under oath, he said, look, the president wants to cooperate with the special counsel with whatever is requested by the special counsel. but, again, the terms of any potential interview are still very much under negotiation. the time frame is important here, nicole. the president himself saying this could happen as soon as two to three weeks. that's consistent with everything that we've been reporting. but based on my conversations, they are still trying to work out those details, what would an interview look like, would all

of it be in person, would there be a written portion to the interview, how long would it be, what would the scope be. those are among the questions being asked. also worth noting that john dowd, who is the president's personal attorney, earlier today put out this statement, essentially saying that the legal team had been the most transparent in history, had turned over some 20,000 documents and 20 white house officials had sat for interviews with the special counsel. so, really trying to make the case that, look, they are cooperating. they want to see this investigation conclude as quickly as possible. >> kristen, they're cooperating. if not they get subpoenaed. it's not like they woke up and said how can i help out mueller today. >> i do think their approach to this -- and it is a significant one, because remember before the president got his legal team together, he was almost on a daily basis lashing out at the investigation, the russia probe, calling it a hoax. there is still some of that. but his legal team and the approach that they have taken is

let's dial back some of that aggression and let's just focus on getting the special counsel whatever documents, whatever interviews they're asking for, nicolle. >> jeremy bash, it does amount to a little bit of managing the principal in that we also know -- first of all, it's baloney that donald trump went out there and painted with some broad brush strokes. he took out a scalpel, he carved out what hillary clinton did and put himself in a different category. he was hardly riffing and in a rush. it sounds like -- kristen, jump in and correct me if i'm wrong. he didn't really rush through any of those comments. he dove in, he dug in, and he was pretty expansive, right? >> he didn't seem to be rushing. >> so, jeremy, let me get you to weigh in on two things. one, this is client management playing out in full view, which proves two things. one, that donald trump is a horrible client. it's no wonder his friends describe his lawyers as the

c-team. and, two, is it possible that donald trump is acknowledging that he may have done something that looks like obstruction of justice, but he was entitled to obstruct justice, he was just fighting back? >> it was a very troubling day for trump's lawyers, nicolle, because two things happened. first of all, he said he would testify under oath. he made that statement kind of in a rash answer before the lawyers really had to consider whether that was the proper strategy. and second is he gave a presentation where his words were imprecise. his tone was chaotic, and his approach was completely defensive, making counter accusations. that's precisely the wrong approach when you're being interviewed by the special counsel. so, on both scores it was a huge set back for the trump legal team. >> matthew miller, let me play you donald trump asking questions, not under oath, but while being interviewed by our own lester holt who is i think probably ever bit as good as bob mueller asking questions but the stakes not as high.

let's watch and talk about it on the other end. >> you met with the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. >> right. >> did you ask for a recommendation? >> what i did was i was going to fire comey. my decision, it was not -- >> you had made the decision before they came in the room? >> i was going to fire comey. when i decided to just do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a made-up story. it's an excuse by the democrats for having lost an election that they should have won. >> so, let me just take that answer and put it inside -- actually, i'm guessing bob mueller would travel down to the oval office. most special counsels have granted president as that courtesy of coming down and interviewing them in the oval office or wherever it's convenient, the es are dns, wherever a president chooses. but telling bob mueller that he was always going to fire jim comey because, i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is made-up story, it's an excuse by the democrats for having lost an

election. the democrats having lost an election they should have won. so, he is acknowledging that the story that was put out by the white house was a ruse, was a lie, what people -- what surrogates like kellyanne conway and others said to be the reasons this rosenstein memo about comey wasn't the truth. he admitted the truth to lester holt. what would a witness like donald trump be like in the hands of bob mueller? >> it's a great question because that real difficult explode 36 hours of talking points from the justice department, from the white house, that jim comey was fired because of the way he handled the hillary clinton investigation, number one, and number two, it was a bottom-up recommendation that came from the justice department to the president, not the other way around. and when the president made those remarks, really, you know, unsolicited. he just kind of came out and volunteered this information. it was the first sign that we might have a real act of

