my thanks to nicolle wallace for letting me hold the seat while she enjoy said this presidents' day. that will do it for this hour. i'm peter alexander in for nicolle. "mtp daily" starts right now with katy tur in for chuck todd. i hope you had a very reflective presidents' day. >> i have been reflecting about a lot of things including truth and lies and saying things that don't match up to facts. peter, thank you very much. good job today. if it is monday, it is not predtrump's fault. >> tonight, president trump signals support on background check changes. as school shooting survivors demand action. >> the fact that nikolas cruz purchased legally an ar-15,

killed 17 of the people at our school, is unacceptable. >> we're not going to let the 17 bullets we just took take us down. >> plus, the president lashes out after the mueller indictments. why does vladimir putin continue to be the only one immune to the president's blame game? and what's to stop more russian meddling as the midterms approach? >> the one thing we know would have an impact on putin is if he knows for sure he's going to pay a harsh penalty. >> this is "mtp daily," and it starts right now. >> hello, and welcome to "mtp daily." i'm kata tur in new york in for chuck todd, and president trump is on his way back from his florida resort where he spent much of his weekend lashing out at just about everyone except

vladimir putin over the russia probe. after special counsel robert mueller charged 13 russians with interfering in the 2016 presidential election, to help donald trump defeat hillary clinton. we'll dig into that blame game and its political consequences coming up. but first, in this moment, is there movement on guns? today, we're seeing what could be a movement of teenagers who are angry about gun violence and want lawmakers to listen. and we're also seeing what could be movement from those lawmakers who have yet another opportunity to do something or nothing about gun violence. after 17 students and teachers were massacred at a high school in parkland, florida, last week, today students across south florida walked out of schools to demand the government do something about it. in washington today, some teenagers laid down in front of the white house in a lie-in, and intentionally macabre protest meant to underscore that kids just like them keep losing their

lives while the gun laws never change. now, though, the white house says the president is open to looking at what can be done to prevent this from happening again. announcing they'd get behind a bipartisan effort aimed at making the background check system more effective. saying in a statement, quote, while discussions are ongoing and revisions are being considered, the president is supportive of efforts to improve the federal background check system. let's not get lost in any illusions here, though. remember, this bill has been out there since after the mass shootings in texas and las vegas last fall. remember, that moment, a potential movement on guns came and went without any action. remember, this bill, the president is -- this bill the president is open to wouldn't necessarily have kept a gun out of the hands of nikolas cruz. remember any action on anything related to guns is a serious uphill climb in washington. five years ago, a democratic president couldn't even pass background check legislation

through a democratic senate. remember, we have a republican president, a republican house, and a republican senate. so what makes movement possible now when it seemed so impossible before? it may be the students. the almost victims, the lucky ones who were trying to turn tragedy into action. >> we want it to be more difficult to buy a gun. the fact that nikolas cruz purchased legally an ar-15, killed 17 of the people at our school, is unacceptable. >> this is the time for discussion, for all people that are americans to come together as americans through love and compassion. >> we're not going to let the 17 bullets we just took take us down. if anything, we're going to keep running and lead the rest of the nation behind us. >> and it's those teenagers getting angry on tv that reportedly caught the president's attention. according to "the washington post" this weekend, mr. trump surveyed mar-a-lago club members

about whether he ought to champion gun control measures in the wake of last week's school massacre in nearby parkland, telling him he was closely monitoring the media appearances by some of the surviving students, according to people who spoke with him there. this weekend, republican senators signaled they'd support changes. >> we know we need to do something. and now we need to take the time to -- and not forever, but we need to take time to understand what that is and be open minded. some of the things that it might require to make sure this never happens again are potentially things we haven't supported in the past. >> i have no issue with more extensive background checks. i have no issue with slowing down purchased for people who show all the basic warning signs. we have determined only a court can take away a constitutional right and the right to keep and bear arms is a constitutional right. we have court who step in on mental health and other things. >> in a lot of ways we have been right here before. it's a depressing and familiar cycle, but could this time be

