g. thank you for watching. "deadline white house" is up next. john heilman, it's all yours. >> hey, ali, i don't want to take it. i want to ask you a question. you're freaking me out about how you say don't worry about the market but i should be scared, right, because of this correction? i'm doing the math here. i've lost -- i'm down to about $93 in my 401(k). i know you said it's because of fears of a trade war. is that it, not just the trade war, is there any other -- are there other elements of instability causing this downturn? >> well, first of all this week we started because of facebook. facebook is a big player. when tech companies think about being regulated, investors get spooked about that. that was the beginning of the week. the second part is this. the trade war. and then, you know, markets are not paying a whole lot of attention to politics these days. they've decided to sort of march on higher regardless of what goes on in washington. but i think this week with the lawsuits with the president, with the change of his legal team, you know, if you're already nervous about a few other things, that might be the cherry on the top to say i'm going to sit this one out. as you get closer to the end of

the week investors don't want to be left holding the bag in case something else drops or happens in another part of the world. that's why you're seeing this exaggerated return. when i get to 2.5% is when i start to tell people let's pay attention. >> sure. you just mentioned the fates book thing. i noticed over the course of the lat few days it's not just facebook. twitter shares are down, google shares, a lot of the technology shares, shares on social media companies that are all looking at the possibility of regulation. is that another factor here? >> yeah, anybody who claims that they're not a media company, they're just a utility, is now in a little bit of trouble because that's -- it's not what americans are thinking about this. the europeans are much faster on this sort of thing. they are investigating whether these companies really have more responsibility, whether they should be regulated. you know, john, no industry wants to regulate -- wants anybody else to regulate it so these companies had a chance to regulate themselves. a lot of investors are saying hey maybe you missed the boat. maybe you could have regulated yourself, you haven't, we have to get involved. that spookz investors. >> all right, ali velshi, my

bald brother. appreciate your help today. we will talk more about the facebook stuff. we'll talk more about the trade wars stuff. first we'll start the show off by talking about at least in the political world the biggest breaking news, john dowd, that man right there, the president's lead attorney in robert mueller's russia investigation who adopted the proposal of roberto duran, no mas. as the probe approaches what could be a particularly precarious phase for the president. an in-person interview with robert mueller. "the new york times" reporting dowd concluded mr. trump was ignoring his advice, like don't attack robert mueller on twitter, which trump has now done three times in five days. the president is reportedly pleased with dowd's decision to leave. he had grown increasingly frustrated with the attorney who stepped in over the weekend when he issued a statement calling on the justice department to, quote, bring an end to the alleged russia collusion investigation and affirmed on the record that he was speaking as the president's counsel. but then after his comments

sparked uproar among critics who believed trump was laying the groundwork to fire robert mueller, dowd suddenly backtracked and said, no, no, no, i wasn't speaking on behalf of the president after all. that was just me. apparently even that was the wrong move. the times writes, quote, the president was angered with dowd's handling of the episode telling people dowd should not have backed off his initial statement. dowd has also been at the center of major dispute with the president's legal team of how to approach trump's impending interview with mueller. he stressed trump is eager to set down with mueller. dowd has long thought the interview was a bad idea according to multiple reports from the times. all of which lends even more significance to those meager few words that donald trump said your reporter today on this topic just hours after dowd's resignation was made public. >> mr. president, would you like to testify to special counsel robert mueller, sir? >> thank you. i would like to. >> here with us now to talk about these breaking developments, national political

reporter for the washington post the robert costa. msnbc national security analyst, the frank figliuzzi, and jennifer rodgers, former assistant u.s. attorney as well as our friends jennifer paul merry, former communications director for the obama white house and hillary clinton's presidential campaign, and a man who needs no introduction other than three simple irish catholic words, lawrence o'donnell. good to see you, lawrence. i want to start with you, mr. robert costa and ask you this question. with dowd leaving, the president stressing in his one little exchange in the white house today that he wants to do the interview with mueller, is the difference between the president's point of view about that and dowd's point of view about that, is that really the basic fundamental bottom line reason why john dowd is out? >> disagreements over that potential interview with the mueller team has been one of the conflicts in recent weeks. this is really the end of a simmering relationship between dowd and the president. the president has grown

