i'm sorry for my family and i'm sorry for his family. i think it's safe to say there's been a disappointing week. >> understatement of the year from senator mitch mcconnell. this is "kasie d.c." ♪ welcome to "kasie d.c." we are live every sunday from washington 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. eastern. tonight conflating tragedy and political expediency. plus, reports just in tonight of a new plea deal in the mueller investigation. and later on, he was secretary of education under president obama. we'll get arne duncan's opinion on how to return safety to the school.

this latest chapter has left students taking matters into their own hands because the adults in washington won't act. but first, in the wake of tragedy, on thursday president trump sought to set the emotional tone for a nation coming to grips once again with a mass shooting. >> to every parent, teacher and child who is hurting so badly, we are here for you, whatever you need, whatever we can do to ease your pain. we are all joined together as one american family. and your suffering is our burden also. it is not enough to simply take actions that make us feel like we are making a difference. we must actually make that difference.

>> the president traveled to florida visiting with survivors, posing for photos, and flashing a thumbs up. but all of that was swept aside by a wave of tweets late last night and early this morning. there were tweets about fake news, polsters, even nascar. and then there was this one. quote, very sad that the fbi missed all of the many signals sent out by the florida school shooter. this is not acceptable. they are spending too much time trying to prove russian collusion with the trump campaign -- there are no collusion. get back to the basics and make us all proud. and if you have to ask what changed, well, the answer most likely this. >> the defendants allegedly conducted what they called information warfare against the united states. the indictment alleges the

russian conspirators want to promote discord in the united states and undermine public confidence in democracy. we must not allow them to succeed. >> the president tweeting this morning, quote, if it was the goal of russia to create discord, disruption and chaos within the u.s., then with all of the committee hearings, investigations and party hatred, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. they are laughing their butts off in moscow. get smart, america. and so the mueller investigation marches on. now the los angeles times reports rick gates will take a plea deal, though nbc has yet to confirm that. joining us tonight, to get smart, republican strategist and political analyst rick tyler. staff writer for the atlantic julia. ken dilanian and political reporter for "the new york times," ken vogel. thank you all for joining us on what has been really an off the wall news weekend quite frankly. rick tyler, i want to start with you. can you put the president in

context here? i mean, this indictment comes out -- [ laughter ] >> you know, there are 13 -- >> sure. >> please. but in seriousness, this is an indictment that outlines a foreign power attempting to fundamentally change what is the most important central tenet of our system of government, and the president is focused instead on his own political campaign. >> yeah, he's doing two things at once. one, by saying there's no collusion, which this indictment doesn't prove there's collusion or no collusion. what he's doing is validating the investigation because if he's hanging his hat on there's no collusion, he means he believes this is a legitimate investigation. while at the same time he's trying to dee legitimatize it over here. but at some future date if there is proven collusion between him or his campaign staffers, people are going to go back and say, but mr. president, you said

there was no collusion here. you validated this investigation. so, the president once again is sending a lot of mixed signals. >> yeah. well, what we've come to expect from this president. julia, can you put into context you as somebody who has spent so much time reporting on, what did you learn from the mueller indictment about what russia was doing, or did it all feel like he had essentially compiled what we had already known and just laid it out kind of point by point? >> it was a mix of both. he laid out a lot of what we knew both from domestic american reporting and russian reporting, which went into a lot of detail about how the troll factory works. publication named rbc did that earlier this year -- actually, no, end of last year. but he also uncovered a lot of new things about how much exactly it cost, about how each of these operations was done. i mean, the best detail about, you know, the cage and the hillary clinton look alike in the jump suit. this was very, very detailed. also, you now, we got things

reporters couldn't have found or would have been very hard for reporters to find, like visa violations and wire fraud and things like russian operatives -- >> prosecutor -- >> yeah. >> ken, you're nodding. >> subpoena envy. there is only so much we can do. there are only so many pieces we can put together. mueller, any prosecutor really, but particularly mueller has the ability to bring all of these things together and paint a full picture in a way that none of us could do. even as we saw little bits and pieces of it. i mean, to be able to get communications between some of these people who work for this internet association agency, troll factory as you put it, and americans, trump supporters as it says in the indictment, unwittingly communicating with them. i think a lot of people focused on that and looked at it as maybe some bread crumbs mueller was dropping, suggesting hey, there could be more here. so, to me i'm reading that, i'm thinking, i wouldn't go too hard on the no collusion thing. there are suggestions there there very well might be. >> ken? >> i think we learned a lot from the indictment actually.

