that may not be in the offing either. that's our broadcast tonight. thank you for being with us. brian is back monday. good night from nbc news headquarters in new york. hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. donald trump needs a bigger bus, one that fits all of the west wing staffers that have been thrown under it in the last four days in the rob porters domestic abuse scandal. this is a white house incapable of getting its story straight and delivers credibility and consistency to the press. ironically those are functions

of all the white house communications director who happens to be one of the key figures in what's becoming a circular firing squad of aides blaming different power centers. in one corner beleaguered white house chief of staff john kelly, "the washington post" reporting this afternoon under the headline, quote, kelly offers account of porter exit that some white house aides consider untrue. he, kelly, told the staff he took immediate and direct action, one of the officials said. adding that people actively expressing disbelief with one another and felt his latest account is not true. the white house counsel is getting his share of blame in reporting from the washington post and "the new york times" that fills in some of the time line in when the white house first knew of the allegations. from the post, white house counsel don mcgahn knew one year ago that staff secretary rob porter's ex-wives were prepared to make damaging accusations about him but allowed him to serve without investigating the accusations. and hope hicks, she's typically spared from criticism from her colleagues and the president. she's coming under scrutiny for her role. the "times" writing, white house officials have privately that the president was frustrated

with both mr. kelly and the white house communications director hope hicks who in recent weeks has been dating mr. porter. ms. hicks was one of those rallying the white house to mr. porter's defense when allegations first surfaced in "the daily mail." and the president for his part, well, he thinks the guy could be innocent. >> well, we wish him well. he worked very hard. i found out about it recently and i was surprised by it. but we certainly wish him well. it's a obviously tough time for him. he did a very good job when he was in the white house, and we hope he has a wonderful career and hopefully he will have a great career ahead of him. but it was very sad when we heard about it and certainly he's also very sad. now, he also, as you probably know, he says he's innocent. and i think you have to remember that. he said very strongly yesterday that he's innocent.

so you'll have to talk to him about that. but we absolutely wish him well. did a very good job while he was at the white house. thank you very much. >> let's get right to our reporters and guests. joining us from the washington post white house bureau chief phil rucker. with us at the table megan murphy, the reverend al sharpton host of politics nation here on msnbc and president of the national action network. commentary magazine editor and msnbc contributor. and john heilman -- alrighty. messing around. nbc news and msnbc national analyst. phil rucker, let me start with you and your phenomenal reporting all week. but on this story today, you detail something that i've never read as a white house staffer or someone covering this white house. aides left the staff meeting this morning and basically came out and said kelly is telling a story that's a big fat lie. >> that's right, nicolle.

we got calls from folks about that meeting that john kelly tried to present a version of events that simply does not match the public record that's been offered by the white house. but it also doesn't match the behind-the-scenes reporting that we've done at the post that you guys have done at msnbc and elsewhere. kelly tried to say to staff and asked them, by the way, to distribute this message to their subordinates to everybody working at the white house hears it, that he took decisive and immediate action within about 40 minutes of first learning that the allegations against rob porter were credible. that does not match up with the statements that the white house press secretary sarah sanders made on wednesday or with the account that raj shah, the deputy press secretary, gave publicly on thursday, or with the statements that kelly issued publicly and we know from our

reporting that kelly, you know, even after the photograph of rob porter's ex-wife with the black eye surfaced would seem to be credible evidence in the eyes of many, kelly was still defending porter internally and he was advocating for him to keep his job. so, kelly seems to be trying to keep his own job now and restore his reputation inside the white house by presenting a new account of events. >> jeremy -- we don't have jeremy yet. let me stick with you, phil rucker, and ask you about your reporting in your paper in the "new york times" about the timeline, individuals who were in possession of information in a normal white house. i think both the post and the times, our news organization has gone so far to point out how abnormal it would be for a white house counsel to become aware either by a staffer or by the fbi, in this case it sounds like from the reporting that mr. porter himself made don mcgahn, the white house counsel, aware of allegations that existed about domestic violence.