obstruction of justice by the president. and, so, when he sits down with bob mueller, he's going to have to be held accountable for all of these statements. bob mueller is going to take all the statements he's made publicly, and not just publicly, but statements that he made to other people who bob mueller has interviewed. so, the president probably doesn't remember everything he said in a meeting six months ago, three months ago, two months ago. but staffers will often have much more memory of what the principal said. it's a searing thing when the principal said something, especially if it's something inappropriate. they remember that. if they've told it to bob mueller, the president is going to be asked about that. if his recollection is different, he may very well commit a false statement. >> steve schmidt, i want to get your thoughts on this, but i want to play one more piece of sound from this remarkable press event yesterday. this was about acting fbi director andy mccabe. let's watch. >> did you ask mccabe who he voted for? did you ask him that? >> i don't think so.

krong i did. >> you did not? >> i don't know what's the big deal with that. who did you vote for? [ laughter ] >> i don't think it's a big deal. but i don't remember that. i saw that this morning. i don't remember asking him that question. >> is it possible you did? >> i don't remember asking him the question. >> steve schmidt, we should remind our viewers who andy mccabe is. he's the acting director of the fbi. he's someone donald trump has smeared in a series of tweets that he sent from his twitter feed which the white house deems official white house statements of policy. he has served under democratic and republican administrations and we know that bob mueller is interested in andy mccabe's account that he found it very troubling that donald trump asked him who he had voted for. your thoughts? >> well, there are tua expects to it, nicolle. the first is the smearing of this credi-buareer public serva is number two to the president of the united states. and how unnormal that is, how strange it is to see that, the

spectacle of it going on. and then the second parliament of it is there's no specific rule that prevents the president of the united states from asking the fbi number two that question. what prevents a president from asking that question is understanding norms. that to protect the independence of the fbi, the president of the united states doesn't discuss politics with him. he doesn't pressure him politically. he doesn't ask the number two at the fbi who it is that he voted for. it's completely utterly absolutely inappropriate. and to come back to what jeremy bash was saying which i think is dead on, the news encounter so remarkable in just its abject recklessness. and as this proceeds apace and the president walks into a room with the special counsel and does what he typically does, which is make stuff up, be inaccurate with information, reckless in his approach, there

are going to be negative serious consequence of him and his lawyers are scared to death about that. >> chris, can i have you for one quick question? >> absolutely. >> let me come back to that. ty cobb seems to show through his actions if not words what jeremy and steve articulated what a horrible witness donald trump would be and unmanageable client he is by the mere fact he walked back "the new york times" characterization of what the president committed to doing. what is their strategy going forward for a client who doesn't -- i worked for a candidate who went rogue and it was sort of a joke. she delivered messages that weren't in line with the man at the top of the ticket and wrote books about it. it was funny, it was about being mismanaged. but this is a man who is a sitting president of the united states. the stakes could be his own impeachment. why doesn't he seem to take seriously the legal advice he's getting from his own lawyers? >> well, i think that the

strategy behind the scenes, to your point, nicolle, is to really try to push an interview that would include, if not solely be written. of course legal analysts say that is very unlikely that the special counsel would agree to that. but remember, when the negotiations started and we first started reporting on the fact that there were these sensitive discussions going on with the president's legal team and the special counsel's team, it focused on that, on trying to have some written portion of this interview. submitting an affidavit, for an example, so that there could be discipline to the answers that were given. so, that is why i think you have ty cobb coming out last night and saying, look, there is still very much a dialogue going on about what this ultimate interview and interaction is going to look like. and then more broadly, i think that there is a message being sent behind the scenes that there needs to be discipline, both in terms of some of these on-camera interviews, but also in terms of the tweets that are sent out.

