roger stone in the next hour. so seriously, pop popcorn, order dinner, sit down, don't go anywhere. that does it for our hour, i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. for once i'm on time. hi, chuck. >> nicely done, hello, nicole. you're right across the room. we'll do a baton one day. if it's tuesday, it's roger and me. >> tonight, long-time trump advisor roger stone joins us to talk about the mueller investigation and sam nunberg's defiant and dizzying media blitz. >> why do i have to give them my personal communications? steve bannon, roger stone? roger is my mentor. >> plus, trade war. what is it good for? >> trade wars aren't so bad. >> and primary color check for the lone star state. it's the tale of voter turnout in either red, blue or purple texas. >> across texas, it's doubled. these are democratic votes.

this is historic what's happening here. >> this is "mtp daily" and it starts right now. good evening, and welcome to "mtp daily." i'm chuck todd in new york. joining me live in just a moment is roger stone, one of president trump's long-time confidants an closest advisers. we'll talk to him about the intensifying russia probe as the special counsel's investigation seems to be getting closer and closer to the president and showing more interest in mr. stone. it will be stone's first live interview since the marathon cable news appearances by his long-time aide and protege, sam nunberg. nunberg did back-to-back-to-back interviews monday defending stone. he said repeatedly he would refuse to comply with a grand jury subpoena and he would not turn over e-mails, texts and other documents dating back to the trump campaign and involving several of the president's current or former top aides.

nunberg now says he probably will comply after all and cooperate with investigators. nunberg's tell-all comes as we now know that mueller's team is asking questions about the president himself, including what he knew about wikileaks and when he knew it. and why he took policy positions that were friendly to the kremlin. and that is why it has raised so many alarm bells when nunberg said this. >> you sat there in that room being questioned by mueller's investigators. i want to hear directly from you, do you think that they have something on the president? >> i think they may. >> why? >> i think that he may have done something during the election, but i don't know that for sure. >> why do you think that? >> i can't explain it unless you were in there. >> they probably have something on trump. trump did something pretty bad, if i had to assume. >> what do they have? >> i don't know. >> folks, nunberg was fired by the president and he says he's not a fan of mr. trump. he was not threatening to defy the special counsel out of

allegiance to the white house, he was considering risking jail time to protect roger stone. >> this is so ridiculous. i'm not going to give them every e-mail i had with steve bannon and roger stone. i communicated with them every day. i'm not going to testify against roger. roger did not do anything. roger was treated terribly by donald trump. >> and he's one of donald trump's oldest advisers. >> yeah, but trump is the most disloyal person you're ever going to meet. they definitely had -- they definitely had roger stone's. mails. they asked me questions about roger stone's e-mail -- they asked you questions about roger and me that they would only have had roger's e-mails. i'm worried that they're trying to make a case against roger, that they're maneuvering -- >> and what would that case be built on? >> i have no idea. i have no idea. >> would it relate to wikileaks? >> i can tell you once again -- >> would it relate to wikileaks? >> it could relate to wikileaks. >> roger stone says nunberg was not speak at his behest or direction but stone's relationship with trump,

candidate trump and president trump are likely to be of interest to the special counsel. sam nunberg's reappeated defens of stone yesterday and his reluctance to turn over e-mails with him perhaps raised more red flags. roger stone has been an advisor and kconfidant to trump on and off for decades. he may still have a direct line to the white house. he joins me right now. mr. stone, welcome back to the show, sir. >> chuck, thanks for the opportunity to be here. >> let me start with this. mr. nunberg says he was trying to protect you. what would he be protecting you from? >> i have no idea. look, sam nunberg is a very talented writer and researcher, but he marches to his own drummer. he is not speaking at my behest or my direction. i would certainly have not advised him to ignore or refuse a document production subpoena. i was pleased to read today that he's changed his mind about that. now, "the new york times" reported on january 20th of 2016

in a page one story that my communications had been accessed through a fisa warrant along with those of paul manafort and carter page, therefore i have always operated on the assumption that there are folks in the government who have examined all of my communications and i can say with confidence that i know nothing about any russian collusion or any other inappropriate act, that i never had any advanced knowledge of the content, the source or the exact timing of the wikileaks disclosures. i never predicted that john podesta's e-mails would be hacked, i predicted that his business activities would come under scrutiny, his time in the barrel. that is based on the january 2016 disclosures in the panama papers where his russian business dealings are fully exposed, the uranium deal, the bank deal. >> you keep talking about john podesta, do you mean tony

