now we hand you to andrea mitchell. right now on "andrea mitchell reports," warning shots. president trump taking direct aim at robert mueller, calling his probe a witch hunt after firing andrew mccabe just hours before the veteran fbi official would have qualified for his pension. top republicans say this better not be the prelude to firing mueller. >> as i said before, if he tried to do that, that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency because we're a rule of law nation. mutual friends. the political data firm that fueled the trump campaign now accused of misusing personal information for more than 50 million americans on facebook. a former employee says it was to manipulate voters. >> what cambridge analytica does is works on creating a web of disinformation online so that people start going down the rabbit hole of clicking on blogs, websites, et cetera, that make them think that certain things are happening that may not be. and last laugh.

rex tillerson has his "saturday night live" exit interview with the help of john goodman. >> okay, gentlemen. any insights into -- >> trump is a moron! i'm sorry. i done splurted that one out. woo! feels nice to say what i want. call "jurrasic park" because the rexie is loose. and good day, everyone. i'm andi rea mitchell in washington, where president trump's year-long frustration with the special counsel investigation appears to be boiling every. he's blasting newly fired fbi director andrew mccabe and james comey in a string of tweets and targeting robert mueller himself, marking the first time the president has name checked him on twitter. just this morning, calling the russia probe a total witch hunt with, quote, massive conflicts

of interest. the president now heads to new hampshire this hour. let's begin with nbc national correspondent peter alexander at the white house and msnbc political analyst robert costa, national political reporter at "the washington post," and moderator of "washington week." peter, first to you. the president seems to be unleashed, but now his lawyers are trying to say, well, he doesn't mean to fire robert mueller, but boy, seemed to be getting awfully close to that kind of breakout this weekend. >> reporter: yeah, let's be clear. if there were to be any orders in terms of the firing of robert mueller, they wouldn't come from his lawyers. they'd come from the president himself. he would need to direct those orders to the attorney general. since he's recused himself, he'd go to rod rosenstein. at the end of the day, it's the president's words that matter most. that's why it's so striking to see him so unrestrained over the course of this weekend, lashing out a about partisan investigation, in his eyes, that he's repeatedly viewed as a hoax and witch hunt.

as you note, and this is why it's important, now for the first time personalizing his attacks against robert mueller. notably similar the way he went after andrew mccabe a matter of months ago. ty cobb, the president's attorney, this weekend basically pushed back all this and said the president is not discussing, is not considering the firing of the special counsel robert mueller. again, to be clear, it wouldn't be the president who would do that firing. and you'll remember that "the new york times" reported several months ago the president, we understand, tried to orchestrate the firing of the special counsel, even pressuring don mcgahn to look into the firing of the special counsel before mcgahn basically said he wouldn't do it. the president backed off, andrea. >> peter -- bob, weigh in on what peter was discussing. how do we interpret what the other lawyer, john dowd, had to say over the weekend? >> these are lawyers, andrea,

who have had a difficult relationship at times with president trump, as he has grown increasingly frustrated with this ongoing russia probe. my sources inside of the white house say that dowd and cobb are trying to rehabilitate their relationship with the president, speaking for him in part, at least his impulse that he's confiding to them behind the scenes. it's a complicated moment for the president's legal team as this white house comes under such scrutiny. >> and the scrutiny is very personal now that we know that there have been inquiries subpoenaed to the trump organization. robert, is that partly what might be driving this? >> partly, it's that. also, the white house and president's lawyers are aware that the mueller team is looking into potential obstruction of justice, things that happened during the presidency. so the president was already alarmed that his business dealings from the past were under the spotlight. now he knows his own conduct is being evaluated very closely,ing

even come up in an interview with robert mueller in the coming months, should the president move forward with that. >> and peter, what about the propriety of the president of the united states taking aim at andrew mccabe in such a personal way for more than a year now? >> reporter: yeah, andrea, it was striking to see the way this played out. obviously mccabe fired, literally a matter of hours before he would have been eligible for his full pension. i just want to make one more point about this conversation we're having. i think this is important here. the president again this morning, in all caps, describing this russia investigation as a witch hunt. over the weekend, as he referred to mccabe and comey and others, using words like fake and fraudulent. but remember just a matter of days ago, this white house effectively acted on findings by that special counsel and his team's investigation. those findings as they related to interference by russian individuals and russian organizations, sanctioning those individuals and those

