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karen, since you are working on a nancy reagan biography, i will tell you i was with ed meece talking about wreck a deck and how everyone thought it went south even though it was a great win. has that crossed your mind since thursday night that the president will sit down with the north korean dictator? >> that is immediately what i thought of. the circumstances were very, very different. the summit was preceded by years and years of trust building on the part of the administration. president reagan had a very clear world view, i think, of clear and fairly consistent world view. but the listen was i think that you have to go into these negotiations knowing exactly what your end goal is and also exactly what you're willing to walk away from the table over.

and what happened with president reagan was it was considered a failure at the time because he and gorbachev got close to an arms agreement and he walked away from continuing research on "star wars", the strategic defense initiative. it was considered a horrible failure, huge missed opportunity. but a year later, that was the groundwork for an enormous arms control agreement between these same two leaders. >> three years later the soviet union was no more. karen, be optimistic with me for a second. if in fact, this leads to denuclearization, doesn't that mean a nobel prize for donald trump? could the world's davos elite bring themselves to do that? >> the problem is we have seen this movie before. in the 90s the clinton administration thought they had an arms control deal with the

north koreans. so i think that, yes, it would be a major achievement if in fact, there was follow through on this. we're not having lucy and charlie brown and the football once again. >> alana shore, let me ask you what you heard on the hill after the news came down. what's the reporting and reaction among other congressional friends? >> well, i think republicans wish they had been in town when this handled. they had a tough thursday over this tariff plan. and then this really good north korean news that allows them to say, look, there's the prospect of a testing suspension, the prospect of a real agreement on denuclearizati denuclearization. democrats are caught on the back foot right now thinking how hard should we warn donald trump against going into a negotiation that, to karen's point, he may not have a clear way out of that doesn't work. >> alaina, what did you hear, the same thing alana did? >>. >> a bit more tepid response.

they are excited we're talking about peace and not war. trump is ultimately operated on a high that he is doing something no president pwrpd in the 70 years of conflict has done before. ultimately as karen put it it is not enough to go into a negotiation and know what's on the table and know when you're willing to walk away. so i think at this point my sources on the hill are skeptical because they don't know the details yet. they are still dealing with the fallout of thursday's tariff announcement. now suddenly the leader of the free world is meeting with a brutal dictator. i also think one hill source told me in the freedom caucus, we worry trump will see himself in cutting the same cloth as nixon on china. but the thing there is, you know, china and the u.s. at the time shared an andy-stalin

skwraepbd. this was based off years of negotiations. nixon whaou what he wanted and knew when to walk away. trump favors nixon. so i think you will see hill sources worry that the president is thinking far more about the image, what he has done no president can before as opposed to the substance of this meeting. >> karen, of course, president nixon preceded the china initiative with four years of negotiations, wrote his first foreign affairs before he was elected. and kissinger went back and forth secret any to china. this is all new. if h.r. mcmaster, general, national security adviser, leaves in the next two months as rumored, it will be a fiasco, right? >> i think so. because what we have here is, you know, negotiations thus far have been conducted by twitter with name-calling and arguing

over who has the bigger button. you really do need to have kind of all hands on deck with expertise. we have a state department that has pretty much been hole he lowed out. >> alone that, on on thursday i thought we would be talking about gary cohn leaving. now we are not. we are talking about north korea. do you hear if changes are more afoot in the west wing? john bolton coming on board to help prep for this north korea thing? >> that is certainly the gossip on the hill right now. everyone is expecting bolton to play a bigger role. everyone is expecting the continued rise of peter navarro. and everyone is preparing for knight potentially to take over for gary cohn. so there's a lot of shuffling in the west wing. and i mean to alaina's point, there srpbl is serious concern about the north korean talks.

bottom line, the republicans, at least the ones i talked to, are searching for something to feel confident about, some optimism about this very turbulent white house. >> alaina, let me ask you about peter navarro. he ran for mayor in san diego, anticipate-developer, anti-developer left-winger. he ran for county supervisor on the same platform. then congress with hillary clinton on his side and addressed the democratic national convention as a left wing democrat. how in the world does peter navarro end up making trade policy for a republican white house? >> i'll tell you exactly how it happens, hugh. my conversations with peter in the past year i have noticed him to be a pretty eccentric guy who does put you at ease when you speak to him. like we have seen with chuck schumer before, trump feels comfortable when he sits down with him. i think ultimately those interpersonal relationships are so crucial in determining these major policies.

now, whether or not he can hang onto that when you see knight come in who has a lot of backing from capitol hill republicans and democrats alike is another question. but i think a reason to never count out something like navaroe is because he does put the president at ease. >> he is charming and ofable. he had george schultz, greatest living marine. he had the prince of darkness, richard pearl. a deep and wide bench. i'm just not seeing that bench at the white house. are you? >> not at the white house. not at the national security council. not at the state department. truly, donald trump, he not only has the team, he doesn't trust the team that he has. and that is a big problem. because in the end what donald trump trusts are his own instincts and his own reflexes.