and i think that's been sort of consistent throughout the course of this investigation since the president put his legal team together, nicolle. >> kristen, thank you for spending a few more minutes with us. >> thank you. >> we appreciate it. jeremy bash, let me come back to you, though. an affidavit in donald trump's mind, i would predict isn't any more binding than a speech agreed upon by all of his senior staff and delivered on a teleprompter. once he's left to his own devices we know that he feels at liberty to deviate from something agreed upon and delivered based on a script. would you trust donald trump to deliver some -- i mean, first of all, let me ask you, there any scenario where bob mueller accepts simply written answers and no interview? >> no, because the answers would be written by counsel. and the point of an investigation is to get facts in evidence and what counsel provides is not facts in evidence. they provide argumentation, so no. >> that said, it is going to be at best for the president, some combination of written answers and an interview. where would you put the odds

based on watching donald trump as a candidate and a president now deliver one set of ideas that are scripted for him from a teleprompter, and then deviate from them, not just slightly, but almost completely in spirit, in tone, in tenor, and in substance often issues like charlottesville, on issues related to immigration policy? you can go up and down the line of issues big and small and the president almost 100% of the time deviates from things that have been written for him by staff. >> odds are very high. and in that impromptu press conference, he said he i wasn't obstructing justice, i was fighting back. under that logic he could lie to the special counsel under the gooids guise of fighting back. he doesn't realize he's committing felonious perjury. if his lawyers can't get that concept into his head, he's going to have a very difficult interview. >> do you think -- let me give you the last word on this, steve

schmidt. do you think that the idea of committing perjury is something that the president's team has sort of red teamed? do you think they have shown him how bill clinton was impeached by the house? do you think they have looked at any worst case scenarios? do you think they are simply caught in the moment of managing their client, living hour to hour with the revelations that seem to be coming out at an increasing clip from the mueller probe? >> i'd be completely astounded if it wasn't their number one worry that it wasn't the first thing that they thought about in the morning and the last thing they thought about before they close their eyes at night. that's his chief vulnerability. i was just thinking listening to jeremy, the degree to which this completely validates the michael wolff book, chaos in the white house, he doesn't read, you can't tell him anything, he knows everything. and you just know for sure the lawyers are telling him one thing and he says, hey, i've

been deposed like 595 times. i've been in all these lawsuits. trump doesn't lose. i'll take care of it. i know more than the lawyers. i'm the president. i'm in charge. i can do whatever i want. and i think you really saw that manifest itself. it's not the issue that he doesn't understand it. it's the issue that he doesn't want to understand it. you can't tell him anything and it creates great vulnerability to him. it will be fascinating to see how this plays out in the next couple of weeks as this comes to its end game. >> all right. no one is going anywhere today. we need you all to stick around. and when we come back, why wouldn't you admit my greatness, asked no american president ever, until now. we'll bring you those groundbreaking remarks. also ahead, left behind or opting out. we'll tell you who didn't make the flight manifest for davos and what that might mean for the white house staff and the president's agenda. and the fbi smear campaign that republicans are pursuing with vigor hits a speed bump.

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we are back and our panel is here. joining the conversation today, bill crystal, founder and editor of the weekly standard. elise, former aid in the george w. bush white house, now msnbc analyst. eli stokols, msnbc analyst and trump white house whisperer. jeremy's team and matt are also here. i want to play one more clip from donald trump's remarkable news conference last night where he's asked how do you define collusion. his answer somehow, all about hillary clinton.

>> how do you define collusion? earlier in the briefing -- >> how are you going to define it for me, okay? i can tell you there's no collusion. i couldn't have cared less about russians having to do with my campaign. the fact is you people won't say this, but i'll say it. i was a much better candidate than her. you always say she was a bad candidate. you never say i was a good candidate. i was one of the greatest candidates. nobody else would have beaten the clinton machine as crooked as it was. i was a great candidate. some day you're going to say that. >> i'm never going to say it. elise? >> he is definitely going to run in 2020 just because he loves the campaign so much. he literally would love to be on the campaign trail reliving the victory and having an active opponent. he still is using hillary clinton as that, even though he defeated her and that was now two years ago, year and a half ago. >> amazing. >> here we are in the middle of this investigation about collusion and obstruction of justice. when the president is asked about collusion, he tells us

