the president doesn't want to top it. >> we'll be reading axios am j usa will it l b-- little bit. >> correct myself it's actually tuesday. >> there was a brazen plot to illegally exonerate hillary clinton and if she didn't win the election to then frame donald trump with a falsely created crime. >> that is president trump's new attorney back in january. amplifying claims of a secret society at the fbi. that appearance was in effect, a televised audition for joining the president's legal team. welcome to morning joe. it is tuesday. march 20th. with us here in washington, we have columnist and care rale

lee, new york times reporter michael schmidt and new york times reporter jeremy peters and in new york along with willie geist we have msnbc contributor mike barnacle and the president of the foreign relations and author of the book war of choice, richard haas. i know david especially is hoping that he's next and that he'll get am rosa's job. but it appears that cable tv is like the bench for the president. >> it looks like it. the attorney speaking on fox news amplifying or perhaps introducing the idea that the entire mueller investigation is a conspiracy against president trump, that is president trump's argument. he's been tweeting about it that the investigation is a witch hunt and it appears he wants to surround himself with attorney who is agree with him that this is in fact a witch hunt against

him. >> that should be interesting and again, worries about the potential firing of mueller. we begin though with that shakeup in president trump's legal team. michael schmidt, you and your colleagues, you're reporting in the new york times that trump recently weighed out loud to close associates whether he should dismiss ty cobb. he's a lawyer on the team who has pushed for a strategy of fulling cooperating with the special counsel investigation. according to a person who spoke with trump late on monday, the president reassured cobb that he has no plans to fire him. i'm not sure what that means in part to prevent a narrative that his team was in disarray. meanwhile, trump's lead attorney, john dowd has reportedly considered leaving because he feels that he has no control over the president's behavior according to two people briefed on the matter. i've heard that as well. in response to the report, one of the president's personal

lawyers, tells nbc news that dowd and cobb are fully engaged and continue to represent the president and his office, but the president has already made one change to his legal team, with a move that reflect as shift to omore confrontational stance towards mueller. the new york times was first to report that joe degenova will join the president's legal team later this week. as a contributor to fox news, he has repeatedly pushed the theory as you heard that the fbi and the justice department have been working together to intentionally frame trump. >> make no mistake about it. a group of fbi and doj people were trying to frame donald trump of a falsely created crime. >> they conspired to exonerate

improperly and politically hillary clinton and also if she lost to frame the incoming president of the united states with a false crime. >> what they have done to the department and the fbi is undermine the confidence of the american people in federal law enforcement. it is disgraceful and it all stems from their animus to president trump. >> he served as special counsel in the 1990s and was later hired by the new york senate to investigate elliot spitzer. it was just last week that the new york times reported the president was talking to bill clinton's impeachment attorney about joining the white house to help deal with the special counsel inquiry. trump responded to the article via twitter calling reports that he was going to add another lawyer to his legal team false. so what's true?

>> well, i -- first of all i think that the randall county folks wou -- hillary clinton folks would argue. that's a bit of a bank shot. think of the legal team is what we see in the white house, like we see within the campaign, chaos. that is what's unfolding here. he's looking for a badgic bullet. some way to deal with mueller and thinks there's a guy out there can do this. >> every part of this white house is a episode of the apprentice and who's going to get fired, who's going to get ahead. it literally is kind of falling that way. >> yeah, and you get to audition on television. if you go on fox news or anywhere else he's watching and he may hire you and put you in the administration. i was interested to hear that john dowd is worried he has no

control over the president. there aren't going to be many attorneys who can meet it. do you think he was auditioning or perhaps, you know, when he came out the other day when he said the mueller investigation must end, do you think that was a message to the president trump that i am on your side if president trump was waivering about john daowd? he did want the president previously to fully cooperate with the investigation. >> i had a chance to speak to dowd last night. i think what happened was is that ten days ago the president trump met with emmett flood and they did not know about this and that really unnerved them. they were wondering at the time whether they were on the way out. and i'm not sure if that led to this, but sometimes as we see with the president, folks start a auditioning and maybe that's what we saw when dowd went as

far as he did on saturday. >> so david, just looking at the overall state of this presidency, how is it possible that this part of it all is not completely consuming? >> i think it is completely consumer. we now have a sign of how president trump intends to fight this battle. he has chosen a scrappy cable news style infighter to be his additional advocate. joe is not a fancy white shoe lawyer. dowd andty cobb have pretty good pedigre pedigrees. they're well known as defense lawyers. joe is a street fighter and he's going to do for the president what he does on cable tv. the president is going to clearly fight this in the media. if you wanted a lawyer who's going to fight it in court you would have chosen emmitt flood or somebody else. this is a sign of where we're going to go and it's going to

get rougher. >> could it get ugly or uglier despite all that? >> despite the president's heightened attacks on the special counsel investigation, witch hunt and all that, yesterday, trump called the investigation a total witch hunt with massive conflicts of interest. when asked about the need for legislation, second ranking senate republican john cornyn told reporters quote, i don't think that's going to happen so i think it's not necessary and obviously legislation requires a presidential signature and i don't see the necessity of picking that fight right now. he also called rhett tick on mueller unhelpful and if trump fired him quote, the consequences would be so overwhelming and here is senator orrin hatch. >> i feel confident he won't be fired. mueller's an honest man. he's a decent guy, but you know, there's some differences of opinion between the administration and mr. mueller, but mueller's a very, very tough

guy. >> why are you so confidence that he won't do this? >> because i think it would be the stupidest thing anybody could do. >> that may be drew, but the confidence that orrin hatch and john cornyn displays, i don't think a lot of people would have thought he would have fired james comey. >> they don't know where the president will go on it. they don't know whether the president would appear on the guidelines of any legislation at this point. this is an old story and it gets to the root of mu man nature being so unpredictable and the human nature element is that everyone, including a president of the united states always gets nervous and a little frightened when the cops are about to knock on the door and this is what's going on here. and michael schmidt, i would like to ask you, the disarray within the president's legal team, the chaos that has been created here, how much of it has

to do with their apprehension about what might be about to happen? >> well, they're coming up on probably the biggest decision they've had to make during the investigation, which is whether to sit down with mueller for an interview. and they're deeply divided about this. the president who thinks he's his best smokesman really wants to do this. he thinks he can go in and explain to mueller how he did nothing wrong and he's not going to say anything to get him into trouble. dowd thinks this is a terrible idea. they're concerned. they know this is a president who does not tell the truth often and would go on and on and could easily get himself into trouble where he in that part may not have criminal exposure. >> or he could be on to something. attacks against the so-called deep state the president and some republicans may be taking hold. more americans now believe that national policy the being manipulated or districted by a deep state, that according to

the newest monmouth university poll. 6 in 10 americans believe that government officials have too much influence in determining federal policy. 26% say the right balance of power exists between elected and unelected officials. why this view of the deep state seems to be growing, 24% are somewhat familiar with the term and 63% are not familiar. however, as monmouth described the term as unelected military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy, nearly 3 in 4 americans said they believe that the deep state exists. one in five said it does not. and i think if the facebook story and cambridge analyticas that we're coming, we'll be doing that a lot more later, but this is real. and this president may be on to

something whether it's right or wrong. >> this is -- i don't think you can look at that any other way in that it's a direct result of what we've seen the president try to do which is sew doubt about people in the administration, whether it's the fbi and other agencies, and we've seen since he came into office him do this every single day, whether it's on twitter, whether it's things he says publicly, whether it's from the white house podium, and clearly this is having an impact and this is the battle that he has been fighting while his lawyers may want to fight a different one. >> and richard haas, sewing doubt in the members of the fbi and the cia and saying things that aren't true like they are democrats when they're republicans. this is the beginning of something potentially dangerous? >> we used to talk about

american exceptionalism and now we're increasingly looking like everybody else and that's not a compliment and coming back to something you raised before, mika, this is not happening in a vacuum. over the next two or three months this administration is going to face three enormous decisions, what to do about these tariffs, and what to do about the iran nuclear agreement and the idea that it is consumed by this chaotic churn of people and what to do about this investigation, the combination of the two, again, this is about as bad as it gets. >> as bad as it gets and david, chaos, one -- one foreign policy disaster, i'm trying to think of the right word, one wrong move and chaos could turn into something else. >> it's a really dangerous time. real challenges for an inexperienced president, thank goodness we have very good people in the military.

i just want to note one thing about this deep state poll. it's a very dangerous thing when most of the country begins to believe that a small group in the country is manipulating decisions. we've seen that historically in countries that begin to break down. i've spent much of my life reporting from countries in the middle east where people believe that, that conspirator yal idea that politics is imbedded. if the united states is becoming a country like that, people have to fight for democracy. if most people think my vote is stolen, it doesn't matter then you get into that it appeals to that feeling that people have and you begin to go over the edge, so i take that poll finding very seriously. >> i do too and mike, as you point out, every day, this is not what people are thinking about.

this had to be explained to people in the poll exactly what it was that was being polled. because they're thinking about today and tomorrow. and their wallets. this could be creeping in. >> mika, david is exactly right. and there are arguably two great tracts that have been written throughout history. one is the bible and the other is the constitution of the united states of america. nd america is an idea. it's not a democracy, it's not a republic before it is an idea. and the idea that 74% according to the monmouth university poll believe as david pointed out there is a deep state run by a military political intellectual hoo hierarchy apart from government and this is the gift we've gotten from donald trump. this is the gift we've gotten from him sur surrendering to

vladimir putin and causing chaos in the country. >> the stunning refzlations involving the data company with ties to the campaign. new overnight the washington post reports that a package headed for austin, texas, exploded at a fed ex facility in texas this morning. there was a call about an explosion, injuries are unknown at this time. this would be the fifth explosion tied to the incidents in austin. officials say it's clearly the work of a serial bomber. also this morning, the weinstein company has filed for bruptd any in the wake of the allegations against harvey weinstein. its assets will be acquired by a dallas based equity firm. it would nullify all nondisclosure agreements.

