news. after months of policy disagreements over the iran nuclear deal, over russia, tariffs and north korea, the president fires his secretary of state, who had early warnings but only finds out about it from a tweet this morning. >> rex and i have be talking about this for a long time. we got along actually quite well, but we disagreed on things so we were not really thinking the same. the cia director mike pompeo, a trump favorite, is the president's choice to become the nation's top diplomat. >> tremendous energy, tremendous intellect. we're always on the same wavelength. the relationship has been very good and that's what i need as secretary of state. good day. i'm andrea mitchell with the stunning news today that president trump has fired his secretary of state at a critical time for u.s. foreign policy. rex tillerson is out as the

nation's top diplomat. shocking america's closest allies, as the president heads into historic talks with north korea. threatens to withdraw from the iran nuclear deal, and says he welcomes a trade war. mr. trump explaining the reasons behind this massive shakeup from the south lawn today. >> i wish rex tillerson well. i'm really at a point where we're getting very close to having the cabinet and other things that i want. as far as rex tillerson is concerned, i very much appreciate his commitment and i wish him well. he's a good man. we were not really thinking the same. with mike, mike pompeo, we have a very similar thought process. i think it's going to go very well. i actually got along well with rex, but really, it was a different mindset. it was a different thinking. >> joining me is nbc national correspondent peter alexander at the white house. msnbc political analyst and "the washington post" white house

bureau chief phil rucker, david ignatius, gardner harris, who was just on the plane with rex tillerson coming back early this morning from africa and on that whole seven-day trip, and nbc national political reporter carol lee. phil, let's go first to you. you and your team broke the story. the surprising announcement today that despite all their tensions for more than a year, that rex tillerson was fired on twitter. >> yeah. well, andrea, it's interesting, there seems to be some conflicting information, because the white house is telling us that chief of staff john kelly actually called tillerson overnight in the wee hours saturday in africa, woke him up from his sleep to tell him that, you know, his job was in jeopardy, he ought to get back to washington right away. we are still trying to sort out exactly what that conversation was about but tillerson, if he didn't know until this morning he was going to be fired

definitively, he at least should have had some indication that this was coming, that things were not going well in the relationship with the president. >> gardner harris, you were on the plane with rex tillerson, who had an unusually we thought candid briefing, extraordinary briefing, on the flight between n nigeria and refueling in cape verde. we got the transcript from you and your colleagues, our colleague, abigail williams, the pool producer on all of that. his state of mind as he talked to you very openly about being the point person setting up the upcoming korea talks. >> he did. look, phil and i are getting the same information. the white house people are sort of telling us look, kelly called him, kelly gave him a heads-up. the state department people are telling us tillerson didn't really get that message. i think what we are hearing kelly told him is you are going to get a tweet, but you know, there's a lot of people in this

administration, jeff sessions among them, who get tweets that are critical and tillerson sort of felt like i think he had been here before, that he would weather this storm like he had weathered others. so yes, you are exactly right, i was on the plane with him. if he knew that he was about to be fired, he is the coolest customer i have ever known. he spoke to us about his plans for diplomacy going forward. he then got off the plane at cape verde, was very jocular, laughing with his chief of staff who by the way, is also being fired today. there was no sense of grim forboding in that group whatsoever, and as you said, one thing we are also hearing is in that interview, he was very tough on russia, much tougher than the official line coming out of the state department, and it was another one of those sort

of last straw things. the white house was livid about that because once again, it made them look like they are being soft on russia which they don't want to look like because he really got out in front of the white house and what was really known about this poisoning incident in britain. so i don't think he really got it, it really sunk in that kelly's call suggested that his job was in jeopardy. and you know, he of course came back in around 4:30 this morning and it wasn't until apparently trump's tweet that his top staffer showed him that he understood he was really out of a job. >> david, i want to come to you because you and i have both covered this man. you have interviewed him many times. the fact is that he was, let's face it, a management disaster. the irony because he was ceo of the world's largest private company. but he was at least regarded as a traditionalist in terms of