organizations. so on the one hand, they're saying this is a witch hunt, it's a hoax, but on the other hand, they're using that very information, those findings to basically go after russia and in fact acknowledging there's something to this. >> indeed. peter alexander and bob costa, thank you both so much. wisconsin democratic congressman is offering andrew mccabe a job to help him qualify for his job. congressman, thank you very much. tell me how this would work, and have you heard back at all from mccabe? >> yeah, hi, andrea. thank you for having me. so we've definitely talked to his folks this morning. we're hoping to have a personal conversation, but clearly this is a very legitimate offer. what the president did was one of the biggest, i think, character flaws that we see in him. he just lacks human decency. it was cruel the way he did this, to fire someone literally hours before they would have got their pension. so we need to be a check in the balance of this system.

in this case, our check is that we can make sure at least someone isn't going to be threatened and others threatened that they'll lose their pension if they do something the president doesn't like. so we've made a very legitimate offer to work on election integrity. it's a nonpartisan issue. and if andrew mccabe would like to work for us, we want to make sure he gets his pension after many years of service to this country. >> and would this be a short-term hire so that he has the additional days to qualify for his pension, or might he continue for a while if this is agreeable? >> you know, i'll tell you, i think it'll be part of the conversation we'll have, but we'll make sure that he's on at least long enough to get the pension. it's important work that we'd love to have him do with his invaluable background. but it's also -- don't forget, the president did this to try to interfere with the mueller investigation. he wants to send a signal that anyone who crosses him, he's not going to just hurt you, he's going to hurt your family, he's going to hurt your future. he's going to go after your pension. andrea, i grew up in a lower-middle class family.

i still live on modest means, like almost everybody else in the country. when you threatening pensions, you are sending a message. it's thug-like behavior. quite honestly, paul ryan, mitch mcconnell, and others have to stand up far more than they are. i'm glad others also made offers. i don't necessarily care if he comes to work for me or not, just as long as he can get his pension. but we have to let people know, don't be intimidated by someone trying to stop you from talking and doing your job because again, that's cruel behavior and it's unbecoming of a president. >> now, are you at all concerned about what may or may not be in the ig report and in the office of legal counsel in terms of the substantive issues against andrew mccabe? >> yeah, again, every report we've seen, whether it be the fake report that devin nunes found then delivered to the white house last year or the bad report that the house republicans put out, every time we see one of these reports, we find out there's absolutely nothing. it's one more reason to try to derail this investigation. i'm guessing the same thing is

here. this person has had 21 years of credible, honorable service, and i'm going to put my bet behind andrew rather than behind the president. >> and one quick question. i was listening to congressman hines this morning on "morning joe" suggesting there's an effort by some democrats at least to put this standalone bill having a backstop for an office of special counsel to be legislatively enabled as part of the must-pass omnibus budget bill this week. obviously there will be pushback from republican leadership, but is that a real thing? >> you know, it would be something credible. if paul ryan wants to show he's not on the staff of the white house and he's the head of a co-equal branch of government that's a check and balance, i would hope that they would rise to do this because we all need to send a message regardless of partisan affiliation, that this investigation needs to go forward. as lindsey graham and a few other republicans have said, we would have a constitutional

crisis if mueller is fired. i think we need more of us to stand up and say it. this may be the best opportunity, as you know, in a must-pass bill. >> thank you so much. thanks for joining us. please let us know after talking to andrew mccabe or his people if there's a deal. if he's a new hire on the congressional staff. >> absolutely. it was your tweet that started all this. i just want you to know. we saw your tweet over the weekend. that's what gave us the idea. so thank you. >> well, that's interesting to note. thank you very much, congressman. and joining me now, msnbc national security analyst and former fbi special agent clint watts, and msnbc contributor chuck rosenberg, a former u.s. attorney and senior fbi official. chuck rosenberg, i know you worked well for quite some time with andrew mccabe. do you know how he's doing now after all this tumult? i think it was his 50th birthday yesterday as well. >> it was, andrea. he's probably doing about as