increasingly angry privately inside the west wing about how his team legally is approaching the mueller probe and he's trying to take control of the administration wholesale, not just with regard to the russia legal team, but with people inside different positions in the white house. >> all right. so, robert, pull the aperture back. you have john dowd out. you have conspiracy theorist joseph digenova in. esteemed member of the washington bar declined a role. mark, the president's personal lawyer, once shunned from the team now may be making a reentry. when you take a look at the slightly bigger picture of the state of the president's legal team as we move to this new intense phase in the investigation, what do we make of it? >> it's a struggle inside of the white house right now. my colleagues and i have been reporting today that so many white-shoe law firms in washington have conflicts with regard to joining the mueller

legal team for the president trump. people like ted olson are not joining. they're finding it hard to bring lawyers in because lawyers say we have conflicts. we're not going to be able to do it. it's too much of a political risk for the law firm. he's turning to pundits, people on television being allies. this is leaving the white house in a precarious position. who is the president's lead lawyer on his outside legal team? >> i'm turning to pundits. i know how dangerous that would be to put some of these people in a court of law. frank fa glues see, i want to ak you a question. he was afraid trump might perjure himself. is that reason enough, you think my client is going to walk in, because of his tendency to lie, the weaknesses of his memory, et cetera, et cetera, he's going to per jerry lewis himself so he shouldn't do it, he's rejecting my advice. is that enough reason to say i'm done, i'm out of here? >> indeed it is. a lawyer cannot knowingly

supborn perjury. that in itself could be it. there is a larger chaos reigning here. there is an indication the president wants to call his own shots in his legal defense. it brings up the old adage he who represents himself has a fool for a client. i think that's what we're looking at here. >> what kind of lawyer to costa's point a second ago, what kind of lawyer would under these circumstances given the chaos that reigns and given the specific issues that are bones of contention right now and the president's impulses, what kind of lawyer is going to want to walk into that kind of environment who has credibility? >> it is a lawyer that is not going to be wedded to the facts. he's going to throw out conspiracy thoor iz, there are aliens from out of space causing this to happen, there is a deep state going on here. we're going to hear the no collusion phrase repeated several times every speech. that's the lawyer's approach that trump is going to go with. but it's a signal to all of us

that the facts are problematic for the president, that he's choosing to go with a p.r. route versus a hard legal defense. >> jennifer, i want to ask you, i want to talk about mark kasowitz, someone who was a street fighter well known, but someone who has in his roster of clients according to the washington post last year, one of his clients was oleg deraposka, russian oligarch and evil doer. if he's on his way back in, is that not a problem? >> it's a big problem for the president because he also has no white collar experience. i mean, he is not a criminal lawyer. so, to bring him back on, it may signal this more aggression stance are talking about. he's a known bull dog. at the same time he doesn't have the ability, he does presiden'te team to support him. to go with joe digenova who is more of a tv personality, i guess, than a real lawyer here.

>> not that there is anything wrong with tv personalities. >> of course not. >> let me ask you another thing about john dowd. this episode over the weekend which was extraordinary, he put the statement out. i pray that bob mueller -- rod rosenstein ends this inquiry and we get past this. i am speaking as donald trump's counsel. after the uproar, no, no, i was speaking for myself. i said, i pray, me speaking personally. what does that say? is there some way in which by having put that statement out initially that dowd himself could somehow be implicated in obstruction of justice? >> well, we have this issue with dowd before, right, when he wrote a tweet that looked like it came from the president then dowd claimed it came from him. i mean -- >> right. >> he's in some trouble here. i'm not sure it's legal trouble as far as the criminal law goes and obstruction, certainly with the bar. you can't be putting out statements that you're saying are yours and they're not yours and they're somebody else's. this is misleading conduct that i think the bar would be interested in. you know, it may have been a kind of last ditch play for him to try to stay with the

president, do something he thinks the president likes. at the end of the day, you know, the president is going in a different direction, probably a bad direction. i guess he was out. but that may have been what it was over the weekend, trying to stay on board there. >> i want to put that tweet up because it was one of these remarkable events. john dowd was, when you think about the president's legal team, there was a period of time we said there's the yahoo from new york. we had donald trump in december talking general flynn. i had to fire general flynn because he lied to the vice-president and the fbi. he has pled guilty to those lies. it is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. there was nothing to hide. now, people said, that's weird because he was supposed to be just fired because he lied to the vice-president, not because he lied to the fbi. that was new. and so suddenly john dowd steps forward and says, no, i wrote that tweet. people said, wait a minute, lawyers know the word isn't pled, it's pleaded. what trouble does that spell for