podesta? >> no, i actually mean the podesta brothers which is addressed in the panama papers. i'd seen an opposition research memo dby dr. jerry coursey an al of these things were reported. so i didn't ask sam nunberg to protect me. i don't think i require any protection. look, i'm one of the president's oldest friends and i remain a staunch supporter. it's not surprising that the special counsel may wanting to see e-mails and memos that i wrote to the campaign and about politics, and that's not really surprising. >> have you turned over anything yourself to mr. mueller? >> i have not been asked to do so. i have not received a subpoena nor a request for an interview. but it is based on a conversation between mr. nunberg's attorney and my attorney that i believe he was asked about the circumstances of my leaving the campaign. that's always been a matter of some confusion.

i continue to maintain that i resigned. i reached the conclusion that donald trump would be his own strategist. turned out to be right and he did a pretty brilliant job. i also came to the conclusion that i could be more effective on his behalf outside the campaign. i wrote the clintons war on women, i urged him to make an issue of bill clinton's serial sexual assaults and hillary's role in silencing those women and bullying them -- >> so you consider yourself that you've been an active advisor to the president just on a volunteer basis? is that how you describe yourself? >> well, our contacts have been sporadic. i certainly consider myself a strong supporter of the president. >> when's the last time you talked to him? >> it's been a while now. i would say several months. this idea that we talk incessantly is not accurate. but i showed my resignation letter to a reporter from "the new york times" and the reporter then with "the miami herald" and now with politico the night before i submitted it because i wanted to have a record.

there was also, according to mr. nunberg's lawyer, a question about whether i had ever met julian assange in london in 2016. i never left the country in 2016. my passport, i showed the appropriate pages to "the daily caller" proves that. i have never met or spoke with mr. assange. >> why did you have this -- why did you reach out to gucifer? why did you reach out to wikileaks? >> first of all, my direct messages with gucifer 2.0 if that's who it really is come six weeks, almost six weeks after the dnc e-mails had been published by wikileaks. so in order to collude in their hacking, which i had nothing whatsoever to do with, one would have needed a time machine. secondarily, i wrote a very long piece, you can find it in stone cold truth, i doubt that gucifer is indeed a russian operative. i once believed he hacked the

dnd dnc. i don't believe that either. i think it was an inside job and the preponderance of the evidence points to a thumb drive and the device is coming out the back door. chuck, also ten days ago "the washington post" reported that based on the democratic minority memo, that the russians had sent documents to me for review. i've never received any documents from the russians or anybody representing them. i never had any contact with any russians. >> did you receive any documents and you didn't know it was a russian? >> i never received any documents from anyone purporting to be a russian or otherwise, and i never saw the wikileaks documents in advance. >> are you concerned that mr. mueller hasn't asked you, hasn't subpoenaed you, hasn't asked you for an interview? do you think he's building a case against you? >> there's nothing there. i have no concerns. i'll be happy to answer his questions. i believe my e-mails are probably based on that "new york

times" story have already been reviewed. >> so you think all of your e-mails have been scooped up via fisa warrant via mr. mueller. >> i'm relying on "the new york times" of 2016 -- 2017, pardon me. that's what they reported. >> if you were mr. mueller and you had this communication that you saw between you and mr. assange and the fact that you talked about -- predicted podesta's time in the barrel, why -- wouldn't you consider that suspicious behavior if you were mr. mueller? >> yeah, i'd look for any proof that i had advance knowledge of the content or the source. >> because to the public you understand why a lot of people think you had advance knowledge. podesta e-mails, because of all things to be focused on, john podesta is not a household name. certainly wasn't a household name in august. >> i understand the effort to distract from the content of those e-mails because they show hillary clinton to be greedy, corrupt and up to her neck in campaign dirty tricks, so let's

make a controversy about where they came from, not the substance of them. say this about julian assange. i reject the idea that he's a russian asset. i reject the idea that wiki leaking is a russian front. i think that he's a journalist, a courageous journalist, and frankly his track record for accuracy and authenticity is superior to "the new york times" or "the washington post." >> the cia director, mike pompeo, compared wikileaks to isis and said they're a nonstate actor trying to undermine the united states. they do not -- >> well, our intelligence agencies also told us that there was no meta data collection program on american citizens. that turned out to be a lie. they told us that saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction. our intelligence agencies sadly have been politicized and they have said things that i think fit a political agenda. their role in leaking against this president, their role in forwarding a phony dossier that was used as the rationale for