different? joining me is republican congressman charlie dent, and msnbc host hugh hewitt. congressman, i want to start with you. what is realistic on guns right now with this congress and this time with this president? >> well, let me say this. i believe congress has really largely lost the ability to engage in bipartisan incremental changes on controversial issues. let me explain. back in 1995, when tom ridge was governor of pennsylvania and i was in the general assembly, we were able to bring together the nra, gun control groups and law enforcement, and we passed enhanced background checks for private sales of pistols. we were able to do that. it is much harder to do that now. for a whole host of reasons. you look at the gun groups themselves. you have the gun owners of america that will go after the nra if they enter into some kind of negotiation, and they call them cupitchilators and try to

poach their members. that's what's changed with these outside groups. certainly, we should be able to do something on enhanced background checks, similar to cornyn and toomey/manchin. we should be able to ban the bump stock, and where would go so far as to say what susan collins has proposed on the terror watch list with due process. ban purchases for u.s. persons on that list. there are things we should be able to do. in this polarized, paralyzed environment, i'm not particularly optimistic we should be able to do something. >> you think the nra is going to make it impossible for any action, even after what we saw last week in florida, congressman? >> look, i believe right now the issue is for our leadership in the house and the senate to allow votes on some of these measures. and i'm not talking about banning firearms. i'm talking about what i would say are gun safety measures. enhanced background checks, extend background checks to sales of all firearms. that's reasonable.

banning the bump stock. most of us didn't know what a bump stock was prior to las vegas. we do now. that should be banned because it takes a semiautomatic weapon and functionally turned it into an automatic weapon, and the other proposals should be permitted a vote. the cornyn/murphy, that should be, i think that seems like a no-brainer to me. >> we'll see if it happened. that's the thing. and we talked about banning bump stocks right after vegas. and it was an immediate pressing issue, and everyone talked about it. the news cycle moved on and suddenly, it wasn't talked about any longer and no vote was held on the floor. you know this better than anybody. this is a really busy cycle. and there's already a lot of time being taken up by immigration right now. by the other things that are on the agenda. the question is, as you said, will it come to the floor. hugh, though, let me ask a question about how much the president's support or non-support makes a difference. the white house is saying in a statement that he does support the idea of this cornyn bill, this background check bill with

some language potentially being changed there. this, though, is coming from the white house. it's not coming from donald trump's mouth directly. do you think that that's going to matter? >> the president has enormous opportunity to set the agenda. he could, with a single tweet, ask leader mcconnell and speaker ryan to institute a joint committee, select committee on hearings for gun violence. one tweet might get that going, but congressman dent is an old front. he's absolutely right. we have seen this before. in fact, i sat down with the speaker the week after las vegas. the bump stock thing i thought would get out of congress in one month. and it died. and so i appreciate the enthusiasm and the passion of the students. but i expect that what will happen is what has happened before. absent persuasion of the opposite side about the rational basis for incremental changes of the sort you talked about in your opening monologue, we're not going to get anything.

we ought to focus on the persuasion, not jamming the other side with guilt or joint condemnation. >> i want to talk about the president's reactions. we got that statement from the white house saying that potentially he would be supportive of a background check bill, potentially. but that, again, is from a white house statement. the president's own words, and this is him on twitter from the weekend, didn't necessarily say that he supported any one of those things but instead it blamed the fbi for what happened. he said the fbi missed all of the many signals sent out by the florida school shooter. this is not acceptable. they're spending too much time trying to prove russian collusion with the trump campaign. there is no collusion. get back to basics and make us all proud. congressman, do you think that the president is right saying that russia probe is distracting the fbi from being able to take threats like we saw in florida seriously? >> no. look, the fbi has to do -- they have to multitask. they have to deal with the russia issue.