what he actually means is not that there was no collusion, it's that you're not giving me enough respect. you don't respect -- maggie asked sarah huckabee sanders at yesterday's briefing, what does the president mean when he says no collusion, her response was he won this election on his own without help and nobody gives him enough credit. >> it's a good point because even donald trump's answer, bill crystal, does not deny that -- he is no longer denying russians were involved in the elections. he's simply carving away from russian involvement his political achievements. and i've just never heard anyone talk about themselves the way donald trump talks about himself. i know he's been cleared of any physical or mental impairments, but that is not normal. >> it's not normal. it's a kind of -- a little cunning there to make it as much of a fight with hillary clinton as possible, which rallies his base. he says he's going to testify, wants to tell the truth under oath. i don't believe for a moment

he'll testify. he's going to find excuses, highs lawyers will fight it. they'll take the 5th amendment and excuse that. we are all comparing the trump thing to watergate or maybe bill clinton and monica lewinsky. think the o.j. trial. how did o.j. get off? i don't know if he really convinced people he was innocent honestly, but they raised enough doubts about the l.a.p.d. and about the evidence and the glove. that gave people on the jury who seemed to have some wish, almost, to find o.j. innocent, right, give them an excuse to do so or maybe get a hung jury to push that analogy. that's what trump is playing for. he figures maybe they won't be able to get real proof on the collusion, the obstruction thing is going to be kind of murky. maybe there will be reports there is obstruction, but if he holds the republicans of congress he's fine. he has -- beneath all the bluster and narcissistism and craziness, he has a certain strategy here and i don't believe he's going to cooperate with mueller at the end of the day.

he may fire mueller incidentally. >> jeremy bash, i saw you nodding your head. do you want to weigh in on that? >> in a jury trial, you just need to convince one person. the president's political strateangie can be good enough to convince one out of 10 or one out of 12 people in the country. >> three out of 10, 4 out of 10 is good enough for him now. >> let me keep this going with what speaks to bill's point about a political strategy, not just a legal strategy. axios reporting trump has created reasonable doubt about mueller's investigation among a significant portion of the gop base. enough that he may have already won his case with the jury that matters most to him in his political future. just to keep this o.j. analogy going, which was effective in part because of branding, because of slogan airing. if the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit as i recall. how -- where is the intersection of sort of these political campaigns, these public

relations endeavors, and legal outcomes? >> i think they are looking forward to legal out come, not as a trial because they know, the president's lawyers know the department of justice has concluded for sometime a president can't be indicted. the worst case scenario for them is if bob mueller decides there is some kind of wrongdoing, they are fighting a fight in congress over impeachment. if you want to stay with the analogy, when o.j. simpson was attacking the l.a.p.d., that's why they've been attacking the fbi for over a year now. you've seen the shifting of conspiracy theories from devin nunes, from ron johnson, the president himself. first with unmasking, uranium one, the lost text. >> now found. >> secret society, now found. you have conspiracy theory after conspiracy. you knock one down another one pops up. it doesn't matter whether any of them have been proved true they move on to the next one. i think the idea is to condition -- condition his base, condition republicans in congress, if bob mueller ever comes and says i have hard

evidence that the president of the united states obstructed justice, there is a significant portion of the country probably not a majority, but maybe 35% that don't believe him. >> elise jordan, one of the people who fuels his conspiracy theories is his son. i want to read you something from axios. junior is fueling conspiracy theory fire. trump talks to plenty of people in his out of office hours and in the residence who fuel his sense that the intelligence community is populated by enemies out to get him who are trying to engineer a cue and nullify his presidency. he tops the list. i don't want to strain the o.j. a nal analogy, calling him kato kaelin. people fueling his worst instincts is so contrary to the role family typically plays. you look at nancy reagan, you look at michelle obama, you look at laura bush. the family typically takes the heat away from a principal who feels that scrutiny, from the highest office. what do you make of the fact it's his own son fanning the