you? your credibility obviously. what trouble does that potentially spell for you? what does it say a white shoe lawyer would be engaging in that kind of tactic? >> i don't know what to make of that tweet. i have to say pled and pleaded. i've seen it both ways. ary we're sticklers on this show. >> this notion that this tweet came out that was problematic for the president in terms of the facts. he comes in afterwards when people start pointing this out, oh, no, it was me. i wouldn't be surprised if the grievance committee of the bar is looking at that. that's very problematic for dowd. you know, look, the new york bulldogs are a lot of good white shoe lawyers. it's just the president hasn't tapped those. he's tried for some of them and they've said no. not just recently, by the way. not just now that they have conflicts. but at the very dinning of thbe this inquiry. a lot of them wouldn't come on board for a variety of reasons we can guess at. >> my political friends, between

the two of you, you have seen a lot of special counsels, independent counsels. when you look at the state of donald trump's legal team and what we've been discussing, what say you? >> the news of the day is donald trump has traded an incompetent lawyer who has bungled this thing consistently for, what as of this hour, for a much worse set of lawyers. now, let's just correct the record here a tiny bit. it's being reported as fact -- fact, john dowd resigned. we have no idea. john dowd says he resigned. we do not know whether donald trump fired him or whether he resigned. i don't know when we will know the truth of that. >> if ever. >> and let's not ever report as fact or even -- anything at all close to fact that donald trump wants to be interviewed by the special prosecutor. the fact that donald trump today said that on camera as he runs

out of a room afraid to talk to anyone about anything else that's happening in this thing, only means that donald trump said that. there is utterly no evidence at all that donald trump wants to be interviewed by the special prosecutor or that he doesn't want to be interviewed by the special prosecutor. we don't have any idea what is actually going through his mind at this particular minute and we certainly don't know that the same thing will go through his mind about the same subject in the next minute. >> jennifer, you look at the situation, you know, when donald trump is backed in a corner, his immediate move is to not so much bear his teeth as become a pie romaine yak. he tries to light a fire on everything in the room he's in. he burns the house down to get out of the corner he's in. at this moment is that what this reply indicates, what lawrence said, i'm backed in a corner, i'm going to destroy everything around me and dance through the

ashes and make an escape? >> it's also the way he said it over his shoulder as he's going out of the room. i want to do it. he's done -- people remember -- i had two thoughts in my head. he has done it a lot. he's been deposed a lot. he's had a lot of lawsuits. interesting, people would be surprised to learn he's actually pretty careful when he's under oath about what he says. so, i can see why lawyers would be very concerned about putting someone like him under oath. but the record shows that he can be -- he can parse with like more skill than he normally does. but the other thought i have in my head is just having worked in white houses, as bad as it looks on the outside, it's usually a little more chaotic on the inside, than you can see, even when it looks bad. so, how bad is it on the inside that what we see is chaos? and how bad is it that lawyers

keep quitting? i mean, these are lawyers that have -- >> they're generally mercenaries to begin with and they're getting paid. >> they are criminal defense lawyers. that's what they defend. so, the fact that they keep walking away -- we just have rounds and rounds of these people quitting because their client is lying to them or they're concerned about -- it's interesting about the bar committee that hadn't occurred to me, the kind of exposure that they have. how bad is it that you can't get lawyers to stay? >> i want to go back to mr. costa. mr. costa, the other -- the two supposedly great white shoe lawyers that donald trump brought in, great experience in the washington bar, one was john dowd, the other ty cobb, still on the team at this moment. they are remembered among most of us, the two colorfully sat in the washington restaurant and talked about the trump legal strategy with a reporter sitting next to the table, politically

savvy knowing the ways of this town, nevertheless ty cobb still there. for how much longer? >> based on my reporting, john, his status has been fading for quite sometime. the president has been frustrated not only with mr. dowd, but with mr. cobb. and the white house counsel, don mcgahn is not in frequent touch with the outside legal team, if at all. so, you have this president on his own up in the residence often watching television, talking to friends and allies in the legal community encouraging him to fight the mueller investigation, and not really trusting his lawyers in the same way he may have done six to seven months ago. the reason for this, white house officials tell me, is the president was told by dowd and cobb back in late 2017 the investigation would probably be wrapping up soon. well, it's march. it hasn't wrapped up. that's left for the president to try to make some moves. >> frank, i want to come back to you and ask a question about something i talked about a minute ago. the dowd got in trouble over the weekend putting out a statement said he was speaking for the