foreign policy. he objected on tariffs, objected on withdrawing from the iran deal, the paris climate accord. most recently, he said it was going to take a much longer time to open and move the embassy in jerusalem -- to jerusalem for security reasons and then the white house preempted him on that and said it's going to happen on may 14th. so there were so many things, iran, russia, on which they disagreed. we were not respected by allies because they knew he was not on the same page as the president. he was far more traditional and in line with europe. >> you put it just right. he consistently from what we know gave the president, the white house, traditional advice about alliances, relationships, the continuity of u.s. policy. in doing so, he was in sync with

secretary of defense mattis. the two of them would talk over every policy issue before going to the white house to make sure they were aligned. i think mattis will be very sorry to see tillerson leave. the president was pretty direct in the comments he made this morning as he was about to get on the helicopter. he just didn't feel that he was in step with tillerson. it's obvious that that traditional foreign policy advice, he kept getting from his secretary of state, bothered him. the president wants to be the disruptor and he has a secretary of state who says hold on, sir, let's be more careful here. tillerson has not been a successful secretary of state. you have to be honest about that. he has many good qualities intellectually but the state department is just a mess. and i think that the new secretary, pompeo, will be a better communicator. a lot of things to wonder and worry about with pompeo as secretary of state but in terms of the outward facing aspects of the job, i suspect he will be a lot better at it.

>> peter alexander, let's put in context here this extraordinary timeline. in that interview with gardner harris and our other colleagues on the plane last night on the way back from africa, the secretary said he was awakened early saturday morning around 2:30 in the morning by a call. so that was part of his explanation, 2:30 according to him, he was awakened. that means that that was probably the john kelly call that has been referenced. but it could well be that he did not take this as the firing because he had said, he had constantly said he has to do it to my face. i'm not going to quit, despite all of the, you know, don't waste your time, rex, when he was on his way back from asia, famously, don't waste your time with diplomacy, ironically they are now doing diplomacy with north korea, and the other thing was on october 4th we reported that back in july, the president had referred to him as a moron. it's very clear that mr. trump

understandably did not like being called a moron from his secretary of state, something that rex tillerson personally did not deny. >> i think that last point is crucial here. you talk about with jeff sessions, the original sin being his recusal from his role in the russia investigation. for rex tillerson, the original sin perhaps was that comment where he, among other officials, describe the president as a moron, as first reported by the team here at nbc news. as you noted most importantly, although there were multiple occasions on which he was pressed on this and even at the time came out, said i won't address petty things, the word he used was petty issues like that and even more recently was asked about it again, and again said he wouldn't talk about it. privately, my conversations here at the white house are that that continued to frustrate the president, that that has upset him from the very beginning. one thing that really struck me from the president's comments on the south lawn today was that he said i'm finally getting to the point where we have the right

cabinet members, we have our cabinet and other officials in place. he said he's finally getting to that point which is to suggest there may be more changes still to come and remember, this is a president who from the very beginning said i only hire the smartest, the best people, but consider the abrupt shifts we have already watched, not just in his cabinet but across his administration, this west wing over the course of the last several months. they are still looking for a new communications director after hope hicks announced departure, replacing anthony scaramucci, sean spicer, mike dubkey. tom price at hhs is out. reince priebus has been fired. to say nothing of the other issues that have gone alongside david shulkin at the v.a., questions about his status right now, questions about spending by ben carson and others. so even as we talk about what is just a seismic shift right now with the announcement regarding rex tillerson, consider the fact the president still appears to be dissatisfied and there may be more change coming. >> in fact, maggie haberman, who