they have to deal with political corruption issues, with drug dealers, with what we saw, too, down in florida. i think it's unfair to say that the fbi is distracted in its duties because of the russia investigation. very unfair. i don't think that was proper of the president to do that. >> governor scott down in florida, hugh, has said he wants christopher wray to resign over this at the fbi because they didn't listen as carefully to these warnings as they should have with this young man. senator rubio says the fbi utterly failed the victims. hugh, do you think those two lawmakers have a point that the fbi needs change at the top? >> not at the top. i think they need to absolutely overhaul the tip line because some tips got lost. but this killer actually had multiple contacts with all sorts of different agencies at the state, local, and federal level. so lots of people dropped the ball on this. i heard our msnbc colleague interviewing a high school student today who said, look, he was just a scary guy and he's

always been a scary guy. he got past a lot of red flags. i just would emphasize, the president's twitter feed, his tweet storm, very unfortunate. just wrote in "the washington post" today, he's got not to do that in the aftermath of one of these searing events. what he could do is use that amazing platform, it's vast, it has extraordinary reach, to focus people on moving towards comprehensive solutions regarding unstable ideologues and unstable almost insane people who can get access to guns under the legal regime. he could do that. i hope he does. >> congressman, is there any need for a person to own a semiautomatic weapon like an ar-15? >> well, i own a 12-gauge shotgun that's semiautomatic. i mean, there are a lot of firearms that are semiautomatic in common use. i think we have to be very careful with how we talk about that issue. so again, semiautomatics are in common use. the ar-15, what i was concerned about that an 18-year-old can

walk in a store and buy one. to buy a pistol, you have be 21, but a long gun, you can be 18. i think that was largely done because back in the day, most people felt handguns were the source of most murders and gun violence, and they were trying to keep that out of the hands of younger people, i presume. but maybe we have to revisit that issue about purchasing at such a young age. >> i want to talk about bret stephens saying again today that it's time to repeal the second amendment. he writes, we need to repeal the second amendment because most gun control legislation is ineffective when most americans have a guaranteed constitutional right to purchase deadly weaponry and nearly unlimited quantities. there's a good case to be made for owning a handgun for self defense or a rifle for hunting. there's no remotely sane reason for being able to purchase, as paddock did, 33 firearms in the space of a year. congressman, do you not see his point there? i mean, it's not a popular one for republicans, but bret stephens is certainly no liberal.

>> well, i certainly respect bret stephens, but i would be hesitant to repeal the second amendment as i believe he is advocating. you know, the supreme court has affirmed that the right to own a firearm is an individual right. and i would just be very hesitant to talk about -- >> what about owning 33 firearms in the space of a year, buying 33 in a year. talk about limitations, potentially, to what you can do and you can't do. is there any reason for someone to buy 33 guns, 33 firearms within one year? >> well, where i live, there are a lot of cleblollectors. they own multiple firearms. that's the question. that is the question, should a person not be allowed to own multiple firearms? i think that's -- maybe that's part of the discussion we should have going forward, but again, there are lots of people in this country who own more than one firearms. i own more than one firearm.

that's a fair conversation to have. >> the kids are asking why should somebody own more than one firearm or why should somebody get an easy firearm when they're using it to kill us. this has happened at multiple high schools now, kids killing kids. it's happened at movie theaters. it's happened at concerts. it's happened in churches. at what point, is there a point, hugh, where the lives lost matter a little bit more than the guns owned? >> there's not going to be a repeal of the second amendment. in fact, if they put that on the floor tomorrow, two thirds of the democrats would not vote for that because it is esteemed by a vast majority. on the other hand, there are lots of very useful things that can be done which fall far short of repealing the second amendment. for example, gun violence restraining orders ought to become more common across the united states. they have been adopted out in california and a few other states. there are lots of things in the middle ground. it doesn't have to be an either a or b. confiscation is not going to come here as it did in australia because of the second amendment,

because of the nature of america. you heard, i'm not a gun owner. this is not my issue, but you heard charlie dent, the liberal congressman from pennsylvania who is a republican say he's got multiple weapons. it's not going to happen, but we could stop and say if someone is buying a lot of weapons in a short period of time, ought not the authorities to pay a call on that individual if they have gotten ten weapons in a week, the las vegas shooter went on a weapons purchasing spree that had me shaking my head. it's a legitimate place to dive into, but we won't get there if we try to assign blame to either side in the conversation or if we say we have a prepackaged solution. ban all of this or ban all of that. that will just freeze and end the conversation. >> charlie dent and hugh hewitt, thank you very much. >> thanks. >> thank you. >> and ahead, as the russia probe heats up, president trump's anger seems to boil over. blaming everyone but russia for russia's election interference. plus, his message about the