president, then speaking for himself. we learned donald trump was angry at dowd because he thought he should have stood by the statement, the statement that the investigation, the probe should be shutdown. if you're bob mueller and you're reading that news account, that donald trump is angry at dowd because he wishes dowd had stood by the statement, what does that say to you as robert mueller about where the president's head is at and about what the state of his approach to the entire investigation is at this moment? >> yeah, look, so, if you're on the mueller team, you're seeing this chaos and it creates cracks that you want to exploit. so it gets into the president's mind-set of how he's going to defend himself, how he's lashing out at people, how he wants people to think he wants to be interviewed. i also think it's quite significant that the departure occurs on the heels of an in-person meeting with the mueller team where it was actually discussed what questions might be posed to the president. i think that was reported back to the president. i think the president heard those questions and said, you're kidding me. this is really going to happen,

this is serious? they're really going treat me this way? and i think he started lashing out and i think dowd was one of the victims of that. >> i'll stay with you, frank, on this, and i'll ask jennifer the same question in a second. you're bob mueller, you've been negotiating with john dowd for some period of time, he's now gone. you think you're going to be negotiating with who, with digenova, jeannine is going to be in your office negotiating the terms of an interview? i would have thought that would fill bob mueller with alloy glee. >> look, there is chaos here. you're right. this is going to serve to delay negotiations. we're going to see this go on and on and on and it actually might be in the favor of the president because, you know, if your dentist tells you, you need all your wisdom teeth pulled some day, it's going to be ugly and painful, some people say let's do it now. some people say i'll wait until i absolutely have to do it. i think we're going to see that with trump.

>> i'm in the latter category. jennifer, does donald trump end up testifying, sitting with mueller or not? >> i think so. if he refuses to do the interview voluntarily, there will be a subpoena eaissued. i think a judge will enforce the subpoena. i think ultimately trump will sit down. mueller should want that for a variety of reasons. one reason trump supporters are going to demand it. they want him to have his say. even if it is a bunch of nonsense and doesn't lead to charges, i think mueller would want that to happen because he has to give the president a chance to respond official lip. i think it will happen. we just have to see when. >> i have to say if we end up with a legal team of digenova, kazowitz and per owe -- thank you for coming in. the rest of you can stay, at least for the moment. coming up in less than one week, donald trump has managed to completely up end what it means to be a republican president by conventional standards and it looks like he

has taken his entire party with him. plus, with friends like these, mark zuckerberg and sheryl sandberg finally address the growing scandal over data, but do very, very little to quiet the storm at facebook. and did the nation wake up to a preview of what the next presidential campaign cycle might look like?

we're doing things for this country that should have been done for many, many years. we've had this abuse by many other countries and groups of countries that were put together in order to take advantage of

the united states and we don't want that to happen. we're not going to let that happen. it's probably one of the reasons i was elected, maybe one of the main reasons, but we're not going to let that happen. >> oh, he's definitely not doing what his predecessors have done in the past. in just the past 24 hours, the republican party has had to reconcile itself to a president completely, utterly, totally out of sync with what the gop has traditionally stood for. to wit, trump slapped $60 billion on chinese imports, dealing a second blow to the long held republican belief in free trade and the markets down nearly 3% today. overnight we learned of the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill that president trump has indicated he will sign which will balloon the deficit beyond all recognition. and, of course, there is the expect consolidate spectacle of trump cozying up to

putin, despite the party's hawkishness. contributing editor of the weekly standard and host of its podcast, daily standard, and costa still with us. another friend, university professor eddy. charlie sie charlie sykes, i go to you as the one republican on this show at this moment. it's just -- it's kind of a stark thing how much donald trump has departed from republican orthodoxy just in the last 24 to 48 hours. how is your party coping with that spectacle? >> yeah, i'm not sure i recognize the party any more. this will really test their capacity to swallow all of this and to go along with all of these departures. look, the three things that you mention, you know, are dramatic moves that threaten to eclipse almost every message that conservatives have had for the

last 20 years. they're not even pretending to care about the deficit. they're undermining the agenda of economic growth that they put through with the tax cuts and the appeasement of vladimir putin is exactly the kind of thing that republicans used to mock obama for. so, yeah, we're going to find out how much in this cult of personality with the very flexible ideology of republicans, how much are they willing to go along. ly say this, though. that omnibus bill is exactly the kind of this can that stoked the perpetual machine on the right that exploited donald trump to win the nomination. i don't see anything in that bill other than the funding of the military that is going to do anything other than demoralize the conservative republican base going into the mid terms. >> lawrence, i want to cite a thinker not as sterling as you, tom friedman who wrote the piece in "the new york times" what trump and putin have in common. this quote. trump news that once he