is often referred to as the trump whisperer because of all her exclusive reporting, people close to the white house say they expect more major personnel shifts this week, an effort to rip off the band-aid fast -- >> especially if the republican loses in pennsylvania. watch that tonight. it will infuriate the president. >> that's so smart of you, peter. >> those two things, it's the politics of this election tonight which the republicans fear they may lose and will lead to a real change or worsening of the narrative around the trump presidency. i think also, you know, you are exactly right here, peter, that the president oddly is getting more confident in this job, getting -- he's a year in, he really is feeling like he sort of knows how to do this job, and he doesn't really want to be lectured anymore by people around him who i think in the first few months he was willing to sort of take that because he

wasn't confident in the job. so i think among the other people that we are going to be watching this week, of course, is h.r. mcmaster, the national security adviser. they are clearly not in sync, just as the president and rex tillerson weren't in sync. and you know, you wonder about whether that is the next shoe to drop. but andrea, i think it is important to point out, you know, in your conversation that rex tillerson really genuinely was one of the least successful secretaries of state in history. you have two jobs basically as secretary of state. you have to manage the white house and you have to manage the state department. he obviously did not manage the white house very well at all, and he was a disaster in managing the building. the third, which is managing your interlocutors around the world, can only happen if you do those first two jobs. he just was never comfortable in this town. he always sort of continued to

have that sort of imperial ceo attitude of listen, i'm the secretary of state and i'm in charge. everybody in this town knows that that's not really the way the town works. you have various power centers that you have to manage and he never really understood that. >> well, nothing could have made that more clear than his comment about the moron which was done in the pentagon at the tank. carol lee is here. that was your original reporting. you were the lead reporter on that. we all then were contributing. but from your perspective, can you recall a secretary of state ever publicly, because that is public, there were a number of people present, a number of witnesses, we had a number of sources there, calling the boss, the commander in chief, a moron after such a significant meeting? >> no. and particularly in front of a number of his colleagues and obviously, we spoke to several people who overheard tillerson call the president a moron. i think that it's exactly that,

it's hard to overstate how much that irritated the president and that tillerson continued to not deny it. that was just a constant reminder of, you know, the fact that these two are not on the same page and he felt rex tillerson didn't respect him so it was all of the policy reasons that they were at odds over, and then you had the relationship and the chemistry that just didn't gel. then rex tillerson not denying that he called the president a moron, which he didn't deny it, because he did, obviously. the benefit i think that whether it's a team or it's just the secretary of state and the new cia director coming in has a year into this presidency is they can learn from some of the mistakes that they have seen people like rex tillerson make in terms of dealing with the president. this was neither rex tillerson or donald trump knew each other well coming into this. they didn't gel. mike pompeo obviously has a very big advantage in this relationship because he does

have a good relationship with the president. you heard the president stress how important that is to him this morning. and so there's an opportunity for them to kind of handle the way the president operates, his management style, in a better way than some of the people who originally came in did. >> to that point, david, perhaps you and i are the only ones here who remember the firing of alexander haig who also certainly was arrogant and did not get along with the president and made his own, staked out his own place with ronald reagan. that is a key point here. really, the devastation of the foreign service, you said it was a mess, just in the last ten days we have had the resignation of the most preeminent of the asia specialists and roberta jacobson, all of latin america. ambassador to mexico but previously assistant secretary for the region. we have vacancies at assistant secretaries, acting secretaries

everywhere and vacant ambassador posts in key posts, riyadh and key embassies around the world. >> mike pompeo is smart, he will move quickly to fix that. he will quickly appoint ambassadors to fill these open embassies, many of them are going to be career appointments. there are some things that pompeo ought to find no-brainers as he comes in. he has one thing going for him that tillerson never did, and that in some ways was fatal. tillerson could never speak for the president in a way that was credible. it was known around the world that this was a bad relationship, a bad marriage between the president and secretary of state. >> partly because of jared kushner and initially steve bannon setting up the riyadh summit which was not a logical place to begin your diplomacy overseas. >> tillerson was undercut and