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welcome back. today in the midterms is the operative word for one texas democrat. money is a great thing to have on your side in a political campaign. but no amount of money in the world will help you if voters don't know who you are. that is the problem democratic congressman beto o'rourke could be facing in his state-wide challenge against senator ted cruz. a new poll from the university of texas and the texas tribune shows 58% of texas voters with no opinion or no knowledge of the el paso democrat. that, guys, is a big number. especially with early voting for the primary starting tomorrow in texas. one bit of good news for the congressman, though, his

favorability numbers are above water. his new poll just released after -- was just released after o'rourke reported raising around $2.5 million from $40,000 so far this year. that's more than the $2 million senator ted cruz raised in the same time span. maybe o'rourke will spent some of the time and big haul on ads. we'll be back with more "mtp daily" in just 60 seconds. trails are covered. paths aren't what they used to be. roads nowhere to be found. ( ♪ ) and it's exactly what you're looking for. ( ♪ ) discover card. and it's exactly what i justis this for real?match, yep. we match all the cash back new cardmembers earn at the end of their first year,

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us all proud. it also felt very different because of the vitriol behind so many of the president's many tweets this weekend about the russia probe. they came after special counsel mueller charged 13 russians with engineering an elaborate social media campaign interfering in the 2016 election. and supporting donald trump's candidacy. he tweeted, 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 -- i don't know if i can say this word on tv -- off in moscow. get smart, america. the president's reaction to friday's indictments were to point fingers everywhere, at the fbi, the obama administration, congressional democrats, the clinton campaign, everywhere except, you know what this is, everywhere except russia. let's bring in tonight's panel.

gabe deben adetti at politico. howard dean, former vermont governor, former dnc chair and an msnbc contributor, and republican strategist susan del percio. okay. we have seen this before. read this story before. we have played this song before. donald trump will criticize everybody but vladimir putin, but russia. >> yeah, we have had this conversation so many times that it feels like nothing has changed whatsoever, and nothing has changed because the reaction that you have back in d.c. over and over is democrats saying this is so suspicious. why won't he talk about russia, and republicans saying ask me about something else. the reality is president trump has the opportunity to pass all sorts of legislation, to get all sorts of things done. republicans in congress are shaking their heads right now because this weekend was yet another weekend in which he went off about the russia issue and dragged the country back into this conversation about the 2016 election, which will never again. >> then again, he did acknowledge in one of the tweet that russia did meddle. he acknowledged it. does that mean because he's now

acknowledged it and claimed that he always acknowledged it, even though he did not, we'll leave it aside, but because he's now acknowledged it, does it mean he's going to enforce the sanctions that congress passed and he signed? >> he should, but why isn't he outraged about it? that's what we should have heard from him. the russians are trying to undermine our elections -- >> after the indictments. >> yes, after the indictments. they're trying to undermine our lection, our democracy. this was an attack on the united states of america. our primaries start in a few weeks. the general election is eight months away. what's the president waiting for to take action? we don't know, you know, the interesting thing about donald trump is just before the election, he started to undermine and question the integrity of the elections. this seems to be a theme he likes. >> vast global conspiracy, all out to get him. the banks, the clintons, the media. the democratic process is not reliable. watch your polling booths in philadelphia. >> just like he's undermining a free press and the judicial

system, this is equally as dangerous, if not more. >> he did blame the fbi. and say that -- blame the fbi for the shootings at least and say they're too focused on collusion. maybe you could make an argument that maybe you could make an argument that he was really concerned about what they are focused on, but when you look at the totality of his tweets and everything he was talking about, does it become clear. >> you see a mini me in rick scott of florida who has signed five bills making it easier to get guns and then tried to get rid of the head of the fbi, and he's a trumpist, basically, as well. look. this is the last hand here is going to be bob mueller. so trump can have a temper tantrum. he can scream and yell, lie, do all these crazy things and entertain the hell out of people who are interested in crazy things, but what he can't do is deter bob mueller from finding out what the truth is unless high fires him.