surveillance by the state of the republican candidate for president is an abuse of power far more egregious than what happened in watergate. >> did you suggest to the president that he at that press conference say, russia, if you're listening, go find hillary clinton's e-mails? >> i can honestly say that candidate trump, donald trump, president trump and i have never discussed the wikileaks disclosures before, during or after the election. >> you never had a single discussion about hillary clinton e-mails with him at all? >> that is correct. >> nothing about hillary clinton. i understand wikileaks. not once about hillary clinton e-mails? you never had one conversation with president trump about that? >> not a single one, no, absolutely not. >> that's the same answer you're going to give if mr. mueller asks you that question? >> it's the same answer that i gave the house intelligence committee under oath months ago and certainly the same answer i would give the special counsel. donald trump and i have never discussed the matter. >> you have made the case here

that there was no collusion there that you're aware of. would it have been wrong to collude with a foreign adversary to undermine hillary clinton's campaign? >> well, there's no evidence that this happened. you're asking me to answer a hypothetical question. it seems to me that mr. steele was colluding with the russians -- >> do you think it's fair game to get incriminating evidence about your opponent from a foreign government? >> the idea that donald trump needed help from the russians to beat hillary clinton is an excuse. it's a conard, a fairy tale. i don't believe it ever happened. >> what did george papadopoulos plead guilty to then? >> well, that's an interesting question. both mr. papadopoulos and carter page appear to me to be volunteers on the trump campaign. i saw in the media reports that papadopoulos urged the campaign to meet with the russians. i also read that the campaign

seems to have rejected that advice. >> it's been reported by some who have heard testimony from him and have seen some evidence that he apparently was told that the russians had democratic e-mails. >> i have no knowledge of that. i believe he was indicted for lying to the fbi. as i recall. >> who is randy credico. >> randy was a confirming source on july 12th of 2016, assange said in an interview that he had information on hillary and he would publish it. i knew that credico knew assange and i asked him whether this was true. a couple of days later he confirmed that it was. he did not have any comment about the source or the timing or the content of those disclosures. i testified about this under oath to the house intelligence committee. mr. credico chose to plead the

fifth amendment. >> so he is the only person -- when you said you were talking to somebody who had a relationship with assange, he is the only person you're referring to here? >> that is correct. and that's called a confirming source. it was a very narrow question. look, assange himself has said all roger stone did was to watch his interviews and his tweets and repeat things he had already said publicly. that is entirely true. i actually never claimed otherwise. i did before i wrote a column and got out there in interviews predicting that they really had this mother lode on hillary clinton ask for some confirmation, and it was supplied. it's that narrow. >> going back to the fisa warrant issue, do you believe one was issued on you or this was stuff scooped up based on targeting of somebody else? >> the headline in "the new york times" is wiretapped data used in probe of trump aides. the story goes on to say that three individuals were

surveilled, myself, paul manafort and carter page. the headline changes in the online version of that story, but "the times" has never retracted the story. since that time i have operated on the assumption that my communications have been viewed. there's nothing there untoward or that concerns me. they're political, but there's no collusion with the russians. chuck, i've been accused of being a dirty trickster. there's one trick that's not in my bag. that's treason. i have no knowledge or involvement in russian collusion and i don't know anybody else who does. >> let me establish something. you believe if unbeknownst to you there is somebody on the trump campaign that worked with the russians on these e-mail releases, that that would have been -- that's a treasonous act? >> no, actually i don't think so because for it to be a treasonous act, assange would have to be provably a russian asset and wikileaks would have to be a russian front and i do

not believe that is the case. just because they -- >> so you think it's possible wikileaks and the trump campaign coordinated the release? >> i didn't say that at all. i have no knowledge of that and i make no such claim. >> no, i understand that. but you just issued that hypothetical. so what you're saying is had that -- had that occurred, you don't believe -- you don't believe that that's untoward -- you don't believe that that's against the law? >> this is all based on a premise that wikileaks is a russian front and assange is a russian agent. as i said, i reject that. on the other hand, i have no knowledge that that happened. it certainly did not happen in my case. that is not something i was involved in. >> why is sam nunberg so afraid of having every one of his e-mails with you in front of the special counsel? >> well, he was asked about numerous other people besides me. i have no idea. there's nothing in my e-mails with sam nunberg that would prove that anything i said today is inaccurate. but he was also asked to produce