we learned the scope of this cove vert vugs intelligence agency was broader. they were sending russian agents into the united states. they were interacting with americans, there was a budget of as much as 15 million a year. i mean, they were taking out ads on websites, not just social media trolling, and also mueller laid down a really important marker. there's been a question. is it a crime for americans to collude with a foreign power interfering in the election? he said there was a criminal conspiracy to defraud the united states. now any americans found to have participated in that could be guilty of the crime of conspiracy. >> ken dilanian, hold that thought. there are two of you. two kens sitting next to each other. as we mentioned we want to get to the story, the los angeles times reporting rick gates will plead guilty to fraud-related charges within days. the paper cites a person with direct knowledge of the developments and who says gates has made clear to prosecutors

that he would testify against paul manafort. nbc news has not independently confirmed the report, which also says the change of plea could come as we said in the next few days. gates already saw much of his legal team depart recently, and on friday federal prosecutors indicated in court documents they had new evidence against paul manafort of bank fraud. so, of course this is a change, ken dilanian, from where we were before rick gates was going to plead not guilty. put this -- essentially, he's going to be building a case against his former boss, we think. >> yeah, in part. this would be a very significant development if true. first because he was paul manafort's right hand man for years. presumably he really helps the case against manafort. and the goal of the mueller investigation most people believe is to have manafort plead guilty and cooperate. this would move the ball in that direction. don't forget, rick gates stayed around trump world long after paul manafort left. he was raising money for the inaugural. he was there a long time.

he may know other things that could be helpful to the investigation. >> rick tyler, how much danger is there here for manafort? i mean he's obviously someone the president has said, oh, you know, he only worked on my campaign for a little bit of time. he wasn't really a big deal. he was of course the campaign chairman. he points out gates was there. >> manafort is in trouble. his activity is proven in the election. just the fact the indictments, he had a multi count indictment against him and none of it has to do with the election. i'm not so sure it's all -- i'm not sure they need manafort. i think gates is a pretty big fish. he was senior official in the campaign. he was fairly senior in the administration. so you have that, you have the national security advisor, you have a fuller -- another foreign policy advisor.

you have all these guilty pleas. and people all around. so, the circle is just getting smaller and smaller and smaller and it's getting much -- very uncomfortably close to the president. >> tighter. you mentioned a former national security advisor. i want to talk a little bit about the current one because the russia investigation is putting president trump at odds with his current national security advisor. things came to a head yesterday when general h.r. mcmaster said this about friday's indictments of 13 russians. >> and as you can see with the fbi indictment, the evidence is now really incontroefrtable and available in the public domain. >> you will be surprised to learn that the president took to twitter to address general mcmaster saying, quote, 9:00 mcmaster forgot to say the results of the 2016 election were not impacted by the russians and that the only collusion was between russia and crooked h., the dnc and the dems. remember the dirty dossier and the podesta company. by the way, david sanger of "the new york times" reports tonight secretary jim mattis and cia

director mike pompeo also attending the munich conference and in private meetings with others, they reiterated similar statements as mcmaster. so, julia, this is on the one hand the president's security team saying the russians essentially it's the russians are bad on the one hand and the president is saying, well, all i know is all i'm paying attention to is there is no collusion. >> it is part and parcel of his general approach, which is toss overboard anybody who throws any shade at him, right? and we've seen this happen again and again. i'm thinking back to last summer, for example, aspen security conference where a lot of trump administration officials, dan coates, mike pompeo, yeah, we know there was

russian interference in the election. we have proof. and this is probably not going to stop. and the question i kept wanting to ask is, are you guys talking to your boss? >> 48 hours after the justice department told us about a covert operation that the russians mounted against our election, the president of the united states has not told us how he plans to respond, how he plans to prevent it from happening again. don't forget, some of the same intelligence officials were on the hill last week telling us the russians are continuing to medal in our politics.