if he does that, there's a major constitutional crisis, and his kids are probably going to go to jail for money laundering in new york state, which is a parallel investigation, which he can't pardon anybody for. >> the mueller investigation and how it's being laid out. you started a bit on the fringe with papadopoulos and gates and manafort. you can say that's a fringe. you can make that argument. >> gates is no fringe. >> no, but you could say they're starting on the outside circles and now with these indictments, the mueller team has laid out what happened, how it happened. and so this is not fake news. is he basically laying out a case, not just for the courts, but for the american public to convince them why they should take it seriously, knowing full well that donald trump and a lot of partisans and his supporters are going to do everything they can and have been doing everything they can to make it so that investigation is not trusted. >> that's the most fascinating thing about this. the answer to your question is yes. and the answer to why that would be, why would such an

experienced prosecutor as mueller do this, is because trump is throwing a softball right down the middle of the plate. every time trump has a temper tantrum, it's just more incentive for mueller to quietly and carefully say, yes, and this and now this, and then it's going to be and this, and pretty soon, it's going to be trump himself. which is exactly why trump throws these temper tantrums. >> you had general mcmaster telling folks it's incontrovertible what mueller found. you can't get around it. and donald trump, instead of saying yeah, i believe my intelligence, and he said, he forgot to add there was no collusion. >> one of the things we seem to be forgetting and falling down the trap of is, when the president talks about this stuff, he seems to be assuming that this is what mueller has to say about russia, and everything else is something else entirely. mueller's indictments last week did not even touch on the hacking of the dnc, the hacking of john podesta's e-mails.

there's a lot more than russia did, at least that's what the reporting shows us, and that's what the intelligence ancient agencyvise shown us that did have material effects on the election. when you have the president saying no collusion, he's making this assumption we're not going to hear more about russia, and that's not the case. >> jared kushner still doesn't have a permanent security clearance. we're going to find out soon if he's going to get one or not, or maybe he didn't start his background check when he walked into the white house, although that would be weird. >> transition team. >> why can't dan scavino, donald trump's social media manager, get a security clearance. he used to caddie for donald trump. what has he done that is making him difficult, who puts out the tweets, to get a security clearance from the fbi. >> i'm not an expert on dan scavino, but your question does speak to a much larger issue. >> a lower level person. jared kushner, you understand that. why can't a lower level person

like the social media manager get a security clearance. >> a lower level person had to quit this week, this past week because he smoked marijuana in 2013 and would not pass a back ynd check. that was recently reported. it could be that, or it could be more substantial. >> although interestingly, you can still pass a security test if you have smoked marijuana in 2013. more likely, he smoked marijuana and lied about it to the investigative agencies, and these guys lie. you know, trump is a congenital liar. he can't help himself. guess what. he hires a lot of people who lie every day. and when you lie to the fbi, you are not going to get a security clearance, and you're damn lucky not to go to jail. >> we don't know what he did. we should put it out there. jared kushner has had to refile his security forms multiple times because he keeps leaving stuff out. >> that's a lie. if you leave information out of your security clearance form, that's a lie. that's prosecutable. >> let's talk about this other thing very fast.

for the wary white house, florida shooting reprieve from scandal. out of the "the washington pos." white house officials saying they were getting hammered last week. the rob porter issue that bifurcated into where the white house stands on domestic violence. so many things you can't remember what they were. >> playmates, the playboy bunny accused affair. the porn star payoff that michael cohen admitted to and whether or not she can tell her story. they didn't release the dnc memo. there are other things i'm not thinking of. what duds it say to you that the white house, i'll do this with you, susan, the white house considers a shooting, a murder of 17 students a reprieve? >> well, first, it says they're morally bankrupt. now, we knew that from donald trump. we now see it playing out in the white house. here's where they'remer making huge mistake. the children we hear speaking out on television, they're extremely articulate.

they play in the social media platform. and here's the other thing. donald trump can't pick on them. he can't try and make them, you know, belittle them. he's got to play up to them. and those kids, i think, are going to continue to make a statement and continue to be problematic for him. >> he picks on gold star families. why won't he pick on them? >> i don't think he's going to pix on these children. >> i wouldn't be surprised if he does. he just can't help himself. he has no judgment whatsoever. >> we're going to come back to this in a little bit. so hold your thoughts. guys, stick with us. gabe, susan, and howard. ahead, the president is on his way back from mar-a-lago and returning to a white house, as we just mentioned, in turmoil. the porter fiasco, the russia probe, and more. the latest on the drama and the fallout next. if you have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, or psoriatic arthritis, little things can be a big deal. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not an injection or a cream. it's a pill that treats differently.