e-mails with corey lewandowski, with hope hicks, with the candidate himself, donald trump. so i don't know what case mr. mueller is making. i don't know what he's trying to find out. but i would urge sam nunberg to cooperate. >> sam nunberg, among the things he alleged was that carter page was colluding with the russians. do you concur with that? >> i saw that, but if you look at all of his interviews in other places he contradicts that. so i don't know what he is referring to in that regard. >> do you still consider him a protege? >> i consider him a friend. he does not work for me and i do not in any way control his thought process or what he says. he is very much his own man and he marches to his own drummer. i would certainly not have advised him to ignore a subpoena and i was delighted to read this morning that he's changed his mind about that. >> what is -- what happened in the relationship between he and president trump that it is so

bad? >> sam did some things in the campaign that displeased the candidate and he was terminated. this is actually too bad because he's a very talented writer, researcher, and wordsmith. beyond that i can't characterize it. he was at one point rehired. became the only person who was ever fired by donald trump and then fired a second time. but he -- >> i think omarosa has been fired four times, according to the white house. >> i mean within the context of this campaign. look, i don't know what he refers to when he claimed that they had something on the president. i have no knowledge of that. i don't think that is the case. >> final question. do you think the russians attempted to interfere in our presidential election in 2016, hard stop? >> well, the indictment brought by mr. mueller would indicate they did. but it's not clear that they did so with the sole purpose of

helping donald trump. at various times they appear to be pro trump, pro bernie sanders, anti-trump and the bulk of their money appears to have been spent after the election. when you look at the totality of the resources spent in the election, what the russians did appears to me to have been muddled, ineffective and a drop in the bucket. and no connection -- and no connection to the trump campaign in any way, shape or form. >> but given the fact that even you are acknowledged they tried to do something, the president's lack of confronting vladimir putin about this issue does lead some people to be circumspect about his motives. do you think president trump should confront the russians more aggressively on this issue? >> look, the president doesn't to go -- didn't want to go to war over syria where hillary clinton favored that no-fly zone. >> he's there now. >> and the president is selling offensive weapons to the ukrainians over the objections of the russians.

so much for the idea that he's in putin's pocket. when people have thermonuclear weapons, it's probably better to be talking with them and trying to find a way to have peace rather than looking for our next foreign war. >> roger stone, i'm going to leave it there. sir, i appreciate you coming on, sticking around, taking all the questions. thank you, sir. >> thank you, chuck. >> you got it. let me bring in the panel, nbc news special correspondent, tom brokaw, michelle goldberg and john podhoretz. tom, i'll give you first crack. roger didn't crack. >> roger has been at this a long time and he relishes his role, which is always on the perimeter. it's almost never been right next to the seat of power. you can tell by his style that he's very well read in on what he wants to say and how he wants to say it but he is for the most part an agent for roger and not for anyone else, but he loves all the attention. you know, the fact is that

there's a pretty long record at this point that he was always a disrupter in one fashion or another for the people that he believed in and he's always believed in people on the right. he's the man who has a tattoo of richard nixon on his back and people have to keep that in mind as well. and he did that, i always believed, just so he'd get more attention for himself. >> you know, michelle, i will say the thing i took away from the interview is how he defined wikileaks, because mueller is going in a specific place. mueller is going to treat wikileaks like an agent, i think, of the russians. >> and i kept wanting you to ask why he visited the ecuadorean embassy i believe in january. you don't stop by the ecuadorean embassy in london. >> he's been asked that and he said he was doing it for -- >> kicks. >> yeah, for kicks, so we would pay attention. >> to me the most striking thing about him, and i think even -- you know, donald trump may be as oblivious to truth and reality and roger stone is just truly

indifferent to it. so i was idly taking notes on some of the things that he said were blatantly and provably not true. for example, that the minority democratic memo shows that the russians previewed the leak to stone. they said they previewed the leak to the campaign, they don't mention stone. so there were so many slippery falsehoods, kind of conspiracy theories that he treated as if they were already proved. for example, that there had been an inside job at the dnc, that that's -- >> this is a sean hannity conspiracy. >> this comes from the fever swamps. one thing about roger stone is that he's a regular on alex jones. he's the link between that world and trump world. and he kind of borrows very liberally from the like darkest, murkiest conspiracy theories and presents it all.

