>> hi, everyone, it's 4:00 in new york. are the wheels and the guardrails coming off or is donald trump shaking his staff to dominate the headlines and show everyone who is in control? the answer depends on who you ask, when you ask them and whether they believe they are being recorded or quoted. there are fresh rumblings from inside the national security establishment that the manner in which rex tillerson was summarilily dismissed on twitter was particularly upsetting to his allies in donald trump's orbit, namely the generals that donald trump likes to call my generals. that would be chief of staff john kelly, national security advisor h.r. mcmaster and secretary of defense james mattis. the three men are said to harbor growing concerns about the

president's conduct in office according to two sources. the president had lunch today with secretary mattis who one of these sources tells me maintains the most distance from trump and is, therefore, the most secure. the washington post is the vivid details of this disfunction based on interviews with 19 sources. they write, quote, the mood inside the white house in recent days has verged on mania as trump increasingly keeps his own counsel and senior aides struggle to determine the gradations between rumor and truth. the washington post offering a much fuller picture of mcmaster being on his way out. trump is comfortable ousting mcmaster with whom he never gelled, but takes time executing the move because he wants to make sure the three-star army general is not humiliated and that there is a strong successor lined up. "the new york times" adding to the picture of upheaval with this. quote, mr. kelly himself is also on thin ice according to

officials in the white house. he is said to have angered the president by privately saying no to the boss too often. in recent days mr. kelly has sought to repair his standing with the president by moving more aggressively to address issues that have festered including staffing concerns at the white house and cabinet secretaries with political liabilities. mcmaster for one was spotted on the grounds just in the last hour ominously warning one abc reporter, quote, everybody has got to leave the white house at some point. joining us from the washington post, white house reporter ashley parker, one of the by lines on that remarkable piece of reporting last night. with us at the table former democratic congresswoman donna edwards now at the brennan center for justice. john heilman, nbc news national affairs analyst. evan mcmullen former operative who ran for president as an independent, and reverend al sharpton here on msnbc and president of the action network. let me start with you, ashley parker.

the word i heard today about mattis, mcmaster and kelly really starting to have concerns about the president's conduct seemed to me the first coordinated expression of, i don't want to call it despair because i don't want to overstate what i heard, but real concerns about the country. >> sure, i think that's fair. and i think some of them, especially general kelly, has sort of privately made no secret about that from the minute they went in. i mean, kelly likes to joke publicly and i've heard privately that this is the worst job he's ever had, but also the most important. and there is sort of between the lines in there a sense that the, quote-unquote, adults in the room believe they are to the extent possible trying to manage the president's sort of whims and impulses in a way they believe is best for the country.

whether they are doing a successful job of that i think is an open question. >> evan mcmullen, i want to bring you in because one of the other individuals i heard of who sort of the twin events this week of the elevation of mike pompeo who was seen inside the national security team as someone who spent a good deal of time racing down to 1600 pennsylvania avenue to be in the president's presence to ingratiate himself with the president instead of addressing the russia threat or other issues. admiral rogers, i heard from two sources, he also had concerns that solve of the oxygen is taken up by all the chaos and all the drama, he has concerned about the president's conduct. can you speak to the threat of our nation if the national security questions the commander-in-chief. >> i think there's been a propensity among trump's allies

to say he's coming to washington, he's going to do things different, he's going to drain the swamp. we're talking about how he manages his own team in the first year and a half of his presidency. there is not some sort of genius management acumen or secret here. what he's doing is dividing his own staff because i believe and this is my own commentary, of course, he's a deeply insecure people -- person, he's trying to turn his own people, people he's chosen, against each other to weaken them so they can't in some way challenge him. in the same way he does that exact same thing to the american people. but the point is just that this is not a healthy thing. it does communicate and cause weakness in our country. it prevents the government from being able to govern effectively and it's a dangerous thing certainly. >> one of the former national security officials i spoke to if we're going to make it, he said the country can handle three more, it can't handle seven. there is growing concern this is not a sustainable level of