they're going to attack the 2018 mid terms. what is the president doing about it? >> you know what i wonder? all this conversation about russia meddling in 2018 continues to mount, if republicans then use it to say, well, see, all these democrats that won, you know, we think are going to win seats in 2018, that was all collusion with the russians. >> it is a politically viable path for them to take, which is seizing on the russian efforts to sow dissent. trump i think articulated this fairly well in the first tweet that you showed, saying it's not about me. it's not about them trying to elect me, even though there is some evidence that they did certainly favor him over hillary. >> eventually. >> it was more about the efforts to sow miss cord in the american political system. even after trump is president, if they season that and launch

an effort on the hill to try to heighten these efforts to prevent future meddling, i think that would be a way for them to say, we are taking this seriously. instead he just continues to brush it aside and that is sort of harder for him to justify with what his own national security team is saying. >> in the last tweet he went on to say that the russians didn't have any influence. that is simply not true. the fact that they didn't -- maybe they didn't break in and change ballot counts like that, but as a campaign professional, you've got 13 operatives and a multi-million dollar budget and you're advertising like crazy. of course it had an effect. it is unquantifiable whether it would change the election, but it clearly had an effect. >> the piece of this, julia, that i keep -- that i keep tripping over is this man is the commander in chief and there doesn't -- he doesn't seem to have taken -- it is obvious to say he hasn't taken a step from being candidate to president. in this case the stakes are so incredibly high. >> i feel like we say this every week. every week something happens that he doesn't like and he attacks the fbi or the justice department or some other, you know -- remember when he attacked the judiciary. >> right. >> i don't think anything matters to him but him and his own personal reputation and his butt. >> so, the question here, greater question i'm interested in is how all of this online activity found its way into our real lives. so, following the indictment filed by robert mueller, "the new york times" published a report detailing the nature of russian election infiltration online. the times writes, quote, around mid 2015, the russians began buying digital ads to spread their messages. a year later, they tapped their followers to help organize political rallies across the united states. nbc's les field and indicate list katie engel heart introduced documentaries how one small town in idaho was hit with that exact kind of russian influence.

>> in 2016 there was this facebook event advertised in twin falls, idaho. an anti-refugee, anti-muslim political rally apparently organized online by a group of locals. the town of twin falls idaho becoming the center of refugee reset almighty led to the upsurge the violence towards american citizens. we must stop taking in muslim refugees. exclamation point. only recently, facebook revealed the event actually came from a fake account with ties to the kremlin. >> engel heart notes the twin falls group was trying to target residents like this man who runs a local group seeking to end refugee reset lment. >> the facebook group, secure borders, appears to be recognized by russia. the daily beast and new york times, that russia was using social media to interfere politically? do you believe it? >> i really don't believe the russians had any legal involvement. i mean, they have rt and

network. i'm sure you're familiar with. i do go online and watch rt occasionally. >> you know it's like a russian-government backed news organization? >> yes, it's funded and backed by the russian government. >> i'd like to point out that documentary series is called "after truth" which seems to be the world we're living in if you list tone what that gentleman was essentially saying. this is a situation where, yes, we think of it as online -- i'm scrolling through my facebook news feed. i'm seeing something the russians are trying to influence my thinking, like i might go buy a pair of shoes. but this was russian-backed efforts that led people to take actual actions that seemed like a connection. it seems just like a completely uncharted territory. the other thing i think we learned from the indictment, too, is how deeply facebook or potentially how much responsibility they might have for all of this. >> it definitely shows the risk. it shows the blueprint that