>> i would challenge any human being who does not spend six hours a day studying this issue every day to follow a single answer that he gave you. it was a masterful job of delving into detail so deep in the weeds that unless -- like i said, unless you have an advanced degree in the mueller investigation, you're just lost in the thicket. you can't make any sense out of it. basically the one thing that you got out of him was him saying i don't believe that julian assange is a russian agent. i think he's a journalist and wikileaks is not part of an effort -- >> and coordination between wikileaks and the trump campaign would not be some sort of crime. that is what he is trying to say. >> right. and that is interesting, why he has to express an opinion on that at all, if his whole point is, look, i'm not involved in this. i've got no involvement in any of this. i've been out of the campaign, i

haven't talked to the president in months, i don't know anything. >> one thing i've learned about trump and stone and all this is you sort of sometimes are previewing something that's coming, right? and it's like, well, we may have -- we may have known something about wikileaks, and when they were going to dump certain things. or we had a deal, but now they're trying to create but wikileaks is not an operative of the russians. >> but he was lawyerly and said i didn't have the exact date and wasn't told precisely the content. so it was a specific hedging denial. >> and if you knew that a leak was coming and he only knew this because he was dealing with a journalistic organization that was not part of any state-sponsored effort to involve itself in the 2016 campaign, who could say nay, he didn't do anything wrong. it was ordinary person discussing something with a journalistic organization. >> i can't imagine that there's even the most casual observer of

all the stuff that's been going on didn't sit up and say he just said julian assange is the greatest journalist involved in all of this? >> mike pompeo is comparing wikileaks now to isis as a nonstate terrorist organization. >> he's a journalist, he's not somebody attempting to disrupt in every possible way this country and all that it stands for. >> right, but that's the caliber of people that trump surrounds himself with. to me that's the lesson of both him and nunberg. this is -- you know, roger stone is somebody who aspired to be roy cohn. sam nunberg aspires to be roger stone. imagine that. these are like really bottom feeders who now are suddenly are at the center of our politics. >> i would be careful about dismissing roger stone. he played an elemental role in the ouster from office of the governor of new york, eliot spitzer. >> oh, i think he's smart. >> he's very shrewd. >> he's able and he is a

conspiracyist who runs conspiracies successfully against other people, which is why it's worth parsing these statements because you don't know -- you know, he's playing -- he is kind of playing three-dimensional chess sometimes. >> but what's interesting with roger, tom, is people say, oh, he buys in conspiracies. he sees it all as one. he saw the nixon watergate as this effort to oust nixon because there was a political agenda to get rid of him and they conveniently found a crime to do it. so that's his formative experience. so he views everything through the prism of assuming there's an angle. and his job is to either find it or make you believe there's one. >> and also to keep himself in the hunt. to keep himself on television, to keep himself as a player. i mean the fact is that the trump people walked away from him. that bond was broken. >> did they, though? or was it a, yes.

no, no, no, no. a stuiff arm but don't get us. >> the essential truth about him is he has to be involved in everything and it's always on the dark horse, it's always on the dark side of whatever it is that he's doing and the manner in which he dresses, the manner in which he conducts himself, he sees himself as some kind of a james bond evil factor in all of this. >> the important thing to remember about roger stone is that there is this -- the thing that created the idea of potential russian collusion was the hiring and the management of the trump campaign by paul manafort who was ousted in august of 2016 because news came out of potentially illegal payments that he had received from a ukrainian strongman with ties to russia. stone was partners with paul manafort for 15 years in an important washington, d.c., lobbying firm and they remain friends. how manafort ended up running the trump campaign is the great

mystery of trump 2016 and stone's role in it, we don't know. >> michelle, it's this -- the problem for trump is the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. but it is right now all circumstantial, whether it's the manafort connection to stone or big things like the wikileaks conversation and podesta in the barrel. i think we're waiting to see if mueller has more than circumstantial. >> it's not circumstantial that they get an e-mail saying we'd like to come help the trump campaign. >> but it is circumstantial that it's proof that they got it. >> right. but it's clear now that the campaign was eager to collude. we just don't know for sure that they succeeded in colluding. >> and that's the mystery for mueller is trying to figure out. anyway, you guys are sticking around. up ahead, it's election day and we didn't get to lead to the elections. that tells you how the mueller

probe is going these days. anyway, it's primary day in texas. early voting among democrats has been extraordinarily high. what to read into that. the state is holding its primaries and we'll get a good indication of how big is a blue wave going to be and can it hit the state of texas and turn it purple. we're going to go there live. it's 6 am. 40 million americans are waking up to a gillette shave. and at our factory in boston, more than a thousand workers are starting their day building on over a hundred years of heritage, craftsmanship and innovation. today we're bringing you america's number one shave at lower prices every day. putting money back in the pockets of millions of americans. as one of those workers, i'm proud to bring you gillette quality for less, because nobody can beat the men and women of gillette. gillette - the best a man can get.