well as you would expect one to be doing after being fired in a public way and humiliated by the president. but here's what i know about andy, and i think it's worth telling you. he's a good man. he's a decent man. i found him to be a kind and humble man. i enjoyed working with him. now, to your point earlier, i don't know what's in the report, and maybe there's something bad in there, but the andy i know, the andy mccabe who served his country honorably and well for 21 years, i'm proud he's my frie friend. >> and chuck, just to be clear, the information that was allegedly disclosed, he says properly, with authorization, but apparently the ig found otherwise, to a reporter actually was detrimental to hillary clinton. it was not favorable because it involved a continuing investigation into the clinton foundation during the campaign. that's one piece. the other piece is that according to a lot of reporting,

this information was lifted out of a larger ig report and hurried through to try to get him out of there before his pension could kick in. so it's the speed with which this was done without due process, without his opportunity to really look at it, rebut it, et cetera. >> that's one of my questions. did he have the requisite amount of time to view the report, to rebut the report, to present evidence in his own favor, or was it rushed? here's where i think this may be nuanced, andrea, because i know a number of the career officials who are in this process. like andy, i've worked with them, i trust them. they're people of integrity. but was there unlawful command influence? in a military setting, the four star says i want andrea mitchell court martialed a court-martialed and out. it's in violation of the rules of military justice. here you have the chief of the

executive branch, the president of the united states, saying exactly that. i want this guy gone. what role does that play? and even if it doesn't apply as a legal matter, it should apply as a malter tter of principle. >> and clint watts, let's talk about that also. mike hayden, a former general who headed the cia and the nsa, suggested that no matter what the facts of the case are, there was in a military context, not a legal context, but a military context undue command influence in this case. >> that's absolutely right. the president forecasted this months ago, and he did it through his twitter feed. we saw that this was a vindictive attack on andrew mccabe. it didn't matter what andrew mccabe did or what the findings were. they had an objective they wanted to meet, and this is the method they chose to pursue it. and the problem with all this is we have no idea what's in this report. if the attorney general is going to go to such lengths, i'm sure he knew this would cause a fire storm, as it did last week.

then he should have disclosed that report. he should have offered what opr did in the representation, what they put forward in the recommendation, why he made his decision. right now we only have two sides of the story. we don't have the ig report. so it's very hard for the public to make much sense of it, other than if you have to go with president trump's word, which he forecast this months ago, or andrew mccabe's statement, i'm going with andrew mccabe's statement at the moment until i see that ig report. i think it would be very helpful, much like when we went through this process with the nunes memo, for the public to have something to base this on rather than cherry pick information and really behind the scenes maneuvering. >> clint, do you think that this is a prelude to -- you know, we've seen the president fire comey. we've seen him now pressure for the firing of mccabe. there are a lot of questions as to whether sessions recused in

the underlying russia probe should have even been involved in the firing of mccabe. is this something building to the firing of bob mueller? >> every time i say the president won't do that, he goes ahead and does something completely outrageous. at the sam point, i think strategically what the president and his lawyers are trying to pursue is a discrediting campaign against anybody that's a potential witness against him. what we've seen both with former fbi director comey and now deputy director mccabe is they've both been ousted from their job, and they've been discredited. if this were to go to a trial or into open hearings, they could just point and say, comey was fired because of his handling of the clinton investigation. mccabe was fired because of lack cough candor. they can discredit each of these witnesses and have grounds on the record. this is definitely the number one and primary goal. even if the mueller investigation processes all the way through, many of the witnesses have now been tarnished through these actions that have happened in the public.

