well, thank you all for watching. >> right now we are going to hand you off to our friend and colleague andrea mitchell for "andrea mitchell reports." >> good day, i'm andrea mitchell. his split with president trump over trade and tariffs draw major concern to staffers and investors, all wondering who else is going to leave the white house.

we have kristin welker here. kristen, at any moment we'll be hearing from the president. he'll be speaking at an event here in washington. but gary cohn, the ripple effects still being felt. >> reporter: they're still being felt, andrea, and the markets started down today and it's an indication of the jitters that gary cohn, the president oe to' adviser has left. he is someone who counters the president's views, so there is a real concern how this is going to impact not only policy but the stability here at the white house. of course, the breaking point for gary cohn, he was asking for a larger role here at the white house, but the real breaking point had to do with the president's refusal to back down on new tariffs. gary cohn and a number of other

republicans have warned it could start a trade war. the president said, hey, trade wars aren't that bad. we heard him reiterate that yesterday during the joint press conference with the prime minister of sweden. adding to all of that, andrea, the fact that there have been so many high-level departures here at the white house in the trump administration. just last week, hope hicks announcing her resignation, and jared kushner, the president's son-in-law, his security clearance was lowered significantly, so his role here is lowered by quite a percent. so the president, as he moves forward with policy issues like trade, one of the questions we'll be drilling down on today, is there any flexibility? his commerce secretary wilbur ross indicated there may be carve-outs for mexico and canada. will that, in fact, be the case? we'll have to see. it seems they're still trying to get the details together, andrea. >> peter, you've been pointing

out, for instance, there was a brooklyn study you wrote about that 40% of the top officials had left, the people who first came in, now that number is up to 43% by brookings count now that gary cohn has left? >> that's right, 43% of the president's top people. of the 12 people close to him, they are all that's left when they came into the office 14 is months ago. the president says it doesn't matter, that some turnover and natural and normal, it isn't chaos, that in his mind it's normal energy. the question is will people coming in be people that can have his ear, people he can rely on. the internal dissension and unhappiness is so extreme that

it's hard for them to move on policies they care about. >> the president is just about to be introduced at the latino coalition legislative summit in washington just a few blocks from the white house. let's listen. >> i want to thank all of you with latino businesses, fantastic job, by the way. most of all, i want to thank all of you, the latino business leaders, who are living proof that the team is back strong as ever. the latino body is the pioneering spirit of america. we're a nation that loves adventure -- and you love adventure -- that celebrates risk-taking and embraces faith and family as the true center of american life. as president, i am committed to unleashing the full potential of the latino community by removing government burdens, by restoring safety and security to our neighborhoods, and by defending

america's interests so that all of our citizens can prosper. america first is about unity. it's about coming together as one family, one, big, beautiful american family. no matter our race or color or creed to protect our jobs, our communities and our country. we want all americans to thrive and flourish together. our program is working far beyond our wildest expectations. we've created nearly 3 million jobs since the election, think of that, 3 million jobs. if i would have said that prior to the election, nobody would have believed it. all right? they would not have believed it. today we have more hispanic americans working than ever before in our history.

setting records. new jobless claims have hit a 48-year low last week. and last year the hispanic unemployment rate reached the lowest level in history. congratulations. and i'm proud to report that hispanic unemployment has remained at or below 5% for the longest period of time ever recorded. you're doing very well! that's good! consumer confidence is at an 18-year high. business confidence is through the roof with a record number of small business owners saying that now is a good time to expand, and by the way, we're going to keep your playing field level so we don't have outside

interests coming in and hurting our country, which they've been doing. they've been doing a lot of that over the last 25 years, and we're doing a lot of things to stop that, and you're seeing that actually already in the numbers. that's why these numbers have been so good or great, i might add. latino-owned businesses now make up more than 10% of all businesses in the united states, providing jobs for more than 2 million american workers. these businesses contributed nearly half a trillion dollars to our economy last year alone. latinos are also starting new businesses at three times the national average. that's pretty good, three times. the american economy is coming back bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and latino businesses are helping to lead the way. you're paving the path.