someone could follow to, you know, spending a lot of money and investing a lot in human resources to try to sow discord or even achieve a particular result in a given election campaign. that said, and i've heard julia talk about this, i don't think it was as sophisticated as we sort of, you know, not as the indictment, as we have received it. they tried, they tried to stage these rallies in florida and some of my former colleagues at politico went and looked at the press releases for these rallies. they're riddled with grammatical errors. there are questions about how many people actually turned out. so, they definitely tried. they spent a lot. they had a sophisticated operation, but as to whether the results were actually sophisticated and showed that, i think the jury is still out. >> what's your take on that, julia? >> i agree with ken vogel. i think it's kind of -- it's going to be impossible to measure in general because they were, they were -- to some

voters they were saying stay home. to some they were saying, come out and vote. i think what's interesting is that it shows us that this was just as much as it was a pro-donald trump operation, it was also an anti-hillary clinton operation because they also supported bernie sanders. they supported jill stein who sat at the same r.t. dinner next to mike flynn and vladimir putin. so this wasn't just to sow discord. it was very intimate between the two of them. >> hillary clinton and vladimir putin? >> and this gets at the russian response to the indictment, which has been, oh, and you guys never meddle in elections? what is national endowment for democracy do, what did you do in 1996 when russians were afraid the communists would take power five years after the collapse of the soviet union? a lot of american political consultants came to moscow and

helped. you know, they see that -- they see our democracy promotion, our toppling of saddam hussein and muammar qaddafi as part of basically what they did and they've been trying to say there is more than one, you know, regime change of game in town. >> fascinating. we are just getting started here on "kasie d.c." when we continue, we are going to talk about the devastating story from florida. there are signs of incremental change as students set up with waiting on the adults plan a march on washington. "kasie d.c." is back after this. you know, we lost 17 lives on valentine's day. that's supposed to be the international day of love.

you know, we lost 17 lives on valentine's day. that's supposed to be the international day of love. we're going to take the love that we got lost on wednesday and we're going to spread that over the next day, weeks, months, and maybe even years. the love you shared and continue to share is going to help us get through these trying times. i promise you, i will hug each and every one of you as many times as you need and i will hold you as long as you need me to for all 3300 of you and your families, and we will get through this together. >> that was the principal of stoneman douglas high school with an emotional message to his student body. and in the aftermath of wednesday's shooting, some of those students are taking action of their own. five of them have announced plans for a nationwide rally called for the end of next month. the march for our lives, as well as a demonstration here in

washington, d.c. the announcement comes on the heels of yesterday's protests in fort lauderdale, florida, where stoneman douglas high school senior emma gonzalez publicly warned of the consequence of doing nothing. >> maybe the adults have gotten used to saying, it is what it is, but it's us students have learned anything it's if you don't study you will fail. in this case if you ask if we do nothing, people will continually end up dead. so we're doing something. >> gonzalez also appeared on nbc's "meet the press" this morning telling chuck todd politicians facing reelection should watch out. >> these people who are being funded by the nra are not going to be allowed to remain in office when midterm elections roll around. they are going to be voted out of office. incumbency rates are going to drop. >> so, very emotional day from all of those students and, of course, an attempt, rick tyler, to extend this conversation beyond what we have learned is

an all too familiar pattern of a violent event like this happening, politicians talking about how terrible it is, and then it fading from the headlines and nothing changing. >> it's an unspeakably heart breaking. look, the solutions are difficult. there are some things we know we have to fix. it is true that law enforcement missed the signs. if we put together a composite of the shooter, within hours after he killed those 17 students. and all that information was available. and i remember some of the very first interviews breaking on this network, people saying, we absolutely know who this is. there was no doubt about it. they knew who he was. that seems like all that should have been done before. if there's things we need to do to take people's weapons away who shouldn't have weapons, we should do that.