>> and chuck, we're hearing from james comey on twitter. his book is about to come out. he's tweeting in response. mr. president, the american people will hear my story very soon, and they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not. comey's controversial. there's no question that a lot of hillary clinton democrats and other democrats as well blame his reopening the investigation into her e-mails for the way her momentum got stalled. >> that's right. i'm sure the book will probably not change a lot of minds on either side of the equation, andrea. >> chuck rosenberg, thank you very much. and clint, stay with me for a second. i want to bring you to texas, where there is growing fear across austin, texas, today after yet another package bombing overnight. the fourth to strike the city this month, two victims sustained non-life threatening injuries. investigators believe it could have been triggered by a trip wire, an evolution in the bomb maker's tactics.

austin police are working with the fbi. officials say it is not clear whether any of the six bombing victims were themselves targeted. clint, you've worked on joint terrorism task force operations at the fbi. what are they looking at now? this is an extraordinary development. >> yeah, i was at south by southwest last monday when two of the devices went off. you could hear the sirens whirling around town. this is definitely a very serious case and one the public needs to be paying attention to. i mean, this is a sophisticated bom bomb-making effort that seems to follow at least a deliberate pattern for the first three. it targeted people in their homes. it sounds like law enforcement think they're connected to each other. now you're seeing a different type of device, employing the trip wire, which allows for more random targeting. it seems like it might have been a random target late last night. the sophistication, also, it seems like they've put out warnings that point to this person, whoever is making the devices, has bomb-making experience, maybe even military

training, and shows some sophistication. i think we saw over the weekend the austin law enforcement along with the fbi and atf asking for the bomber to say what they want, essentially to come forward. if you remember back to the unabomber time, one of the keys was understanding his motive and getting them to talk, that way you can connect them both in terms of motive but in terms of persona. it's a fast-developing case and one that definitely should be on the attention of the american people this week. >> clint, thank you so much. double duty for you today. we appreciate that. and coming up, social insecurity. facebook back under fire for its role in the election. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. (vo) make her day with

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facebook is under fire for improperly obtaining data from 50 million users shared with the political data firm involving steve bannon and the trump campaign. whistle blower chrisser topher e helped had expose the information. he told our british tv partner itn channel 4 the company secretly accessed personal data from facebook users, turning their profiles into unique political weapons. he spoke with savannah guthrie this morning on "today." >> to your knowledge, did the trump campaign in 2016 use that improperly accessed data?

>> well, let me be clear. i left cambridge analytica before it joined the trump campaign. what i do know is that cambridge analytica was meeting with corey lewandowski in 2015 before trump had even announced and offering the services that i'm talking about right now. what cambridge analytica does is works on creating a web of disinformation online so that people start going down the rabbit hole of clicking on blogs, websites, et cetera, that make them think that certain things are happening that may not be. >> and in exclusive new reporting by nbc news just now, several key figures in trump world were involved in hiring cambridge analytica, including jared kushner. joining me now is nbc reporter anna schecter.

anna, thank you so much. your work over the last days on this tells us so much, but explain to people what role facebook played and how cambridge analytica reportedly then used these 50 million user names to mine data that was so critically important or could have been critically important to the trump campaign. >> i think what's crucial here is that facebook knew about this breach. they knew that 50 million users' data was inappropriately taken, and they did nothing about it until they realized last week that reporting was going to be imminent, exposing this breach. and i think that's really the key point to take away here. >> and they then basically said cambridge analytica was, you know, banned from facebook, but according to the guardian and other reporters in the uk, they also threatened to sue, to block publication last week. >> that's exactly right. they did not want this getting

out. >> so anna, this is a classic case, in contrast to some of our colleagues, of a major company doing everything wrong when it came to accusations as compared to the best case known in america of johnson & johnson way back decades ago when they had a tylenol problem and immediately withdrew all bottles of the potentially poisoned capsules from shelves across america. facebook is in denial until the last minute. >> that's right. i think facebook has been plagued with head lines over the past few months about the safety of users' data, and particularly in this case, it took them years to come out and alert people that their data was improperly used. particularly, i think it's interesting for this political campaign. >> let's talk about the trump campaign. when you talk about jared

kushner, you're talking about the key figures in running the digit call campaign, which ran circles around the democrats' campaign. just what role they played and how advanced it was. >> well, the rnc had developed troves of data themselves, but they brought cambridge analytica in. cambridge analytica uses algorithms to predict how a voter might cast a vote, and they also do personality surveys to figure out what might change their vote and what messaging might get under their skin. so a certain type of personality, fear might work for them, so they'll send that political message for the candidate that is paying them to do this work, to get those people to get out and vote. >> let me ask you about the role of luke oil, which is a major russian company run by an oligarch close to vladimir putin