at the center of america's resurgence are the massive tax cuts i just signed into law. now, that is a lot of money in your pockets no matter where you're coming from. >> as the president continues with the latino coalition, peter baker, you were talking about the exits from the white house, you and kristen welker. pick up that thought about the numbers in your own reporting of people who are original advisers who have left, whether or not gary cohn could return -- he hasn't completely burned his bridges. there have been a lot of rumors about him replacing john kelly. i don't know if that's just a pipe dream. >> at this point it seems unlikely, but there are questions of will john kelly stay? will h.r. mcmasters stay? we heard that hope hicks left, the staff secretary. we have so many people coming and going in this white house

that it's hard to keep track. what any people who have worked in the white house will tell you, republican or democrat, that a certain degree of turnover is natural. it's a burnout kind of job. but the more you can keep everybody together on the same team, the more power you have to enact things you want to enact. the president said he is a president of one. he said yesterday in the press conference that he likes conflict, he likes different points of view, but what you see is a certain degree of dysfunction that john kelly, chief of staff, hasn't been fully able to tame, as much as he's tried to. >> there have been a lot of distractions along the way. one thing peter was pointing out, kristen, i've never seen the white house covering a process. here the process gary cohn replied to latino ambassadors

that they would do an agreement with china. it would be a step-by-step process through counsel and then a deal on steel and aluminum but set the stage and certainly not in the middle of nafta talks. then the president blurts it out in the middle of a photo opportunity and they scramble around saying they didn't have any paperwork done. then you've got stormy daniels in the middle of it. here we're looking at foreign policy and -- bring us up to date on this. i guess i should share everyone what savannah guthrie's interview with the attorney for stormy daniels -- that's her stage name or theatrical name -- you can take it on the other side. >> did she have a sexual relationship with the president? >> yes. >> she also says, according to this document, that there were tangible items, photos, images, that she had them, and according to this agreement she won't turn them over, she will never

release them publicly. does she still have photos, images, text messages, documents that verify this claim? >> that's a question ms. daniels will have to ultimately answer. >> do you know the answer to that? >> i do know the answer and i'm not at liberty to disclose it this morning. >> kristen, this is unprecedented. we've never had a porn star suing the sitting president of the united states, so it's an issue but it doesn't seem to be a disabling issue for this president in the midst of everything else that's happening. >> reporter: that may be one of the most incredible parts to this story, andrea, but just to give some information about the crux of this lawsuit, stormy daniels is suing the president because she says he never signed the nondisclosure agreement, and so, therefore, she has a right to tell her story. she says their relationship again in 2006 at a charity goft tournament and ended in 2007.

sarah sanders was pressed on this earlier in the week in which part the president's attorney gave her a large payout days before the campaign to keep her from sharing her story. sarah sanders was asked if she knew about that payout and she said not to her knowledge. you can bet she'll get a lot of questions about that today. this is the kind of stuff looming over this white house not to carry out policy and get the message straight. when the president blurted out his announcement on tariffs, there was nothing in writing and there really had been nothing decided when it came to care riffs within the administration. of course, you have house speaker paul ryan saying, look, this could spark a trade war. you have a number of different messages coming from the president himself when it comes tie trade war, and another one saying, i don't think there will be a trade war. and then yesterday saying, even if there is a trade war, it's not that big a deal.

they're still trying to get on the same page with the messaging even as these controversies pile up, andrea. >> even the other allies from passing the tax bill, the signature achievement so far for the administration, criticizing this decision as well. peter baker, the other thing that's so striking is that vladimir putin gave his speech days ago threatening the united states with a new class of weapons, we don't know how true that is, how much of a threat, but no response from the president yet on twitter. he's talking about alec baldwin, the academy awards, the ratings for the academy awards. he's talking about the author of a book about "the apprentice." how does that add up? >> you know, you're right, there's been a conspicuous silence about that. the president not only threatened with a new weapon. he had animation striking in