humiliated in 20 different ways, but i think the fact that he didn't take command of his own bureaucracy and mobilize it, the reason that secretary mattis is so powerful in his interactions with the white house is he's got the pentagon, military, behind him. tillerson never understood he had to have the foreign service behind him. it serves the country, it also serves him as a powerful figure. people around the world knew that rex tillerson did not speak for this president and that's a problem. >> we have an all-star cast throughout this program. thank you all for launching us. also, we understand that there have been two more firings, not only the chief of staff but gardner harris, we also understand steve goldstein, the undersecretary for public affairs, who had only come on board in december, has also just been fired as well. cleaning house at the state department for those who are left. we have to leave it there. this is an extraordinary day even for this administration.

thanks to all. out of the shadows. who is the woman that president trump wants to run the cia? the former director of the spy agency's covert operations, well, the former director of the spy agency joins us next to talk about the first woman and the first head of covert operations since william colby in the '70s to take over the cia. stay with us. plaque psoriasis can be relentless. your plaques are always there at the worst times. constantly interrupting you with itching, burning and stinging. being this uncomfortable is unacceptable. i'm ready. tremfya® works differently for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. with tremfya®, you can get clearer and stay clearer. in fact, most patients who saw 90% clearer skin at 28 weeks... stayed clearer through 48 weeks. tremfya® works better than humira® at providing clearer skin and more patients were symptom free with tremfya®. tremfya® may lower your ability to fight infections, and may increase your risk of infections.

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president trump's choice to head the cia is deputy director gina haspel. if confirmed, haspel would be the first woman to run the agency. what more do we know about her? joining me is john mcloughlin, former acting director of cia, former deputy director, long-time deputy director and msnbc national security analyst. first of all, two things that are noteworthy. the first woman. she's also formerly the head of covert ops. i think the only predecessor in that role to take over the agency or the most recent was william colby. >> that's right. yeah. >> what does that mean? what signal does that send at home and abroad? >> well, i think let's start with the cia. if you were choosing a professional to head the cia, i frankly can't think of a better choice than gina haspel. gina is widely experienced, respected by all parts of the agency and so within the agency, this will be met with calm and with reassurance and with pleasure.

overseas, i don't think she's well-known. she has served overseas. she's well-known to other intelligence services, but i think overseas, the message should be the cia, at a moment when this is a controversial period in the united states, has a director who knows how to speak truth to power, who is an honest person of integrity and the cia is in good hands if she's chosen. >> clearly she must have accompanied pompeo, mike pompeo, on these daily excursions to the white house where he, among others who played the role that you played, he was there every day because this president does not read his pdb the way others have, and he really wanted a verbal briefing in person at 11:00 every morning. someone has described that as a big time slot for the cia director but clearly that helped cement their relationship. she was most likely there when mike pompeo was not.

>> i'm sure she stood in for him when he wasn't there. i suspect she has some kind of relationship with the president. clearly he chose her for a variety of reasons. i think that's fine. pompeo had a particularly warm relationship with the president. i don't know exactly what hers is, but i'm sure it's a good one. >> now, there was a bump in her career rise. john brennan had promoted her and that promotion did not go through because there's no question that she and many others in the covert operation did follow orders on a number of cases involving the enhanced interrogation techniques known certainly on the hill and widespread in the wider world as torture under george w. bush. >> no doubt. what i would say about that is if you want a cia professional to head that agency and if you are looking for a cia professional who has no controversy attached to them, you are going to find a very unsuccessful officer. you cannot work there for 30

years at that agency and not be involved at some point in something that someone thinks is controversial. so when it comes to gina, i want people to remember she was doing what her agency asked her to do, what the president asked her to do. she carried it out at a time when this was widely seen as essential to the nation's security. >> post-9/11. >> post-9/11. leave aside the controversy since then. but i think that's what's on the table here. >> what about mike pompeo? >> what about him? >> the fact he came from the world of politics but was successful at the agency because they knew he had the ear of the president. is that a fair description? >> i think -- >> does he speak truth to power? >> well, i don't know that, but i assume he did. i think any cia director, if they don't speak truth to power, they've got problems in their building. i can remember times when i had to say to someone we're going to take this position or i'll have a revolution here.