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that gary cohn his chief economic advisor would resign. that is indeed what is happening. he has resigned. president trump said this to "the new york times." gary has been my chief economic advisor and did a superb job in driving our agenda helping to drive tax cuts and unleashing the american economy once again. he is a rare talent and i thank him for his dedicated service to the american people. no obviously reference in there to the disagreement, but on tariffs, gary cohn has been the leading opponent of this tariff idea inside the white house. he's been trying to rally support from ceos to come talk to the president. obviously this has not gone that well because, again, one of the things our reporting had indicated over the weekend was that if indeed these tariffs were going to be policy, that cohn felt that there was nothing left for him to do other than resign, and here we are. so the news gary cohn resigning just the latest. president trump himself almost

hinted at it in a tweet this morning. in mihindsight when we look at that tweet, talking about people coming and going, he knew he was having another major exit today. we'll have a lot more on this. as soon as we get more information, just developing in the last few minutes, gary cohn, the latest trump advisor to leave the west wing. we'll have more right after this. (avo) if you've been struggling with belly pain

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ah. oh hello. that lady, these houses! yes, yes and yes. and don't forget about them. uh huh, sure. still yes! xfinity delivers gig speed to more homes than anyone. now you can get it, too. welcome to the party. well, if it's a day that ends in y, it means we have more breaking news out of the white house. this in the last ten minutes, we have learned that the president's chief economic advisor, gary cohn, has officially resigned. we had heard that he was threatening resignation over the last week when news came out that the president was going to issue those tariffs on steel and aluminum. and indeed gary cohn has followed through on that threat, has resigned. let's go to hallie jackson, our chief white house correspondent at the white house right now. hallie, you know, we see these threats all the time and i guess

it's rare that somebody follows through on that threat. obviously it means these tariffs are a go if gary cohn is gone. >> reporter: i think you're right, chuck. listen, there's a couple of things to note with gary cohn's resignation. it is happening, first of all, after the markets have closed, by the way, at least here in the u.s. because there was concern about how wall street is going to react to this. so we'll watch for that tomorrow. but let me read you some statements that we have, including from the president himself, who is tonight calling cohn a rare talent, thanking him for his dedicated service to the american people. he said he did a superb job in driving our agenda, helping to deliver historic tax cuts and reforms and unleashing the american economy once again. general john kelly is out with a statement also praising cohn. cohn himself says it's been an honor to serve his country and enact pro growth economic policies, in particular the passage of historic tax reforms. perhaps the most surprising thing about this resignation is that it's not happen on a friday. there had been a lot of discussion that gary cohn was going to be leaving this

administration after the passage of the tax cut plan. he stuck on, stuck around i think several months longer than the initial expectation had been, but this tariffs issue had brought it to a head. i will tell you that moments before this came out, i was on the phone with several different sources specifically asking about cohn because today at that press conference in the east room, gary cohn was not there. now, that wouldn't normally be unusual except there was a seat for him and he didn't show up to sit in that seat. i yelled to the president at the end of the press conference where is gary cohn. he talked about chaos in his administration. the president had tweeted just today about how some people may not be sticking around, that he may make a change. and i was told by a couple of different people that obviously the relationship between the president and cohn had become strained, particularly on this tariff issue. i was also told that perhaps the frustration that cohn had been expressing to others had made its way back to the president and you know donald trump would not have liked that very much. so i do think that this is something that had been in the works for a little while. i don't think that's untrue from