let me just tick through some of the timing as we understand it to be from "the new york times" piece. shortly after the inauguration, rob porter tells don mcgahn about the allegations which he said were false. for six months they're aware he is an accused -- accused of domestic violence by two ex-wives. six months later the fbi investigates and uncovers the allegation. porter maintains they are false. in november, deputy white house chief of staff learns the allegations are credible. mcgahn encourages porter to move on. i'm guessing resign, but no action is taken to dismiss him. so the best-case scenario that this white house is looking at is that from november on, the white house counsel, the white house chief of staff and the white house deputy chief of staff, three men, knew that it was likely true that the staff secretary, one of the most senior advisors, would never have a security clearance because he had abused physically his two ex-wives. that's their best case scenario. what do they have to say about

their best-case story? >> well, it's not a good story for this white house. there seems to have been an institutional bias against believing or even trying to hear out the stories of these women. rob porter's ex-wives. there seems to have been no effort by the white house to hear their accounts. they didn't really do anything with the information they got from the fbi and they kept rob porter in place. they didn't only keep him employed, nicolle, they kept empowering him. he came in as the staff secretary, but he's become a really influential figure in the last couple of months. as almost john kelly's right hand. there was some speculation he might even be named and titled the deputy chief of staff, but he certainly functioned that way in helping control the access to the president and helping prepare all the briefing materials that the president saw. they knew there was a problem and didn't do anything about it. and the other problem based on the reporting i've been doing today and one of the reasons the president is so upset is because they didn't actually tell the president about this. he learned about these

allegations against porter very late in that time line and he was upset that he had not been told. >> i want to ask you about hope hicks. hope hicks is someone that all of us who covered the campaign and now the feels like 11 years of the first year of the trump presidency, i've heard very few recriminations of hope hicks. she is described by her colleagues as professional and collected and wise. for the first time today, people reached out to me and said that john kelly is getting a disproportionate amount of the blame. he screwed up, but that she deserves a big chunk of the blame for how this has all gone down. do you have any new understanding of her role? >> her role still seems fuzzy. what we do know is she has been dating rob porter leading up to this crisis period and that she continued to be involved in helping the white house manage

the crisis from a public relations perspective. she was involved in helping draft statements that came out under the name of chief of staff john kelly, of press secretary sarah sanders on tuesday night defending rob porter defending his integrity and honor and she continued to be involved in those discussions. she didn't recuse herself. there's no law that says you have to recuse yourself, but in most workplaces if you have that conflict of interest you leave it to your colleagues to handle it. we are learning a little bit more about, i don't know the full story. she's not spoken publicly about any of this, but certainly there are some arrows pointing her way inside that white house right now. >> megan murphy, what's your sense of not just the fact that there was someone who "the new york times" describes as having been found to be credibly accused of domestic abuse by the -- three of the top white house officials, john kelly, joe

hagan, his deputy, and don mcgahn by november? that's the best case fact pattern for the white house as we come on the air. we are now sitting in the middle of february, the longest of 2008 -- 2018 ever. but what is your sense of sort of how they muddle through? is it just the volume business of crises, that the memo come out tomorrow and this will be brushed under, or is this -- does this reveal how truly unmoved any of these men were by the idea that there was a domestic abuser in their midst? >> not only does it reveal how unmoved they were, but more that there was a systematic attempt to not believe these women. that there clearly was knowledge that these allegations were credible, and yet there was institutional bias to say this is not true, this did not happen, and believing rob porter stories.

which, by the way, are incredible by their very nature, that there was a dispute in the case of the photo of the black eye, that she was hit in the eye by rob. one thing we should also say, these women talked to people about these incidents. these were not just these women and details. they told the fbi and family members. they've come out and described a culture of fear, of abuse. this is not a case of #metoo movement. this is domestic violence, and this story is appalling on so many levels. yes, it's a scathing indictment of this particular white house and how they operate. yes, questions are being asked of john kelly, rightfully of hope hicks and her role in it as well. but more to the way that women are treated. it's the way these allegations have been looked at. it's the way that he has -- that this white house has looked at women far more generally that you and i both know about, talked about quite a bit. and whether or not this will be a turning point, it is, another crisis will happen. hopefully people will take a look at this scandal.

it has rocked the heart of the man who carried papers to the president's desk, who, by the way, didn't even have a security clearance for a year while he was doing this job. it is appalling on every level. >> do you think anybody pays a price? i fell for it again, does anyone resign in disgust? obviously he didn't resign after charlottesville. are you going to resign after a wife beater being in their midst november on and the knowledge that he had credibly beaten two wives, known by the three men i've named, don mcgahn, general kelly and joe hagen. do you think that his denial, which was enough, i guess, for these men to leave him in that job, do you think anyone sort of pays any price with their job or demotion, do you think anything happens? >> i don't know about a demotion. it seems like right now kelly's job is in a significant amount of jeopardy.