conspiracy flames? >> i think you can directly look at some of the worst mistakes of this presidency and a family member is implicated. you look a jared kushner and ivanka trump to make mike flynn the national security advisor. you look at jared kushner telling trump it's okay to fire jim comey. you look at those decisions arguably putting flynn in that position of power and getting rid of comey, and this family, their lack of political judgment, will ultimately lead to donald trump's downfall. >> and perhaps there, they've got legal exposure now based on those two things you just named. eli, we've gotten a reporting that democratic senator whitehouse the president's son may have made misstatements. they're pushing to release his testimony. it's not just the worst decisions for the president politically, they may all have political exposure. >> they are winging it. they aren't smart enough to have

good legal counsel. this compounded itself. during the campaign they were ad-libbing the entire thing and it worked for them and they didn't really worry about, have we been contacted by a foreign government? do we need to report that? all these sort of questions that pros would have known and said, okay to protect yourself you need to do this. there wasn't that knowledge. >> how about to protect the country? >> and that. at this point, their first concern is protecting themselves and winning. donald trump said in that meeting with reporters yesterday, that thing when he said, you know, i fight back, i fight back and it's obstruction of justice. he really believes that he's absolved by the fact he's doing what any normal candidate or president, competitive person would do, which is trying to win. and i don't think that's going to pass muster with bob mueller. >> real quick -- >> let me be a little more cynical. why do eric trump and donald trump, jr., and jared kushner think they're fine and they can be incredibly reckless? they think they're going to be pardoned by the president of the united states, in my opinion. it's idiotic for them to be saying some of these things, but

they have pushed a ludicrous narrative on the mainstream republican in congress, a conservative commentsery in a way that we -- i'm personally sort of shocked by. if you told me six months ago, semi-serious conservatives on tv and republican members of the house and senate would be sounded like eric and don junior -- >> talking about secrets -- all right, we have so much more on the secret squirrels. no one is going anywhere. don't go anywhere. we have to sneak in a break. when we come back, the justice department rebukes the republican intel committee. calling their stunt extraordinarily reckless and bill crystal breathes a sigh of relief.

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the republicans want to malign and smear the entire enintelligence product. can you speak to how unprecedented that is from the d.o.j. perspective? to see them release this letter today on d.o.j. letterhead, rebuking nunes, rebuking the memo -- explaining the entire process which you think the chairman of the house intel committee would be well versed in, was an extraordinary thing for me today. >> you're right, nicolle. i cannot remember a time where a justice department sent a letter like this to a committee chairman of its own party. and there was something remarkable in this letter. look, the fisa application they're referring to regarding carter page, was submitted when loretta lynch was the attorney general, sally yates was deputy attorney general, when jim comey was the fbi director.

all people who republicans have great enmity to. in this letter written by a republican appointee who used to work for jeff sessions on behalf of the republican trump appointee rod rosenstein, and trump appointee chris wray, they said that there was no wrongdoing in this application. therefore the justice department, the trump appointees are saying they've gone back and looked at the fisa application and the obama justice department did nothing wrong. furthermore, if you release this you could expose national security secrets. it is a remarkable thing for them to do. and there is one little thing that was missed in this letter. you talked about how the committee has voted to not let its members see the underlying information. there was a small little footnote in the letter that revealed, devin nunes who wrote this memo didn't even himself look at all the underlying classified information. he delegated that authority to tray gowdy. so, the guy who has written this moment owe that purports to claim the fbi has committed some kind of wrongdoing, without sharing all the context, hasn't even looked at all the underlying information himself.