turnover. this is too much time for people who should be in charge of the military, in charge of our spy agencies, in charge of cyber command, they're spending too much time dealing with chaos and drama and not doing their job. >> look, there are a lot of complaints about -- in the time of the obama administration, there were various people in the national security world, in the permanent government who complained about president obama being too ponderous and too intellectual and not leading from the front. what they appreciated was his cerebral, deliberate, analytical quality and the calm. the no drama thing was applauded by everyone because in the area of national security and a foreign affairs, you need to be clear headed and focused. i think someone like mike rogers who you know a little bit, i'm sure is totally concerned about this. i don't know of anybody -- yes, i'm sure if you've thought about it as a seven-year project, i think you would be dismayed. i think there is a question right now given the kind of reporting that ashley produced, i think a lot of that

reporting -- i don't know anything about her sources, but those views, the notion of -- that when they talk about the mania in the white house and they express concern about it, certainly that is something that is expressed most vocally right now by the people who have been longest serving in government who are still around trying to keep the wheels from coming off the wagon and particularly those people who deal with bombs and bullets and decisions where lives and deaths are on the line. they look at it and say, it would be a lot better if we could calm a lot of this down. >> so, let's dig into some of your reporting, ashley. again, you have 19 sources quoted in your piece. but after it came out, sarah huckabee sanders came out and said, just spoke to potus and general h.r. mcmaster. contrary to reports they have a good working relationship. there are no changes at the nsc. it seems like mcmaster essentially undercut her nondenial denial.

by saying that everybody leaves at some point. i covered part of this story a couple weeks ago myself. and the president called in, spoke to people and reporters and called it fake news. just talk about the lies that come when you tell the truth. >> well, first of all, i would point out what you said is exactly right. it was a nondenial denial, or nondenial denial. she didn't actually sort of contradict the story. secondly, as we've all learned, just because this white house denies something doesn't mean it's not true. and frequently it's borne out that when the criticism or the big all-caps claim of fake news comes from the president himself, that is often in response to a piece that is most definitively true and he's just frustrated by it. so, it's not necessarily a sign of a reporting. it's a sign the reporting frustrated the president. i will add this is the president who does watch a ton of television, pays a lot of attention to the media and reacts to things real time.

sometimes there is a sense and a truth to the idea. that's why all of these stories always have these caveats. nothing is final until the president tweets it, or makes an announcement. so, there have been sometimes where something is true but the mere fact that the president saw cable news headline about it that he didn't like has forced him or made him delay a decision or change a decision in that manner. >> that's right. if he doesn't like the way something plays, sometimes he changes his position even after he's made a decision. >> it is the trump's version of the heisenberg uncertainty. when you flash a light on something it changes the nature of a thing. i'm going to fire this earn person. then when it gets out, i'm not going to fire this person. my god, who knew? >> let me ask you one more thing. this is getting in the weeds. i think our viewers are following this closely enough. people don't understand all the alliances inside the west wing. take us inside. jared and ivanka have been widely reported to have been weakened by the stripping of jared's security clearance, by

the evacuation from the west wing of some of their closest friends and advisors, hope hicks, jared's spokesman, rob porter. and kelly was seen as temporarily and surprisingly strengthened because that period followed the rob porter scandal. you've got some reporting and other folks who are also chasing reporting about kelly's tenuous standing inside the president's inner circle. speak to that for us. >> sure. kelly's standing is incredibly tenuous. so, we have heard, other places have heard he and the president, you know, reached a truce yesterday, or they laughed about rumors of kelly's firing. first of all let's stop for a moment and realize that -- how remarkable that is the president and his chief of staff had to reach a truce and come to an agreement he was not imminently going to be fired on that day. you know, and kelly is someone who has gone in and out of the president's favor. the president believes he sort of botched the rob porter scandal.