part of the reason is not -- well, the president has in his inemmittable fashion, wished him well out the door. hopes he has a great future. >> and he's sad for him. >> not a word of condemnation, not even for the general question of are the accusations serious, troubling if true, appalling, none of that. just we wish you well. he worked really well for us. the president's reaction to this, although fully in character as utterly repulsive so no, i don't think he's going to fire anybody. the problem for john kelly, he's lost the support of his staff and the people around him are looking at him and saying, if this guy, the model of probity, with the military rectitude he brought into the job, lying not just to the public, lying to the press, but lying to us and telling us to lie, that is a hard position to maintain and be sustainable when your staff looks around you and says, you are a crumpled figure to what we thought you were and you are

asking us to tell lies. many of those staffers are going to be women who are saying, you're asking us to go and lie for you when you were covering up. i think the timeline is wrong. i think kelly knew about it when he walked in the door he realized his staff secretary could not look at code word clearance documents. he figured out pretty quick what was going on. now he's asking women staffers in the white house to lie for him. i just don't know that's a sustainable situation if your staff has turned on you and said, sayonara. >> two things. >> go ahead. >> one is the president said we wish you well because the last thing he needs is a senior official thinking that he was railroad -- for whatever reason porter might think this, no one had his back and he was railroaded. >> he had his back for over a year. >> he goes out and becomes a hostile witness. he doesn't need that. he's sending all sorts of signals to porter that he wouldn't have done this -- >> he said the same thing about roy moore. anybody who is involved in any kind of sexual misconduct, the

federal government denies it, donald trump is on his side. >> the second thing is it's important to note that we wouldn't know about this at all if "the daily mail" and intercept hadn't summoned it up. of course, they didn't care. it was sitting there, their hope was that no one would ever find out about it, not that they needed to take action. they didn't take action. they had already long since decided they were going to do nothing and then david of the daily mail surfaced, the fact there was untoward stuff going on with porter, his ex-wives, the girlfriend that he had moved out on him thanksgiving because he apparently had taken up with hope hicks. so, you know, this is not as though there was some big debate inside the white house because of the great pain of the issue it came out. it was a reporter seeing people in a car that got this thing public.

>> let me ask you, john makes a good point. there was nothing about rob porter's character that troubled anybody on the white house staff. there was no plan to fire him. he was going to stay on board as a credibly accused abuser of women. >> without a full security clearance. what is so troubling here is had they not exposed it, and i'm no "daily mail" -- >> nor is any of us. >> had they not exposed it -- >> would you say that now he's a guy that they had no problem that this guy had no security clearance, is sitting around, telling stories or lies and directing other people in the staff.

>> phil ruckrucker, what i foun astounding about this white house, this was an instance where my phone hasn't stopped ringing since tuesday. >> wanting to call and offer their theories on who do what. they are so eager to throw one another under the bus. i hadn't until today had people calling and pointing at hope hicks.

they are very eager to lay the blame for this situation either at the feet of john kelly, a camp wanting to lay it at the feet of don mcgahn. today is the first day that my former colleague and friend joe hagen's name has been in the press as someone i acknowledge, and hope hicks. what do you think under girds the blame game going on? >> well, part of it, nicole, is that the chaos that existed early on in the administration never fully went away. all of that infighting just sort of -- they hit pause for a little while to try to get things together. but there are still all sorts of personal agendas, intentions and rivalries inside that west wing. you have a crisis moment like what happened this week with rob porter and all of that is sort of bursting forward. and the people in there who don't like john kelly or against him or feel he's too controlling are taking advantage of the moment to try to kill him off. the people who have issues with hope hicks are trying to do the same to her and so on and so forth. and what you have in the middle of it all is the ring leader, the president, who has some tough decisions to make here. and it's not entirely clear, you know, what move exactly he should be making right now unless he were to clean house entirely. but he's trying to think that through himself in conversations with his outside friends and advisors as well as people in the administration.

and we may have, you know, some news in the next few days if he makes decisions. >> we sure might. he should start with he or she who has security clearances. when we come back, another scandal involving men behaving badly. what the heck is a champion of women and girls everywhere, ivanka trump? also ahead, a president who foregoes the daily ritual of being briefed of the urgent threats to our nation. another presidential first in the time of trump. vice-president pence has a hear no evil see no evil approach to governing. you won't be surprised to hear he was surprised to hear about rob porter. that's coming up. ( ♪ ) ♪ one is the only number ♪ that you'll ever need ♪ staying ahead isn't about waiting for a chance. it's about the one bold choice you make, that moves you forward. ( ♪ ) the one and only cadillac escalade. come in now for this exceptional offer on the cadillac escalade. get this low-mileage lease on this 2018 cadillac escalade