florida, where the president has his vacation home, mar-a-lago. it seemed aun ki strange way to approach it. he did say yesterday he does accept that russia is meddling in the election and he is intending to stop them from trying to do it in 2018. that's moving a little bit further than he has in the past, but he didn't say anything about this sabre rattling by president putin, and it was still even yesterday couched in terms that, you know, were not directly targeting president putin or even really the kremlin generally. just a, this shouldn't happen and we can't let it happen, that russia did something wrong and we need to do something about it. >> he certainly seems to be minimizing to a great extent. peter baker, thank you. thank you, kristen welker. jason furman served as the chairman for the counsel executives of president obama.

jason, as someone who knows the counsel very well, the whole point was to have a parallel organization to the nsc, the nsc being foreign policy and a new economic policy was supposed to synthesize cabinet positions and come up with a policy. how does that contrast with the war between gary cohn and steve mnuchin on one hand and peter navarro on the other hand and the way this whole trade policy was announced? >> that was a great explanation of how it worked. i actually spent time with them in the clinton and the obama presidency. it puts itself in an organized manner. in this situation it doesn't seem to be a process, a whole

lot of organization. i guess this is a pretty hard job for someone like gary cohn to have. at the end of the day, though, i don't think it matters a whole lot who is in this job. there is one person in the white house making decisions. with all the turnover the one person in the white house making that decision has not changed, and that's president trump himself. >> and, jason, i know you're a professor, but i don't want to be too professorial and lose me, but the president does not have an understanding, to put it kindly, about what a trade deficit is and the difference between a trade deficit and an accounts deficit as he has negotiations with not only the european union, but with canada and mexico on nafta. how is america being hurt by the $8 billion trade deficit he's complaining about? >> yesterday i was teaching my macroeconomics class here, and i don't have any politics in that

class at all. i was teaching them about the current account deficit and it felt like a political act that i was attacking the president's understanding of economics when i put up some of the basic identities that are in every single economics textbook and all economists would use. first of all, that $800 billion number is goods. that's an increasingly important part of the u.s. economy. the reason we run that trade deficit is because we spend more than we produce in the united states so we have to borrow money from the rest of the world to make up that difference. if we want to bring the trade deficit down, we have to start investing less or saving more. the tariffs wouldn't let you do that. we have a big trade surplus with brazil even though they have really high tariffs. we have a trade deficit with germany even though they have lower trade rates with the united states. this is about your overall

academic picture and that's what determines your trade balance. >> someone has to start talking about the fiscal side and the tax cuts. >> exactly. i think every exist would predict that the tax cuts, because they weren't paid for, will raise the deficit. that means americans will have to borrow more money from the rest of the world. the only way we can borrow from the rest of the world is if we're buying more stuff from them than they are from us. the tax cut is going to increase the trade deficit and have a much bigger effect than anything in these tariffs. >> jason, could i take your class? let me audit your class at harvard. thank you very much, jason furman. meanwhile, of course, more reporting on russia and this time stunning reports from the "new york times" highlighting a key new figure in the mueller investigation. at least, not a well known figure. george nader, adviser to leaders of a critical ally in the persian gulf reportedly

cooperating with the fbi when he was stopped at dulles airport in january. he was served a subpoena, he was questioned. he had planned to go on to the president's party that weekend in mar-a-lago celebrating the first year the president was in office. joining me now, security analyst and former fbi special agent clint watts and nbc national political reporter carol lee. you've got new reporting on all of this, carol. george nader goes all the way back to when i was kofcovering hostage crisis. he was helping the reagan administration help get some of our hostages successfully out of lebanon at the time. he's a lebanon adviser. he shows up at the islands, the trump tower. who is this guy? >> he is somebody who once is very unknown and very well known. as you said, he's been around in different circles that link to washington, d.c. at various times over the last few decades. you know, he is somebody who