the white house there because that matches with our reporting. his departure date is still tbd, not for another few weeks as he presumably puts in place the next person to take over as the top economic advisor to donald trump. listen, if you're going to flame this as globalist versus protectionist, this is the protectionist wing winning out. you know who was at that press conference? wilbur ross, who was one of the folks pushing for these tariffs that cohn had been fighting against. >> all right, hallie jackson, thanks very much. all right, panel. gary cohn threatened to resign after the charlottesville debacle and the president's both sides response. he pulled back that resignation to the point of, i think, he wrote it. even may have written it down, i believe. didn't there. tariffs is what broke it. >> he didn't go at the time of charlottesville because there was the possibility of the tax cut and working for the tax cut and they got through the tax cut and then there was this fight on

the tariffs. and what is he supposed to do? i mean this is economics 101 that these tariffs are a bad idea. what's he supposed to do, go and defend it, try to implement it, try to argue with our allies that this is acceptable economic behavior on the part of the world's leading economy? so he couldn't hack it. in some sense i think there's something honorable about that. that is likes this is one argument i can't make for you. i'm one of the most important people in the most important building in the world. i've got to go now because those words can't come out of my mouth. >> i mean i am maybe a very naive person because i just cannot get my head around the psychology that there are good people among the white supremacists is not a bridge too far, but tariffs are, right? and that i can kind of suck up the white supremacy for a tax cut but this is my red line. i mean i just -- you know, i will go to my grave not

understanding the mentality not just of the gary cohn but all the people that collaborate with these people. what? you think gary cohn has collaborated with this foul, disgusting government for a tax cut? >> yeah. he is the economics person. he's not the charlottesville person. and he could say to himself, you know, i'm trying to serve the country. i think this is a good thing to do, to do the tax cut. he did the tax cut and then the policy that's in his bailiwick, that's in his portfolio comes down the pike that is indefensible. i'm not arguing that people who would have resigned over charlottesville wouldn't have been doing a noble thing, it's just, you know, he thought -- you know, do you want people who are able to work in a white house? >> i want to take this, what's the message the world economy is going to say to this? the message world leaders are going to get from this? they notably did wait until after the stock market closed because they knew the markets

are going to hate this. >> gary cohn is a heavyweight. he came out of goldman sachs. >> this would have been like bill clinton losing bob reuben six months after they passed their tax hike. >> yeah. he is an extraordinarily important figure. he was a democrat, for one thing. i saw him early on. he was very uncomfortable with not being able to get the president to play the way that he thought. he said i get about 50% and lose him on the second 50%. so it's been very thin for him for a long time. a lot of people have been on the phone with him saying how long can you stay down there with all of this? he came out of the goldman sachs culture. the goldman sachs culture is about the economy and about strong fiscal policy. i'm sure that that's what they were talking to him about. and he couldn't go here. >> you know what's interesting, michelle, is that the people that were supposed to be the small g governors to the president, whether it was gary cohn on the economy, h.r.

mct mcmaster on national security, reince priebus arguably was picked, john kelly, these people are either on the outs, gone, or have capitulated. there is no corralling trump. i think that's people are learning. >> all the people sort of presented themselves or were presented like the committee to save america. the people who were going to go in there and be the adults in the room and protect us from this catastrophic madman who has somehow become president. you know, i think that either some of them were just -- were just kind of -- i don't know, humoring us, or if they were kind of lying to themselves about their own motivations because it's just been astonishing -- >> they genuinely believed the office would change donald trump. >> yeah, but it's been pretty clear -- >> it changed everybody else. >> it's been pretty clear for a while that if it was going to change donald trump, it was only going to change him for the worse. so to me the thing that's really disappointing is not just that

they stayed is that the people that leave then don't speak out. dina powell was reportedly part of the gary cohn faction, somebody who was very disenchanted with what she saw there, but she sort of came out quietly and isn't telling the world about what's going on there. these people have a duty to the country -- >> omarosa. >> she's maybe the most patriotic of the trump refugees. >> j. pod, who's going to work in this white house? look at everybody who's leaving. >> it's an amazing list. >> it's a double list now. i can't read them all and it's all on white paper, my apologies, but the fact is it's a two-page list, the west wing exiters. >> trump in this press conference with the swedish prime minister said i've got people -- i can fill these jobs any time i want to. i've got all sorts of people. >> but don't ask me about jeff sessions. >> but it's true. could he fill the job? of course there's some committee head on capitol hill, there's some congressman who's retiring, there's some whatever. he can fill these jobs if he can

find people. can he find really good people? can he find really able people? can he find people with experience who know how to run a policy in a political framework in an election year? does he have anybody with experience? that's where the rubber meets the road. part of the problem with the white house, aside from whatever moral qualms you might have, is that it's amateurishly run. and when you lose your first team of amateurs, i'm not sure your second team of amateurs is going to be that much better. >> i talked to a leading republican the other day on the hill who said we're down to about 22% of the country are going to be with him no matter what. he gets, what, 35%, 40%. he said those others are very, very spongy at this point. i mean this is having an effect on him politically. >> and that's the -- over time this sort of chips away at it. all right, guys. again, it's a day that ended in a y, so of course it was another big news day out of the white house. up next, if it's tuesday,