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as you probably know, he says he's innocent. and i think you have to remember that. he said very strongly yesterday that he's innocent. so you'll have to talk to him about that. >> well, he denies it. look, he denies it. i mean, if you look at what, what is really going on and you look at all the things that have happened over the last 48 hours, he totally denies it. he says it didn't happen. and, you know, you have to listen to him also. you're talking about he said 40 years ago this did not happen. these vicious claims about me of inappropriate conduct with women are totally and absolutely false. they're pure fiction and they're outright lies. >> if president trump's defense of domestic abuser rob porter sounds familiar, that is the same support he offered when alleged child molester roy moore

was under fire and when he himself faced allegations of sexual misconduct from more than a dozen women. perhaps like a virus that tolerance of abuse has infected the white house and the republican party as a whole, at least according to jennifer ruben at the washington post who writes, the core mission of the gop is now to defend abusers. quote, they are as we have noted, abusers in every sense of the word and in every aspect of the presidency and leadership of congress. they abuse the privilege of serving by hiring utterly unqualified and morally reprehensible characters. they abuse the privilege of the bully pulpit by spinning conspiracy theories as senator ron johnson has done on two separate occasions. they abuse their access to classified material by using it to smear the fbi and hobble an investigation into both an attack on our electoral system and a pattern of conduct that amounts to obstruction of justice. the gop at every turn has earn

enable rd and -- enabled and encouraged trump just as chief of staff john kelly said porter is a man of integrity. and the president is an admirable leader of their party. phil rucker is still with us. megan murphy. >> i think it's important to think about how far we sunk with roy moore and how we had a president who was willing to openly support an accused pedophile, who multiple women said abused and harassed them under age. now a month later, weeks later, we have a case where a man accused of credible domestic violence allegations now is being, as he's left his position, the president wishes well, said he was a good guy, said he worked hard. >> where are the women? why don't they walk out en masse? i know they feel picked on because i asked this twice.

i asked this after the president tweeted about miki, i think about the women and named them, but i won't today. why don't they walk out? why don't they leave? >> ivanka trump, anyone in the lgbtq community lost hope with sarah huckabee sanders, kellyanne conway. we can go down the list of senior women in the white house. i can tell you, i can't remember a time when they stood up for the rights of women, for people in other disenfranchised communities who put their mouth when it mattered. this is one of those moments. sarah huckabee sanders simply refused to carry those talking points. that is what they are. we now know the full time line. we know who knew what and when. this is one woman who said she was pushed in the face. you're willing to sacrifice your integrity, your dignity for this white house? enough is enough. >> but not only said it. showed a black eye. i mean, again -- >> in technicolor. >> you're talking about where are we as a nation. we hear this man on tape with "access hollywood" say things, we see a woman with a black eye

and we're sitting around debating things as if there is something to debate here. we can have different opinions. we can't have different facts. we're looking at a woman's black eye. we are looking at a tape where the president who is running then actually says what he does to women. this is no rumor. this is no sources. this is trump about trump. and he still gets elected. and i think that women and men need to stand up and say, we are going through an existential crisis in this country normalizing this kind of behavior. >> but where we are is precisely that donald trump got elected after the "access hollywood" tape. everybody -- >> yeah. and more than a dozen accusers after. >> and the accusers. everybody who is working in the white house, like everyone who voted on november 8, knows exactly who he is and what he stands for. >> that's the problem. >> would it make sense in the trump white house for there to be an outraged dismissal of rob

porter on the grounds that he was an abuser of women? >> no. >> the president himself is an abuser of women. if you've gone to work for him, you have already made some part of peace with the fact -- >> this is why again we come back to kelly because the reality is there was a theory, a lot of us were hopeful that someone like kelly did not make his peace as he decided he was going to become chief of staff in order to try to do right by the country, to protect the country in some sense. it's the theory. against donald trump's excesses and to try to be the adult in the room and not let things get out of control. that was the theory about john kelly. so he wasn't an enthusiastic trump booster previously. he went in, you thought, call of duty. and now he is in the room and he is the person who is i think this lands squarely on. the man says things that are if not completely racist, he says things that are borderline racist. he attacks barack obama and

african-american congresswoman -- >> he attacks -- >> dreamers. we discover those things about him. now we discover not only has he been shielding, comforting, giving aid and comfort to this very credibly accused wife beater, but we go back to when he was still in the military that he went and did this thing "new york times" reports in the 2016 marshal case of a marine harassing two subordinates and he went out and said that person was a superb marine officer. i will point out that marine officer has been accused of seven accounts of child -- of sexual indecency with children. so the moral compass that people right and left hoped was present in the chief of staff is clearly not. >> can we dismantle for a second the theory that because donald trump was elected that that was somehow imprimatur of okayness?