even when the assault rifle ban was passed back in the '90s, nobody's ar-15 was taken away. the ar-15, you couldn't buy one, but they didn't take them away. the ar-15 platform which was armor light sold by colt back in 1959, the ar-15 has been around for decades and we didn't have ar-15s in schools shooting people. so, what has changed? >> but now they're selling a million two a year. in 2004 when the assault weapons ban expired they were selling 100,000 a year. this weapon has become incredibly popular in popular culture. you're right, you ban it, how do you get rid of the millions that are out there. >> of course you can. in australia they did. they had a big national buy-back. >> that's where the nothing -- that's where the nothing in washington will happen because there is no way this congress or this president -- there is no way -- people are going to call

for a collection of weapons. and even if you took away the ar-15, let's say you took away the ar-15 and similar weapons, there are many, many weapons that shoot the same ammunition. i have a gun that shoots the .223. it's a vermin rifle. it shoots just as hard and just as fast. >> what do you have it for? >> for personal protection. i like to do target shooting. i have handguns, i have a concealed carry. but i don't feel like -- i feel like there are millions of americans who own these weapons and somehow a political party is going to say these people own these weapons are bad? i don't think that's a very smart politically. >> let me jump in on that because we do have some new reporting from our good friend of the show and washington bureau post bureau chief phil rucker who writes about this series of tweets. and, ken vogel, i know you do a lot of work on this reporting as well, so interested in your take. apparently the president,

surprise surprise, has been watching the news. and he's been surveying the mar-a-lago club members about whether he ought to champion gun control measures in the wake of last week's school massacre because he has been noticing appearances by some of these surviving students. i mean, do we think that this -- i mean, certainly this president has shown that he most often takes action or reacts to things he picks up in the news media. >> he has been at different places on gun control. his sons have been very aggressive opponents of gun control measures, and they, as like rick, are hunters and they have, you know, deep ties to this community and this culture. and i'm not questioning any of that. that said, what i think that some of the calls for action now, even from the students who like clearly their passion and their grief is palatable and you don't want to take anything away from that. what they're ignoring, it's not the nra. there are people like donald

trump, jr., but there are millions of those people who are -- who, you know, really are animated by gun rights. that is their top animating issue. not because they give donations to individuals of congress and going after individual members of congress who get limited hard dollar donations from the nr, that's not going to do the trick when you have tens of millions of people voting on one of their top issues is second amendment rights. and the nra, as with other groups that are -- that are devoted to protecting those rights, are doing an amazing job of mobilizing those voters and sending alerts to them and key voting pieces of legislation. that is why. it's not the power of this given special interest group. it is that there is resonance for the opinions and the beliefs that they are devoted to, you know, protecting and furthering in the american public that is deeply embedded in the american

public. >> but when you talk about mobilizing and what the nra is doing, you act like these are two separate phenomena. but they're not. the fact that there are these millions of, i would say rabid gun advocates in the country is a relatively new phenomenon. joe la port did an amazing history for the nra a few years ago showing how it had been taken over in the late '70s by radicals who amped up this kind of feeling of paranoia, that you need to stockpile guns, you need ever more powerful guns. and, you know, and gun ownership -- gun buying just skyrocketed. >> they merely channelled and harnessed t. >> they did create it. >> potentially -- >> it didn't exist in the '60s. >> no need for the nra.

all these groups do the same thing. you can look at environmental groups. they all jen up, we're going to drown, the sea is dry. the nra does something very similar. look, the members of the nra support, particularly the nra has done an amazing job of organizing them. yes, they have political action. the students, i support their right to go out and organize the counter thing. >> and just because you have these -- there are millions of people who, you know, want to have ar-15s and would rather have completely automatic weapons, there are millions of more people who think that is absolutely insane. >> not doing as good a job of mobilizing. >> that's true. >> one at a time. ken? >> the polls show a majority support for an assault weapons ban. why, i ask you political experts why can't that pass. >> that's the thing. the other side has not done as good of a job. >> i can answer that question for you. the answer to that question and this is what i'm interested to see, if these students can keep this up, the thing is that the nra and the gun owners of america which is a group to the right of the nra, they pay attention when this fades from the headlines. day in, day out, they pay