that handling. but then there was the shooting at parkland distracted the attention and bought general kelly some time. the president doesn't like it when the general sort of says no to him or constricts the number of people who can call him or come and see him. we've seen kelly loosening that up a little bit. and kelly himself has made comments -- worried about, how long he'll be there for and other moments feeling quite confident. so, like almost all people in this white house and sort of dealing with this mania, it feels like it cycles from minute to minute. >> donna, let me bring you in on this idea of general kelly as one of the adults who is supposed to be a stabilizing force. i want to read you something michelle goldberg wrote today in "the new york times." she writes, since the beginning of this nightmare administration we've been assured via well placed anonymous sources a few sober trust worthy people in the white house were checking donald trump's instinct and most erratic whims. they present themselves as

guardians of american democracy rather than collaboratored in the undoing. the people who were supposed to be the adults in the room aren't in the room any more. i've heard from kelly's defenders that he is still one of the adults who says no, as ashley has reported. i've also heard from the wing, which is more aligned with jared and ivanka and the family, that he is not deferential enough to the president. what ashley said, that he says no too much, that he goes to the hill and says the president isn't informed on that issue. that he has tried to play president himself. what do you think when you see all of this sort of unraveling chaos and the fact that it's in perpetual motion? >> well, i mean, the president came in saying, i'm going to surround myself with generals because i trust the generals. and now what we're hearing is that there could come a point very soon where there are no generals. and despite the fact that there

are some who said that they are the moderating voices, they are the adults in the room, each of them has been proven in different ways not to be able to be enough of an adult for the biggest child in the room, and that is donald trump. and so they haven't been able to control him. they haven't been able to moderate them. he's undercut them. and i think he demonstrates over and over again that he doesn't want to trust the people that he put in charge to be trusted. >> and i want to bring you in, i didn't think i would do this very often. it's one of those days. anthony scaramucci said something that ended up being incredibly revealing. he meant this as an insult. he said this in an interview in his 10 minutes as communications director, there are people inside the administration that think it's their job -- who think it's their job -- to save america from the president. that turned out to be true. i think he meant it about people he was hoping to oust.

i think he meant it about reince priebus and steve bannon. he meant it as an insult. it turned out that the people who were there trying to protect the country from the president are three generals who now have some pretty deep concerns about the president's personal conduct. >> well, i think that when you look at what we are seeing, this is donald trump. you know, one of the reasons that president obama's administration saw that turnover was calmer and more cerebral is because he was a calm and cerebral person. that's who he was. donald trump's management style, from those of us that knew him in new york, was always -- he would pit people against each other because he was selling real estate. he was hiding this deal from this deal, playing one kid against another. can you get that building sold? no, she's doing better than you. that's his style. it's like a low-grade machiavellian prince book at a lower level, on grammar level. that's how he operates.

>> now you're talking. machiavellian. >> with the drawings inside. now you're dealing with real consequence for real people, and i think that is why people are concerned. when you hear people saying that ivanka or donald junior is saying kelly talks back too much, it's because nobody talks back to him. >> right. >> so to say no once a week is too much when you've been house broken into always, you know, bowing to the king because that's how he plays. but he believes in organized disarray. the only organization is him. feedback to me because i'm too insecure to trust anybody to make any decisions but me. because even if you make a right decision, it's undermining my insecure concept that i'm in charge, when he really knows he's not qualified to be where he's sitting.

>> i want to ask you if this idea that 14 months in, the three generals -- he's earned so much credibility on the world stage, even among his 30% by associating with these three men, with secretary mattis, with h.r. mcmaster, and with secretary kelly. if the three of them should say, we've done all we can do, what happens? >> well, i think -- well, there are global repercussions and there are domestic repercussions. >> pick through both. >> i think for much of the world there is no doubt in the early part of the administration where there is a question, who is making foreign policy and there seemed to be multiple foreign policies, particularly when the bannon wing was ascended and steve bannon had a different view with how to deal with allies and trade and economics and national security. there was -- members of nato, for instance, these three men were of enormous reassurance that they were there. they believed at heads of state

around the world that ultimately they would constrain the president and that basic establishment kind of consensus views about foreign policy, national security would hold sway because of those generals. their absence will cause a lot of concern and a lot of questioning among our allies and probably a lot of joy among some of our adversaries. and then the question will be who are they replaced with. if donald trump is building, as it seems increasingly, is a cabinet of loyalists, a war council as he heads into a period of greater jeopardy, of greater political threat, of legal threat and what he wants around him is only people who are willing to go to the barricades with him, that will not reassure our allies. i think that then leads you to the domestic conversation because i think that is what it looks like is going on right now, the gradual move towards i want loyalist, yes-men around me. i am in charge and all i want around me are people who are going to defend me against the arrows of bob mueller and house