sees himself and others see him as sort of a fixer, a broker, somebody who brings people together, particularly in the middle east, and what we see now is that he has been ensnared in the mueller investigation as somebody who is now talking to the grand jury because of interactions that he had with trump associates during the transition, at least. >> including michael flynn. >> and he's also been in this meeting we've been talking about. and so i think broadly what this suggests is that, based on that and other reporting by us and other organizations, is there is this look at foreign influence, you know, from a broader perspective on trump associates. you know, not just russians but also -- and not just during the campaign but during the transition and then in the white house. >> is jared kushner involved in the middle of this? >> yes. we had reported last week that mueller is looking into whether

meetings that kushner took with foreigners including from the uae and cutter and others had any influence on u.s. policy -- >> important policy of going t to rijad and having a meeting against cutter. why would somebody like nader who has operated on the fringes of policy, and going all the way back decades, dennis ross and other negotiators knew him well -- aaron david miller -- why would he be willing to cooperate? is it likely he was threatened with some sort of violation, perhaps not registering as a foreign agent? >> i would imagine he feels his business is at risk with the uae if he does not cooperate. he was the interlocker between two parties, a russian party and

an american one. so in that relationship, he probably was just looking now for what's best for the uae who had essentially hired him to do this and his business is at risk. in order to continue to operate and be a conduit for whoever his plans are, he probably feels he needs to cooperate and clear his name to do so. >> clint, what does this tell us about the mueller investigation, this many-pronged investigation in terms of what they're looking at? could they also be looking at trump organization connections with some of these foreign leaders, including russia, before the election or during the election? >> absolutely. what's always confusing about the trump team is when did someone become a trump adviser and when did they not? where does the trump team begin and where does it end? it sounds like nader thought he was actually, when he was talking to eric prince, he believed he was interacting with

someone who is speaking with the trump administration or representing them. so it's always unclear, when did these negotiations start? the trump administration was very aggressive even before inauguration day about creating relationships with russian entities. i would note i haven't seen him in any hurry to negotiate relationships with other countries. what's also strange is we've seen with jared kushner maybe to set up a backchannel to communicate with russia. we've seen him meeting with a russian banker. it's a continued pattern. so i think what's interesting in all of this investigation is that it's money and influence with russia as far as information and communications. this is what separates it from the whole soviet units and espionage days where they weren't really participating in the market. now russia sees this as an

influence to to be there. >> and this comes to the attention of the white house, susan rice, the national security adviser and they're wondering, what is going on here? is this a parallel foreign policy? >> and they have intelligence reports that show this happened and were just shocked that the protocols were broken and that they weren't made aware, kind of slipped in and slipped out without their knowledge. we also know that that specific meeting is something that is very much of interest to robert mueller, what happened, the circumstances around it, what happened during it and whether that has any connection to these other meetings that we know he's looking into. >> how important is nader potentially as a witness, cooperating witness? >> i think we don't exactly know.

he's not necessarily somebody as high profile as, like, michael flynn or doesn't have the kind of reach that other cooperating witnesses may have that we know of. but like everything with this investigation, we just -- you know, we know what we know and we don't know what we don't know. >> you know a whole lot. carol lee, thank you as always. and clint watts, thank you. coming up, more on the russia connection. the president still downplaying russian meddling in the election. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. we've been preparing for this day. over the years, paul and i have met regularly with our ameriprise advisor. we plan for everything from retirement to college savings. giving us the ability to add on for an important member of our family.

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uh huh, sure. still yes! xfinity delivers gig speed to more homes than anyone. now you can get it, too. welcome to the party. the russians had no impact on our votes whatsoever, but certainly there was meddling and probably there was meddling from other countries and maybe other individuals, and i think you have to be really watching very closely. you don't want your system of votes to be compromised in any way. and we won't allow that to happen. >> president trump acknowledging meddling but downplaying russia's interference in 2016, even after all the warnings and recent warning from admiral mike rogers, head of one of the top agencies, the nsa, to say

america has not done enough to stop another cyber attack. with us a columnist and ambassador to capitol hill and also associate professor and dean to the university of denver. david ignacious, you've got a column today, america ignores russia at its peril. that resonates with me. we've been talking about how the president has tweeted about everything but vladimir putin's since putin's state of the union, from his perspective, speech in which he threatens the u.s. expressly and implicitly with new weapons. we don't know if this new arsenal exists or how effective it is, but how could this speech be made without a single american response from a top u.s. official, especially the commander in chief?