attention. they organize and they mobilize. >> we have a terrorism task force. we need a school shooting task force. i'd look at the results of that. but we've got to protect our kids. we've got to do it today. there are a lot of schools -- look, my wife is a teacher and my daughter is a teacher. i want them to be safe. luckily they work in schools that you can't get in the school. you go to that school, you want to go in, you have to push a buzzer, you have to pass security and go to the office. you can't get to the rest of the school. now, a kid could potentially still bring a weapon in and they are vulnerable. i worry about that all the time. but we have to protect our kids. >> that certainly definitely of the case. i'm sorry we have to leave the discussion here. we will be back with more "kasie d.c." in just a minute. >> tomorrow's headlines before they go to print. are cream conditioners bringing your hair down? switch to new pantene light as air foam conditioner, full of rich pro-v nutrients. for 100% conditioning,

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no one's ever said that running for office is like riding a bike. mitt romney is back on the campaign trail. this weekend, bringing charts, and perhaps a little bit of a rusty remote control. >> and the answer -- woops, the answer can be learned a bit by looking at how we spend federal dollars. >> press the button. please change. change slide. there we go. long pause. there we go. now, this is so small you probably can't read it from where you are.

isn't it great? i press the button nothing happens, i don't press the button and something does happen. let me turn to the next -- you can turnoff the slides now. >> i really miss covering mitt romney i have to tell you. i promise later tonight we'll go deeper into the actual policy that he discussed and why he didn't contrast with the president as much as you might expect. but for all of you, rick, tyler, i should go to you on this one. it seems as though romney is, in seriousness, represents a return, in part, of a wing of the republican party that's been pretty much silenced. >> yeah, i think that's true. look, i mean, romney is solidly

in the establishment camp. back in 2012, i think we win every candidate for except i think ron paul. every candidate got their chance to be in the lead. we said the heck with it, mitt romney, right? so, he doesn't generate a lot of excitement. he's clearly competent. utahans love him. >> also, look, he was the governor of massachusetts. it's a big job. he did save the olympics. he ran a major corporation. >> and he will win. >> he will win? >> he was right about russia. >> he was right about russia. >> and when he does win, there will be -- there are already donors who want him to win and then position himself for a primary run against president trump in 2020. i'm already talking -- they're already -- a slide show performance doesn't dissuade them. >> we'll talk about it later. first, an iconic washington phrase has been getting quite a bit of use lately. >> follow the money. >> what do you mean? where? >> i can't tell you that. >> only now it's being tossed around in reference to play mates, first class airfare, wimbledon tickets. oh, how times have changed. "kasie d.c." back after this.

welcome back. there have been so many other major stories going on about the trump administration that have just been drowned out this week. so, we are going to dedicate a little bit of time to something we're going to call for tonight, ken vogel explains it all. ken, you and maggie haberman were the first to report on this. president trump's inaugural committee paid nearly $26 million to an event planning firm started by an advisor to first lady melania trump. the firm donated just $5 million to charity, which was less than expected, but the other piece of this that i thought was interesting was that this company apparently sprang up out of nowhere weeks before the inauguration? >> yeah, that's right. it was started by this woman who is sort of a society, she had helped plan the met gala, that's a major gala and charitable gala in new york city. and so she traveled -- >> the most elite? >> so she traveled in the same circle, social circle as melania trump and had apparently had