democrats if they take control of the house. i need to have -- >> roy -- >> a guild, a gang around me who are there only to try to serve and protect me against a hostile universe. >> ashley parker -- i'm sorry, go ahead. >> i don't see these generals, though, walking away on their own. i think they are patriots and they stayed precisely because -- >> and i don't have any reporting that suggests any of them are walking away. but if he fires them, it is precisely -- i actually have heard the contrary, that they won't quit because they are afraid of everything john heilman just described. but should he fire them, which ashley's reporting suggested he's ticking through the grown ups, taking them off one by one, those -- i agree with your assessment. do you think that that's a fair -- >> i think that's fair. and i think it's precisely because they're there guarding -- safeguarding the nation, especially in their mind. no matter what it is that the president is doing or not, but we don't see them walking away. but he is picking through them. >> an important part you have to

remember here and that is that this president's mind is not on national security. it's on the investigation. >> right. >> so you're dealing with someone who may be half focused anyway because every knock at the door, he doesn't know if that's a subpoena to get more books. they just took records out of his new york business office. >> right. >> so, he's not exactly focused on -- >> focused on the nation's business. ashley, let me give you the last word on this other tidbit from our friends at axios. apparently general kelly said trump might be talking to reporters. kelly acknowledged to the reporters -- i guess assembled in his office -- trump is talking to people outside the white house and reporters are then talking to those people. kelly cast's trump's own conversation as a contributing factor to stories about the staff changes. this doesn't surprise me as a fact, it surprises me as a leak. why reveal and blame the president for being responsible for giving some of those 19

people he may have talked to their fodder? this doesn't seem like the kind of context that is going to ingratiate him with his boss. >> right. we know the president calls friends late at night, they say things and it leaks into the media. again, i was not at that off the record. if i was at that off the record, i could not share what i heard. in general, this is one of the frustrations the president does have with his chief of staff, which his chief of staff in private situations and in public situations frankly, but he'll go to the hill or he'll be talking off the record to a group of reporters according to the axios account and he'll say something that undermines the president and when that inevitably leaks out, it is not helpful to the trump/kelly relationship and understandably so. >> ashley parker, congrats on an incredible piece of reporting and thank you for spending some time with us. >> thank you. >> when we come back, who burns it down? that's the question on the list of trump watchers everywhere. we'll explain. also ahead, stormy daniels' attorney says his client has

been threatened with physical harm and confirms six additional women have come forward with allegations about the president. and one of donald trump's business associates with deep ties to russia is going public with his story today. stay with us.

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so, i'm going to do that awkward camera turn right now. so, we can add the name of the secretary of state to the list of departures of senior officials from the trump white house and the senior ranks of

the trump administration. just in the past couple of weeks we have had to move my camera position so that we can show you this bigger wall so we could make room to add -- there is a third column here on this wall, yeah. >> the wall keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. and the dozens of senior white house officials who have been expelled from the white house are facing a big question, to talk or not to talk. michelle goldberg of "the new york times" offering this succinct advice to rex tillerson. the latest ousted official. quote, burn it down, rex. if tillerson came out and said the president is unfit, and perhaps even that venal concerns for private gain have influenced his foreign policy, impeachment wouldn't begin tomorrow, but trump's already narrow public support would shrink further. republican members of congress like bob corker, chairman of the senate foreign relations committee, might be induced to rediscover their spine ands

perform proper oversight. joining us is an msnbc contributor. let me start right there with you, steve. >> he absolutely has an obligation. the secretary of state doesn't take an oath of personal loyalty to the president, but to the constitution of the united states. the ugly, unseemly and small way with which he was terminated should give rex tillerson no pause, no hesitation to tell the american people who have a right to know what he saw about this president's competence, his preparedness, how he conducted himself on the world stage. and if, in fact, rex tillerson is worried about what he saw, if he is having private conversations with his former ceo friends, with the elites of america and whispered in hushed tones, but not telling all of us, then shame on him. >> steve, let me ask you something that's close to home for you and me, and at least one other person at this table, john