>> and, karen, one last thing. when george w. bush scored his big win in libya and got gadhafi to turn over his weapons, it was secret. it took two or three years to get the weapons out and destroyed. have you heard anything about a plan to actually verify denuclearization for kim jong-un to promise it? >> they didn't even have a plan for how to set up this meeting. it was something donald trump decided spur of the moment. it came as a great surprise to his own team. the most likely answer to this is no. >> we will find out in the weeks and months ahead. thank you alaina, alana, karen. "the looming tower" book is now. now a television series. author lawrence wright joins me next. i have type 2 diabetes.

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♪ welcome back. i'm hugh hewitt. you can hear me monday through friday 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. eastern on salem radio network. saturday mornings i'm here on msnbc. if you have been listening to my radio show, you know since 2007, i've asked almost every serious guest who has been on the program, including heidi hide camp if the guests had read the book "the looming tower." this book, which was the pulitzer prize winner in 2007, is a deep dive into the origins of not just al qaeda and osama bin laden but the world view which brought the movement and man into america's history on that terrible day 9/11. now it has become a terrible series on hulu. the author of the book and the creator of the television series

which he co-wrote is lawrence wright. most recently to be published is "god save texas." lawrence wright, welcome. good to talk to you on television instead of just the radio finally. >> wish i could see you, hugh but it is good on to talk to you in this form as well. >> it's excellent. i watched the first three episode. not episode 4 yet. i have to ask you -- you know i love the book so i can start with a complaint. episode one, amazing jeff damns playing the fbi agent at the center of the book says after the embassy bombings in kenya tanzania, 1998, now it begins. you gene in greenly, colorado. what happened to that part? >> hugh, there is some possibility that if we are able to extend this series we might go back to that time. you're not the only one to signal that.

of course it's important to understand the rise of radical islam. you have to understand saeb and his journey to america. so much came out of that. i would very much like to revisit that. >> he writes two books which deeply influenced zawahiri who influenced osama bin laden. do you think that fan at similar is growing more intense as the years go by or less? >> i don't know about the intensity, but the spread of it is really alarming to me. when al qaeda struck america in 9/11, there were only about 400 members in al qaeda at the time. now, there are thousands, not just in al qaeda but its chapters around the world. it is still a considerable problem, far larger than it was on 9/11. >> they communicate the depth of

division between the fbi and the cia prior to 9/11. were you happy with how it was portrayed and has that division been healed now? >> you know, i think the actors have done a wonderful job of portraying the institutional and personal rivalries between the cia and the fbi, which was so damaging. it really, i believe, caused -- allowed the 9/11 plot to proceed. had those two agencies cooperated with each other, i think we would be living in a different america. now, yes, the intelligence communities have healed that rift to some extent, to a large extent. we created the national counterterrorism center, for instance, where intelligence agents from different bureaus and agencies sit together and have to share information. and our relations with intelligence agencies in other countries is dramatically better, which is one of the reasons we have been able to do

really superb job of protecting america since 9/11. >> my law students, i've got them reading "looming tower" for first amendment seminar. they asked me to ask you this. do we need the perspective that we have been allowed to have in the 17 years since 9/11 in order to understand what happened? tphoerldz, did we overreact after 9/11? >> no question we acted out of fear and paranoia and did some things that were mistakes. the diversion from afghanistan to iraq was a terrible mistake. we had al qaeda on the run. and had we sealed the borders in afghanistan and trapped bin laden right after that and simply gotten out, i think we would have -- the world would have been on our side and we would not have been in these prolonged wars we have been in ever since. that was a terrible error. we haven't gotten to the point where we are seeing the end of the consequences.

>> now, lawrence, one of the great things about the hulu series is how it depicts the bombings at the embassies. they have been much overlooked because of the massacre and terror of 9/11. now we have al qaeda and its affiliates spreading around the world. do they have greater or lesser capacity? and in terms of our defense, is it greater or lesser around the world? not here in the u.s. but at these remote places like kenya and tanzania? >> i think in both cases the potency of the al qaeda offense and our defense has increased. what concerns me is the spread of technology, drone technology in particular. and then the access to certain kinds of chemical and biological weapons which they will pose a real problem not just for america but so many countries around the world. and we have to keep our defense up. we have to keep on top of it.