i think we've moved far beyond partisan politics. this is a really dishonorable act for devin nunes and a low moment for house republicans. like speaker ryan who have not stood in his way but encouraged him and let him go forward. >> he's done more than that, steve schmidt. let me read you this from jennifer rubin. a house speaker would have stepped in and protect the integrity of congress. ryan must decide whether his water carrying for the president obliges him to indulge in committee chairman consumed with mongering who routinely gives support to white house allegations and who has failed in his obligation to exercise reasonable serious oversight and explore an assault on american democracy. this, steve schmidt, to me, is a stain on paul ryan. and the fact that he ever, ever was on the ticket as a vice-presidential nominee blows my mind. >> yeah, he's demonstrated since donald trump became president absolute lack of toughness, of strength, in asserting the

prerogatives of the institution that he leads. the house of representatives. he's a constitutional officer, third in line to the presidency. and what devin nunes is doing here is, in fact, exactly correctly described as dishonorable. we are in a global misinformation war with the russian federation who is, through social media, trying to shape the narratives to confuse the american people, to loosen their faith in our system, in our institutions. the social media companies are largely the battle grounds of it. there has been an explosion of twitter activity from russian accounts in support of the nunes position. he's the chair of the intelligence committee who is politically acting to burn down the fbi, to destroy the credibility of the nation's premiere law enforcement organization, the world's most

respected in a key part of the intelligence community. we've never seen anything like it. we have hosts on fox news routinely calling for people to be jailed, for leadership in the intelligence community to be arrested, for insinuations that there is a coups. their subversion under the constitution, specifically congressman gates, congressman jordan, devin nunes, senator johnson, united states senators and members of congress driving this on virtual conspiracy theory cycle. it is dangerous. not just dishonorable, it's dangerous to a democratic republic like the united states. >> yesterday i called them nuts and loons. after the break we're going to call it immaculate conception. don't go anywhere. you won't believe how much is new at red lobster...

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look, i was making a point that this is an absurd coincidence. >> by what? what do you think happened with the immaculate conception? >> the immaculate conception is obviously a religious doctrine that deals with the christian faith. >> i know. but i'm saying where is the analogy? that's what i don't understand. what do you think happened with the immaculate conception? >> look, did you really bring me on to discuss my religious views, chris? >> no, i'm saying you made the analogy and -- >> when jesus was born. >> the immaculate conception is not how jesus was born. >> it was the conception, the nature -- >> no, it wasn't. it was mary's conception. >> i just had to show you that because i'm still trying to figure it out. what they were trying to do was have a conversation about missing texts. they've now been found since that interview was conducted last night. but i tease that by talking nuts and loons and secret squirlz and secret societies. to bill crystal's point, once

serious men and women of the party i used to belong to -- i don't know where you guys stand these days. but i mean, they've lost their mind. they're so off the rails. >> i want to be generous and say that perhaps some of our former colleagues -- some of our former colleagues don't realize the consequence that what they are backing, where this could end. it seemed like fun and games for plenty of the conspiracy theorists who were saying hillary clinton had a pedophilia ring until a guy showed up with a machine gun. the president's rhetoric, the rhetoric endorsed by his followers, by his prominent followers on television. there are going to be consequence and i think it is something they should think about as they actively endorse it. >> how did this get to where we are now? >> and it happened really fast. >> yeah. >> it happened really fast. this presidency is a year old and we went from sorts of normalcy in washington to seeing people who we thought would be -- who always had been

defenders of ideas for the most part, who, you know, we thought this was a party bound by ideology. there is total abandonment of that, there is abandonment of principle, disregard for history and facts. among people who know better. there are a lot of republicans on the hill who aren't out there ranting and raving like matt gates is on television trying to carry water for the president. but they're not saying anything. they're saying things privately, but, you know, paul ryan and other republicans who we look to to be leaders on the hill occasionally trump will tweet something insane, they'll have to be asked about it and they will condemn those tweets. but on the whole -- the fbi derangement syndrome, and all these things that are running across the republican party right now, nobody is standing up and saying, hey, guys, come on. have you looked at all those memos -- >> it is unfortunate and say -- hyper boll i can for being offended by the kind of language and behavior and cruelty this president, it's his nature. >> because he got a tax cut. you're in a war of words with