your strength is your building. >> will he talk back to donald trump? >> i don't know that, but -- she, you mean? >> no. will mike pompeo as secretary of state. >> i think he will give him his best judgment and frankly, i think he will be more comfortable at the state department, as some of your previous guests said. clearly in his cia role, he loved being cia director, obviously. most people do. tough job, but they do. and yet clearly from time to time, he kind of broke out of that cia mold and wanted to talk about policy and made comments about the previous administration and so forth. that's something you can do at the state department and it's fine, but at cia, that's not -- that's not the comfort zone you want to be in. >> it's something that rex tillerson absolutely hated, the public part -- >> i can predict with confidence that pompeo, when he arrives at state department, will not want a decimated state department. he's used to running an agency that's fully staffed, capable, he will want that at state. in that sense, this is probably a good move for him. >> thank you so much.

john mcloughlin. coming up, what's next? mike pompeo has to be confirmed by the foreign relations committee as the next secretary of state. senator chris coons joins me next. i accept i don't bike the miles i used to. i even accept i have a higher risk of stroke due to afib, a type of irregular heartbeat not caused by a heart valve problem. but no matter where i ride, i go for my best. so if there's something better than warfarin, i'll go for that too. eliquis. eliquis reduced the risk of stroke better than warfarin, plus had less major bleeding than warfarin. eliquis had both. don't stop taking eliquis unless your doctor tells you to, as stopping increases your risk of having a stroke. eliquis can cause serious and in rare cases fatal bleeding. don't take eliquis if you have an artificial heart valve

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mike pompeo still needs to be confirmed by the senate to take over as secretary of state. he may face some tough questioning. joining me is democratic senator chris coons, member of the senate foreign relations committee. you will be sitting in judgment. first of all, what do you think? >> well, i think the timing couldn't have been worse here. we have got an opening with north korea, something that president trump's bluster and aggressive stance may have helped create, but this is exactly the moment when you need your diplomatic team to be operating at its highest level. secretary tillerson is someone who both stood up to russia on some occasions in some ways, most recently over the assassination of a former russian spy in the united kingdom, but also in saying that we should be negotiating with north korea. the absence of an ambassador in south korea, the absence of an assistant secretary and now the absence of a secretary of state concerns me deeply as we are diving into this opportunity

with north korea. so both the process and the timing concerns me deeply. >> we know that senator corker, not very close with the president, but very close with rex tillerson, as of an hour or so ago, had not yet spoken to him but he spoke to our cameras about a rapid confirmation hearing. let me play that. >> i think with any secretary of state, let's face it, with any of them, it's the one cabinet position where you're in the president's lane, right? you're not going to be in the president's lane as head of cia or homeland security or even treasury. secretary of state is the one position that you're constantly in the president's lane. so it's the more difficult of all the cabinet positions. >> there was also personal friction between the two, clearly, and challenges, jared kushner and before that, steve bannon doing diplomacy with riyadh which contradicted what secretaries mattis and tillerson

wanted in terms of qatar where of course we have that enormous base. there were so many different conflicts in competing areas but the bottom line was personal. so is it better to quickly confirm mike pompeo and get him in there because we know he has the president's ear and at least diplomacy will be -- or the state department will be represented. what is your view as a democrat? >> that's a tough trade-off because frankly, the state department and this administration, president trump, have failed to deliver to the foreign relations committee and to the country a clear strategy for where we're headed in syria, with iran, with north korea, with russia, and many of us, myself included, are going to be strongly tempted to use confirmation hearings to do our best to extract that, that clear policy path forward, strategy from this administration. things that we were promised during secretary tillerson's confirmation and yet haven't seen. the number two at the state department, the deputy secretary sullivan, is someone i have great confidence in and i think