harvey weinstein used nondisclosure agreements to silence his accusers. those agreements end, effective immediately. it calls it an important step toward justice and this story from arizona. uber is halting its self-driving car tests after a woman was struck and killed by one of its autonomous vehicles while crossing the street. cameras captured video footage of the accident from inside and outside the vehicle and the federal investigators are on the case. this is the first pedestrian death by an autonomous vehicle. and still ahead on "morning joe," just a day after worldwide news that cambridge analytica exploited data from facebook users there is this headline to deal with. suggesting sex workers and spies

could be used to influence elections. but first let's go to bill karins with a check on another noreaster. >> three storms and significant travel issues over the next 48 hours. the university of jacksonville southern was hit, the dorms were hit. some of the roofs have been torn off. thankfully those students are on spring break but there's questions of where they'll return to. a lot of hail damage in alabama also. there's some f of the pictures there and hundreds if not thousands of cars with extreme hail damage in northern alabama especially coleman county. so we still have the wind damage for charleston, to savannah. these are the end of these storms that are clearing on out. new thunderstorms so we do have a chance of isolated tornados, jacksonville, myrtle beach, those are the areas included. 65 million people at risk for

this noreaster. boston, philadelphia, new york, eventually down to d.c. 6 to 12 inches likely areas north and west of baltimore and d.c. up towards the mountains. d.c. i have you 3 to 6. baltimore 4 to 8. most of this accumulates wednesday and the heaviest of it, new york city, hard ford, providence and boston. the weather service forecast is almost double my numbers here so we'll see how it all plays out and funlly southern california could get five inches of rain in the next few days. they're expecting mud slide and debris flows in that region. they're trying to get people out of there to protect their lives. so washington, d.c., 3 to 6 inches of snow. tonight you'll mix in with some sleet. the snow for you is going to be wednesday morning into wednesday afternoon. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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now to the developments surrounding the company cambridge analytica and it's alleged practice of collecting data from tens of millions of facebook profiles in the leadup to the 2016 election. nbc news uk partner it and channel 4 news has released video involving the head of cambridge analytica and its reporters posing as a potential client. the reporters trying to find out how the company operated claimed to be interested in changing the outcome of the elections. the hidden footage shows the ceo of hypothetically trapping an opposition leader. >> it can just be to get and

speak to the incumbents and to offer them a deal that's too good to be true and make sure that that's video recorded. tactics that are very effective, instantly having video evidence of corruption and having it on the internet. >> a spokes person for cambridge analytica denied to itn channel 4 news that it used any of the tactics used in the video. meanwhile new video is surfacing about its ties to the 2016 election campaign. the source familiar with the hiring of cambridge tells the primary figures involved in the hiring was jared kushner and the digital director of the 2016 campaign. he has been tapped to lead trump's 2020 re-election campaign has denied that the firm was useful to the campaign and said that the trump campaign

instead used data from the republican national committee. but in may of last year, forbes magazine published a number of never before seen quotes from its november 2016 interview with kushner on the data operation. kushner told moshs that facebook and digital targeting were the most effective ways to reach the audiences. after the primary we started ramping up because we knew that doing a national campaign is different than doing a primary campaign. that was when we formalized the system because we had to ramp up for digital fund raising. we brought in tarrant county and we saw a lot of that. we talked with brad during the election and with jared and jeremy peters, there's another angle to this and that would be the republican donors, the mercer family, tell us about that. >> it was a condition of the mercers involvement in trump's operation. they're giving the money that they did to him, that they hired

cambridge analytica. and as my colleagues reported over the weekend, this is a deeply tainted corrupted company. look at the way that they have abused the data that was available to them on facebook? but there's also another layer. it's not just the political aspect. it's a corporate aspect. how facebook has responded saying no, this is not our fault. which is a strategy we've seen from them before. we are blameless here, and so therefore we should be above regulation but i think you are about to see that mood on capitol hill shift. >> absolutely and there's the facebook connection. >> yeah, the facebook connection is that the media company under fire. data on 50 million users was harvested by donald trump's political ad firm in 2016. the stock fell sharply finishing down more than 7%.

a loss of more than $30 billion in value. meanwhile lawmakers on both sides of the aisle called on facebook to make changes. democratic senator, a member of the senate intel committee sent zuckerberg a letter asking whether the federal trade commission need to step in. axios and amy klobuchar calling on zuckerberg to testify before congress. this follows republican senator marco rubio's comments saying he was disturbed by the move. we're going to have more on backlash, that facebook is facing when senator klobuchar joining "morning joe" in our next hour. so this has bubbled up now where the senate wants to take its up. they may have hearings about this. they may call facebook executives in front of them. i guess the question is what to

do and do you have an oversight now from the federal level? does the government have oversight over those social media companies, something a lot of people think is long overdue. >> yeah, i think that this particular incident is the thing that seems like it's going to finally get the lawmakers and facebook to sort of figure out a path forward. i mean, facebook is facing a huge crisis here. i was speaking to someone yesterday who said they recognize this and it's all hands on deck and it's not just here in the u.s. where they're under pressure but also in the uk. and they're starting to be spoken to in a language that they understand. their stock is dropping. there's hash tags that are anti facebook saying delete your facebook and so you know, we've seen them time and again try to push things off and make excuses and this feels different. this feels like they're actually going to have to do something. >> all right. coming up, it feels like a lifetime since then press

secretary robert gibbs took joe and me on a tour of the obama white house. remember that, willie? i think you went to the pool in the basement? >> i was underneath the briefing room. >> we'll be right back. hands go here... feet go here... you know what goes here... and your approval rating... goes here. test drive the ztrak z540r at your john deere dealer and learn why it's not how fast you mow, it's how well you mow fast. nothing runs like a deere. save 250 dollars when you test drive

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well, he's back. he just asked if anything was going on here in washington. we told him nothing. joining us now former white house press secretary for president obama, he's now chief communications officer and executive vice president for mcdonald's. he's got a big announcement on what the company is doing on climate change, but first, i don't know, did you sign an nda with obama? did that -- was he -- how about a loyalty oath. >> >> i did not know those existed. >> right. okay. so trying to get your comments a little bit on, you know, what you see happening in this white house, especially given your perspective, we have josh and

he's always very careful. he's like, it's rather striking to me that they're citing ndas but how would you describe everything from the press secretary being if i can go as far as forced to lie about crowd size to a press secretary calling an fbi agent a bad actor, how do you view these thing from the perspective of a former press secretary who did this for a living? >> well, one i'm glad to live in chicago where the deep arguments are around the white sox and the cubs. i do say the job of press secretary having done it for a couple of years is extraordinarily difficult even on the best day. i remember, i met sean spicer about two weeks before the administration started and i remember the first question i said was, do you see the tweets before they go out? he said i wake up and check my

twitter feed like you do. >> right. >> so it's a -- i -- i personally can't imagine the pace of keeping up with all of that, starting that early in the morning. >> but we're chuckling. having said that these people are being put in a horrible position. is there something i don't know? i'm deeply critical at times for press secretaries not saying no, mr. president, i will not lie to the american people for you. what am i missing here? do you do that? >> no, and i was never asked to and -- and i do remember times when you go up and you aren't ready to talk about something and maybe the administration isn't ready to talk about something and you get asked a question about it. i remember once having to say something that we weren't ready to talk about fully and we did and you know, it's a tv show that happens every day and you've -- you get asked what you

are prepared for and you get asked a lot what you aren't prepared for. >> it's great to see you. it's been a long time. mike has a few questions on when the shamrock shake promotion begins. but just want to ask you since we haven't talked to you in quite some time just broadly what we've watched over the last 14 months or so. we had a poll that showed 74% of americans believe in the deep state, a lot of them didn't know what it was at first but explained to them, they said yeah, i buy into that. what do you think since your old boss left office on that january 20th, what do you think has happened to the country in those 14 months? >> i think the country has been divided for quite some time. it certainly has become far more divided and to get numbers like 74% you've got people on both sides that believe on any given day there's some apparatus in some set of buildings behind us that are arrayed in makes

decisions that comport with what that poll showed. and so i -- you know, i -- i do -- you get worried about the overall trust in government and the desire for young people to want to go into public service. the democracy only works if we participate actively in it and you want more and more people to think of it as an important noble position and job that can help tackle big challenges that we have in this country and throughout the world. >> hey, it's indicated it has been a while since we've seen you and in the course of those months that we have not seen you, has your family adjusted at all to the golden arches and the drive through window in your home? >> yeah, it's the head set that i wear around the house that's unnerving but other than that -- >> you stood there nearly every day in your tenure as press secretary and i'm wondering about the presidency that you were a part of and what you

think about the damage that's being done to the institution of the presidency today given that you worked for a presidency that was virtually scandal free, and now we have nearly the opposite. >> what was the question? >> the question is, what do you think about the damage that is being done to the ins institution? >> i don't think we can solve problems in our country if we can't sit down and talk about them. if we're so deeply divided. if it becomes everybody going to their corners and their trust in the ability that we have on either side leading us can't help bring all of us together and i think that's -- without it, you're going to -- you're going to find the problems that we struggle with each and every day that don't get better with age -- >> but with all due respect

aren't we talking about something completely different at this point? people running to their corners, that's been a problem that we've had to deal with, but aren't we dealing with something completely different? what's holding you back from talking about the reality of this presidency in a real way? i mean, i'm not a political pun dent anymore and i'm happy to be on talking about what we're working on on climate change and -- >> but aren't you deeply concerned as an american? >> i think everybody is concerned deeply about the country. again, i think the challenges that we wake up to every day, things like north korea that are tens of thousands of miles away that we don't normally think about on any given day or haven't, are vexing challenges that we've got to get real answers to. >> i'm wondering if there's any way you think your former boss, president obama is play a useful role in this period where this

country really is rapidly dividing. he was worried about that until the day he left office. what can he do now? >> it's a good question and my hunch is that he'll certainly -- my guess is be out in the midterm elections, but you know, my guess is that he had great respect for when george w. bush left the white house and wasn't involved in the day-to-day and my hunch is that he'll be out in some of the political campaigning but i don't think he sees himself playing that role and i think he understands that he served his time and that he has other things that he will try to do now to engender that next generation of public servants. >> i'm going to set aside the fact that the fries are addictive. mcdonald's is making news. >> we're trying to reduce green

house gases between now and 2030. the first restaurant company in the world to set a target to reduce those green house gases. verified targets. it's the equivalent of taking 32 million cars off the road. it's a significant and a big step that we're taking. our customers want us to do things that help their communities and help planets. help this planet and by doing something important on climate change and doing something around green house gases will make that big difference. >> richard, jump in. >> it will be interesting to see what mcdonald's comes up with. but the u.s. government has checked out of the climate change policy debate, but states, cities and american corporations are all heavily involved and we actually could have a bizarre outcome where the united states meets the climate change, climate accord goals even though the trump administration doesn't participate in it. so this is good news and it's

part of a much larger trend. >> right. there's no doubt. i mean, you've got companies large and small that are making big commitments like this and we eef got -- you know, we've got franchises that operate 37,000 restaurants around the world and we've got to do something about the energy that powers those and we've got a big supply change and we hope we can use our size and scale and bring about some good and as you said, whether or not a country is in that agreement or not, they've got to have goals around getting to what they commit to and i think that's what companies and cities and states are stepping up to do and that's what mcdonald's is doing today. >> all right. thank you very much. it's always good to see you. i can't believe your kid is in high school. >> i can't believe it either. driving soon. >> he was a little kid in 2008 when we talked to him about auburn losing to vand ir built. >> i knew that was coming up. >> time sure flies when you're

having fun. all right. so still ahead, thank you so much. still ahead on "morning joe." >> was she threatened in any way? >> yes. >> was she threatened physical harm? >> yes. >> oh. that was stormy daniels last week here on "morning joe." now he's offering his side of the saga. we'll talk to senior reporter ativanty fair with her new reporting next on morning joe.