tucker carlson whether or not his show careens into racist themes, which you are more polite, it does. just talk about how unrecognizable some of the bright lights and rising stars -- you know, you and i used to disagree on sarah palin. but now i retweet along with 37,000 other people everything you say to criticize this president. but donald trump has divided the republican party into people who look up and see a sky that's some shade of blue or gray and people who look up and say, not only are you wrong, it's green, its's purple. i want you to go to jail for seeing it is an not green or purple. >> that's the key. the embrace of conspiracy theory is the embrace of general hostility to government institutions. it's fine to say the fbi has some problems, we need to have strong oversight. the whole thing is a conspiracy to elect hillary clinton, is that plausible? incidentally, james comey came out ten days before the election

and argue tipped the percentage point to donald trump. it wasn't a very good conspiracy if that's what it was. i think the combination of the conspiracy theorizing, vehemence and unchecked rhetoric, the personal assaults. you mentioned the president's family earlier. think about that. it's one thing, presidential families have always been problematic in certain ways. billy carter and all these characters weren't perfect models, maybe. but to have the two sons of the president of the united states attacking political opponents and critics in the way they do, can't the president call -- of course, he could call them up and say hey, you shouldn't do this, but he doesn't because he wants them to do it because he unleashed this kind of belittling of your opponents, questioning your opponents and having no disregard for them. >> when we come back, the president sets his staff's hair on fire again over immigration policy. this time, it's with a position that may have averted the entire

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we want to do a great job with daca. i think it's our issue. a better issue for the republicans than for the democrats. >> do you want citizenship for d.r.e.a.m.ers? >> we're going to morph into it. it's going to happen. >> what does that mean, morph into it? >> over a period of ten to 12 years, somebody does a great job, they have worked hard. it gives incentive to do a great job. if they have worked hard, they have done terrifically, whether

they have a little company or whether they work or whatever they're doing, if they do a great job, i think it's a nice thing to have the incentive ofarve a period of years being able to become a citizen. >> that's called a pathway to citizenship. president trump appearing open to a pathway to citizenship for d.r.e.a.m.ers. part of those impromptu comments made at his chief of staff's office. "the new york times" reporting his remarks sent the white house scrambling in what one official called a fire drill. they have to reconcile the administration's plans with the president's words. the white house this morning quickly followed his comments with an e-mail warning with a flood of immigrants to the country and demanding an end to chain migration. eli, i just want to know whether that would have been a government shutdown if donald trump could have said at 10:00 p.m. friday these words. if they do a great job, i think it's a nice thing to have the incentive of a period of years being able to become a citizen for d.r.e.a.m.ers. >> sometimes not only is there

the reverse engineering in terms of the staff having to take something he says and make the policy so. it also takes a lot of time for the president who goes around and around and talks about both sides of an issue to sort of come to a position on his own. he may be there now, but it's hard to know. and it's hard to know if there is a deal that is out there and is workable over the next couple weeks, if it passes the senate, will paul ryan push it through the house? will he push it through the house with democratic votes? will the president, when he hears about the backlash from the base, breitbart already calling him amnesty don for the comment last night, will he stick to the plan or out of fear to lose some of his base, retract the whole thing and say it's a bad deal. >> yes or no, you think he gets a deal on immigration reform? >> no. >> yes or no. >> i think it's possible. more possible the more trump stays out of it and serious members of the congress work it out. >> we have to sneak in one last break. we'll be right back.

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steve, this is a crime, but one where do you predict any progress on immigration reform? steve schmidt? >> no, not really. it's going to be very contentious, and i don't think trump will resist his base. >> all right. my thanks to steve, bill, eli, and elise. >> how are you doing? well done. if it's thursday, the president will definitely maybe talk to the special counsel. >> tonight, it's a trap. fears of a perjury trap with bob mueller take the president literally or seriously? >> i will say if this talk is real, and the interview is coming up that bob mueller is probably farther along in the investigation than some might have imagined. >> plus, what's the deal on immigration talks? >> i think the more you do an immigration all at once, the harder it is to pass. >> and dividing lines. how more states are