on the "access hollywood" tape? it was not. yes, it may not mean that women in mass, men in mass turn against him, but it certainly doesn't mean and we cannot let it mean that they said it was okay. that it's not what that moment meant and we are in a very different time. that is a dangerous mean to carry forward. >> i don't agree with that. what i'm saying is everyone who works in the white house -- >> you're responding to my question who resigns and where the women -- >> they have already made their peace with working for somebody who -- >> we have kelly o'donnell standing on the north lawn of the white house. she just spoke to general kelly. what's the latest? >> yes, i just ran out from the west wing. i have not heard the conversation you've been having. i'll give you what we've got here. this is one of those benefits of working in the white house where you can occasionally bump into a principal you've been wanting to talk to. general kelly paused for a moment, spoke to me and two other reporters and we asked what about this timeline with respect to rob porter and what did general kelly know.

he said that in november he was given an update on the status of investigations. that refers to the clearance process that a large number of white house employees would have to go through, and that he was alerted that there were additional things in the rob porter file that needed to be looked into. but he said there was nothing else. he said he learned on tuesday night that the accusations were true. those were his words. and he said within 40 minutes he was gone. meaning it was clear to chief kelly that rob porter could no longer serve the president and would be out at the white house. we followed up and said, did you fire him or did porter say he would leave? there seems to be a bit of murkiness on that. he said porter said he would go, but it was clear to kelly that he would no longer serve in the inner circle. and remember that chief kelly and rob porter worked almost hand in glove day to day managing the flow of information to the president. now, a couple of things stand out. when initially sarah sanders told us from the lectern on the podium porter would be leaving but there would be a transition

period, that doesn't really square with the phrasing "he's gone" and we then learn the next day porter came in, cleaned out his desk and he's now terminated is the word they've used, the end of his employment at the white house. but kelly insisted that he did not have more understanding of the allegations than what was known tuesday during that time when he was updated. and that's something we want to get more at. unfortunately we didn't have more time to drill down because this was a passing grab of a principal figure, not an interview. but he did confirm that he was notified in november there was an issue, and that he did not know until tuesday, so he said, that this was an accusation that was, in his words, true. nicolle? >> kelly, thank you so much. i just want to add while kelly was on the north lawn waiting to talk to us, we heard from one of our colleagues in the white house unit that the white house is pushing back this hour of an account from another news organization saying that general kelly has not offered his resignation over his handling of

the rob porter -- >> this news organization suggesting he had? >> suggested he had expressed a willingness to resign. the white house press office, which we should add is not in the loop 100% of the time on all of donald trump's conversations, no offense, guys. is saying at this hour that is not true. that general kelly has not offered to resign. but i want to pull one thing out and i want to put this to you. i feel like in listening to kelly l. in reading the time lines that in watching the briefing at the podium, they are defining found out it was true, as putting their eyes on the pictures. so they didn't think it was true when the employee himself said he was accused of domestic violence. they didn't think it was true when the white house came back and said, oh, yeah, just in from the field interviews and that

vets out, that's true. which at any other white house, either this one or this one would have been the points for dismissal. >> for a job this senior in the white house, it almost never takes a year to do an investigation about -- >> never. you can stick with never. >> so the question that is begged here, again in the course of 24 hours i talked to at least ten people who had been in senior level in the white house who kind of qualified to speak to this. the staff secretary is supposed to have the highest level of clearance possible. he gives all the paper to the president. code word clearance, top of the top. kelly arrives as chief of staff and the staff secretary is under these terms, because he has an interim security clearance, tempora temporary, is not able to handle

the paper that he's supposed to handle in part of that job. so the question that is begged here, someone can get with the chief and actually go through this with him and say, so, when you found that the staff secretary could not do every aspect of his job -- >> ever. >> did not have, the whole time you were with him was not able to handle papers that would normally have been part of his job, did you not ask the question, why? are you unable to do this job? and if you ask that question, what was the answer? did no one call the fbi and say, hey, what's the hold up on the security clearance, guys? it's been a long time here. this is the thing that beggars belief, that those conversations did not take place. >> and there's plenty of reporting that they knew exactly why. phil rucker, let me give you the last word on hope hicks. i've been told to stay on an anything can happen footing when it comes to general kelly. not that something would, but something could. what is your sense about hope's job security at this hour? >> i don't know. i mean, certainly all the reporting i've done indicates that john kelly's job is more in jeopardy than hers. but we also know that there is a mercurial president who makes decisions on a whim and you'll recall when he got rid of reince priebus as chief of staff, it was in a tweet as reince priebus was walking off air force one to get into the motorcade. decisions like this happen whenever trump feels like it. i'm not going to read his mind, but, you know, hope hicks has a