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welcome back to morning joe. joining us now senior reporter at vanity here. emily jane fox. >> so your latest piece you spent a bunch of time with michael cohen and you had to go back and revise the piece a few times including after mika's

questioning of stormy daniels attorney on this show when he said that stormy daniels had been physically threatened. what did michael cohen say when you asked him about that information? >> every day i had to reinterview him because news kept breaking and i was transcribing the latest interview on friday morning and when mika asked that question, i picked up the phone and i had to say, hey, michael, did you threaten stormy daniels and he said to me unequivocally, i've never talked to her, i've never texted her, i've never met her in person, i've had no communication with her other than through her old attorney. i said to him, do you know of anyone else threatening her and he said i don't know, but i can only speak for myself and he had not issued any threats to her. >> so he wouldn't acknowledge if perhaps someone else -- it was within the realm of possibility

of someone else threatening her. >> he said he would have no way of knowing if someone threatened her. >> he admits to paying her $130,000. why did he cut her a did he cut $130,000. >> in the past he has said this is -- president trump is someone who he would be loyal to no matter what. the answer he gave me this week was slightly different that this was his job, he is a fixer, he's doing what he's done for years, which is taking care of problems for the president and in the normal course of business there would be situations where he would take care of anything. my question was, well, have you taken care of situations like this before and that's where he drew the line. wouldn't go into what he had done. >> if there was no affair, as the president says, what was the money for? in other words, why was he paying for someone with whom the president wasn't having an affair, $130,000? >> very good question. michael cohen said the affair

didn't happen but the story of the affair would have been damaging enough for his client that he wanted to make it disappear. the issue i brought up with him was this wasn't just your personal client at this point, this was a candidate for the president of the united states so it wasn't business as urge. this is not the job he had a decade before, it was different because it should have been hold a higher standard. there were ethics regulations, campaign finance regulations you have to abide by and the way michael cohen sees it is it was business as usual and he was doing what he's always done. >> emily, welcome. >> thank you. >> michael cohen -- it sort of defies reality for him to say the affair didn't happen but the story would have been so explosive. there were tons of women making all sorts of allegations about now president trump and trump didn't care so i'm not sure how that explanation flies. michael cohen is walking around with everyone knowing he made

this payment. i can't imagine this isn't impacting his life personally in some way and how can he honestly say there was nothing to hide with this porn star, with this payment that he made for trump. >> this was the first time -- this was not the first time he dealt with miss clifford, either in 2011 she had given an interview and then later recanted what she said in the interview about her alleged affair with president trump and -- so he dealt with her for the first time in 2011 in helping getting her story removed from a web site that published the interview and then in 2016 michael cohen told me he caught wind of different media outlets looking to tell miss clifford's story and that's when he decided that he wanted to make this all go away for his boss. >> make it all go away. still don't know what "it" is, but we'll find out. i'm hearing from one source that

the person who threatened stormy daniels is a trump person through trump but part of a pattern of how trump does business, working to corroborate that. but if cohen didn't threaten stormy daniels, who did? >> that is a good question. michael cohen didn't have answers for me on that, but there's digging to be done and i'm sure we'll find out more once the interview airs on sunday as well. >> jeremy? >> so for those of us who don't know trump's world, why don't you explain exactly how -- what kind of person michael cohen is, he's always been a trump character right out of central casting. he's this voluble new yorker, most people have probably never heard his name until the stormy daniels saga broke so for people who don't know him who aren't familiar with his crucial role until the trump orbit, maybe you can just describe a little bit about what he was like to interact with and how you think he fits into trump's broader

orbit of informal advisers. >> you are absolutely right to say he is a perfect character in trumpland. michael cohen is a self-described fixer. he is someone who has worked for a decade to try and make things disappear for his boss. this is someone who is unbelievably publicly loyal to his boss and privately as well but in every interview i've done with him -- and i have done a number of them over the past six months -- the first and last thing he says is how loyal he will be to his boss no matter what, no matter what it costs him, no matter what it costs his business or his family, his loyalty is to president trump. and part of that is that he has been so close to the trump family for so long that he knows that loyalty is the one button you should push so he pushes it and pushes it and pushes it over and over and over again. >> wow. >> emily, the michael cohen/stormy daniels timeline, how long has he lived with this

woman's alleged story? >> i think the first time michael said that he heard about this, the first time he told me he heard about this, was in 2011 and that was the first time it came on his radar and he said it slipped off of his radar until october of 2016 when he started hearing various media outlets were interested in her story again. >> how worried are they about the "60 minutes" interview? >> this is typical michael cohen for those who don't know him. he did not express any worry about the "60 minutes" interview. what he said is if she goes forward with it, if cbs airs this interview, it's a chance for them to collect more money from a potential judgment. >> he threw out $20 million. >> $20 million was the figure in the lawsuit filed on friday and i asked what he would do if he is awarded money and he said he would pay legal fees, he would donate the excess to charity and then on second thought he said well, maybe i'll take a vacation on her dime. >> and michael avenatti, the attorney for stormy daniels replied in a tweet said "michael

cohen better make sure he makes that a refundable reservation for his vacation" so the back and forth continues. emily jane fox, what a piece in "vanity fair." we'll all be reading it. coming up, the "washington post's" robert costa reports on the shakeup in trump's legal team. plus, will he stay or will he go? president trump's tweet spree is raising questions what about the president may fire robert mueller despite warnings about not to do so. simple goodness is ahhhmazing! meaty morsels. a tender texture.

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congratulations to trump's bff vladimir putin who was elected for his fourth term as president of russia. he won in a landslide. his opponents coincidentally died in landslide. doesn't matter, he was winning one way or the other. there were widespread reports of ballot stuffing. this guy the is shoving ballots in there like he's voting on "american idol." nobody seems to notice or care that -- this guy, i think he won for style points because he just -- yeah, he was like the david blaine of voter fraud. so there you have it. vladimir putin won and now he can focus on his next election -- ours. >> all right. welcome back to "morning joe." it's tuesday, march 20. with us in washington we have columnist and associate editor for the "washington post" david ignatius. "new york times" washington

bureau chief elizabeth bumiller. political reporter for the "washington post" and moderator of "washington week" on pbs, robert costa. "new york times" reporter michael schmidt is with us. and in new york, tv's willie geist, of course, along with msnbc contributor mike barnicle and president of the council on foreign relations, richard haass. we have a lot to get to and i know right now we have a little bit of a competition with bob costa and david ignatius. they both want omarosa's job and they want to make a pitch to the president right now. who wants to go first. no, we won't do that. >> please. >> oh, my gosh, who's the next to go, the question is that. because this is now the white house "apprentice" style. and the question is who is president trump going to say "you're fired" to next? we'll start with the shakeup in president trump's legal team. michael schmidt and your colleague maggie haberman reporting in the "new york times" that trump has recently weighed outloud to close associates whether he should

dismiss his lawyer ty cobb. cobb is the lawyer on the team who pushed for a strategy of fully cooperating with the special counsel investigation. and that appears to not be working out for the president. according to a person who spoke with trump late monday, the president reassured cobb that he has no plans to fire him, in part to prevent a narrative that his team is in disarray after the "times" began making inquiries. meanwhile, trump's lead attorney john dowd has reportedly considered leaving because he feels he has no control over the president's behavior according to two people briefed on the matter. in response to the report, one of the president's personal lawyers, jay sekulow say that they're fully engaged to his office but the president has made one change with a mood that reflects a shift to a more confrontational stance towards

bob mueller. the "new york times" was first to report that joe degenova, a washington lawyer who's been outspoken in questioning the integrity of the russia investigation, will join the president's legal team later this week. as a contributor to fox news, digenova has repeatedly pushed the theory that the fbi and justice department have been working together to intentionally frame president trump. >> make no mistake about it, a group of fbi and doj people were trying to frame donald trump of a falsely created crime. they conspired to exonerate improperly and politically hillary clinton and also if she lost to frame the incoming president of the united states with a false crime. what they have done to the department and the fbi is undermine the confidence of the american people in federal law enforcement. it's disgraceful and it all stems from their animus toward

president trump. >> robert costa, david's going to talk a little bit about this attorney and exactly what his approaches have been in the past but first you're finding that president trump is frustrated. >> he's very frustrated at this moment and based on the "post" reporting over the last 24 hours, the president has been in his residence, in the oval office talking with his lawyers, functioning at his own lawyer, his own strategist. he's saying he wants to have new people come on to the legal team and he keeps telling his friends and associates "i don't feel protected. i don't feel protected by the justice department, by my own legal team." that's why he's reaching out to people he sees on television and his real circle of friends are people outside of the west wing. it's not his advisers. he's lost faith in cobb and dowd and even white house counselor don mcgahn to an extent and he's venting constantly, his aides and friends tell me, about feeling vulnerable to mueller and the way the investigation is expanding. >> so exactly how could

president trump be protected in a situation like this when you have a special counsel bearing down with questions about -- i mean, at some point there are certain things that are going to come out, david ignatius. is there any way he can protect himself? >> the argument his lawyers have been making is stick with this, you're innocent, let the investigation run its course and you'll be shown to be blameless and it will be over soon, mr. president. >> that doesn't seem to be sitting well the president. >> that doesn't seem to be sitting well with the president or working out very well. every week there is a new revelation and new area of problem. the new person that president trump has brought in -- >> joe di genova. >> joe digenova is the kind of person you want in a knife fight. he's very tough, uses the media aggressively. he's had clients over the years who have been angry government officials who've argued there's a plot to subvert their actions. he and his wife who -- he's in a law firm with -- were involved

with benghazi defendants who argued there was a conspiracy by secretary hillary clinton then running the state department and other top officials in government to leave soldiers on the roof top to die. and there's a whole movement of angry people that joe digenova helped to support, encourage. so this is a person who is, as we see in each of these clips, this is a fire cracker and if we think this is the nasty fight now, just wait because he is an experienced cable tv -- i want to say advocate, agitator, almost and if that's what president trump wants, he'll get it from digenova. >> so you get more tv agitation possibly with this addition to the legal team. you have to president tweeting, elizabeth. you have him bullying people on twitter right and left, firing people. one person you haven't heard from -- bob mueller. what are you hearing? what's going on? >> we would love to hear more from bob mueller ourselves. >> maybe we can wait. >> we don't hear -- there's