compromised the gop, even its evangelical wing to give him a pass on the taxes, they'd rollover for anything. seconds with porn stars, trashing the fbi, coddling putin. with us once you erase a big red line, it is hard to start enforcing others. how much do you think that is the dynamic here that's played out with donald trump republicans? >> as usual i learned a lot when i read tom friedman's column. he's way smarter than i am on my best day. from where we're sitting now and looking back on that tax return violation of protocol, no law saying he has to do it, but everyone had agreed this is a sensible thing to do, friedman pointing out that allowing donald trump to get away with that and donald trump's own personal surprise at getting away with that, has emboldened him for everything he has done since, and every lie he has told since, and every line he has crossed since. that for him was always the biggest line. the reason why i always felt confident about predicting

donald trump run for president because i had the rule book in my hand and the rule book says you have to show us your tax returns. he's never going to do anything that forces him to show his tax returns. he's just not going to. >> and get away with it. >> and get away with it. not just the press who raised it a lot. i certainly did. his party said, it's okay with us. charlie, going back to you, trump basically said -- they seem to be like the bargain your party made was, okay, he's a liar. he's a nincompoop, but we're going to use him as a vehicle to advance our policy agenda. when it came to the tax cuts, that seemed kind of like a logic that made some kind of sense, a debased kind of sense, but sense. now, however, the policy agenda that he's pursuing is utterly at odds with theirs. he wants to start trade wars and slap tariffs on people. he wants to have a giant deficit

and he wants to be in bed with vladimir putin. so, what's the rationale now if you're a republican? you're going along with all the stuff you didn't like before because why? >> well, that's the thing about faustian bargains. you think you know what you want, but the price is way higher than you thought it was going to be. now conservatives are waking up to realize how much they were rolled on this. the only answer i can give to the sunken cost, they're in so deep they don't see a way out. in for a dime, out for a dollar. once you've sold half your soul, 55%, 60% of your soul, at a certain point where do you go? right now, this is where they're at. they cannot win this midterm election without the trump voters. they can't win by breaking with trump. so, it's almost an insoluble problem which leads us to this particular point. they're stuck with him. >> robert costa -- >> they made that decision.

>> robert costa, you're up there on capitol hill and i'm always following your twitter feed. i saw this tweet earlier today. you're describing the disruption on capitol hill. the mueller probe continues popping up like a submarine each week with no one in the white house quite sure what's coming next. knowing the president's ire extends to them and their bill. so, give me -- just give me a little window into the collective mind of the congressional republican caucus at this moment. >> well, for example, i just had a revealing interview with senator lindsey graham of south carolina, republican, he said he was here in the '90s when president bill clinton was dealing with his own controversies and special counsel and he said he's worried about president trump who he called an ally. he said he's worried about the president's focus on the actual presidency, the job. he needs to bolster this legal team, bring in some lawyers to help him focus on the presidency, not on countering the mueller investigation because the president, he said, has more on his plate than just dealing with mueller.

he has to deal with the republican party, the midterm elections and policy. >> robert costa, i know you have a deadline to meet right now. you're going to break some news of some kind or at least spit out some staggering brilliant analysis. i'm going to let you go. thank you for being with us today. i'm going to turn to mr. glod now. there are a lot of ways in which presidents can defy orthodoxy, some don't matter. two of the big places where trump is departing from, not just republican orthodoxy, but kind of the big establishment orthodoxy on the questions of trade, for instance, which has been a bipartisan consensus view in favor of free trade, at least since world war ii. and on the question of russia where even when there was a little bit of a difference over how hawkish to be, there was never any doubt between democrats and republicans that russia was fundamentally our strategic nemesis, our foe, not our ally, right? so, with trump wildly veering away from that consensus, what does it do to america's standing

in the world and what kind of risk and jeopardy does the country face when it has a president who is basically giving the bird to everybody in both parties on this matter? >> it creates an environment of uncertainty they don't know what to think. the russia question is kind of odd to me. we can answer that in relation to whether he's compromised or referred to former cia director john brennan and the like to talk about that. but the first issue around trade, right, actually kind of points us to the fact that the recent presidential election was a change election. that donald trump isn't your traditional republican, that we're seeing a political realignment in the country that actually is -- that reflects, right, a rejection, or at least a kind of deep suspicion about current orthodoxies on both sides of the aisle. so, what we do know is that the current economic regime, global economic regime has not done well by everyday ordinary workers. people are catching hell. i keep using that word. people are having a difficult time, right, making ends meet. they're working harder.