will keep things moving forward in the intervening time. but for exactly the reasons i said earlier, this opening with north korea, i can understand the reason why chairman corker and others may push for a quick hearing with mike pompeo. he won't need to come up to speed on the security aspects of north korea and iran and syria and russia, but what i hope he will come up to speed on is the centrality of trusting and supporting our career foreign service officers and the diplomats who are so essential to the success of the state department and the advocacy for human rights and values that has so long been a key part of what our secretaries of state in previous administrations have done. >> one of the key things on which rex tillerson upset the president was iran. he tried to stretch out any decision to kill the iran deal by withdrawing from it. there's another deadline coming up as soon as may. what do you think's going to happen? >> well, i hope president trump will listen to his national security adviser, his secretary

of defense and we'll see where cia director pompeo comes out on this, but both republicans and democrats on the foreign relations committee, both those who oppose the iran deal and those who support it, have agreed in our conversations and in our hearings that the jcpoa, this iran deal, is worth staying in for now. we should be working with, we are working with our european allies to try and find ways to constrain iran's bad behavior in the region, its ballistic missile launches, its human rights violations, its support for terrorism. there are things we can and should do together. but to tear up this deal and walk away from it just because of a position taken in a campaign would be a strategic error, especially when we're in this moment where we are trying to pull together the world community to apply pressure to north korea and to secure a new deal with north korea that would give us inspections and possibly lead to denuclearization of the korean peninsula. if you think kim jong-un isn't looking at what's happening to

iran and the path forward on the iran deal, you are sorely mistaken. this is an important moment for us to stay in the iran deal for now, find ways to improve upon it in order to have some prospect of a deal with north korea. those two are closely intertwined. >> chris coons, as always, thank you very much. coming up, exit strategy. we will hear from former top officials from the white house and state department on how the tillerson firing was executed. and it was an execution. stay with us.

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president trump's choice of mike pompeo as his next secretary of state if he's confirmed has been telegraphed for months. pompeo has spent more time in the oval office with lengthy daily briefing of the president than almost any other previous cia director, unlike tillerson, pompeo is hard line on iran and has clicked with the president from the very beginning. >> i have worked with mike pompeo now for quite some time. tremendous energy, tremendous intellect. we're always on the same wavelength. the relationship has been very good and that's what i need as secretary of state. >> joining me now by phone is ambassador nick burns, former u.s. ambassador to nato, former top state department official, and former white house press

secretary josh earnest, who is of course an msnbc contributor, is here with me now. nick, first to you. personal chemistry clearly matters. he did not get along at all with rex tillerson from the very beginning, and rex tillerson's management style also completely misunderstood the state department but he was certainly more traditional on iran, on relationships with allies, most recently last night acknowledging before the white house was willing to that russia was likely behind the attempted assassination of a former russian spy in great britain. >> that's right, andrea. i think secretary tillerson's legacy is going to be that along with secretary mattis he was a voice of reason on the two big national security challenges, north korea and iran. frankly took more traditionally republican conservative positions, a lot of positions that many democrats could support, wanting to talk to north korea, wanting to stay in the iran nuclear deal.

where secretary tillerson clearly went astray is that he didn't understand the state department. two consecutive years of 30% budget cuts, a mass exodus, unprecedented in my four decade experience at the state department. of senior officers, and a hollowing out of the ambassadorial corps that has really hurt us and will continue to hurt us for years to come. it's a difficult legacy for him. he clearly did not have what all successful secretaries of state have to have, a close relationship with the president. you saw president trump undercut secretary tillerson continuously. that didn't help either of them. >> so much of this has played out on twitter. let me just bring to all of us a tweet this morning from one of the rivals internally, nikki haley, u.n. ambassador tweeting today congratulations to my friend and soon to be secretary of state mike pompeo, exclamation point. great decision by the president. this only a day after we all