nothing coming out of that investigation. there are no leaks. it's extraordinary. but what we do know is that mueller sent over a number of questions to the white house that he wanted to ask trump and we are told, maggie haberman is told that that's what set trump off on this latest titirade. it wasn't mueller asking for russia documents from the trump organization, although that was not good, but the president is extremely unsettled, bob is right. and there's somewhere between two and 100 questions mueller sent over to the white house. it will be interesting to see what joe digenova wants h "time" ta -- him to talk to mueller. >> and he wants people around him as aggressive as he is and who fight tooth and nail the way he's seen joe digenova do on fox

news over the last several months but to elizabeth's question, how much of this frustration from the president at his own attorneys is about that question of whether or not he ought to sit across the table from the special counsel's office and answer questions himself? he believes he's his own best spokesman, always has. is that part of this dispute between him and his lawyers? >> the president thinks he can go in and explain to mueller that he did nothing wrong. his lawyers see no upside to this. they think it's a terrible idea. they know the president is someone who often doesn't tell the truth and goes on and on and talks at length and he could get himself into a lot of different problems. but there's been a fight about it and dowd does not think it's a good idea for the president to go in there. the thing we have to remember in all of this is that the president's lawyers told him that by the end of last year this investigation was going to be over and obviously it's not and it appears to be intensifying and if you're the president, you'd be deeply

concerned about what's going on and frustrated that the lawyers sold you on that. >> you know, bob costa, what's kind of interesting about all of this is if you track it and you think in terms of being a homicide detective looking at this, you follow timelines, you follow the principaprincipal, t movements, what the principal does, what the principal says. in this case, it's the president of the united states, you just said he's walking around the residence upstairs in the white house demanding that he needs protection. and the first question a criminal defense lawyer would ask, protection from what? tell me what? what have you done? if you need protection, have you done anything wrong? but i'm just interested in terms of the attitude of the president. is it verging on panic? is it verging -- what is it verging on, do you think? what do you hear? >> one detail we have in our story today, mike, is about rod rosenstein, the deputy attorney general.

the president keeps venting and grousing behind the scenes saying what's rosenstein up to? what is he doing? he keeps going back to the recusal by attorney general jeff sessions last year and he says i don't know what rosenstein's agenda here is with mueller, what's going on? and his lawyers keep saying he's -- mueller is running the investigation, rosenstein is overseeing it, what do you expect us to do? but there's always this vulnerability that the president could try to act in the coming weeks on the attorney general because he keeps talking about rosenstein. >> jeannine pirro attorney general. you never know. >> i don't rule anything out. >> i don't rule anything out. she would not recuse herself. but in all seriousness -- although that is a serious possibility in this world we live in today -- is he -- from your reporting, from what you've heard, is he literally saying i don't feel protected? >> yes. >> because mike barnicle brings up a good point. from what? >> he has this old code, creed,

whatever you want to call it that the justice department is not -- one complication for the president i'm told by many people who have spoken to him, the independence of the justice department is a complicated idea for him to grapple with. >> someone who doesn't suck up to him personally or an institution that doesn't is somehow the enemy instead of part of our democracy. >> that the executive branch is not his kingdom. that they're not about loyalty to him. that's something that's been a subject of debate inside of the west wing. >> willie? >> yesterday, mika, we mentioned reporting from the "washington post" piece ruth marcus that senior white house staffers were required to sign non-disclosure agreements with the president. while attorney marc zaid who specializes in national security cases says that violates first amendment rights and he is offering his firm's services to fight it. mark joins us in washington. mark, good to see you this morning. what is the wiggle room in these ndas as reported by the "washington post" yesterday that show a $10 million penalty pay

to believe the federal government for the revelation of any confidential or non-public information? where do you see a way out of these ndas? >> well, first we have to understand, do they even exist? because ruth marcus obtained a draft of the nda. we haven't had anybody come forward to actually confirm that these have been used and signed. the only thing i've been able to come up with so far is an nda from the transition team that the trump folks were using and that document doesn't have any monetary penalty in it. in fact, what it looks like is basically that somebody took a trump organization non-disclosure agreement, just took out the words "trump organization" and substituted "presidential transition team." >> why are these different? if they do, in fact, exist, if they had to be signed, why could someone break an nda without having to pay that penalty in this case? >> case law is pretty clear and i've been litigating it for almost a quarter century in the

national security field for people who used to work at the cia, the fbi, the nsa when they're writing books in particular. individuals have a first amendment right to publish non-classified information. if it's classified, the government owns it. but we've had numerous case decisions over the years that make it clear that if it's not classified, individuals can publish it and, in fact, there's a slew of cases that talk about how even on cla-- unclass paidi information can be given to attorneys. >> mark, do you have a sense of how many, if any people have signed an nda within the white house? >> that's the problem. i've asked around. either people are talking a lot or they're not talking at all and it looks like if there are ndas it's somewhere in that group in the middle. so nobody has come forward. how many people have left the white house, right? and no one has said this. so to be in somewhat defense of the white house, it might have

been someone had a cockamamie idea in the beginning, drafted this up and it's finally leaked. but we're not seeing it's out there. now, there are ndas that have been used over the years that do say inside the government and in particular, for example, the senate intelligence committee that you can't discuss anything even unclassified once you leave government. and that's the real key point. it's the "once you leave government" part. i don't care about while you're in government. you shouldn't be saying anything or leaking anything but i think even those would be subject to a constitutional challenge, just nobody's done it yet. >> in ruth marcus' reporting in the "washington post" she says senior white house staff members were pressed by chief of staff reince priebus and the white house counsel's office to, in fact, sign the nda. we'll see if we can find one of those signs. >> hope so. >> mark zaid, thank you very much, we appreciate it. richard haass, you worked in a couple white houses. robert gibbs said a minute ago he never heard of such a thing,

working in the obama white house signing an nda. is that something you've come across? >> the only thing you sign is basically you agree not to disclose any classified information. not something while you're in government but the rest of your life. if you had access to classified government before you publish a manuscript, i published a memoir after serving bush 43, you have to get clearance to make sure there's no classified material but otherwise it's free speech and good for american democracy. we want people to come out of government and talk about the issues they grappled with. that's part of civil society in the united states. >> again, that's just classified, not non-public information. >> classification is a permanent commitment. the other is, no, that's -- you have to use your own discretion and there's times at which you ought not to say certain things afterwards because it's bad for the policy process, i think, and it could hurt people. but in general it's a healthy thing to have people reflect on what they experience. >> let's go back to washington where mika is covering breaking news. mika? >> we'll get to that now.

it's out of texas. the atf has confirmed the nbc news that there was an explosion inside a fedex facility in a town about 65 miles from austin, that there were no injuries per the atf so far. it's unknown if it's related to the other recent explosions from austin. the fbi also responded to the facility for an explosion and they are on the scene. that comes after officials said the recent string of explosions in austin, texas, is clearly the work of a serial bomber. four explosions have hit the texas capital in the past three weeks, killing two people and wounding several more. authorities also say that the assailant appears to be getting more sophisticated, possibly using a trip wire in the last explosion which happened on sunday. the three others happened after people picked up packages left at their homes. the police chief says that over

the weekend the bombings are "meant to send a message" although he did not elaborate on that but added it is possible they are racially motivated. the fbi sent 350 special agents to austin to assist in the investigation, in addition to extra bomb squads. local and federal authorities have $100,000 reward out for information leading to an arrest and conviction and texas governor greg abbot is also offering a $15,000 reward. so we'll be staying on that. david ignatius, your thoughts on this given everything happening. >> this is one of the stories where you want to be careful not to jump ahead of what law enforcement is telling us. that said, this is the kind of thing that i'm sure for our fbi, for law enforcement everywhere is the most frightening pattern where you -- there's evidence that somebody is plotting a series of serial attacks that continue, that are in different places, we're now two in 24 hours.

the fact that 350 fbi special agents have been sent to look into this -- >> tells you a lot, yeah. >> i thought that was the most telling detail in that story. that's a huge commitment by the federal government. >> there's no pattern, that's the other issue. people thought they were racially motivated but then there was a bomb that went off in a largely white neighborhood so there's no apparent pattern. >> they're saying -- local authorities, i was watching the press conferences yesterday working in tandem with the feds, they were careful not to say exactly how these bombs were made, the sophistication level. they felt like they were impeding the safety of the people in the area. >> can i just make one point? here's a moment where there's a frightening thing happening and our country turns instinctively to the fbi as a source of stability and expertise. that's what's in danger of being undermined when we hear these

stories coming out of the white house, joe digenova has made his name attacking the fbi. we count on the fbi. today is an example. it reminds us what difference it makes that we have law enforcement, fbi who are trusted as our servants to carry this out. >> absolutely. robert costa and michael schmidt, thank you both for your reporting this morning. elizabeth, stay with us if you can. still ahead on "morning joe," not a great stretch for mark zuckerberg. first his net worth drops five billion in just hours, now he's facing calls to testify over the massive data breach affecting tens of millions of facebook users. senator amy klobuchar is one of the lawmakers pushing to get the facebook founder up on capitol hill. she joins us next on "morning joe."