they're working longer and they're making less. so, they know that something has to change. and donald trump spoke to that work. they spoke to the worker in western pennsylvania, spoke to that worker in the south -- in the mississippi delta. so did bernie sanders. so, this move around china and trade may seem weird, right, unorthodox, but it's actually speaking to some real serious unease among workers. we need to have a conversation about that because, remember bernie sanders supports this. the head of afl-cio, head of steel unions, right, they supported the tariffs on steel. there is an interesting argument to be had about what's going on here. >> he's right. i think trump is right, this is what he ran on. it is not what the republican party -- >> truly on trade, yeah. >> it is not what the republican party traditionally stands for, but it is what he are not on. i think the original sin on the republicans' part, not releasing his taxes, it's his announcement

speech. i talked to some republican consultants that worktd on other campaigns and said in retrospect they realized the moment trump said, you know, called mexicans criminals and rapists and some i suspect are good people, he got buy-in because he was willing to say the truth. he was willing to say the really hard truth that nobody else had the courage to do. and i think these are people, to your point, who want to -- there's people who are concerned about the world coming to the united states and want to protect ourselves and shut the world out. on our side, i feel like it's people who want to engage in the world. that's what that dynamic of the 2016 campaign was. the republican party is, you know, the traditional republican party is off on an island somewhere. this is what trump ran on. >> we shouldn't forget the 3:00 buckets steve bannon put out there. national sovereignty, economic nationalism, those three things. we thought that was bannonism. it's trumpism. >> it presents complicated

challenges to the democratic party, too. we'll talk about it down the road, maybe this show. for now we have to say good-bye to charlie sykes. thanks, sir. it is complicated, how people in facebook are responding to the growing crisis with your and my data. we have a new interview with sheryl sandberg coming up next.

♪ just got a job as a lifeguard in savannah ♪ ♪ i'm 85 and i wanna go home ♪ [ding] [boxing bell ding] [applause]

if i could live this past week again, i would definitely have had mark and myself out speaking earlier. we were trying to get to the bottom of this and make sure we could take strong action. our commitment is clear. we know this is an issue of trust. we know this is a critical moment for our company, for the service that we provide. we are going to do everything we can -- >> that was facebook's chief operating officer sheryl sandberg just a few minutes ago on cnbc. congressional hearings, regulatory pressures and consumer backlash all looming as

potentially business breaking crises if facebook doesn't handle things in the right way in the wake of the cambridge analytica whistleblower. they will in fact summon mark zuckerberg to capitol hill in the coming weeks. joining the panel now is my old friend john ba tell, long-time author covering technology. founder of wire. john, you have been watching facebook, been talking to facebook including mark zuckerberg since the company was born. and i know you've been also watching their reaction to the scandal. what mark zuckerberg said on television last night and other interviews, now this clip we played of sheryl sandberg. is it your sense facebook thinks they are facing an stexistentia crisis? >> they've faced i don't know how many existential crises the past decade and a half. i don't think it ever felt like

they were existential crises. in this case i think they're starting to wonder, but they i think believe they may have gotten it contained in the last 24 hours. i'm not certain that's true, but i don't think they truly understand the scope of the problems that they've got. >> do you think that the issue -- that they look at this and say, hey, we've got a problem here because we might get some increased regulatory scrutiny and we're going to have washington on our back, or do you think they look at this and say, man, we have fundamentally potentially risked the perception, at least, we have broken trust with the millions upon millions of people who give their data to us and who rely on the service every day. what category of problem do you think they see themselves as having? >> the far greater issue for them is the one you mentioned second, the trust issue. the regulatory issue, they have the best lawyers in the world, far better than trump, it seems. and they're not worried about whether or not they can manage the regulatory issues that this