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to improve short-term memory. prevagen. the name to remember. voters are voting right nows in the big state of texas. first and foremost, turnout. will democrats show up to vote as republicans or even greater? a huge spike in democratic turnout. up more than 100%. how many democrats will have turned out versus republicans? that number could tell us a lot about democratic enthusiasm this november. four years ago, democrats had about a 6,000 vote surplus

there. for the drathdemocrats, the drama in the seventh district. the dccc op all on its own. if mozer makes it in the runoff, it could embarrass the local party there and embolden other candidates they don't like. our texas chief for tate's purposes is in austin. all right, abbey, what's the big story you're watching out of here and what are you seeing so far with about 2 1/2 more hours until the polls close. my favorite race in the state right now is the one you just

mentioned, is the texas seventh. it's a very wealthy area. when that dccc op happened it was like a bomb went off. this was a new situation, they have not had a really successful democratic primary here. it's really hard to figure out who's going to make it to the runoff. but if she does, i think we'll see some fireworks in the runoff. >> i understand how there's a spike in southeturnout in the s congressional district. so to watch democrats show up for a primary, where it's not as if that gubernatorial primary is one of those that everybody's been talking about there, o'rourke isn't a very good challenger against ted cruz.

is it trump? >> if you look back to 2016, that was not a terrible night for texas democrats. they had a good showing in dallas county, houston county, what happened in the rust belt. the reverse happened in texas. the urban areas came out that honestly stunned a lot of foelk including me. >> george p. bush has been trying to wrap his arms around the trump family, the trump family has been trying to wrap his arms around him, it seems awkward sometimes, watching it. wow, look at that. i assume it's jarring to some voters too? what's your sense, is he going to be able to get 51% in this runoff? >> that's a question we were debating today. some of the polling i have seen, i hate to make apredictions, i think he'll avoid a runoff.

but i feel -- i've been on the ground in ft. worth, houston and here in austin, and things just feel weird. it feels wierd and unstable. >> what do you mean? incumbents are in trouble on both sides of the aisle? >> i just think there's such a revulsion with the government right now. it wouldn't shock me if we had a situation where maybe a congressman i haven't even been watching suddenly loses re-election tonight, or a state legislator. every once in a while when i was in a previous role caroll call would be just stunned. >> not to put you on the spot here, but is there an incumbent member of congress, that you're saying, i'm going to be curious to watch that primary result tonight? >> i don't have one off the top of my head, but what i can tell you i'm watching long-term is

there's several seats, who are very good democratic candidates, they have real campaigns, they have real pollsters, but these are state of republican seats. john carter's district, ted poe's district. i just wonder if a wave hit how hard it could go, and if some of these imcoupncumbents will be surprised. >> no raining on your texas parade down there, abby livingston, washington bureau chief of the texas tribune.

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in case you missed it, we got a new way that you can be the first kid on your block to know what's going on between now and the midterms. it's the rundown blog, it's chock full of what you need to know, or didn't know or didn't even know you should know, whether it's tv ad buys, poll numbers that you've missed. think of it as a political brain dump. we have center ratings already, we have new analytical data, smart writing. news and uncupping primaries, also you never wind up saying, what the heck happened the last hour? you can find it on our website, nbc news.com/rundown. it doesn't come to your email, so bookmark it, read it, enjoy

it, become smart eer with it. do whatever you want with it, just don't miss it. ari? you know, you can go four or five different directions tonight and i wouldn't became you. >> one of the things we're going to do is play only excerpts from the very interesting interview you had with the witness. >> that characterization on russia, coordination and colluding with wikileaks is not coordination and colluding with russia. >> thank you, as always. tonight a new white house shake-up. but also breaking right now, donald trump's top economic advisor, gary cohn out, and the russia probe, the storm now hitting after the calm. it has been if you think about it,