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>> that is hidden camera footage featuring cambridge analytica ceo alexander nicks discussing the idea of hypothetically entrapping an opposition leader. a spokesperson for the company denied to itn channel 4 news that it used any of the tactics discussed in the video. still it raises questions about the data breach impacting millions of facebook users. joining us now, democratic senator amy klobuchar of minnesota. i take it at this point you'd like to hear from mark zuckerberg. >> yes. and we'd like to hear from all the social media ceos because

we've had this now news for a year that they have been taking political ads from russia, from other countries that there's no disclaimers, no disclosures, it's a huge problem. now you have this where it appears that 50 million profiles, 50 million americans basically had their information stolen. they don't call it a breach, i call it a breach. if somebody broke into my apartment and took my stuff, it would be the same as if my apartment manager gave them a key and they took my stuff. >> what do you think of the latest revelations pertaining to cambridge analytica and impacting the election in any way, what do you think the biggest questions are not just for mark zuckerberg but the election process? >> i think the first is we need to have a safe election infrastructure going into this next election in 2018. i'm hoping this this budget we'll get nearly $400 million for states, number one. we worked hard on that. senator langford and i have a

bill on that ch. these companies have to do all they can to protect the information from the people part of their platforms. no one thought that would go to the trump campaign and it appears it did. they let a prussian professor in to do research, people just signed up to take a quiz and suddenly all their friends are in the hands of the trump campaign. this makes no sense at all. they have to change their rules of the road. >> how do they explain that they just handed this information to a russian professor? i mean, what is -- i know that open internet but how do they explain that? >> that's why we want to have the hearing. we want to ask how, why, and how will you fix it? they have not explained it. >> >> as you look at this it seems from the outside almost as a business school case study of how not to manage a problem, i'm

wondering what your sense is wrong at these social media companies, facebook in particular. their first instinct has seemed not to be to disclose but to withhold information, not to be transparent. they here in the transparency business. what about that part of it. do you think the fundamentals of how they operate need to be examined now? >> these are brilliant companies and they started out as a place where everyone could exchange information, the marketplace of information but people didn't realize they were making money off of them, they had advertisements, the data was getting sold, now they're in a new business model and they're worth, at least facebook, something close to $500 billion and so we in the government have to look at it different lift just like you protect people from rotten tomatoes or if their credit card information is stolen, we have to protect them when they innocently go on the internet. it doesn't mean it's not freedom

of expression, that you can't put on what you want to put on there but if you have an app to take a quiz you should have to be able to confirm this information isn't going elsewhere. when you unsubscribe on e-mails, you're able to unsubscribe. there's nothing like this going on in the internet and that's why the fact that they won't even let us regulate the political ads is really concerning and i think that was a canary in the coal mine. >> i would agree and willie, these may be brilliant companies but they've exploded on to the landscape ever so quickly and a rapid rise has risks. >> and not clear they recognize this is a problem to begin with. let's bring in senior writer at wire izzy lepowski. some facebook executives were on twitter defensive about this, saying this is not technically a breach, that the information was accessed through proper channels and, hey facebook user, you put yourself out there, you put your information online and this is what happens.

does facebook recognize now that they have a problem on their hands? >> i think they absolutely recognize there's a problem on their hands. look at their stock price. the reason they're playing semantics is because when you call something a data breach there are rules and regulations. that's why they're being defensive and playing semantics. it seems silly to us but for them it has some basis. >> can facebook survive if they' they're told you can't have hundreds of thousands of apps to gain access to the data? isn't that their business model? isn't this a challenge to their fundamental way of making money? >> there are two important things to point out. as you were mentioning it shouldn't be the case that you sign up for an app and you get everybody else who's in tour from friend network's data. they shut down that loophole in

2015 so -- but the problem still remains that any app developer does get access to a pool of data and facebook has no mechanism for auditing those yaps and making sure they're not passing them on. >> is this naivete that we live in this wonderful kumbaya open world or is this greed? is this something that cuts to the center of their corporate business model? >> i think it's a belief the public is none the wiser and maybe not concerned about it. a lot of people have been bringing up this idea that the data is a civil right that is a human right, this is your personal private information and we're the product. it's being sold without anybody's knowledge and people are starting to understand that this marketing add tech tool that would sell you a better pair of shoes is being used to influence democracy and that is startling and as soon as the american public wakes up to it i think facebook will have to

respond more forcefully. >> why do you think ceos have been reluctant to answer questions? why won't they sit in front of the judiciary committee and answer questions from senator klobuchar, for example. >> one thing i've been hearing is they don't want to have their big tobacco moment where mark zuckerberg is up there with his hand up and testifying and it is a sensitive topic. they want the lawyer -- they sent the lawyers in the fall to answer these questions very carefully, to not say too much, to not give away too much and -- but i think that isn't going suffice. >> they can have a tactical decision, though. it's almost like the nra. will they agree to a degree of regulation or run the risk that senator klobuchar and her colleagues are not just going to regulate them lightly but heavily? they have a big decision to make. >> thank you very much. we'll send it back to mika and senator klobuchar. >> and given what we heard from izzy -- and you know this is sort of a reckoning for these tech companies which have access to our information. i know in some way you agree to

it when you sign up for gmail, but your e-mails are read, all of them, and you notice they can give you prompts to respond like "yes, thanks" "i'll call you later" because they're reading your e-mails for a lot of different reasons. but back to facebook and what do you make of what izzy said and also can you compel mark zuckerberg in some way to testify? >> that's going to be up to chuck grassley, he's the chair of the judiciary committee, he says he's considering this, you can always subpoena witnesses but there have been other ceos that have showed up. i remember richard anderson, the head of delta coming before us and tech companies seem to think they're in a sperm status that they don't have to do that and i think there will be a drum beat of 50 million people that want to see them. one other thing that hasn't been mentioned, facebook in 2011 signed a consent decree with the ftc. and they said if there were violations of privacy because other people were experiencing this back then that they would pay $40,000 per violation so we

don't know how this might apply but a number of people involved in that decree who are no longer at the ftc said that may be relevant as well. >> that could be expensive. >> so there are many fronts for protecting the privacy and the biggest thing is that we have this election coming up, we have to get the election infrastructure protected and do everything we can to push them and that's mostly why i'm interested in this hearing to push them, the people in charge, mark zuckerberg, all the heads of the companies to say you still have a few months, you are brilliant companies, if i can this as much as you can so we can protect this next election because as marco rubio said, one election it was one party and one candidate, the next time it will be the other, we have to protect our democracy. >> senator amy klobuchar, thank you very much. great to see you in washington. coming up, we'll talk to a senior counterterrorism official who served under bush 43, barack obama and donald trump. his take on the integrity of u.s. law enforcement and intelligence amid the president's attacks. "morning joe" is coming right back.

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welcome back to "morning joe." joining us now, nick rasmussen, we are happy to welcome nick as a new national security and

intelligence analyst for nbc news and msnbc. welcome to the family, good to have you here. >> thank you, good to be here. >> you served as director of the national counterterrorism center under presidents obama and trump. you left at the end of last year but you've seen a lot across two straights. andrew mccabe fired the other day. i know you know him well. what was your reaction to that news? >> i was sad, disappointed, upset, all of the adjectives you would use because this is a person i know to be someone who has served this country extraordinarily well. he's a man in my experience of deep integrity. someone i would call a friend and partner working in counterterrorism issues over a several year period. i have no insight into the inspector general's report or what may or may not be in the details but it's hard to watch that atmosphere that has been created around the whole case of whatever andy was or wasn't involved in with the inspector

general because the environment is so tainted it's very hard to imagine that he will get a fair hearing in that environment and that troubles me. >> the president said leadership -- he goes out of his way not to say rank-and-file but the leadership of the fbi is corrupt and that's why we have the mueller investigation and why he says and his new attorneys say the fbi is trying to delegitimize his election win over hillary clinton. these are their theories, anyway. what's it listen like for you to watch this take place where you have the president of the united states and his administration attacking not just the fish fbi but the national security apparatus. >> it was a challenge when i was still inside government, especially when you're leading a work force comprised of lots of dedicated patriotic heart working young americans, people who came to washington because they want to serve their country and make a contribution to national security and if they have to deal with the idea that there isn't full confidence in

what their doing and their motives are suspect or they aren't working to make or keep america safe, that's a problem. a watched the segment a few moments ago with david ignatius and he spoke about austin and what we are counting on the fbi to to to unravel what's happening in austin and anything that undermines confidence in those critical law enforcement and national security institutions, it's hard to feel good about that. >> richard, it's ironic and good that nick is here today given the fact we live with existing threat levels everyday in this country that the public is unaware of and today is the 15th anniversary of the invasion of iraq, an indication that destroyed thousands of lives, thousands of american lives as well as iraqi lives, families, continuous tours of iraq that have put military families, less than 1% of this country serving under tremendous stress but the

use of intelligence, flawed intelligence in the case of iraq, the impact it has not only internally in this country but on the world. >> and the fact that we got it wrong on weapons of mass destruction was one of the principle drivers of the policy though i think quite honestly a lot of people favored the iraq war not simply to deal with supposed weapons of mass destruction but also wanted to do something after 9/11 to show the united states wasn't a pitiful helpless giant, also thought -- i thought wrongly -- that somehow iraq was going to be made a democracy and it would set an example that the rest of the middle east would want to emulate but looking back, this was a disaster. this administration is so focused on iran more than anything else, it was this war that removed iraq as the bulwark against iran and opened up the middle east to iranian influence and penetration, it poisoned sunni shi'a relationships so this war will be covered by historians for decades or

generations to come and it will be seen as one of the ultimate own goals in the history of american foreign policy. >> nick, what's going on with this assault on the intelligence community in this country? the fbi, the cia, the nsa? it's virtually in some aspects an assault from the oval office, from the white house on the intelligence community. the affect that it must have internally on morale in langley and washington. >> again, as i said a minute ago, i think we have a core of people who are committed to serving in this country who serve in these institutions you just described, mike and one of the things you don't have to do is tell them why they come to work. they know why. they signed up and took jobs that were paying lesser than -- lower salaries than they might have made coming out of school and they did it because they believe in what they are doing. i found these issues were on the tv and as you walk down the hallway you would see them scrolling across the bottom of

the screen but it didn't affect the work people are doing and i would sometimes say to my colleagues at the national counterterrorism center, if you're paying attention, you're focused on the wrong stuff. off job to do, that carries on beyond any single administration. what does worry me is the ability to generate enthusiasm for public service in young people. the idea that someone would self-deter and say i don't want to go work in washington, i don't want to serve in the fbi because it looks like it's a troubled organization. that would be a tragedy. these organizations, these institutions have been able to call upon the best and brightest from schools all around the country and i would hate to see that be chipped away at by some of these attacks on the integrity of the intelligence community or national security community. that would be a tragedy. >> nick rasmussen, great to have you with us at nbc. >> thank you, great to be here. still ahead, another major foreign policy playing out, the saudi crown prince meets today with president trump amid a

whirlwind tour of the united states designed to remake his image and that of his country. what role will president trump play in that charm offensive? "morning joe" is coming right back. ♪ most people come to la with big dreams. ♪ we came with big appetites. with expedia,

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that lady, these houses! yes, yes and yes. and don't forget about them. uh huh, sure. still yes! xfinity delivers gig speed to more homes than anyone. now you can get it, too. welcome to the party. president trump is hosting saudi arabia's crown prince mohammed bin salman at the white house today. it has been salman's second official visit to washington coming amid a massive corruption crackdown being waged by the crown prince. joining us now in washington, the founder of the arabia foundation and in new york, co-host of "morning joe" first look, ayman mohyeldin joins us for this conversation. i think we should start off broad and talk a little bit. this is the second visit about the global significance of the relationship between saudi arabia and washington. could you do that? >> well, it's very significant.