heilman is here. during the mccain/palin campaign, it was our job to keep secret the degree to which we were concerned that sarah palin might not have been up for the job of vice-president, and we did. after the campaign, people, john heilman and his co-author wrote a book called game change, hbo went on to make a movie. and at that point which would be the parallel to rex tillerson being gone, at that point we shared some of the things we'd seen and some of the concerns we had. talk about -- because what you started out by saying is right, but it's pretty agonizing. someone that went in and served at the highest levels on behalf of a politician aren't going thinking about coming out talking about what a bleep show it was. >> no, they don't. in my case, in 2009 i was asked a question at a conference hosted by john king at

cnn, who asked what i thought of sarah palin as a potential nominee for the presidency in 2012. i answered it in one word. i said it would be catastrophic. there were many, many people long after the hour that it was clear she was unfit temperamentally, intellectually, from every conceivable character perspective, from a veracity perspective, were still suspending disbelief and saying, oh, yes, this person, because she's on fox, because she has a rabid fan base, i'm going to say that, yes, she'd be qualified to be president. eventually it all comes out. but what we're seeing lately is this emboldened president. we can learn and study about trade wars, for example, by reading about the impact or the -- of the smooth holly tariff, or we can understand the impact of a trade war experiencially today with the possible depression and the loss of jobs that will follow. we seek to change the subject from his relationship and payoffs and maybe physical

threats to a porn star, that he up-ends america's strategy and gives north korea the strategic gift that it has always sought, parity and equal status and a rival party on the world stage with the united states of america to change the subject. he's increasingly acting out. he's increasingly emboldened. he's increasingly getting rid of people he reviews as restraints. and the american president is a head of a constitutional republic, is the head of state, the head of government, the commander in chief, that operates within a system of norms and rules and laws. and this is part of his increasing autocratic actions where he acts alone outside a system where he does what he feels. he does what he intuits. he does what his instinct tells

him to do no matter his almost uniform abject ignorance on every conceivable subject on which he's acting. >> steve, we started the program with some reporting that the generals, donald trump calls him his generals, they're not his generals, they're the country's generals. mattis, kelly, and mcmaster are increasingly concerned about the president's conduct in office. we have no indication that any of them is considering leaving their post, but you just talked about him systematically picking off and the washington post has reported he has now systematically picking off the adults in the room. in your estimation, what would be the consequence of losing any one of those three men in their current posts? >> well, they would be significant for two, but they would be deeply worrying. and i think induce panic on a global stage if secretary mattis were to step aside. i think it could precipitate a fact of an article 5 crisis with

the russians say in estonia. remarkably this week what we've seen is this. vladimir putin has opened his hand and he has placed it squarely on the throat of both this country and the united kingdom. and the united kingdom we see a military-grade nerve gas attack on english soil that the president of the united states refuses to personally, directly condemn. and in this country we've seen russian interference and access to critical infrastructure, including our electrical grid, including our nuclear power plant. this is extraordinary, this attack on the united states of america. how is this not the lead of the news? we're talking about payoffs to a porn star. the country is under attack. the country is under threat. the president refuses to act. he increasingly acts like

somebody who has been compromised by a hostile foreign power. he is increasingly acting as his investigation draws nearer, it expands, it expands. the circle of people who are closest to him. >> steve schmidt is just getting started. he's not going anywhere. neither is anybody here at the panel. when we come back, the porn star and the president, the friday edition. new threats and new allegations. stay with us.

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was she threatened in any way? >> yes. >> was she threatened physical harm? >> yes. >> can you tell us whether it came from the president directly, the physical threats? >> i'm not going to answer that. >> will you deny that the president of the united states threatened your client? >> i will not confirm or deny. >> no question, was the threat verbal?