>> andrea, i have exactly the same feeling. i think that speech was important. i tend to scout, as many analysts have done, putin's bragging about his new weapons. this is something intelligence has been watching for a while. i do take seriously the intense focus on the united states. this is somebody who is almost saying, you know, watch out, america. he comes at us in slow motion, and the refusal to look this straight in the eye, to call it for what it is, to have clear and well-articulated foreign policy responses, i don't get it. it's like you couldn't have a more serious national security issue, in my view. >> and we've just seen now some quotations from -- putin has done an interview, of course, with megyn kelly and denying the

russian interference, but he did an interview with russian state television. it couldn't be a friendly interview as his election approaches. and he's describing donald trump as a great communicator, someone you can make compromises with and he seems to be trying to inoculate president trump for sitting next to him at the g-20 and talking to him without having a translator there, and he says he was talking to melania trump about siberian tigers, about fishing, also to things siberia, so he's spinning his own tale about what they all talked about. >> putin is, in his own way, a masterful communicator with the russian people. he's running his own election, he's trying to talk about the foreign threat of the united states. that's really his theme, is they're threatening us.

he's talking about the new weapons they have. he's trying to make russians proud of their country, the advances it's made. it's fascinating to look at that speech, the way he talks about how far they've come since they bottomed out. he goes through all the achievements they've made. this is a man with a chip on his shoulder, a man who has taken his power something i haven't seen since the days of stalin. >> south koreans say that kim jong-un in their meetings, the first meetings face to face, that he is offering a moratorium on missile and nuclear tests, a summit that is going to take place, we're told, in april between him and president moon of south korea. both sides apparently want that very much. talks with the u.s. if -- and denuclearization which he's never said before -- if they see

no military threat from the u.s. is he basically saying that we have to cancel our military exercises scheduled for the end of march, beginning of april with south korea, annual exercises that were postponed because of the olympics and perhaps take down thaad or remove all of these other obstacles? is that what he's talking about? >> it certainly seems like deja vu. we've heard this from other leaders, including that his father had a dying wish to collect nuclear weapons. there is abundant reason to be cautious, but at the same time, i think we need to be careful how we manage the south korean relationship. that's the relationship that counts. so i think we need to listen carefully, be cautious, but i think we need to not be churlish about it and try to see if there is something there. >> the president used to use phrases like rocket man in a u.n. speech before the world,

taunting kim jong-un. he is now saying he thinks this is a sincere offer. we have to wait to see, but there is progress, they had a great olympics. the rhetoric is changed. at the same time you're talking about the south korean relationship. she's tariffs are going to hit south korea right between the eyes. >> you've got it, and these tariffs really hit workers. >> steel tariffs, i mean. >> steel tariffs, and they'll hit workers right between the eyes. we need to kind of look at these issues and understand that they are related. certainly i put nuclear weapons kind of up there, and i'm a little surprised that the president went off on this issue of tariffs. i gather mr. cohn was as well, that he's kind of pursued this at a time when we really need some movement on the nuclear issue because that thing is coming down the rails and it's very serious. >> chris hill, great to see you. thank you for being here in person. and, of course, david ignacious,