the kingdom has a 75-year-old relationship with washington and at this moment in time i think there's a meeting of minds on how to approach iranian expansionisim in the region and the white house announced yesterday they're going to be setting up a coordination committee between saudi arabia, the uae and the u.s. where the national security advisers will meet every month to coordinate their strategy so i think it's a very opportune time. it's following up on president trump's visit last year to saudi arabia. >> that was something. >> that was something. so i think the relationship is very solid. >> david ignatius just back from saudi arabia. >> i was just in the kingdom several weeks ago, had a chance to interview the crown prince. two things struck me. first, the passion that he expressed for changing the kingdom, changing the role of women, changing a lot of things we thought were unshakable.

that's the first. the second -- i was struck by the way in which this is a top-down revolution. this is being imposed by a very strong, i'd say headstrong, crown prince who's leading it so talk a little bit leading it. talk a little bit about both pieces, the change agent and the top down play. >> look, he's the first leader in 50 years that is taking on the conservative religious establishment, so it has huge significance for saudi arabia. it has huge significance for the world ever islam really. middle east leaders have been very reluctant. it's always risky to take on the religious establishment, the religious right. it's a very, very bold step, very risky but bold and very necessary. as part of that he's taken a huge step in empowering women, not just letting them drive but bringing them into the workforce and integrating them into the saudi labor market. so it's hugely consequential. >> his critics say he's

autocratic and impulsive sometimes. what would you say. >> to make such change where the political spectrum is so wide, you need auto crassy to be able to make change. you would not be able to do that in the time required and to the degree required if you didn't have a benevolent auto crassy. >> it is what it is. the anti-corruption campaign. as the "times" reported, there was a big crackdown. there was also torture going on at the ritz-carlton in riyadh. officials were held there and reporters spoke to doctors. what do you think of that? >> there hasn't been any substantiated evidence of torture. i was there just a few weeks ago. the whole process that he went through, what he said was very professional. he was treated with a lot of respect.

yes, he was kept to his room except for interrogations, but there was no physical abuse whatsoever. now, could it have happened on an individual basis? of course. nothing is impossible. but there really has been no evidence brought out so far to prove these sort of allegations. these are simply that, allegations. >> we spoke to doctors who saw quite a bit -- >> well, we would need to have the details of who the doctors were and what exactly that torture was. remember, if they wanted to torture people they would have thrown them in dungeons and prisons, not the ritz-carlton. the whole idea of putting them in the ritz-carlton was this was a sort of house arrest but it wasn't a coercive torture. >> let's send it down to willie geist. >> the idea of a benign auto crassy being necessary for the progress of saudi arabia, what do you think about that? >> from the perspective of

watching the change they're trying to implement, you're going to have a younger generation welcome the news. i think there are going to be questions of transparency, rule of law, whether or not some of the processes that the crown prince wants to try to implement are going to be just, going to be fair. are they going to favor just a certain type of class within the saudi establishment. so there are those that are the skeptics who say the middle east has had its fair share of promisesevolent rulers. the question is will there be given the backdrop of the arab spring, the backdrop of populous change and reform, will there be leaders who are going to see this and want to try to bring their populations along, or will it be as we just heard there a top down driven change. sometimes with a top down driven change you run the risk of alienating parts of the population and sometimes you can become tone deaf to what the population wants. that's the risk if you're

implementing the vision that you want and not the one that society wants to participate in. >> the phrase is revolution from above. the danger is there's going to be tremendous pushback, factions in the royal family who feel cut out, that this is going too far too fast. also, where do the checks and balances come from. one of the biggest mistakes was the war in yemen. this is strategic overreach. he's trying to take on all this domestically at the same time he's having a war with qatar, where are the checks and balances. the danger for the saudis and for this clearly visionary and talented young prince is who's there to self-correct if and when he makes mistakes. i think that's the real question. >> you want to try and answer that? >> of course checks and balances are issues but it's not a question of having a menu of perfect skills at the moment.

you need to have change. you need to have somebody who has the guts to do it and you need to do it in a record time. and yes, of course you're going to have resistance, but so far he has taken power and he has effected so much change. there's been very insignificant if negligible resistance. there's been no bloodshed. there have been no demonstrations, no domestic strife. so far if you look at the record, he seems to have done a pretty good job. >> ali sha has beeny, thank you very much from the arabia foundation, good to have you on the show, fascinating perspective. amen, thank you as well. we'll see you on "morning joe" every morning here on msnbc. still ahead, donald trump had the apprentice. now he has his own legal drama show. the latest reshuffling of the trump legal team as bob mueller closes in. and republicans see no need to formally protect the special

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donald trump with a falsely created crime. >> that is president trump's new attorney back in january with claims of a secret society at the fbi. "the washington post" notes that that appearance was in effect a televised audition for joining the president's legal team. he seems to be picking people off tv lately. welcome back to "morning joe." it's tuesday, march 20th. with us here in washington we have columnist and associated editor for "the washington post," david ignatius. washington bureau chief for usa today susan page. tv's willie geist in new york, along with msnbc contributor mike barnacle and former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, rick stengle joins the table. joe has the morning off the by the way. we're going to get to the turmoil in the legal team in the white house as well as all the turmoil in the white house in just a moment but we want to start with the breaking news out of texas. the atf has confirmed to nbc

news that there was an explosion inside a fedex facility in shirts, texas, which is about 65 miles from austin, and that there were no injuries. per the atf, it is unknown if it is related to the other recent explosions in austin. the fbi also confirmed they have responded to the facility for an employs. it comes, as officials said yesterday, that the recent string of explosions in austin, texas is clearly the work of a serial bomber. four explosions have hit the texas capital in the past three weeks, killing two and wounding several more. authorities say the salient appears to be getting more sophisticated, possibly using a tripwire in the last explosion which happened on sunday. the three others happened after people picked up packages left at their homes. the police chief said over the weekend that the bombings are, quote, meant to send a message, although he didn't elaborate, but added, it is possible that these are racially motivated.

the fbi has sent 350 special agents to austin to assist in the investigation, in addition to extra bomb squads. local and federal authorities have a $100,000 reward out for information leading to an arrest and conviction. texas governor greg abbott is also offering a $15,000 reward. david, you brought up something last hour that i think is worth reframing. as the president appears to be on the attack and his newest attorney on his legal team going with these concepts of secret societies and all these different ways that he thinks that the president is going to be framed -- >> talking about the deep state as if it's a menace. our hearts obviously go out to the people of austin. it's frightening to have the prospect of a serial bomber in your city in this chain of explosions. where do we turn when something

scary like that happens? what are we reassured by? i was watching this right now. i see the number 350 fbi special agents are headed to texas to try to work on this case. they're on the case and our response is thank goodness because we depend on them. we depend on them and local law enforcement. it's just an important reminder in this period where sometimes our politics seems to be going crazy and there are attacks on the fbi, its leadership. we need good law enforcement. we need the fbi. when crises hits, that's where we turn. we're reminded of that this morning. >> we are. take a look at this, susan. the attacks against the so-called deep state, especially in light of what david just said, by the president and some republicans actually might be taking hold. more americans now believe that national policy is being manipulated or directed by a deep state. that according to the newest monmouth university poll.

six in ten americans believe that unelected or appointed government officials have too much influence in determining federal policy. 26% say the right balance of power exists between elected and unelected officials. while this view of the deep state looks to be growing more prevalent, only 13% of americans are very familiar with the term. 24% are somewhat familiar, and 63% say they are not familiar. however, when monmouth described the term as, quote, a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy, nearly three in four americans said they believe that the deep state exists. one in five said it does not. susan, what does that tell you, especially in light of the president's approach toward the intelligence community from the get-go? >> it's interesting, we don't have a lot of polling history on the deep state because this is not something i think we assumed

we needed a poll about prior to president trump's administration. i think this clearly shows the effect of his attacks on governmental institutions, on the government itself. this is not to say that there's nothing -- there's never anything to investigate. >> no one's above the law. >> that's right. part of our tradition is a trust not just in the government but a trust in the government to investigate itself at times. but this is, i think, a new phenomenon for americans in modern times, for a majority of americans to believe there's a deep state. i think that's a shocking finding. >> willie, this is the problem in covering this because i think sometimes we don't take into consideration the mood of the country as a whole and maybe the lack of trust in government that exists out there, that this president and his administration and his campaign before it might have really tapped into. >> there's been a steady erosion over at least a generation, a couple of generations now of trust in public institutions.

i think this has probably been building for some time but, rick, this term deep state i think has been popularized. what do you chalk this up to? is this donald trump pushing this button over and over again, or does this have a foundation in something that people have long believed that perhaps the federal government isn't up to the task all the time? >> well, i take to task the polsters. i'd like to see that question of how they framed deep state. most people didn't even know the phrase so you're acquainting it with them. if you do it in a pejorative way versus a positive way, that's how they respond. the other thing is we should turn deep state into a positive term rather than a pejorative term. i worked with nick when i was in government. if he's the deep state, bring me the deep state. this is an american patriot who protected and saved lives over decades. that's what the people in government do. one of the things that i've said for a long time is government

does a very bad job of telling the good things that government does which is why people have this im present egpression. >> that gets to a larger point. every day you in the u.s. attorney's office, every day despite all of the talk and the attacks coming out of the white house aimed at the fbi, things like that, people go to work in service of their country, every day. >> not only do people go to work in service of their country but they go to work in a nonpartisan way. i think that's what gets lost in all of these attacks and these twitter attacks by president trump is accusing the fbi or the prosecutors on mueller's team of being partisan or pointing out their campaign giving or their political affiliations. ultimately it does start to erode the institutions that our country is founded on. law enforcement needs the support of the country. the country needs to understand that law enforcement is out

there consistently, daily, trying to protect our citizens, our public institutions and our democracy ultimately. >> as mike mentioned, daniel goldman with us, former assistant in the u.s. attorney's office for the southern district of new york. let's talk about the shakeup in the president's legal team. president trump has weighed allowed to associates whether he should dismiss ty cobb who pushed for a strategy of fully cooperating with the special counseling investigation. according to a person who spoke with president trump late monday, the president reassured cobb he has no plans to fire him in part to prevent a narrative that his team was in disarray after the "times" began making their inquiries. trump's legal attorney john dowd has reportedly considered leaving. in response to the report, one of the president's personal attorneys, jay second you law,

says they're fully prepared to represent the president and his office. "the new york times" was the first to report that joe dejen ava will join the president's legal team later this week. as a contributor to fox news, he has repeatedly pushed a theory that fbi and justice departments have been working together to intentionally frame president trump. >> make no mistake about it, a group of fbi and doj people were trying to frame donald trump of a falsely created crime. they conspired to zexonerate improperly and politically hillary clinton and also if she lost to frame the incoming president of the united states with a false crime. what they have done to the department and the fbi is undermine the confidence of the american people in federal law

enforcement. it is disgraceful and it all stems from their animus towards president trump. >> dan, the president of the united states watches fox news, we know that. he watches a lot of it. he sees joe pushing this theory again and again and says bring me that man, put him on my legal team. what's your argument that there's some conspiracy against the president? >> i think it's, frankly, totally fallacious. there is no conspiracy to undermine the president. if you were to really take a step back and look at the fbi's investigations during the campaign, the public investigations that came out were about hillary clinton. if there were an impact on the election, then it would be on hillary clinton, not on president trump. i think this is part of president trump's recent change in trying to revamp his staff in his own making. i think ty cobb and john dowd are very experienced lawyers who have been pushing cooperation.