might raise. but they are extremely concerned that people might start leaving facebook in droves and that other entrepreneurs might come up with platforms that seem better for customers who are just no longer trusting their service. >> do you think -- i was looking at zuckerberg last night on television. he looked to me, for a guy with his extraordinary wealth, extraordinary power, a greater maturity than some people ascribe to him. he still seemed to me to not be rising to this moment. again, you've watched him personally for a long time. do you think he is comfortable in the position of responsibility he now has? or on some level he would like to somehow have all the money and power in the world but not have to face any of the responsibility and scrutiny he's now getting? >> who wouldn't want that, right? but the truth is i think you can find an answer to that question. and when he was questioned both on cnn and all of the interviews he subsequently gave, on the

question of whether or not he would testify to congress, and his answer was really interesting and to me very evasive, which was, well, of course i would if i were the right person. and it just shows a complete lack of understanding that as the ceo and really the face of this, you know, world-beating company that more than 2 billion people use, he is the right person to testify. and someone with a little bit more awareness would have said, of course, i want to testify. show me where i should show up and i'll be there. that's what i would expect from a ceo. but an engineer's mind-set is always, okay, i've got a problem, let me break it into the component parts and i'm going to figure out each of those component parts how i can fix them then i'm going reassemble the robot. i think that's what we got in the response in the last 24 hours. >> the last thing i want to ask you before i turn to the table, it wasn't that long ago people were asking if mark zuckerberg was going to run for president

in 2020. he went on a road trip and went to places like iowa, places where early votes take place, presidential process. this actually happened not that long ago. >> yeah. >> do you think he actually ever was entertaining the notion of running for president? and i can ask the stupidist question in the world. is he having second thoughts about it now? >> i think he absolutely was considering it in the back of his mind. but to me that 50 states tour was entirely about ensuring that he maintains the trust with the 2 billion population that is already seeing mark zuckerberg as their leader. i don't think he needs the problems of the presidency and i don't think he seeks them. >> jennifer palmieri, i want to ask you a question and turn to the question facebook, good or bad, good or evil for our democratic process given what we now know. but there was a question asked of mark zuckerberg last night on cnn about the role of whether

facebook impacted the election or not. i want to hear what mark zuckerberg had to say last night. >> knowing what you know now, do you believe facebook impacted the results of the 2016 election? >> oh, that is hard. you know, i think that it is -- it's really hard for me to have a full assessment of that. you know, the reality is -- well, there are so many different forces at play. >> jennifer, you lived the 2016 presidential election in a close up way. is it hard for you to believe it facebook had an impact? >> it is the most powerful platform the universe has ever seen. it more than any entity, press or otherwise, was the platform from which people learned news about the presidential campaign. so, it had an extraordinary

impact. and i think that they had a -- it sort of fascinates me to watch, makes me want to put on my jambies, put on some popcorn and watch it all unfold and watch them struggle with their failure of imagination. these are people supposed to be the most imaginative people on the planet. they had a failure to appreciate how bad the problem was at best or cover it up, a failure of imagination to how you wrestle with it. that's what plagued the clinton campaign, in terms of both facebook, concern about bots, concern about trolls, where they were coming from as well as have people wrap their heads around what russia might be doing. >> you, i know, have some instincts that are a little like mine. nobody forces you to sign up for facebook. nobody forced you to join the service. nobody forced you to click that button when it would ask you when you were signing founder a third-party app. we're going to transfer your data to this app so it can interact with facebook.

people are sentient beings. >> i find the word trust to be utterly ridiculous. of course, you shouldn't trust facebook. there should be nothing on there that you consider private information in any way. you should all know that there are people working at the company you're using to deliver your e-mail who can read your e-mail all day. there is nothing private about it. they've made you no promises that they won't. they can all do it and they do. there are people sitting there and they might have some company rules that say, you shouldn't do it. but you know there are people who are just -- that's how they spend their afternoon in their down time. these companies shouldn't be trusted. if you're going to use them, you should use them in a way that doesn't require trust. don't give them anything that requires you to trust them. >> the interesting thing is every time you click a story, every time you move throughout your page, you are giving them a sense of your choices, your

desires, what attracts you, what outrages you. what's interesting here for me at least is facebook, we talked about the manufacture of consent. what facebook did was the manufacture of dissent, by separating us out, generating outrage over clinton e-mails, silence with regards to black lives matter. all the things that place us in our silos, then look what happened. >> i have to say i did not think today i would get the opportunity to speak to my friend john battell and have chomski at the same time. thank you. if you have any thoughts on the 2016 campaign cycle, it was brutal, you probably do. it was pretty brutal. it might be a little more brutal next time around if the preview we saw last night is what it's going to look like. look at that next.