and the kremlin. what connection, if any, did luke oil have with these major players in cambridge analytica? >> well, cambridge analytica had meetings with luke oil and actually sent research done with some of this facebook data. a contract was never signed, but there were meetings, and cambridge analytica did want to work with luke oil. >> do we know whether or not steve bannon took any of those meetings? >> no, i don't believe he did. >> okay. well, all of which is more grist for the mill in terms of the mueller investigation and possible connections. one of the things, anna, that we've been looking at ourselves is how could the trump campaign so quickly determine specific things about voters in a particular district in pennsylvania or wisconsin or michigan. and this kind of user information could be the key to

some of that, indeed. thank you for your work. thanks for being with us today, anna. anna schecter from nbc news. and coming up, who's the boss? president trump unplugged. we'll talk to former white house chief of staff and head of the cia leon panetta about what it means for the presidency, next on "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. you know what they say about the early bird...

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in a white house that rarely sticks to a script and sometimes feels like an "snl" skit, recent days have reached a whole new level of life imitating art. >> john kelly called me personally. he said, where are ya? i said, sir, that's private. he said, oh, good, are you on the toilet because i got some news. >> are you okay? >> i'm fine. i just -- it's just crazy how one day your the ceo of exxon, a $50 billion company, and the next day, you get fired by a man who used to sell steaks in the mail. >> joining me now is leon panetta, former secretary of defense and cia director, also

of course chief of staff for president clinton. you never had to deal with the firing of the secretary of state in such unseemly circumstances. >> no, i didn't, san drandrea. i think we did have personnel issues, but usually when i brought those issues to the president, the president would make a decision, and i would carry out that decision. but i usually did it directly with the individuals that i dealt with. i brought them to the office of the chief of staff and the white house, looked at them directly in their eyes, and told them what the problem was and that they would have to move on. i think this white house does not operate by that kind of direct communication. >> let's talk about mike pompeo going to the state department. do you have any concerns at all?

this is the agency you used to lead. i'm sure you have heard a lot about mike pompeo's leadership of it. is he the right person right now to be secretary of state? >> well, obviously we'll find that out. mike pompeo, as far as i can see, did a good job as director of the cia. he certainly had the trust of the president, which is important. so i think it is important that he would have a better relationship with the president of the united states. secondly, he is more of a traditional foreign policy approach in terms of how you deal with russia and recognize russia as an enemy, how you deal with other countries. i think it's more in line with how mcmaster and jim mattis and john kelly, for that matter, all view foreign policy. so that's a plus. i think the big problem for mike

pompeo is whether or not he can put the state department back together again. it's been undermined. it's been hollowed out. for him to operate effectively as secretary of state, he's going to need some experts in all of these key positions, and that's going to take time. >> and what about gina haspel to become the cia director, first woman, first person from the covert side of cia since the '70s. but most importantly to her critics, including those who are going to have to confirm her, she was in charge of a secret prison in thailand and under orders during the post-9/11 period she was involved in the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques that many say was torture. >> well, gina's had a long career at the cia. when i was director of the cia, i worked closely with her and

found her to be an outstanding cia officer. so i think my recommendation to the senate would be to look at her entire career, look at the issues surrounding obviously enhanced interrogation, but also put it in context. all of that took place soon after 9/11. there were a lot of arguments and concerns about what the terrorists might do following 9/11. so just look at the facts, look at the entire context of her career, and then make a judgment. but i think she would make a fine cia director. >> and mr. secretary, what concerns do you have, if any, about the president's response to the nerve agent's usage against a former russian spy and his daughter and other assassination plots in these recent years carried out by russia, by the kremlin, as we

see vladimir putin now re-elected in a landslide victory. obviously not a free election. >> well, you know, there's obviously been a lot of concerns about how this president has addressed the issue of russia. and although they did take steps to put sanctions in place and i was pleased to see that happen, the fact is that this president still has a real problem addressing directly the problems with russia. russia is not a friend. russia is a foe. russia is an enemy. they're going to do everything possible to undermine the united states of america, as we saw in the 2016, but as we see around the world. their whole effort is to undermine the stability of the united states. i think the president of the united states, as commander in chief and responsible for the national security of this country, needs to be much more