it seems to me that the president feels a little like this isn't working, you told me this was going to be over by the end of the year, it's not over yet, it's getting worse, not better. i want someone here in my own making my own ilk, who is going to attack this investigation in the way that i want it to be portrayed. it's really president trump taking over, taking control of his own legal team and i don't blame ty cobb if the reports are true. i think president trump is a difficult client. his tweets -- to say the least. his tweets do not help anything that he's tried to accomplish. >> it's funny, susan, to hear some of these attorneys say in "the new york times" or at least be reported to have said that they worry they can't control the president's behavior, as if anyone has ever been able to do that. >> you know, that's true. the fact is the president is proceeding on legal grounds in the legal area the same way he's done in the government at area which is to trust his

vise advisers. it seems they're indicating a p.r. strategy, not a legal strategy. i don't think joe was brought in because of the intricacies of what's going to follow in court filings but rather to build and make a defense on cable tv for the president. >> i wonder though, david ignatius, whose behavior we're going to worry about now or the team will worry about now, jody jen oh va's or the president's? >> he's aggressive, tough, street fighter, a guy you would want in a legal knife fight i said in the last hour. there's a saying among lawyers, if you've got the facts, argue the facts. if you've got the law, argue the law. if you don't have the facts or the law, pound the table. joe has been a table pounder. he's a tough advocate and you'll see him pounding the table as

this goes forward in a way that as we've been talking this morning undermines confidence, i fear, in our legal institutions, in the fbi, in our court system. that's really -- that's the danger here. as this plays out, americans will increasingly lose faith in the institutions we depend on to make our country a place of law and order. >> it's the perfect platform for this type of thing because everybody's watching what's happening with stormy daniels, what's happening with mueller, giving this legal team a platform to seed even more deeply these institutions. it's actually the perfect storm, not to use a pun here. let me toss it to willie geist. >> we want to mention to your book "mandela's way" being reissued in connection with mandma mande mandela's 100th birthday.

>> i'll tell you what people don't realize. obviously he wouldn't have been a fan of donald trump and would see him as a reincarnation of those boorish apartheid leaders who were ethnic nationalists and who only governed for their own people but he would see trump through this lens of tribalism which is what we've seen in american politics. trump is a tribal leader of a white nation, of people who are a little less educated, maybe making a little less income, older men. that's his tribe. he doesn't represent anybody else. mandela would have seen this as a global finance which it is, whether it's xi jinping or vladimir putin or turkey or h g hunga hungary, there's a rise of ethnic nationalism around the world and mandela would see trump as an example of that and bemoan this phenomenon because it's away from progressiveness and the things that he fought for. >> if president trump was able to pick up the phone and talk to

nelson mandela, what would he say? >> nelson mandela was an adviser to a lot of presidents. he was never afraid of saying what he was thinking. he would say, look, you have to govern for all the people. you have to try to bring america to make it more democratic and help promote democracy around the world and now he seems to be doing the opposite. >> richard, congratulations again. good to see you. dan goldman, thank you very much as well. still ahead on "morning joe," we'll talk to one of the leading voices pushing the idea of impeaching the president. that's billionaire tom steyr. some argue that tactic will end up uniting republicans and dividing democrats. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ♪ we the people... are defined by the things we share. and the ones we love.

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because he wouas fired two days before retirement, mccabe loses his $60,000 pension. $60,000, that's like half a porn star payment. oh well. oh well. >> okay, the supreme court has declined to take up a republican challenge to the newly redrawn pennsylvania congressional map. earlier this year, the pennsylvania supreme court ruled that the 2011 map drown by the republican controlled legislator was gerrymandered. also yesterday in a separate case, a panel of federal judges dismissed a lawsuit filed by republican congressman challenging the new map. tom steyer and the host of the bill fresh show, political

analyst, you guessed it, bill press. mpeachment. . >> we think it's politically or tactically smart and important and true. we think that the biggest threat to the united states right now is a lawless and reckless president who is routinely ignoring and breaking the law and who is failing to protect the united states democracy and the americans people. >> but it is political in that you have democrats more so than republicans on a huge scale who will say exactly what you're saying. then you'll have the bulk of republicans saying nothing. how could that be? >> the point that you're making is that it is being taken as a partisan issue. but the fact of the matter is this is really much more about patriotism in our country than it is about partshisanshipartis. if president trump gets thrown out of office, the next president of the united states would be a republican. this is not a question about choosing the next president, it's getting rid of a lawless and dangerous president which is something that we're talking about is relevant for every american citizen and where we can see in historical context

this president is so far past the bounds of what's been acceptable before that i think that we've basically redrawn the lines to allow him to stay in without telling the truth. >> a lot of lines have been redrawn i think it's safe to say. susan page? >> i think realistically there's zero chance that this house impeaches president trump this year. if democrats win control of the house in november, what are the odds, do you think, that impeachment proceedings do begin in a democratic-controlled house next year? >> let me stop you for a second because when you say there's a zero percent chance this this house impeaches this president this year, there's an implication that there are no events that occur between today and november 6th which is election day that are so heinous that everybody, democrat, republican and independent decides that is just unacceptable. that is far from a zero percent chance. subject to that point, you're asking if nothing changed and by

definition tons of stuff is going to change over the next seven and a half months but if nothing changed what do i think the chances are that a democratic-controlled house would impeach the president, my point is different from that. my question is what is the chance that the american people insist on it? we're doing a petition to ask american citizens to add their name and to speak up at need needtoimpeach dom. this is about the american people. >> i really admire what tom is doing. i'm a more pragmatic approach to this which is with susan. i do think there's zero chance that this group of republicans that now control the house will initiate -- >> you're hearing nothing from them. >> i want to connect the dots and go back to the supreme court decision in pennsylvania which is so extremely important. what most influences the makeup of this congress are the district lines drawn state by state and what the supreme court is saying in a state like

pennsylvania which is 50/50 that to have 13 republicans and 5 democrats does not reflect the population of the state. in state after state they're taking the power to draw those lines away from the state legislators and putting them like we have in california into a group of political experts or whatever what draw nonpartisan lines. that's extremely important and that's a first step and necessary step to getting to down the road impeachment. susan, it will be day one of the new congress i think if democrats take control. >> some of that makes me nervous in that everyone says we're getting ready for a massive wave. are democrats as ready for the mid-terms as we're hearing? >> let me say, democrats could -- look, democrats could screw up a two-car funeral, right? they could clearly blow this. but right now if you look, new jersey, virginia, alabama,

pennsylvania, four big victories democrats were not supposed to win. there have been 39 state legislative seats across the country, flipped from red to blue since donald trump took office. that's the beginning of a blue wave. >> nobody should be too confident, i think. that's what we've learned. bill press, what did we learn from the left? >> what we learned from the left is i've had a great run and a great ride. i think all of us had and i want to tell my story about growing up in delaware, studying for the priesthood, going to california, working with jerry brown, coming back to california, great run at crossfire and connecticut. here in this studio, pat buchanan and i, buchanan and press, and then leading up to the bernie sanders campaign which was launched in our living room on capitol hill. it's a fun story, a great story. i hope everyone enjoys it.

the best part is there's a blush from joe scarborough. >> yes, there is. mike, jump in. >> let me ask you, the house convenes at noon today. this house or next year's house, give me the first two or three counts for an indictment of the sitting president of the united states that you propose he be thrown out for. >> i think that was for tom. >> i'm sorry. give me the first two or three counts. >> i think just to make a distinction, mr. mueller is a prosecutor so he is looking at legal things as opposed to impeachment which is a political proce process. the counts would be obstruction of justice, the emoluments clause and the refusal to protect the american people and our democracy from an electronic attack by a hostile foreign power called russia. so when i think about this, when i listen to this discussion, i hear people saying it may be true that he's dangerous, it may

be true that he's reckless, it may be true that he's not protecting the american people but it's not politically sensible to say that now because it won't work. our attitude is, this is the most important truth in the united states right now and not to say it because it doesn't seem tactically sensible to me is a terrible misappropriation of priorities. you've got to go with the biggest truth in america and let the chips fall where they may. >> all right, well put. tom steyer, thank you very much for being on. bill press, thank you as well. the book "pfrom the left, a lif in the crossfire" is out now. >> thank you. up next, president trump en vales his policy to combat the opioid epidemic, and yes, it involves executing drug dealers. keep it right here on "morning joe."

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let's go to bill with a look at yet another nor'easter bearing down on the east coast. how can this be, bill? >> happy spring today, right? this is ridiculous. even d.c. is getting into the act on this one. i want to recap what happened

overnight. three tornados reported, we did have injuries. university of jacksonville and alabama did get hit. the dorms had some of the roofs taken off. students were on spring break so the good news there. let's get into this nor'easter. we're watching heavy, wet snow developing in the mountainous areas of northern west virginia, this is where the heavy snow will fall today. power outages possible by the end of today. 65 million people at risk from the snow and ice. right now it's icy in areas of ohio. tomorrow it's in the northeast. here's the snowfall map. the heaviest snow in the pink and into the red, that's the 9 to 12 inches. that's between washington d.c., over the top of baltimore, philadelphia, up into new york city and towards long island. i still think in d.c. 3 to 6 in the beltway, could be higher than that. new york city 4 to 8 inches, extremely difficult forecast. it's a huge cutoff. zero in albany, hudson valley a

little bit. new york city you're on the northern edge of the heavier stuff. the same goes for the north. other stories we're watching, severe weather possible, tornados in florida and coastal areas of south carolina. our friends in california, up to five inches of rain over the next two days, biggest storm of the winter and over the top of those burn scars, there are evacuations in place because of mud and debris flows. a lot of active weather, dangerous weather too. we'll try to get you through it safely over the next two days. washington d.c., rain today. tomorrow morning you'll turn over to sleet and then snow. we still think 3 to 6 inches at least in d.c. what a storm it's going to be over the next 48 hours. more "morning joe" when we come back.