>> again, i'm not at liberty -- to discuss that. >> did anyone point at gun at her? >> i'm not at liberty to discuss that. >> that was porn star stormy daniels's lawyer michael avenatti with a stunning charge his client has been threatened with physical harm. avenatti also confirmed something he hinted at on this program earlier this week about additional women coming forward with allegations about the president. john heilman was on set this morning for that interview. we should point out the white house has maintained its denial of the alleged sexual affair and in the press briefing today they said they have no knowledge of the threat. joining the conversation is jennifer ruben, washington post opinion writer. let me start with you, though, john, because you were there. did you learn anything else about the nature of the threat and about whether the timing of that is ongoing? because he has said that the efforts to keep her quiet were ongoing, as recent as late february. >> i'll tell you a couple things i think are important about this. one is michael avenatti is a

very savvy, sharp attorney. and he came to the set not to make this point. he came with some things on his agenda. i think he wanted to get out the notion that there are these other six women who have come forward. he then did the savvy lawyer thing of saying, we haven't vetted them. i have no idea. he wants it in the public there are more claimants, even though they have not examined the veracity of the claims. he also wanted to distance himself from this buzzfeed suit which i think he thinks is not helpful to their cause and is kind of a piggybacking on what his client is doing. but this was not on his agenda. he was caught off guard when mika brzezinski i think anywhere asked him the question, it was at the end of the interview. he had not brought that to the table. he was caught off guard. he answered honestly. he answered -- i don't know whether he answered honestly, but he answered in the moment, he did not try to no comment it. he came forward and made a forthright claim. let's put it that way.

crucially, when i asked him later in the interview whether anybody was a party to the nondisclosure agreement or someone who was around anyone who was a party to the nondisclosure agreement, which would mean michael cohen, donald trump, anybody in their circle, he would not discuss that. it was part of the physical threat. the other thing he would not speak to was the timing. so, whether it took place at the moment that it was struck in 2016 when the presidential race was on the line, was that the threat part -- how the agreement got done or was it last week, or sometime in between. so, those are the giant questions that remain here. >> right. >> and, no, i don't think we -- i don't think we know anything more than that with any kind of confidence that can be spoken of on television. there is a lot of speculation about who in donald trump's orbit, a speculation online and other places about who in donald trump's orbit might be involved in such an effort. and people have pointed to michael cohen who made oral threats against reporters that we haven't -- >> let me interrupt you.

let's play one of those threats michael cohen made against a female reporter. >> trump's top lawyer and executive vice president for the trump organization had re-tweeted let's gut her about me. at a time when the threat level was very high, which he knew. and bill shine, an executive vice president at fox called him up to say, you got to stop this. we understand you're angry, but she's got three little kids. she's walking around new york. really. and he didn't much care. and what bill shine said to michael cohen was, let me put it to you in terms you can understand. if megyn kelly gets killed, it's not going to help your candidate. >> jennifer ruben, michael cohen, walking i -- don't know what color the line is for donald trump, but someone with a past of not really being sensitive to any lines being crossed when he's involved in or aware of threats being made against women who challenged this president. your thoughts.

>> this is beginning to resemble the good fellas movie, that these people are acting like thugs, threatening people, paying hush money. i'll say a few things. first of all, the notion that congress should not be investigating a payment to shut up a witness in advance of an election, which arguably violated campaign finance rules tells you everything you need to know about who is enabling this president and why he has gotten as far as he has. so, put that in the back of your mind for november when the control of one or both of the houses of congress may change. this is extraordinary conduct and we are going to learn more obviously when stormy daniels does a 60 minutes interview which was promised later in the month. but at this point it's very, very disturbing to think that, first of all, there are people out there who have information that is incriminating. do the russians also have information that is incriminating? is stormy daniels and six women

not picked up by others as well? put aside for a moment the morals of it. his wife was pregnant at the time he had this affair. i think the real implications and the fact we have a president who is so blackmailable should concern all of us. and unfortunately right now, we have a congress that is not doing its job. and i cannot stress enough that the founding fathers did not imagine a system that would work this way. they imagined a system in which the congress would act as an oversight authority, would check the executive. and when that does not happen, we wind up in very deep constitutional waters. >> i have two follow-up questions for you, but i don't want to lose this point about blackmail. so, let me bring you in on her point about blackmail. what do you think? >> look, nicolle, you know i've been slow to really focus on this story. among everything we have to focus on --