noticed that josh earnest, the secretary of state's picture was not on the wall at the u.n. mission, the u.s. u.n. mission. we saw last night that the president, the vice president nikki haley's portraits are on the wall but not the secretary of state, whose picture is on every embassy and consulate around the world. >> makes you wonder how quickly they will get that glossy 8 x 10 of mike pompeo framed up in new york. >> maybe he should get confirmed first. >> we'll see if that happens. look, it is clear that the reviews of rex tillerson's tenure as secretary of state are not good. that was true in realtime and i think it will be true in history. but there was one thing that he had going for him, which is that he was unquestionably his own man. sometimes this did put some distance and daylight between his positions and the president. and undermined his ability to represent our country overseas. the question for mike pompeo that he will have to testify before congress about is whether or not he is willing to be his own man, and the early

indications of that are actually not very good. when you hear president trump go on the south lawn of the white house and say the reason he picked mike pompeo is that they are quote, always on the same wavelength? that's not a very good indication of mr. pompeo's ability to stand up to the president of the united states and express a dissenting opinion as somebody who worked in the white house and somebody who sat in numerous meetings with president obama and his secretary of state john kerry, president obama thought very highly of secretary of state john kerry, they had a close personal relationship, but they did not always agree. secretary of state kerry never hesitated to express that disagreement when it was appropriate and president obama welcomed it because he believed that would give him better information to make a better decision. but you know, president trump obviously has very different criteria in mind. >> only about 30 seconds left. nick burns, the way this was done, though, sending such a signal around the world that unless you are dealing with the president himself, it's going to be very hard to understand what the signals are in foreign

capitals. >> this was ungracious of the president, typically, and unworthy of the president not to even have a face-to-face discussion with rex tillerson to tell him he was out. and how is that going to have an impact on all the other people in the white house and the cabinet that sees the president doesn't appear to have personal loyalty to anybody. other foreign leaders will take note of that as well. i think tillerson was respected by his colleagues around the world and so they are going to be looking to see if the president treats pompeo in a different way and is more supportive of him publicly. i think the jury would have to say the president is probably going to treat pompeo the way he treated tillerson, sometimes he will praise him and sometimes he will drag him down. >> thank you so much to nick burns, obviously, a great experience at the state department, and of course, josh earnest. up next, the west wing. with today's cabinet shuffle and departure of several key white house advisers, can the president take on the major challenges ahead and who will be fired next?

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just a few hours, after telling close confidants he is at peace with his plan to push rex tillerson out, making mike pompeo the top diplomat if he's confirmed. joining me is msnbc political analyst robert costa, political analyst robert costa, national political reporter for "the washington post." nbc white house correspondent kristen welker in california. about to see the president when he arrived. his first trip to california. and jeff mason, white house correspondent for reuters. robert, first, what are you hearing about the president and whether or not other changes, which seem to be telegraphed, we don't know what's going to happen with mcmaster or if larry kudlow is going to replace gary co goen, what's going on there? >> it's a wild day, talking to officials inside of west wing. they say he's looking at everybody and everyone, trying to restart his presidency. under siege in a way with what's going on in the pennsylvania special election. but he's open to making major changes this week beyond just making the change of secretary of state.

>> and kristen welker, he's about to arrive in the next couple of hours in california. it's his first visit there. the visit to the border promoting the wall would have been -- that would have been enough developments for a day but now he's fired his secretary of state and even though there was a heads up from john kelly, clearly john kelly -- excuse me, rex tillerson did not accept that. he's long said he would not accept being fired except in pers person, and he was telling the reporters traveling with him, this is what's on my agenda, as recently as last night and overnight on the plane, i'm going to take on north korea, i want to do the diplomacy on that. he had not accepted this. >> he was caught off guard, andrea, and i can tell you a number of top officials inside the white house were caught off guard. as you reported, the secretary of state learning officially from that tweet that went out earlier today from the president and it underscores really all of the tensions that have existed