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and i want to win this battle. i don't want to leave at the end of seven years and have this problem. >> that was president trump yesterday in new hampshire formally unveiling his plan to fight the growing opioid crises. the president's speech focused heavily on punishment, advocating for a get tough approach. joining us from the white house, nbc national correspondent peter alexander. peter, what were some of the aspects of the get tough approach to this problem? >> mika, the president has praised other countries that execute their drug traffickers, something we know he's mused about publicly and privately. again in new hampshire he floated the same penalty for here in the u.s., capital punishment for those traffickers, what he described as the ultimate penalty. here's the president. >> drug traffickers kill so many thousands of our citizens every year, and that's why my department of justice will be seeking so many much tougher penalties than we've ever had,

and we will be focusing on the penalty that i talked about previously for the big pushers, the ones that are really killing so many people, and that penalty is going to be the death penalty. this has been something that i've been very strongly in favor of. spending a lot of money on great commercials showing how bad it is so that kids seeing those commercials during the right shows on television or wherever, the internet, when they see these commercials they say i don't want any part of it. that's the least expensive thing we can do, where you scare them from ending up like the people in the commercials. 90% of the heroin in america comes from our southern border where eventually the democrats will agree with us and will

build the wall to keep the damn drugs out. [ applause ] >> reporter: the president said that he wants to give first responders access to life-saving drugs that can reverse overdoses and provide schools with free supplies of the nasal spray narcan. he also emphasized that connection between america's opioid epidemic and border security, as the white house and democrats clash over immigration. officials tell me that the white house made a last-minute push to congress that congress would fully fund the border wall as part of this massive spending bill. it has to take place at some point this week, but the democrats have balked at that and chain migration, ending that and ending the visa lottery. instead they say that the democrats are dmendemanding the white house green light a path to citizenship for daca. right now it sounds like

democrats aren't going to get that if the president doesn't get what he's demanding for the border wall and beyond. >> right. there's politics here at play, i would think, peter. the headlines of course is what's the update with the mueller investigation and was the porn star threatened and by whom, but all the while you have the president in new hampshire, his daughter ivanka in iowa. if you look at what the president said, you could see it as the president really messaging to his base and growing the base. >> reporter: i think that's exactly right. what was most striking in terms of messaging to the base was that announced hiring of joe digenova, that new attorney on his team. we've been talking about the discord within the president's legal team right now, the competing statements this past weekend from john dowd, one of the attorneys pushing a sort of hard like take suggesting that the investigation should be ended. and then ty cobb saying there were no discussions about that. the president made it clear

where he stands on this issue, signing up a guy who has spouted conspiracy theories effectively saying that the president is the target by the fbi and doj of an effort to frame him in this investigation. so the bottom line is the president is certainly not only following his own instincts but following instincts that play to his base as well. >> bringing people in who agree with him. peter alexander, thank you. david, on that point, joe digenova, could you see him supporting the firing of mueller? >> oh, i think he would be an aggressive advocate for the firing of mueller. he's as much as said in his tv appearances that he thinks there's a conspiracy driven by the fbi, by law enforcement to get the president. he's described it as an outrage. it's disgraceful is one of the sound bites we had. i absolutely can see that. watching president trump speaking in new hampshire i was thinking, real politics is a relief from office politics. he's out there on the trail

talking about what he wants to do for the next seven years as opposed to firing somebody. >> that specific crises is definitely an epidemic and a serious one. susan page, could you see him telling president trump it's a good idea to fire mueller? >> yes, and that's a message that the president would like to have. you know what struck me about peter's report there. we have an opioid crises in this country. wither's about to run out of funding at the end of this month. we're supposed to meet with the north koreans this spring. yet, our politics in washington is focused totally on the self-inflicted problems of this administration, the stormy daniels case, the mueller investigation. all these other issues that really affect americans who are going to vote in november, they're getting much less attention than they really deserve. >> washington feels like an overfilled helium balloon. up next, the latest on the bombing case in texas. if the incident at a fedex

facility is related to others in austin. breaking news from maryland. there's been a shooting at great mills high school. it's about an hour southeast of washington d.c. according to a statement from the school, the buildings are on lockdown and the event is contained. the sheriff's office is on the scene and we're awaiting additional information. stay with "morning joe" for the very latest. we're following that. we'll be right back. your letting go thing. your sorry not sorry thing. your out with the old in with the new, onto bigger and better thing. get the live tv you love. no bulky hardware. no satellite. no annual contract. try directv now for $10/mo for 3 months. more for your thing. that's our thing. visit directvnow dot com

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an update now on the breaking news we reported moments ago. there has been a shooting at great mills high school in maryland. the sheriff's office is on the scene. we don't have any word yet on injuries. the school, we are told, is on lockdown, and the entire event is said to be contained. we have our nbc news reporters headed there now. we're going to bring you understand as thupdates as they come in. the school shooting in maryland and under lockdown right now. that's all we know. now to the breaking news out of texas, local police and fedex officials now say that the early morning explosion at a fedex facility about 65 miles from austin did come from a package and that one person was treated and released at the scene. >> there were nails and metal in the bomb. package was going to austin and building is being evacuated at this time. there were 75 employees that were in the building.

>> it comes as officials said yesterday that the recent string of explosions in austin, texas is clearly the work of a serial bomber. we'll be staying on that. there are a lot of questions about what the motivation was, was it racial, was it something else and exactly how sophisticated these bombs are. joining us now, moving on, the vice president for research and policy at the charles koch institute, will ruger. will is also an officer in the u.s. navy reserves in addition to being a veteran of the afghanistan war. also with us, the editor for real clear defense, david craig. david is a retired u.s. marine corps intelligence analyst who served three tours in iraq and one year in afghanistan. this morning the charles koch institute and real clear politics are out with a new poll that looks at the public's understanding and thoughts about the current situation in iraq as we mark the 15th anniversary of the war, if you can believe it, david ignatius.

some of the findings, some of the more basic questions from the start, did you support the iraq war from the start, 32% support. 32% say they opposed. 28% said neither, no opinion. did the iraq war make safe? 26% responded saying more safe. 36% saying less safe. 31% no opinion. finally, has the iraq war made the middle east stable? 22% saying more stable. 47% saying less stable, david ignatius. >> it's a fascinating poll. reminds us of a very painful decision for our country. take back as a columnist the ones i wrote on the eve of the iraq war. the thing that struck me in the polls. here, people saying the war made america less safe. it made the middle east less stable. as mika just said. but when you asked them, was the u.s. successful in iraq, people say by 43% yes, we were

successful. can you explain that finding to me? i didn't get that. >> americans want to be supportive of our troops but they care about outcomes. i think they look at the middle east and they say look, it's less stable now. they look at iraq and they say it didn't really make us safer. either made us less safe or didn't improve our safety. and i think that's why also in the poll you see the people say look, we might want to decrease our troops or actually withdraw. and i think that's because americans really want a more realistic foreign policy. >> david, as someone who served, talk about your reaction actually as a veteran to these findings? >> i mean, there's several interesting reactions. one, it just shows sort of the disconnect between what the military's actually doing and what the public knows. >> right. >> the fact that they supported our troops, as far as how they felt about the success of the war. however, they want us withdrawn, they don't want us involved. which is kind of unsurprising.

however, it also translates over into the budget piece, if you notice, that most americans think we only spend $100 billion on defense. whe whereas the latest budget proposal is upwards of $700 billion. it's really interesting what the d disconnect is. and then with our defense budget as well. >> wow. >> as you look at these numbers, look at the country, do you think we have post-iraq syndrome in our politics? >> i think we should look at that history and we actually should take that into account. i think this means that really we need to have no more iraqs, no more libyas, no more nation building, while our needs here suffer. no more expanding of our military commitments. i think we should look back and say we didn't do the right thing then. >> mike, jump in. >> david, if you're a

20-year-old lance corporate trying to protect the people in afghanistan today, you were 5 years of age when this war began. what are we doing there now, today? why are we there still? >> well, the stated policy is to support afghanistan. as you mentioned, we've been there for 17 years. to this point, it hasn't worked. we haven't been able to crack the nut with pakistan. i think they're the second largest recipients of u.s. foreign aid. for us veterans that were there, we knew that, you know, it was a safe haven for terrorists. if we can't solve that problem, we need to seriously question what we're doing there. >> thank you both for being on. on tomorrow's show, we'll be joined by former cia director john brennan who is an nbc news

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an update on the breaking news. there's been a shooting at great mills high school in maryland. the sheriff's office is on the scene right now. our local nbc affiliate is reporting there are several injuries. no word yet on the extent of those injuries. the school is on lockdown reportedly. the event is said to be contained. the sheriff's department is urging parents not to go to the school yet. that's a hard piece of advice to follow, but the sheriff's office is asking that parents stay away. the situation is contained. but the school is on lockdown. they'll be no entering the school. democratic whip steny hoyer

of maryland tweeted a short time ago, i'm closely monitoring reports of an incident at great mills high school in st. mary's county. my pairs are with the students parents and teachers. please follow instruction from local law enforcement responding on the scene. again, law enforcement asking that parents not come to the school right now. our nbc news reporters are heading there to the scene. we'll bring you updates as they come in right here on msnbc. now final thoughts for "morning joe" this morning. we'll start with david ignatius. >> i learned this morning i think more deeply about the deep state. fascinating poll saying 74% of americans are worried about it. on a morning when we were thinking about fbi, rushing to austin to try to help citizens there deal with bombings. the part of the deep start. mighty grateful when they come to the rescue. maybe go back to the 74% and ask them, aren't you happy the fbi's

aren't in a cereal bombing? >> susan page? >> another school shooting today. this time in maryland. this is just days before the march for our lives on saturday. i'm thinking about will these protests led by high school students make a difference on an issue where nothing else has? >> looking forward to those. >> mike. >> the deep state. we wring our hands at the events coming out of the white house and washington, d.c. yet every day people from the federal bureau of investigation, people in the military, people in the justice system, local cops and firefighters, school teachers, everyone goes to work and does their job here in the miracle that is the united states of america. >> it is a miracle. so easy to get snarky at times like this, but to quote the great bill karins, there's a storm on the horizon. ty cobb, hold on to your hat and your job. that does it for us this

morning. stephanie rule picks up the coverage right now. >> thanks, mika. hi there, i'm stephanie ruhle. we've got a lot to cover, starting with the search for a serial bomber. a package bomb goes off near san antonio. the fifth explosion in an area already on high alert. defense mechanism -- the president adds another lawyer to his legal team. a critic of the russia probe and a deep state conspiracy theorist. >> make no mistake about it, a group of fbi and doj people were trying to frame donald trump. >> this, as the president's legal team reportedly turned over documents trying to limit the scope of the face-to-face interview. and of course the social media meltdown we're all talking about. facebook stock plummets over the cab bridge analytica ffiasco. lawmakers on both sides of the atlantic are demanding an investigation. >> no question that zuckerberg