some relationship with her to the point where she is now working as an unpaid advisor in the first lady's office. but before that, she started this company that got $26 million worth of payments from the inaugural committee. >> what was it for? what did they do? >> she was essentially like an event planner that helped put on various phases of the inauguration. i was told it was everything from table settings at various dinners to instagram filters. >> is she buying the silver that went on the table? it seems like a lot. >> she was a general contractor who issued all these subcontracts. the reason why this story i think resonated was first of all, that the trump folks had refused to release this tax return from the inaugural committee, this nonprofit that was set up to put on the inauguration. so there were a lot of questions about why they weren't revealing how they spent their money when they actually did release it, people were like, oh, that's probably why. >> wasn't there another event planner who got paid an equal amount of money who was also paid -- >> that's right, yeah. there was a lot more money that came into this inaugural. he raised twice as much for his

inauguration than barack obama who had raised the previous highest amount for his 2008 inauguration. raised $700 million. that was notable because there were a lot of corporations giving, a lot of donors who kept their distance from trump. it was a signal, hey, donald trump is now the only game in town. republican donors' corporations, if they want to play ball and get access, this might be one way to do t. >> can we just say another reason this story should resonate which is that donald trump ran on a campaign of drain the swamp? >> i was going to bring that up. >> anticorruption and hillary clinton was corrupt. it was all about pay to play, that phrase. >> what does that remind me of? pay to play? >> the other piece of this, the other story that we're going to talk about here is scott pruitt, who has spent $107,000 on airplane flights during his first six months leading the apa. >> that was a lot. >> we live in a country where people become a cabinet secretary, you're pretty much set for life. i'm not saying i agree with this, but you can monetize that and make millions of dollars and fly first class or private the rest of your life. is it too much to ask for a little modesty and humility and caring what the taxpayers think? for the brief time you're in office, first class travel, bring your wives to europe, spouses. >> let me show you what scott pruitt had to say then we'll talk more about this. >> there have been instances unfortunately during my time as administrator, as i have sploen and spent time as interaction has not been the best. ingress and egress off the plane, security aspect, those are decisions made by our detail team, chief of staff, i don't make any of those decisions. they place me on the plane where they think is best for a safety perspective. that's how they made those decisions. >> he is basically arguing while passengers in economy accosted

me. therefore it was safer. >> that sounds a lot like, you know, like he's a snow flake. the whole -- again, a lot of the 2016 campaign, the trump campaign, was all about up ending the stifling p.c. culture. we want to say it like it is. it sounds like they want to be the only ones saying it like it is, whereas minority, for example, should not be saying it like it is. >> i was on a flight once with then fbi director bob mueller and his wife and his detail in this, but you can monetize that and make millions of dollars and fly first class or private the rest of your life. is it too much to ask for a little modesty and humility and caring what the taxpayers think? for the brief time you're in office, first class travel, bring your wives to europe, spouses. >> let me show you what scott pruitt had to say then we'll talk more about this. >> there have been instances unfortunately during my time as administrator, as i have sploen and spent time as interaction has not been the best. ingress and egress off the plane, security aspect, those are decisions made by our detail team, chief of staff, i don't make any of those decisions. they place me on the plane where they think is best for a safety perspective. that's how they made those decisions. >> he is basically arguing while passengers in economy accosted me.

therefore it was safer. >> that sounds a lot like, you know, like he's a snow flake. the whole -- again, a lot of the 2016 campaign, the trump campaign, was all about up ending the stifling p.c. culture. we want to say it like it is. it sounds like they want to be the only ones saying it like it is, whereas minority, for example, should not be saying it like it is. >> i was on a flight once with then fbi director bob mueller and his wife and his detail in coach. i think it was a personal trip. the fbi has jets. that's how bob mueller rolls. people knew who he was. he was fighting terrorists after 9/11. >> i had sources reach out to me, they were in an airport in south carolina charleston, and scott pruitt rolled through with his security detail. no one had a clue who he was. people were like, who are all these body guards with?

didn't realize it was this guy. to the extent he has a security -- and also on that same flight waiting in the same area without any security detail were u.s. senators tim scott and lindsey graham who just went about their business and everyone knew who they were. so, it raises a question about to what extent he really needs this protection and needs -- >> a little russia connection. during the obama presidency, the obama administration's ambassador to china was spotted by the press walking through the airport carrying his own bags flying coach. i remember the russians were like, what is wrong with your ambassadors? they travel with the police. it was kind of a point of pride for the americans that our public servants mingle with the public. they don't travel on jets. >> use taxpayer dollars responsibly. our two kens are leaving us.