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attorney general jeff sessions announcing the lawsuit this morning in sacramento. >> treating immigration agents differently than everyone else for the purpose of eviscerating border laws and advancing an open border philosophy shared by only a few, the most radical extremists. stop preotecting lawbreakers an giving officers more dangerous work to do so that politicians can score political points on the backs of officer safety. >> let's get the inside scoop from ann gearen, white house correspondent for the "washington post," sam stein, the daily beast politics editor and msnbc contributor, ann mayr, also an msnbc contributor. what's the impact of this

lawsuit in california? obviously the lawyers will tell us where it's going, to both state and federal court. >> the interesting part is that the sanctuary policy is across the country and it's something that is advocated. the reason it's advocated is it keeps the community safe. someone who has witnessed a crime allows them to pick up the phone and announce it. it makes the communities less safe, and as a result, the rest of the country unsafe. >> the senator from california has just responded to attorney general sessions. let's watch. >> the attorney general is faced with a very important issue and clearly has put a target on california's back. the department of justice has limited resources and it would be a much better use of those resources to focus on issues

that really impact the public's safety and well-being of the american public, including people in california and including local law enforcement in california. >> ann gearen, the irony here is that jeff sessions is doing exactly what the president wants. jeff sessions who is ridiculed and evaded against by the president both on and off the record. he's either taking a very hard line on this issue. this is something the president campaigned against. >> it is. it's something the president campaigned on. it's the way the white house political advisers see it, risk free. there's really no down side politically for them to take this stance. the thinking being, you know, yes, the president's base is anti-immigrant, the president's base doesn't like california. go ahead, right? >> so jeff sessions is once again in trouble, so he

basically -- well, he's in trouble with the president. so he basically goes back and starts parading this idea. the last time jeff sessions was in trouble, he went to the podium and basically created a false date for daca expiration. so every time he feels there is actually tension between he and the president, he goes after the base -- >> and talks about alleged fisa violations which nobody else thinks -- >> it's his way of breaking bread once again with the president, sending his olive branch saying, i will do what you need me to do. >> i just think it's a reminder that we have this debate going on about daca and that's also in the court system, and there is a sense that it's static. we're waiting for a resolution and therefore nothing is happening on immigration policy. a lot of them are happening at the behest of jeff sessions in the justice department, and a lot of it is directed at breaking up these communities, targeting these states. this is all happening on the ground level. there is sort of these dual

conversations happening. one is, what are they going to do about daca? and the other is actually executing these. >> we hear of folks literally coming in from one block and taking the parents and leaving the kids behind so social services can come and pick them up. it is an epidemic. in los angeles, they're building a private detention center for 300 people. who is going to fill them? >> the secretary of state trying to fix what the president did last week. there was supposed to be a visit from the mexican president, everything was set, and the president of the united states, in a conversation with president nieto, could not resist saying he will bring up the wall. they have an election july 1st. there was no way the president of mexico was going to come, and this was after the seventh round of nafta talks. so jared is going down there to

try to fix this, he supposedly still has the mexico account, but he no longer has top security clearance, so he can't read the intel going into the meeting. >> i feel for jared a little bit, because the ability to achieve success is limited and you're constantly being undermined by your father-in-law, which is difficult. i think it's hilarious in a way, and a little sad, i guess, this idea that mexico is going to pay for the wall. there is still some sort of currency in republican circumstances els a he was given $20 billion for the wall. it wasn't funded by mexico. the president keeps going there again and again and again. at some point the base has to awaken and realize this is obviously fiction, right? >> the base will suffer more from these blown-up trade talks than anything that is going to be done.

but, ann, as somebody who watches the president every day, explain to our viewers why the president of the united states can't be told by his national security adviser and his economic adviser or his son-in-law to not talk about the wall in a single phone call with a foreign leader right before a visit and not say that he's going to embarrass him in public right before their elections. >> it may be as simple as he was told not to do it. >> that's the impulse mechanism. >> to have a successful meeting while nafta talks are going on, all he had to do was not talk about the wall. and when told that, he decided to talk about the wall. i mean, i'm not a psychologist, but -- >> you play one on tv. >> the problem i'm hearing from foreign leaders at all levels is our staffs, our ambassadors, our foreign ministers can make deals and shake hands with a

tillerson, with a mattis, with a head of dps. but when it gets to the floor, it's all blown up. >> until they hear something directly from the president and it sticks, there is a legitimate question of whether it's real. >> we're going to have to leave it there. marie, ann and sam, thank you very much. coming up, up in arms. how the gun issue is now taking over florida politics. you're watching msnbc. but she's not much on "articles of organization." articles of what? so, she turned to legalzoom. they helped me out. she means we helped with her llc, trademark, and a lot of other legal stuff that's a part of running a business. so laura can get back to the dogs. would you sit still? this is laura's mobile dog grooming palace and this is where life meets legal.