but be aware that this is a different era. you know, the theme of this season is divided we fail. and we see the consequences of the division within the intelligence agencies and what that led to. but the extreme partisanship and the discredit that is thrown at the intelligence agencies i think is very damaging and distracting to us right now when we should be concentrated on these threats. >> let me close by talking about in the book "the looming tower," zawahiri comes through in the hulu series as well. here we are 18 years later, who would have thought that zawahiri would still be out there, still be guiding al qaeda. when you consider that, what do you conclude about this man? >> well, he's proven himself to be a far more supple leader than i thought he would be.

up to 9/11, he had not been a good leader. he had, you know, his egyptian islamic jihad which he had run into the ground. he was not charismatic. he was sort on of the opposite. but he has proved to be elusive. and he has managed to keep the organization together. amazingly a disbursed period after 9/11, he was able to bring it back into coherence. and to propagate different chapters around the world. i have to give him credit for keeping not only that organization alive but bringing it back to health. >> very quickly, lawrence, is there going to be a second season? terrific television. jeff daniels is an incredible actor and playing a larger than life personality in john o'neill. i hope you go back to the beginning. are there conversations to that end? >> there are conversations to that end. and, you know, i myself as i sit here don't know the answer to your question.

>> well, i hope it is yes eventually. thank you lawrence wright for a great and wonderful book and now television series. up next, hugh's views on the development concerning north korea. i'll be right back. you wouldn't accept an incomplete job from any one else. so why accept it from your allergy pills? most pills don't finish the job because they don't relieve nasal congestion. flonase allergy relief is different. flonase relieves sneezing, itchy, watery eyes and a runny nose, plus nasal congestion, which pills don't. flonase helps block 6 key inflammatory substances. most pills only block one. and 6 is greater than 1. start your day with flonase for more complete allergy relief. flonase. this changes everything. ancestrydna can pinpoint where your ancestors are from...

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welcome back. president trump is going to sit down with kim jong-un. is this going to be a reverse munich where the president explains in his style that it is his way or no highways for north korea. not just no highways but no infrastructure left standing at all, just rubble. or a pr windfall for the north korean dictator. i sat down with edwin meece the night of the announcement of the new summit and brought up the summit with president reagan and the ussr gorbachev in october of 1986. there is a famous photo of a grim reagan and grim secretary of state schultz leading many at that moment to believe a failed summit. gorbachev had made sweeping

offers, meece recalled to me. all the big cuts in the nuclear arsenals would only come if reagan would abandon his strategic defense initiative. meece recalled that a began knew his own mind so thoroughly that never was going to happen. reagan knew going in he would never agree to that. and when gorbachev demanded that, there was no going forward. resolve matters at the summit. if kju gets a source of something he never had before, denuclearization or destruction, it could work. it is useful to consult a 1980 book by richard nixon. the president arguably with the most successful summit in beijing in 1972. he devoted a chapter to presidential leadership. there is quite a lot on preparing for sum mitts. the key admonition, quote, but a

president should go to a summit only if the stakes are worth the risks and the meeting is thoroughly programmed in advance. no president should go with an adversary unless he knows what is on the other side of the mountain. nicks op also wrote 10 rules he wished he could have carved into the wall of the oval office. the very first one of which is, quote, always be prepared to negotiate but never negotiate without being prepared. all of our ends rules are worth reading but none more than that first one. if president trump goes to meet with kju, and if president trump sticks to that edge the details can be worked out later. even if it's a reverse munich or the pacific that is preferable to a photo-op that bestows press staoepb prestige on one of the worst people on the planet.

clinton with wyatt river was a lost opportunity. reagan at rec vick was the biggest of all but no one knew at the time. lots of commentary ahead. we just won't know for a very long time how to score this upcoming meeting. that's it for this week. please keep the conversation going on msnbc.com/hugh-hewitt and saturday morning here on msnbc. did mom give me too much freedom? did dad make me lust for too great an adventure? my scars and bruises tell their own story. so here's to you, mom and dad. freedom and adventure. your body was made for better things than rheumatiod arthritis. before you and your rheumatologist move to another treatment, ask if xeljanz xr is right for you. xeljanz xr is a once-daily pill for adults with moderate to severe ra

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to keep our community safe. before you do any project big or small, pg&e will come out and mark your gas and electric lines so you don't hit them when you dig. call 811 before you dig, and make sure that you and your neighbors are safe. hey there. very good morning to all of you. i'm alex witt in new york at the half hour. here's what's happening. we begin with two big stories out of the white house this morning. new today, "the wall street journal" reporting president trump's lawyers are seeking a deal with special counsel robert mueller to speed the end of the russia probe. meanwhile, new details on what exactly happened inside the oval on office the night the president accepted kim jong-un's