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welcome back. it's almost become a cliche at this point to talk about the chaos inside the white house. think about it. just the past couple weeks, we've had a top presidential aide, rob porter, accused of spousal abuse. the white house initially standing by him, then backtracking. the president reluctant to speak out against domestic violence. new questions about security clearances, including for the president's son-in-law, jared kushner. the president's personal lawyer

admitting he facilitated a $130,000 payment to porn star stormy daniels. a former playboy model reportedly claiming she had an affair with trump, and his allies helped conceal it, and the national's top intel chiefs testifying the president hasn't directed his agencies to blunt russian interference in the midterm elections. that's just in the past few weeks, mostly last week, in fact. think about this. when it comes to this white house's chaos, president trump's first chief of staff, priebus, says take everything you have heard and multiply it by 50. chris whipple nabbed that eye opening interview with priebus. he spoke to a dozen former chiefs of staff for his book, the gate keepers, which you know about because you watch the show. he joins me now. chris, again, congrats on the book. now let's talk about reince priebus. multiply it by 50. what did he mean? there that was the first thing

reince priebus said to me off the record when we sat down for dinner and he later put it on the record. he wants everybody to know it's not just him, but that john kelly also says this is the toughest job he ever had. but it was a wild ride. hard to remember those first six months, right? but it begins with a phone call at 6:00 a.m. on january 21. it's donald trump. he is livid, screaming at priebus, demanding that he fix the story about the inaugural photos that he's just seen in "the washington post" with obama's photo dwarfing his. and priebus says to himself, am i -- am i going to go to war with the president of the united states on the very first day? and of course, the rest is history. sean spicer stepped up to the podium and told those flagrant lies. priebus went along with it. you know, truth was the first casualty on the first day, and it's been true every since. >> not just that, but also reputations and integrity went out the door, out the window,

flying out the window with that first statement. i'm going to excerpt a part of what you wrote for vanity fair, in your excerpt of this new addition to your book. we wanted to help reince in any way we could. this is past chiefs of staff, said jack watson, who served president jimmy carter, but i don't think there was a chief in the room that thought he was going to be able to do the job given trump as his president. >> well, you know, it's a really stunning story. and what happened was in december of 2016, ten former white house chiefs came to the white house at the invitation of denis mcdonough, the outgoing chief. they sat around a table with reince priebus and gave him their best advice, knowing with the nature of this president that this might be mission impossible. but they came away, virtually all of them, feeling that priebus had not given any serious thought to how to govern. and the transition was frankly, it was a fiasco from day one.

none of the binders that were prepared with all of the major issues were even opened. i also talked to steve bannon, by the way, who sat down with me at length for the new chapter. and bannon said on the day after the election, he picked up the fo phone to call the executive director of the transition. bannon said he was in the blanking bahamas on a beach. this is a bunch of people in the white house who were not just inept at governing, they were profoundly uninterested in governing from day one. >> the best people, that's what donald trump promised to hire. >> the best people. >> president obama sat down with reince priebus at one point as well, according to your excerpt. and he said, you gotta tell donald trump the truth. these guys here have all told me the truth. priebus walked out thinking to himself, nobody knows donald trump. it's not going to fly with donald trump. given that, is there anybody that can really tell the president the truth? does john kelly have that ability some. >> in fairness to priebus, what he says, he wants people to know

that he pushed back. you know, the perception is that donald trump just rolled right over him. priebus would argue that for every ill conceived crazy thing they did like the executive order on immigration, priebus stopped ten bad ideas. bannon joking with me said, now, i think reince stopped 20 and 10 were my ideas. so priebus pushed back to some extent, but i think that kelly, you know, the difference between priebus and kelly, obviously, is kelly has been empowered in a way that reince priebus never was by donald trump. i think his failure is all the more glaring. i think kelly has failed in almost every way you can fail as white house chief, but most importantly, he's failed to tell donald trump the hard truth. the last 48 hours of tweeting, a president of the united states smearing the fbi and unilaterally disarming this country in the face of russian attacks on our elections, it's just almost inconceivable that