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we have bonn been told we need to listen to the children. are there any children on this floor. are there any children making laws. do we allow the children to tell us that e we should pass a law that says no homework or you finish high school at the age of 12 just because they want it so. no. the adults make the laws because we have the age, we have the wisdom and we have the experience. >> a contentious and emotional

battle in the florida state house as lawmakers debated for several hours sweeping gun control legislation, including a proposal to arm some teachers and staffers in the wake of the parkland school massacre. joining me is former congresswoman quinn graham, who is now running for the democratic nomination for governor. it's good to see you again. in watching that debate, that's one clip from the debate. i don't recall any of the students that we have been interviewing, seeing at vigils, seeing at news conferences or marching asking they not do homework or graduate at the age of 12. the effort in that clip just now to diminish the intelligence, the pain and the passion of these kids is really astounding to me. >> i know, andrea. as a mom, i'm heartbroken by this. as a florida b, i'm incensed. listening to that representative yesterday speak about the

students in this so callously was an example of the control that the gun lobby has over the state legislature here in tallahassee. it's time we put a mom in charge here in tallahassee and as governor, i'm going to absolutely be. listening to students because they are our future. i'm so proud of all that they have been doing. they are not going to be silenced. every time we have had a mass shooting, it's happened and time has past and people have stopped talking about it. i went to stoneman douglas the saturday after the shooting. i met with the teachers. i met with the students. i listened to them. and i gay them my u word that i will never forget. as a mom, i'm going to be fighting for them every single day and making sure that florida is no longer owned by the gun lobby, but is looking out for the future of those students and all students into the future, which is what they are fighting for. >> now where does the legislation stand now? because on monday the senate in

tallahassee did pass some gun laws. >> the legislation currently is up for a vote in the house of representatives. and i will tell you that the current state of that legislation where there's no assault ban rifle and where there's arming of student personnel, school personnel, that's just such a crazy idea. my husband is law enforcement. and he and i talked about this last night. the last thing we need is more g guns on campuses. and n a situation like what happened at that school, if we had people firing guns, more people could have died. so we've got to get back not state of florida to not letting the gun lobby be in charge of the legislation that's moving through the house and the senate. when i'm governor, i'm going to be working with the legislature showing the leadership that we need to show to make sure that

those students, that what they are fighting for, what they are committed to doing, that we honor those 17 lost and we prevent that from ever happening again. as a mom, it breaks my heart to know that parents are dropping their children off at school in florida and they are worried if they are going to pick their children alive up at the end of the day. enough, it's time we enact common sense legislation and this can't be an argument between the second amendment and common sense gun safety legislation because most gun owners also support the steps that i just talked about. >> betsy devos was at stoneman douglas today and was talking about arming teachers and supports that. there's controversy whether she met with students. some of the students and teachers saying she didn't have a meeting with students. that remains to be seen.

but what is washington doing right now that makes seasonse t you? >> very little. when i was in congress, we did very little as well. after the pulse shooting, i sat on the floor with congressman john lewis and i talked about the need to have common sense gun safety laws. i stood on the florida and gave an impassioned speech and nothing was done. and for those students, the fact that betsy devos would go to their student and further politicize this issue, what they are asking for is action. they are tired of words. >> thank you very much. we have to leave it there. >> more ahead. we'll be right back. 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

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thanks for being with us. craig melvin takes over in new york. >> good to see you. craig melvin here in new york. who's left? the latest trump administration departu departure. top economic adviser a man described as a sois of reason inside the west wing. questions this afternoon about whether the chaos inside the white house becomes more public and perhaps spills into the economy as well. also investigating the investigators. top republicans want