much longer relationship and tenure with donald trump. she's been a part of his sort of personal circle for more than two years now. i think it would take a lot for him to get to the point where he wants to fire her. >> she's also a witness in the mueller investigation. thank you so much. the daily brief the single most important document any president reads in a day, except when they don't. the remarkable report today about donald trump's latest break with tradition. that's next. yea, so, mom's got this cold #stuffynose #nosleep i got it... #mouthbreather yep, we've got a mouth breather. well just put on a breathe right strip and... pow! it instantly opens your nose up to 38% more than cold medicine alone so you can breathe... ...and sleep. go to breatheright.com today to request a free sample.

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renein the caribbean.onder... for a limited time enjoy two free perks, like complimentary wi-fi and drinks. a savings up to $300 when you book now, during the celebrity cruises sail beyond event. stunning new reporting out today that makes us think yet again what is a the heck is going on inside this white house. "the washington post" reporting quote, for much of the past year, president trump has declined to participate in a practice followed by the past seven of his predecessors. he rarely, if ever, reads the president's daily brief. known as the pdb.

analysts sought to tailor their intelligence sessions for a president with a famously short attention span, augmented with photos, videos and graphics. let's bring into the conversation jeremy bash, national security analyst, and chief of staff at both the cia and pentagon. i want to read you something your old boss said. leon panetta, said trump could miss important context and nuance if he was relying solely on an oral briefing. the arrangement also increases pressure on the president's national security team which cannot entirely replace a well informed commander in chief, he said. something will be missed, panetta said, if something

should be done are not backed up by the intelligence because he hasn't taken the time to read that intel. it increases the risk that he will make a mistake. you can have the smartest people around you. in the end it still comes down to his decision, he added. your thoughts? >> yeah, for four years i read the pdb alongside secretary panetta, nicolle, both at the cia and the defense department. and it's important to note the document is highly nuanced, very detailed. it goes into a lot of depth, and i think if you get an oral briefing you're going to miss a lot. you're going to miss a lot of nuance. now, don't worry, the intelligence community officials are not offended. they actually can tailor a briefing to a number of different audiences, number of different types of learners. they pride themselves on the ability to convey the information to any sort of customer. but i do think that if you're president, particularly one who has zero experience in government or military, you're going to miss a lot if you don't read the document and you rely simply on an oral briefing kind of like a drive-through briefing. i don't think you're going to get as much out of it. >> and i have heard from james clapper who said that what you just said, it is the intelligence community's job to prepare a briefing tailored to the president for whom they

serve. so what you're describing is consistent with what i've heard when people try to defend that president trump is free to have this delivered however he wants. but on that point, philip bump reports trump's schedule shows his daily briefing was only daily in three weeks of his presidency. bump writing, trump set time for the president to receive the daily briefing has waned over the course of the year. even the time of the briefing slipped later and later into the morning. last february his first full month in office, trump had 11 scheduled briefings that gannon average a bit past 9:30. the next month he had 18 starting a bit passed 8:45. on average he had nine briefings that began at 11:00. he also writes it's not clear he's actually briefed for an extended period during that scheduled time. on 19 occasions there have been tweets sent from his personal account within an hour of the scheduled briefing getting under way. so, you know, jeremy, it sounds

like this isn't just about a president who doesn't read, but a president who doesn't tend to, what george w. bush and i'm sure president obama thought was the gravest aspect of the presidency. >> it's right. so on those day when he didn't actually have a pdb session, we can assume he got no intelligence. that's very dangerous because on any given day the president can be talking to foreign leaders. he'll be making decisions that affect national security. what pdb editors do is tee up in the book that morning information that is specifically relevant to the president's day. and so to philip's reporting, i think it's a fair point that if the president is not given a book to read, even if he misses that oral briefing, he needs to be able to absorb that information. if "the washington post" reporti reporting is correct, again, that is saying the president is missing out with regards to defending national security. >> on the other hand, you know, on the days he didn't have

presidential daily briefing, he did have "fox and friends." >> he did. >> there is something -- >> he tweeted -- all right. let me put this one to you. feel free to jump in, jeremy. jeremy and i have known each other a very long time. we first talked on television when donald trump was in hot war with the intelligence community and part of the washington post reporting gets at that. so, let me hear from john first, then you, jeremy. post also reports that a person familiar with the briefing process said that at times trump as been dismissive of his briefers. shook his head and frowned the briefers were talking down to i -- him. trump also demonstrated deep mistrust of the intelligence community. he accused obama era intelligence chiefs of rooting against his election and exaggerating russia interference to delegitimize his presidency. is he incapable of receiving intelligence because he doesn't believe the community that provides the intelligence for him? >> i think there is a little bit of both. there is ample evidence that donald trump over the course of