any previous white house chief would have stood by for that. >> is nobody -- is john kelly not going to him and saying this is very serious stuff. you have to make a forceful statement yourself. not one through the white house. you have to come out with your own mouth and stand in front of reporters and say we're not going to let this happen. then you have to follow through with it by imposing at the very least the sanctions that congress already passed and you signed. >> he should be, but the history with generals as white house chiefs has not been particularly rosy. i mean, the first one was al hague, who lasted a little more than a month with jerry ford. he stayed over from the nixon administration. you know, it may be that with some four-star generals, they're more accustomed to saluting the commander in chief. i can't explain why kelly hasn't spoken truth to power or stood up to donald trump more than he has, but he clearly has not. >> all of the scandals we mentioned just before we introduced you threaten to oust

the chief of staff, threatened to be the end of him. "the washington post" has an article that doesn't frankly come as a surprise, for weary white house florida shooting, 17 kids and teachers died, offered a reprieve. that's their word, the white house officials' word, from scandals. anonymous official, at least. what does it say when this white house finds a breath, a reprieve, from a massacre? >> well, it just speaks volumes. it's not just on donald trump but also on john kelly. and in my opinion, this was the guy we all remember was supposed to be the grown-up in the room, he was supposed to be the moderating force who somehow smoothed off the rough edges of donald trump. i think john kelly has been exactly the opposite of that. i think he's re-enforced all of trump's worst partisan instincts. he really should pick up the phone and call ken dubber steen, ronald reagor's last chief of staff or james baker or leon

panetta, and maybe they would explain to him that you can't govern the way you campaign. donald trump has learned nothing about how to govern in more than a year. and he needs a chief of staff who can help to show him how. >> those tweets and the wild statements were coming out when reince priebus was there, too. i don't know, and maybe i'm wrong, if anybody can stop him from tweeting the things he tweets and causing the controversies he causes. i don't think any of his family can do it. they didn't stop him during the campaign. maybe they didn't want to, but certainly some of them did. so, you know, i don't know. i think a culture is created from the top down. maybe john kelly is not helping. maybe reince priebus wasn't up to the task. but donald trump is donald trump. chris, great book. here it is. >> thanks for having me. >> i don't know where i'm showing it. anyway, a full screen. thank you very much. a great excerpt in "vanity fair." >> ahead, though, a possible scandal of olympic proportions involving a sport you might not

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after failing a preliminary drug test. he won the bronze medal late last week. a second sample result is expected today but is yet to be made public. olympic organizers are expected to make a decision on the case this week. russia has been banned from competing in the 2018 games, as punished for widespread doping. athletes, though, are competing as, quote, olympic athletes from russia. back in a moment. i have type 2 diabetes. i'm trying to manage my a1c, and then i learn type 2 diabetes puts me at greater risk for heart attack or stroke. can one medicine help treat both blood sugar and cardiovascular risk? i asked my doctor. he told me about non-insulin victoza®. victoza® is not only proven to lower a1c and blood sugar, but for people with type 2 diabetes treating their cardiovascular disease, victoza® is also approved to lower the risk of major cv events such as heart attack, stroke, or death. and while not for weight loss,

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welcome back. it's time for "the lid." the panel is with me again. gabe, susan, and governor dean. donald trump is potentially open to making a deal on guns and background checks. stronger background checks with cornyn. maybe. >> yeah, maybe. that's the key point here. we have heard a lot of optimistic talk about bipartisanship on capitol hill. on guns, after some of the students, in particular, have been speaking out after this