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welcome back to "kasie dc," we continue our series tonight on women running for higher office. tonight we are looking at the hotly ton tested race in florida's 27th congressional district. right now there are at least p seven democrats, including two women who plan to run for the seat. one of them is miami beach city commissioner kristen rosen gonzalez and she joins me live. thank you for being with me. >> thank you for having me on

the show and highlighting women. that's really important. >> i want to start with i know that you live close to, of course, this tragic incident that we've been covering all week in broward county and you are trying to bring to the table some ideas on how to prevent the next tragedy. what do you think is the best way to fix this? would you support an assault weapons ban? do you have other ideas. >> i think we need to do all of it. our campaign has tried to be creative to work around this love of the second amendment and

we propose a tax on bullets. we sell 12 billion bullets a year and tax it at $2 we could use that money to shore up our schools. how many more notifications are we going to get that say mass shooting in them? how much more blood needs to be spilled? it's awful. i woke up thinking not only are my children feeling unsafe, i'm feeling unsafe sending my kids to school. it hits so close to home. it's that these weapons are readily available. and most of the shooters are men, they get a spike in testosterone, they can't have access to these guns and bullets. >> speaking of p gender, you have been in the news because politico quoted you as saying you were harvey weinsteined yourself. can you explain what happened and why were you -- why did you decide to come forward with

this? were you reluctant? >> i had an incident, and then i remember posting me too. i really relate to this movement. at the time we were having our local commission race here in miami beach and i was supporting a candidate who exposed himself to me in the car. i wasn't going to say anything about him and i continued to support him, and i was embarrassed about it and didn't know what to do and somebody on the campaign said you have to come forward. it's so hard being a politician as a woman. the last thing you want to do is come forward and talk about somebody's genitals. it's uncomfortable. i got attacked because of it. i was happy i did do it because within one hour of it being published i was getting text messages from women who were also harassed. so i almost helped a person get elected who was going to use his power. we have to come forward. >> if you get elected, will you

support nancy pelosi as the leader in the house? >> we have didn't ways of looking at politics. our campaign is local, we're hiring local people. i don't want to spend all day in a call box raising money. so while i do think nancy pelosi has done great acts and i think she's a great representative for the democratic party, i think it's time we move forward and start electing people who are working right now and have energy and approach politics with rational, compassionate, empathic politics. >> so it's no? >> a lot of things i do is contrary to what the dccc is doing. >> so no, yes? >> it's difficult to come out and speak out against nancy pelosi. i would have to see who else is running. i try to stay open minded about these things. i did go up to meet with her and several other leaders in

washington d.c., there were a bunch of eager candidates. i don't ascribe that politics is only about raising money, that's why we have the problem with the nra. we haven't different philosophies on how politics should be run. just ahead my interview with arne dunn can. but first the dvr, don't go anywhere. we are still feeling the shock waves from yet another school shooting. >> the massacre that took 17 lives. >> has reignited the debate over guns and mental health. >> how much more are we going to take. >> i will not feel safe going back to school. >> we should not sell assault weapons in this country. >> an ar-15? >> it's not needed to hunt bears. ♪

i'm jimmy, this is my definition of fresh since 1983. ♪

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including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. with the botox® savings program, most people with commercial insurance pay nothing out-of-pocket. talk to your doctor and visit botox®cmsavings.com to enroll. ♪ this morning, students are demanding change after last week's deadly shooting at a florida high school. they're calling on president trump and congress to act on gun control. plus, the department of justice announcing indictments against 13 russians as part of robert mueller's probe and president trump lashes out on twit per. new in the russia problem, aide rick gates has agreed to testify against former trump campaign chairman paul manafort. good monday morning,