honest and much more direct in focusing on the threat that putin and russia constitutes. what they do in terms of assassinations, what they do in terms of their aggression around the world is all obvious to those who have paid a lot of attention to russia. putin has basically placed us in a new chapter of the cold war. and i think the president needs to recognize it and deal with that directly. >> leon panetta, thanks for joining us today from monterey. and one nation overdosed. president trump expected to announce his long awaited plan to fight the exploding opioid epidemic, but is it the right fix? you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. stay with us. a tip that'll crack this case wide open! turns out the prints at the crime scene- awwwww...did mcgruffy wuffy get a tippy wippy? i'm serious! we gotta move fast before-

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treatment centers. from what you know of what the president is about to announce, are they finally coming to grips with it? >> i got to tell you, andrea, i was talking to a former obama administration official who worked in these very areas earlier today. she said there's not a lot new in what the president is going to propose and what is new, everybody's been talking about this idea for the potential for a death penalty for drug traffickers or drug dealers, actually sends shivers into the hearts of people who work in movements like the harm reduction movement. the idea that you can't help dead people when it comes to addicts. when you talk about giving the death penalty to street-level drug dealers, these are not the drug cartels coming from mexico. they're not the fentanyl distributors from china. these are people often in local street gangs. what you hear from critics today is that the president and his administration will be repeating a lot of the mistakes of the war on drugs of the past with a proposal like that. >> i mean, this brings us back, margaret, to some of the

mistakes that new york state made in this war on drugs, where they disproportionately managed to penalize and imprison african-americans, inner city people who were drug dealers for a number of reasons, but letting off the suburban users. >> that's so right, andrea. it's not a law enforcement problem. it's a supply problem. but president trump doesn't want to go after the drug dealers and the drug companies that are flooding the market with these pills. and studies have shown that the problem is where the pills are. and you're going to make a lot of money sending them to small pharmacies in west virginia and other places like that -- ohio, pennsylvania, new hampshire. president trump has done almost nothing. he proposed cutting the budget from 328 million to 29 million. this is after a year ago wanting to gut the office completely. as you said, he appointed that

24-year-old who'd had a relative die from an opioid overdose. his only qualification for the job to that office where he did nothing. and remember, representative tom morino was the first drug czar. he gutted the law that would allow the dea to enforce against the drug companies to keep them from supplying these markets. >> and jacob, in new hampshire i remember in 2015 when we were covering the listening campaign of hillary clinton because i was on the democratic campaign. that was one of the first things she saw, and bernie sanders jumped into it as well. vermont's governor declared it a crisis in 2016 in his state of the state message. we were up there in new england. so this has been hitting not only new england and west virginia, we know, but as margaret said, ohio and certainly out in california, many of the places where you've visited. so it's across the country, but we've yet to see a unified federal response.

>> you remember, andrea, it was the one moment chris christie had during that campaign that was that empathetic moment there in new hampshire when he was talking about people that he knew who lost their lives from substance abuse. margaret makes a great point i want to touch on. pills. pills we expect to be addressed today by the president in his plan when he releases it in new hampshire. but this crisis, what has caused the greatest drug overdose crisis in american history, and that is the opioid crisis, is not necessarily just the pillingpills. even if the president reduces the amount of pills being prescribed across the country, fentanyl, the synthetic drug that's come into this country from china, from the mexican drug cartels, is more powerful oftentimes than heroin, morphine. it's what's killing people across this country. unless the president does something to stop the flow of fentanyl coming into the united states, this crisis will continue no matter how many pills are out there. >> jacob and margaret. we have breaking news off