his life as an adult has not been someone who has -- not someone who reads books, not someone who reads magazine articles in a systematic way. that is a report of him. he's not a reader and at some levels there are some information -- not a fan of television. there are great things on tv, and there's great oral traditions. there are some subjects in the world that the complexity is required to get the level of detail to understand them. he's not that guy. it's also the case that from before he became the president of the united states until today, he believes that the large parts of the intelligence community is against him to undermine him. part of the deep state. two things, it's not one or the other. even if he trusted the i.c., it would be an uphill struggle for him to take these briefings seriously. but the combination of his lazy mind and his lack of knowledge in combination with the fact that he thinks they're all out to get him, you know, not a good -- >> let me get jeremy to answer

this about russia. "the washington post" reported last year that intelligence officials in some cases have included russia related intelligence only in the president's daily written assessment steering clear of it in the oral briefing not to upset trump. riddle me this. if the russia intel or intel pertaining to russia's efforts to meddle in our elections and it is only provided in writing, and he doesn't read, has he read anything about russia? >> no, and he said he doesn't believe the intelligence on russia and he's not willing to accept the consensus that russia meddled in the election and they particularly favored donald trump. and so this is an area where the president and the intelligence community have been at odds. i think it is part of a broader strand we're seeing with his attacks on the fbi, attacks on professionals, attacks on security organizations that are responsible for defending our country because if they don't comport with his particular political interest, he doesn't accept their findings. >> so, john, i did not know this. i never would have suspected this, but the last american president who believed to not regularly reviewed the pdb was richard nixon. >> right.

>> could we have any more nixon parallels? >> nixon presumably didn't need the pdb because he spent his entire day talking to kissinger. >> talked to kissinger 17 or 18 times -- >> i take it very differently -- >> nixon is easily the most sophisticated foreign intelligence who has ever served in the presidency. again, not to go back to this point, but we had all this evidence during the campaign. he couldn't define what the nuclear triad was which is not a complicated thing particular already for someone 70 years old when we had nuclear weapons on air and on sea. >> tri is three, right? >> thank you very much. so, you know, i would be staggered to read that trump sits around reading his briefing. how on earth -- if someone is in a story that says trump read his

briefing every morning and was very alarmed by it, we should have a special report. >> you know me well enough to know that i would. but let me just say -- let me just say really quick, i think that what's staggering is pompeo made a big display, and this is why trump likes him so much, right? it was a p.r. thing to say, well, we just added charts and graphs. we made it readable to him. we made it fun. that's b.s. he doesn't read it. no matter what it looks like, he doesn't read it. >> he didn't read it. here's a man who doesn't read intelligence. we're not talking about opinions, we're talking about intelligence, but wants to have big parades. you're dealing with a child that in any minute we could be at an international crisis and he doesn't understand the context in which he's reacting to a crisis because these reports don't only deal with whatever is happening in realtime, it gives the president a mentality that he needs in case something that we didn't know was going to

happen happened. he doesn't have a context to respond which puts us all at danger. >> right. and they prepare you for foreign trips, you don't go to france and evaluate the appearance of a leader's wife. just a tip. still ahead, a reporter asked mike pence the question many of us have been wondering, why he always seems to be out of the loop. is it a strategy or is he just wistfully oblivious? friends, colleagues, gathered here are the world's finest insurance experts. rodney -- mastermind of discounts like safe driver, paperless. the list goes on. how about a discount for long lists? gold. mara, you save our customers hundreds for switching almost effortlessly. it's a gift. and jamie. -present. -together we are unstoppable. so, what are we gonna do? ♪ insurance. that's kind of what we do here.