between these two men, between the president and his own secretary of state, when it came to issues, including north korea, tariffs, iran. you heard the president talk about the fact they had a very different view about how they should proceed with the iran nuclear deal. and then of course that big bombshell report that you and i were a part of, andrea. the fact that rex tillerson called president trump a moron after a meeting over last summer. that was something that infuriated the president, continued to really get under his skin. and just one of a number of differences between these two men and that clearly made it impossible from the president's per expectative for the two to continue working together at this critical juncture where he's about to meet with the leader of north korea. >> and returning at 4:00 this morning, jeff mason, from a tour of africa, going to all these nations in africa, including chad, which has been helping us on security and was very upset at being restricted on visa

entries, has been called informally by the press corps the s-hole apology tour, because the president was so late to apologize to the african union for that slur. this, his first trip to africa, arriving, you know, at 4:00 this morning at andrews. you know what that's like. >> i certainly do and not knowing how his day was going to proceed and look at how it did. so unusual now to see with what happened last week with gary cohn, now with tillerson. the direction president trump is going in terms of who he surrounds himself with. clearly wanting loyalists around him. the dissenters are out. and that will have implications for policy, from trade to north korea to russia going forward. >> robert costa, how are you feeling about how the president's feeling? he seems to be unshackled. >> how am i feeling? i could use another cup of coffee, andrea, at this point. >> what are you hearing about how the president is feeling? i know how you're feeling. you're as whiplashed as the rest

of us. what your reporting is on how the president's feeling because he seems to be unshackled. jeff mason's reporting, you know, he is getting rid of what he views as the dissenters in his cabinet. >> based on my reporting, i'm hearing the president is look at this moment as a time to return to trump being trump and that he wants to be his own com director, his own chief of staff. doesn't mean he's going to make cutler the economic adviser. he wants people who understands his campaign mentality. the turning point i'm told was that the weekend rally in southwestern pennsylvania. he said to his aides, i want to do more of this, more rallies, more being out there, throwing political punches day in, day out. wants his cabinet to be filled with allies. people would have a rapport with him. >> kristen well kerr, those are the very moments that have been the most heavily criticized, not only by allies aary ies around but leaders in both parties, that rally in pittsburgh was considered a disaster

politically as well. it did not help the candidate. we'll know more tomorrow. but certainly did not seem to help the candidate. >> it harkened back to some of most controversial moments from the 2016 campaign trail, andrea, and as you point out, he barely mentioned the candidate that he was there to support. he made that rally about himself, lashed out at all of his familiar foes, including a number of people in the media. and yet i think it does represent this moment in time. the fact that you have a number of people within the president's inner circle who are leaving. people who are safeguards, who would essentially protect the president from himself in the words of one top official. now a number of those people with leaving. and we saw the president really trying to take all of these different roles into his own hands. remember, prior to that announcement last week that he was going to meet with the leader of north korea, he came out into the briefing room, as

if he were his own communications director, to alert the press we should be ready for a big announcement, so i think you're starting to see that really playing out. >> that was the beginning of the final downfall that day for rex tillerson. thanks to all. jeff mason, robert costa and kristen welker.

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and that does it for this edition of andrea mitchell

reports. follow me @mitchellreports on twitter, online and, craig melvin, what could happen next? >> that's the million dollar question every day here. good afternoon to you. craig melvin here at msnbc headquarters in new york. you're fired. president trump sending his secretary of state rex tillerson packing. we are getting new information by the hour about just how all of this went down. and how tillerson found out. we're also just learning just moments ago that one of tillerson's top aides who contradicted the white house's version of events, he's now gone as well. plus, why now? less than 24 hours after the house intelligence committee delivered trump a win on the russia investigation, he changes the narrative. so why did the president choose to do this today? and too close to call. all of this drama playing out as a special election goes on today in pennsylvania. what's the mood on the ground? and what could the results mean for the midterms? we're there live. but