totally sceves you out. you're here for porn friday. >> exactly. is this a coincidence? i don't know, you tell me. >> it's not my fault, though. >> i've been slow to sort of say that this is the sort of thing we need to focus on amid everything else. but there's a reason why trump and his team are fighting this so hard. i don't know what it is. i mean, to me, you sort of expect that the president is unfaithful to his wife even when she's pregnant. >> third wife. >> yeah. you expect it may be with a porn star. none of this surprises me and i don't think it surprises his core base, the evangelicals. >> unfortunately. it just doesn't surprise me. why are they fight ing it so hard? if it's true there is a threat of physical violence, there is a reason for that. what is it, i don't know. but there is something there that could be compromising. >> you raised congressional oversight. i want to introduce one more character in the stormy daniels story and i want to ask you about him and michael cohen. so, in in touch weekly, when we had michael avenatti at this

set, i asked him if stormy daniels' account in in touch weekly is what he understands to be the truth, if he believes his client tells the true account of her interactions, her relationship with donald trump. he asserted that it was. so, let me read you something from that. from in touch weekly in 2011, stormy daniels said, so i went up to the room and i was met outside by his body guard keith who i met every time i saw him. keith was always with him. that's how i got in touch with him. i never had donald's cell phone number. i always used keith's, that's keith shiller, the president's one-time body man who left the white house at the end of the summer. michael cohen and keith schiller have both testified in front of the house intel committee. they were both included in the subpoena of communications that mueller asked for earlier this month. do you think that bob mueller and the house intel committee, with democrats on it, are seeking the truth about what you just described? >> i don't think so. i think there is a timing issue that -- at the time that they

talked to these people, this was not out in the public realm. and if we're talking, of course, about the republicans are interested in nothing. now, you raise a very interesting question, which is will the special prosecutor come across this because he is now subpoenaing such a wide array of documents. and this is the issue when you have a special prosecutor or an independent prosecutor. that's how we got from white water to paula jones in the clinton administration. once a prosecutor is in there with the subpoena power, he is going to pickup a lot of stuff. and if along the way he finds that there is evidence of a threat or there is evidence of blackmail, you can be sure he is going to investigate it. he has an obligation to investigate it. so, we really don't know what at this point is in the purview of the special prosecutor. i think it's fair to say that at least on the house side they're not investigating anything any more. they've kind of shut down the shop which i think is probably a good thing. but i think there are many witnesses out there.

and, of course, there is not a rule that you only get to talk to them once. the special prosecutor can call these people back. he can re-interview them. he can ask them about these things specifically. and frankly, if there is information from her lawyer, but that he comes across in the context of e-mails and other communications, you can be sure that he's going to want to take a look at that. >> steve schmidt, i asked michael avenatti about this idea of whether -- now that he's in the line of work of defending women who had alleged sexual relationships with the president, if other women had come forward, he acknowledged it was between five and 12 that had. he confirmed this morning on morning joe and i believe last night on cnn that he's now looking at six women. you've run campaigns. you've worked in the white house. what does this look like? i mean, what does donald trump's war room, to the degree it's staffed by men like michael cohen who is sitting on a subpoena from -- i'm not saying

sitting meaning he's not responsive, but in receipt of a subpoena for his activities from bob mueller, what does that look like in light of the stormy daniels scandal? >> you know, i was thinking about jennifer just referring to them as the cast from good fellas. i agree with the sentiment. but it's more like dumb fellas. it's a group of scum bags like michael cohen sitting around in cahoots with each other, subjects of investigations and litigation themselves, in a caldron of chaos in the west wing of the white house. i think it's remarkable as we look at the news this week, we've seen leadership from teenagers in america. we see the adults looking at teenagers for their courage and principle. we see teenagers watching the news and maybe younger, watching stories about a president of the united states, this chaos, the lack of any decency around the white house, payoffs to porn

stars, everything that is up is down, what's down is up in this corrupted world of the trump presidency. and it's just this remarkable moment where we have growing threats in the world, where there is this sense that the momentum of his recklessness is drawing us closer to real consequence, economic consequence that will crush the dreams and aspirations of america's working families as he blunders his way into a trade war, wholly ignorant how the north american supply chain works or global trade functions. perhaps blundering his way towards a military conflict on the korean peninsula. it seems, though, that the closer these investigations move to him and to the people around him, the more reckless he's becoming. >> steve schmidt and jennifer ruben, we can't get enough of either of you. thank you for spending time with us. when we come back, one of the president's business