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use polident every day. we come on the air with some breaking news that is gob smacking not just to me but john pudorra, the number three official at the just department is stepping down. my former white house colleague rachel brand. she plans to step down after nine months on the job as the country's top law enforcement agency has been under attack by president trump according to two people briefed on her decision, her profile has risen in part because she's next in the line of secession behind deputy attorney general rod rosenstein who's overseeing the inquiry into russian interference in the 2016 election. mr. trump who has considered the

russia investigation is a witch-hunt. you described this as shocking. >> well, it's shocking because rachel brandt is someone who has sort of universal community among never trumpers, trumpers, old time hands. she's a legal intellectual. she's a serious lawyer. and the fact that she -- >> she's a bad ass. she's wicked, wicked smart. she's fearless. she's got all of that conservative intellectual force, but she's also an incredibly professional woman, tough as nails. the fact that she's stepping down while her two immediate supervisors, jeff sessions and rod rosenstein are under near constant bullying from the president over the russia investigation really destabilize people, john heilemann --

>> i was just saying you were talking about white people don't walk out of the white house. and when friends of mine have said to me i'm possibly up for a job and all this, i would say i would want you to go in because you're a good guy and it's good for the country, but don't go there because you have no idea whether your reputation is going to survive this. >> you know your reputation is not going to survive. >> so when i hear this about rachel brand what goes through my head is she is saying i've got to get out of here because stuff is going on that i cannot be a part of. and if that is true, maybe something makes it necessary for them to step back, family issues. but if it's not this, maybe it's that i've got an entire life to live and i cannot be here because i will not survive this. >> let's say a couple of things

first, this "the new york times" report says nothing about why she's leaving. at this moment we are free to speculate. i'm just saying we don't know the answer. it is a reasonable speculation to think if it turns out she is leaving in part because of the experience of being in the justice department and taking attacks from the president and others has taken its toll on her. it's surprising more people have not left the justice department. so if that is the case, what this will mark in a backward looking way is one of the costs of donald trump's word on the justice department or the fbi. looking forward this is very interesting thing because if you believe donald trump is contemplating or more than contemplating getting rid of rod rosenstein. one of the things we've always said is if he gets rid of rod

rosenstein then she'll step into the job. now you have a vacancy in which donald trump can start to think who he's going to put. and then if he gets rid of rosenstein, this is starting to setup in a good way for trump -- >> we just got some breaking news from the "the new york times" that rachel brand is stepping down. she's a veteran of the last, i believe three republican administrations. she would have been next in line if donald trump did what we all know he would like to do, and that's ultimately replace jeff sessions and rod rosenstein. jeremy bash, i believe you know rachel brand. can you sort of play out for us how this piece might fit into a picture that included donald trump doing something he's talked very publicly doing on twitter, which is to ultimately fire sessions and rosenstein. >> yeah, i do know rachel.

she and i were high school classmates. and she is universally well liked, well regarded. she is a serious lawyer. she's got great credentials. and i was at her swearing in when jeff sessions swore her in. and a number of litigators and legal mind that came out to support her, was a show of the establishment in support of her. and i would say i think it's a shame she's leaving. it's a huge loss for the justice department. i really don't know why, but there's two things that make me think she could have been foreseeing rod rosenstein's departure. the one is that the president wants to get rid of rod rosenstein because rosenstein approved the carter page fisa warrant. but secondly rosenstein has become a witness in the russia

investigation case, because he wrote one of the memos justifying the comey firing. so i thought for a long time it's going to be hard for rosenstein to stay on overseeing the investigation in the end, and rachel may have seen the writing on the wall and said i'm out of here. >> i don't know rachel brand, but i know donald trump. and what scares me about this is her not being the one there that would replace rosenstein, it gives him an opening now to escalate against sessions and against rosenstein and really try and maneuver there somebody there to ultimately debunk this whole investigation. so i'm very afraid what it opens up for donald trump. >> let me get megan in on this. let me get your thoughts on the breaking news from "the new york times" as well as the fact she is the highest ranking women at the justice department, one of the highest ranking women in the government. >> she's also the person running

a large part of the justice department. let's step back from the political shenanigans of what's going on. this is huge department hugely responsible for certain things, looking that civil rights, sessions in terms of structuring that department. keeping those staffers involved at work, doing their job every day, outside of the politics this also a hugely critical arm of government. >> a very complicated thing. if he wants sessions and rosenstein out because he wants an official to fire mueller and they wouldn't do it, he has to have a confirmed official in that job. >> the focus on congress as anything else, but -- >> rosenstein has to fire mueller ear rosenstein, if he wants mueller fired he's got to order someone to do it. brand goes, there's no one who's confirmed below her who has that position or that authority in the chart to do it.

>> the question is who he can get confirmed into any of these jobs. >> or recess appointed. never a boring moment. my thanks to the squajeremy bas. i'll see you back here monday for deadline white house at 4:00 p.m. weird night in the west wing. let's play hardball. good evening, i'm chris matthews in washington tonight. the american presidency is grim and chaotic. "the new york times" is reporting the chief of staff is offering to resign. the communication chief is in danger, and the white house secretary is gone altogether. president trump publicly addressed the growing west wing scandal for the first time today defending the former aide who's been accused of two ex-wives of