last school shooting. color me skeptical they'll get anything done in the next few days but the fact that the president is open to talking about this, has in a real way, given a lot of republicans some real hope. >> yet, i remember a conversation about daca not too long ago when he said you just give me something, and i'll take the heat for it. i'll get it passed. and not so much. >> no background. president doesn't have any background. he's all bs, no backbone. he said this before on daca. he said this on gay rights and gay people and stuff. he wasn't going to persecute them. everybody was going to be fine. this is nonsense. this is trump wavering around because he doesn't know what he's doing. bl what about the meeting with students? >> a big risk because they're going to tell it like it is. if he picks on them, he's going to be in trouble. it's a no-win for him. they can't stand him. they're going to call bs on him, and what is he going to do? no matter what he does, he's going to look bad. >> you think that's true? >> absolutely. this was the worst thing to actually have him doing. spatial if he follows it up with

a q&a. >> if he doesn't follow it up with a q&a, it looks bad. >> let's forget that so far, he's talked about, let's talk about the shooting. the fbi should have paid more attention to that. >> or the students should have paid more attention. some of the students looked at that tweet and said it looks like you are blaming us. we did raise red flags. is there any movement on guns? john kasich, a, from the nra, is moving on guns. no reason why anybody should have an ar-15. your rights would not be eroded because you couldn't buy an ar-15. that's john kasich. >> john kasich is not currently on capitol hill and not running for re-election right now. >> he might be running for president, though. >> i'm not saying it's necessarily that much easier for him to say. he is a conservative republican or has been in the past. but he is not currently going to be one of these people writing legislation. >> but the 17 kids died. 49 people died in las vegas. over a dozen died, i believe, in

the texas shooting. that's just in the past few months. >> until -- like we heard a republican donor from florida will not be writing any more checks until he sees something on gun control. what we need to have is him write checks for those candidates who are willing to take a risk and challenge the nra. you need money to challenge the nra. it's that simple. their members, while they have a huge membership, they don't support everything that the nra is out there. they support getting rid of bump stocks. they certainly believe you shouldn't have terrorists on the watch list -- people on the terrorist watch list shouldn't get guns. this is not a hard -- this isn't a hard thing. it's a matter of will. frankly, it needs an organization, and it has to stop coming from democrats. republicans need to speak to other republicans and move. >> last thought? >> it's going to happen because the 17-year-olds are going to make it happen. if you see people lose their seats -- i think rick scott may now lose his senate race to bill nelson. it will be because of guns.

if you see a lot of that, if you see republican members lose their seats because they haven't switched fast enough on guns, then you're going to see change. >> let's see if young people vote in florida, especially in that area. >> these kids are two young. >> i talked to two today, both 18. and their number one issue, not surprisingly, guns. >> howard dean, susan del percio, gabe debenedetti, thank you, guys. appreciate your time. we'll be right back. >> tech: at safelite autoglass

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in case you missed it, happy presidents' day. the day that does not exist. did i just blow your mind? here we are once again on the third monday in february, and here we are once again calling it presidents' day. but people, it is not presidents' day, it's officially george washington's birthday. that's the actual federal holiday. but here's the other thing. george washington was not born on february 19th. he was born on february 22nd. gosh darn it. so happy monday? indeed, the holiday was originally celebrated on the 22nd, but congress changed it decades ago, thanks to the, quote, uniform monday holiday act. that took the onus off the days themselves and just shifted everything to the nearest monday. kind of like rounding down. that's legislation we can all get behind. happy presidents' day which is not officially a thing, or happy washington's birthday, which it

isn't actually, or barring all that, happy monday. see the rest of you at work tomorrow. we missed you. that's all for tonight. chuck will be back in the chair tomorrow with more "mtp daily." "the beat with ari melber" starts right now. >> sounds like somebody has a case of the monday? >> i don't have enough flair on today. >> great movie. >> great movie. >> "office space." >> one of the best movies of all time. >> big claim. >> haven't you wanted to take a bat to a printer? >> one of my favorite scenes. a lot of great music in that as well. katy tur, i hope you enjoy inrest of your monday. >> tonight, there's growing pressure on tt donald trump as he confronts all of this heat from the mueller probe. a former campaign aide, rick gates, now ready to plead guilty in the mueller probe. he would be testifying, of course, against his old boss, paul manafort. sources telling the l.a. times gates will plead guilty to fraud related charges within days. he would give prosecutors the, quote, cherry on t