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mueller did the investigation. say der soviet born businessman spent a decade working with the trump organization to find deals. but it's one of those deals, in particular, that is likely of interest to robert mueller. that's trump tower moscow. back in august "the new york times" published series of messages say der sent to mcdougal -- michael cohen said, quote, our boy can become president of the us and we can engineer it. i'll get all of putin team to buyin on this. i'll manage the process. now for the first time feliz is making the round explaining his story. here is he explaining that message. >> email i wrote was to a friend i knew since childhood, michael

cohen. excitement of having worked with someone now running for president, especially immigrant kid like myself, beyond enthusiastic. i wrkd on numerous trump deals. >> i get it. what do but is this true about deals? >> i don't know putin and never worked with him. >> joins us now from "the new york times" buy line is on the story we quoted heavily from. i want to ask you. mr. sad er, russian immigrant, undermine democracy. in another email ribbon cutting in most couldcow. we heard a lot this report, in the 21-page report they put out when the republicans abruptly concluded their investigation. do you think it's possible we'll

discover any connection between this bank that he wanted to do business with and the intel committee sanctioned bank? >> i don't know if we'll end up seeing a connection. when i get the emails originally, what jumped out at me was this shows that early on in the campaign, there were people around president trump in his orbit, who saw political benefit to being close to and doing financial deals with vladimir putin and his people. right. so to me that was really important. we have somebody saying, look, if trump gets close to putin, that has a political benefit. and a potential financial benefit. so i felt like that was really important. and i couldn't get from the clip you played whether feliz is says he never made the connections or it never panned out.

because obviously the building didn't get built. but why did this fall apart? we had the president in the times borough and asked him what's with the emails? and he said he didn't know anything about it. but those emails say i have the financing lined up vtb is in on it. and i've got the juice with vladimir putin's people. >> and we know the counter intelligence investigation is around people that wittingly and unwittingly engaged with the russians. it seems like this business piece, and we know this is where robert mueller is going from your colleague reporting yesterday, this seems like this is more than just connecting the dots. this is where the dots bleed into one another and form a direct line between president trumps business deals? >> on the question of witnessing

or unwitting, that is the central question. we now know people in the trump campaign came into contact and were targeted for manipulation by the russian government. and the question is were they successful and were they witnessing? and in the case of george papadopoulos, comes off in court documents maybe he was unwitting guy. carter page, was he witnessing witting or un-witting? and the question is was this a deal or was this floated somehow by the russians or was this just another deal that felix sader was feeding to the trump campaign and hoping to get a commission? >> you are the truth teller when it comes to president trump.

what do you make back in the news today? >> i think what is most revealing is even if we think that he's just hyping up his russian connection, i'm seahawking abotalking about sader. we are talking about putin and russia. so what's he admitting is disturbing enough. he's saying yes i did tell a childhood friend that i would involve russia in influencing an american election. and we are acting like that's normal? i don't care how long you know michael cohen. >> acting like collusion, he tried. >> absolutely. >> stopped us from seeing right in front of us. we know they tried to do business in moscow. >> anyway they were trying to

get into russia. trying to build the hotel there. and he's saying that's like me saying to john, i know how to get some dirty money into your tv show. and he's saying, i don't remember that. but we keep hanging out. >> he said that to me a lot the last year. >> i'll let you haggle over this on a break. matt had to run. we'll be right back. -he looks e. -no. -separated at birth much? we should switch name tags, and no one would know who was who. jamie, you seriously think you look like him? uh, i'm pretty good with comparisons. like how progressive helps people save money by comparing rates, even if we're not the lowest. even if we're not the lowest. whoa! wow. i mean, the outfit helps, but pretty great. look at us.

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>> we are out of time. my thanks to donna, john, evan. that does it for the hour. that's it for me nicolle wallace. good evening i'm chris matthews in washington. throughout the campaign donald trump promised that he would solve washington's problems. that he alone could