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. president trump has reportedly taken his requirement that his employees sign non-disclosure agreements to the white house. washington post columnist ruth marcus obtained a draft signed by some trump staffers, an agreement supposed to bind them to secrecy, extending them beyond their service. according to her, staffers who violate the faa could be find as much as a million dollars. joining me is white house chief of staff under clinton and have either of you been told to sign non-disclosure agreements about your white house service? >> not me. >> not me. >> well, i mean, what is the propriety for that for white house officials? nobody likes to sigh these kiss and tell books. >> impropriety. it's a new day, not necessarily

a good one, and ra, i mean, this white house has really suffered from even more leaks than most white houses have. now to come forward with this, i question legality, although i'm not a barrister, but it is just really a little bit unimaginable i this i. >> now, i remember how angry the white house was when robert riesch published "locked in the cabinet" maybe two weeks after he left the cabinet. so you couldn't have been happy about that. >> we weren't and i don't think any president is happy about a kiss-and-tell or a book like that. you've seen them both in democrats and republican administrations. it's a part of the landscape. >> especially one written while are you in the cabinet room. >> you wonder where those copious notes taken in a meeting and where they're going. >> it never happened when i was in the white house. >> you had dan quayle. >> the first bush white house was actually less of that than others. >> a lot more loyal.

>> that's why we only had one term. all the lee, reagan, clinton, they did great. this isn't about leaks. it's so inappropriate, the classified information are you not allowed to reveal when you leave the office. that's precisely classified information classified by the intelligence services. if you want to write about it or talk about, you can say surely this is no longer classified. that's what exofficials do when they write secretarys of state. but the idea that you can't talk about anything that happened in the white house, two weeks or ten years after you leave and not just absencetive things, about anything that the president doesn't like in his personal capacity. it totally reverses the understanding of what a public service is and makes you a personal employee of donald trump, according to at least the draft that ruth ma cuss go. when i saw that i thought, that's ridiculous, that's impossible. no white house counsel would do

that. it's very strict. they haven't denied it. there are serious issues telling a new employee who doesn't have legal representation, it's working here for the taxpayers, you have to sign this mda. that's what happens. i guess i have to do it. is that an appropriate way to do something? >> i think the stronger dwings between the mda and national security issue, you seldom see this in the corporate sector either. >> the trump family business brought to the white house. that peculiar procedure. let's talk about robert muler, they were implicit threats, it was the first time he name checked mueller. it's now the mueller witch hunt. not the russia probe. what should congress do? there is an opportunity this week to put legislation protecting the mueller investigation on the must pass budget. not that it's going to happen, what should congress do?

particularly the leadership. >> i have been dependent on independence counsel, it can be a slippery slope, director mueller is a standing of distinction. andrea you saw republicans speak out strongly, including sharm tray gowdy and other, lindsay graham bass very strong. so i think it's now under active consideration about passing some legislation just because of the events as you just outlined i think a month ago that would not be the case. >> pageing paul ryan and mitch mcconnell. >> you can bitterly add to the must pass omnibus bill a sense of congress, that it would be inappropriate to in anyway impede or interfere or short circuit this investigation. it's a little hard to actually stop the president from exercising his articles of power and at least get people on the record. i think republicans would hope they would vote for that. some said they have said that. not all of them have. if i were a democrat, i'd think

seriously about saying they need democrat votes to pass the omnibus him they could say they want some expression for the mueller report being unimpeded. >> i think we join in that quick. >> we have to leave it there. thank you both so much. more ahead. we'll be right back. thank you so much. thank you! so we're a go? yes! we got a yes! what does that mean for purchasing? purchase. let's do this. got it. book the flights! hai! si! si! ya! ya! ya! what does that mean for us? we can get stuff. what's it mean for shipping? ship the goods.

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mpblgsz thanks for being with

us. . >> a /* /-. >> good afternoon, everyone from msnbc headquarters. we begin with president trump. trump versus mueller, the president on twitter again today, sounding off about a witch hunt. the escalating public pressure he is putting on the special counsel who is investigating him. plus, serial bomber for the next two hours, police are warning everyone in austin, texas, stay inside, the very latest on the investigation into who could be behind this string of mysterious explosions. and facebook fallout, reports that a trump campaign linked firm harvested data on 50 million facebook users to influence voters. now, we are learning who on the trump campaign was key in bringing this firm on board. but we start with president trump's twitter tirade and the relative silence from republicans in the house and the