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when a guy who ended up becoming a national leader said i can grab a woman anywhere and she likes it and then said i made -- i didn't make a mistake, but they asked me would i like to debate this gentleman, and i said no. i said if we're in high school, i would take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him. [ cheering and applause ] >> i shouldn't have said that. but then i was told that was just locker room talk. well i've been in a lot of locker rooms and a pretty damn good athlete. any guy who talked that way was the fattest, ugliest s.o.b. in the room. for real. >> that was the former vice president of the united states speaking in florida yesterday. with a familiar jab against president trump and trump being trump -- that is not someone who is not prone to let any slight go unanswered under any

circumstances and he was up this morning on twitter putting this out. quote, crazy joe biden is trying to act like a tough guy. actually he is weak mentally and physically and yet he threatened for me the second time. with physical assault he doesn't know me but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way. don't threaten people, joe. the panel is back for a little of this discussion. i ask you, jennifer, let me start with you, what is joe biden up to? if he is thinking about running for president in 2020, is that just joe being joe or is there a tactical or strategic ju ju going on there by reviving this long forgotten controversy. >> my experience with joe biden, who like most people who worked for president obama got to know well and love and adore, is that that is joe being joe. but that is also joe reflecting what he says privately all of the time.

he's -- when you see him speak publicly, it is reflective of what he's also been saying. i think there is an element to him that -- a tough kid grew up in the streets of scranton, pennsylvania, that liked to take on the rich kid from new york city. but i don't suspect that that kind of dialogue is what people are going to want on the democratic side in 2020. once we actually get there. although it is nice to see somebody take trump on in this way. >> really? >> you tell me. tell me about -- let me ask you both the same question which is -- it seems to me this is joe biden reading the wind and weather of the democratic base and saying -- what they want is someone who would take donald trump out to the wood shed and beat the hell out of him. so i'll be the guy who says that. >> some people might want that. probably not 70 plus-year-old men behind the wood shed trying to beat the crap out of each

other. and i think also we need to see this also as toxic masculinity. where you have people trying to in some ways perform their manhood by threatening -- i'm going to beat up folks in defense of -- and of x, y and z and trump's response is that kind of masculinity at the very top. and one of the things that we're experiencing in this me-to movement is a fundament attack on that way of being in the world. so it may have some political kind of currency but at the heart of what we are experiencing today, it is to attack that notion of masculinity as it is. and even when it is trying to be chauffeur in this business by joe biden. >> in joe biden's case, it is often not method. and i used to sit there in the senate floor when -- as a staff aide and joe biden would have a good solid 12 minute speech that would last 90 minutes because once joe gets going, he keeps

going and doesn't need text and says things that come into his mind at that moment that he absolutely does d not plan to say and know he didn't because he has that judiciary hearing committee to go back to and still stand here and say this. so most of that is something that happened in that moment. i do think it is important to point out that the words of what joe biden said really matter and they're very, very different from trump language in this arena. he said at the beginning, if we were in high school, they're not in high school. so he's just saying, this is a way into the way i used to think when i was a kid and this guy trump provokes in me the kinds of impulses you have when you are a kid, if we were in high school. and he said that right after he said would you beat the hell out of him. he says i shouldn't have said that. donald trump has never done that. he's never made it theoretical to if he is a kid or after a threat, i shouldn't have said that.

joe biden is self aware enough to know where he was when those words came out of his mouth. and so it is i very different thing from what trump does. >> we have no time and just yes or no. joe biden going to run in 2020, yes or no. >> yes. >> yes. >> yes or no. >> no. >> we'll come back at some point. >> mine was a prediction. was that a wish. >> prediction and the wish and the thought. when we come back, it is possible that donald trump thought that we weren't listening to what he just said but we'll bring you to that -- we'll bring that to you right now, in a second. after this break. i try to take care of my teeth,

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what advice would you give to the 25-year-old donald trump knowing what you know today? >> don't run for president. [ laughter ] >> i love the way he was asked that question and answered right from the heart and so honestly and almost immediately it was kind of great. i think he was telling the truth. a rarity from donald trump. my thanks to the great eddie glad, and jennifer palmyary and -- >> let's not compare. >> this is little league. >> everyone gets a trophy. make sure you watch tonight at 10:00 on the last word and we have michael avenatti and check that out. that does it for us this hour. i'm john heilman in for nicolle wallace and now i'm late, chuck, don't be mad but i will get you what i said yesterday. >> i didn't hear it but i'm cashing that check. if i