daughter and said, a beautiful little girl, it would be shame if something happened to her mom and he was gone. >> you took it as a direct threat. >> absolutely, i was rattled. i remember going into the workout class and my hands were shaking so much i was afraid i was going to drop her. >> did you ever see the person again. >> no, but if i did, i would know it right away. i'll never forget. >> you would be able to recognize that person. >> 100%, even now. all these years later, if he walked in this door right now i would instantly know. >> did you go to the police. >> no. >> why? >> because i was scared. >> ten days ago stormy daniels' attorney told us she had been threatened to stay silent about donald trump. last night she gave the details. meanwhile, the president's own legal team in the russia probe is largely an army of one. despite twitter claims that, quote, many lawyers want to represent the president, he may need the help with cnew reportig

that george papadopoulos was a low level coffee brew. that keeps getting stronger by the day and voters saying that robert mueller has to be able to finish his investigation, a vast majority of them say. this comes as hundreds of thousands of americans mobilize for gun safety reform. "morning joe" was there and we'll show you some of those images straight ahead. good morning, it's monday, march 26th. with us we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, national affairs analyst for nbc and msnbc, john heilemann. former aide to the george w. bush white house and state departments elise jordan, columnist and associate editor for "the washington post," david ignatius, nbc national news reporter heidi presides heidi p jonathan turley. willie is on vacation and mika has a well deserved day off.

let's begin with the "60 minutes" interview with stormy daniels. the porn star divulged details of her affair with donald trump allegedly and agreed to tell her story to a sister publication of "in touch" and later signed a statement denying it but here's how she explained it last night. >> so you signed and released a statement that said i'm not denying this affair because i was paid in hush money. i'm denying it because it never happened? that's a lie. >> yes. >> if it was untruthful, why did you sign it? >> because they made it sound like i had no choice. >> ho one was putting a gun to your head. >> not physical violence, no. >> you thought that there would be some sort of legal repercussion if you didn't sign split the exact sentence used was they can make your life hell in many different way. >> they being? >> i'm not exactly sure who they

were. i believe it to be michael cohen. >> was it hush money to stay silent. >> yes. the story was coming out again. i was concerned for my family and their safety. >> i think some people watching this are going to doubt that you entered that this negotiation because you feared for your safety. they're going to think that you saw an opportunity. >> i think the fact that i didn't even negotiate. i just quickly said yes to this very, you know, strict contract and what most people will agree with me extremely low number is all the proof i need. >> you feel like if you had wanted to go public you could have gotten paid a lot of money to go public. >> without a doubt. i know for a fact. i believe without a shadow of a doubt in my heart and some people argue that i don't have one of those but, whatever, that i was doing the right thing. i turned down a large payday multiple times because, one, i

didn't want to kiss and tell and be labeled all the things that i'm being labeled now. i didn't want to take away from the legitimate and legal i'd like to point out career that i've worked very hard to establish and most importantly, i did not want my family and my child exposed to all the things that she's being exposed to right now because everything that i was afraid of coming out has come out anyway and guess what, i don't are a millihave a dollars. >> so, john, a lot of questions actually that were raised for me by that interview. first of all, you know, he keeps waving around the cd. we keep hearing about pictures. what exactly are they waiting for if this is about truth, justice and the american way instead of just a really big fat paycheck for her from some publication? also, the threat. it's not like it would have been really difficult to trace down who the threat was from, figure

out who made the phone calls and yet you have those two things still hanging out there. and it seemed to me a lot more inconsistencies and a lot more questions about her motives. yes, she was actually far more compelling than i expected, but, again, sometimes the story didn't line up and just to be really honest, there were a lot of questions that should have been asked. there were a lot of follow-ups about the threat, a lot of follow-ups about the pictures that for some reason anderson cooper decided not to follow up on. what was your takeaway. >> i think probably you and i although we haven't discussed it were probably thinking a lot of the same things. start with this, there is a serious charge -- the underlying charge here, the notion that in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign president trump through michael cohen tried to silence this woman at a time of great political

vulnerability, a story that was potentially damaging to him politically, this -- it's a serious charge and nothing about last night's interview in any way diminished the seriousness of what is being put on the table here and it's consequence and of historic importance. number two, i think she came across as a highly credible person on television and so she did her case some good in that sense. i do think that the level of expectation that was raised about what this interview would provide, the kinds of things you're referring to, the reference that he made on this program to the threat which she detailed to some extent in a limited way in the interview but there were a lot of follow-up questions you want to ask about that. there has been a lot of suggestions about who might have been the person who threatened her. why was she not asked in more detail about who that person was. why was she not shown photographs of people that might have been the person who threatened her? there were a -- there was a lot of expectation raised as you

said with the photograph of the dvd the other day. >> right. >> a lot of expectation got raised and most of the expectations that i think people had coming into the interview that they thought they were going -- the story was going to be advanced in some dramatic material way from what we knew before the interview, i think the interview in that sense fell short and, again, as you said, left a lot of questions that you want to have answered either by her lawyer or by her in other interview forums hopefully relatively soon because i think there's a lot of people with questions still. >> again, you're right. i mean, the lawyer was on our show a couple of weeks ago. he teased forward and said you have to watch "60 minutes" to find out about the assault, to find out about the pictures. to -- yeah, the threat of the assault. we found out neither and it just seems like now it's moving down the road. we can't tell you -- i mean, it seems to me that anderson cooper could have had two or three pictures he could have flashed

number front of her face and said was this the person would threatened? you i think all of us around this table and just about everybody in trump's orbit or in washington, d.c. could come up with a lineup of three, four or five people that anderson should have shown her if you have a threat that is out there like that. but that didn't happen. jonathan turley, it seemed to me that of everything that happened last night, you know, the question of whether she was a credible witness, what pictures might be coming forward? what this, what that? when did they happen? what did they say? where was he perched on the bed. all very salacious, all very irrelevant. at the end of the day you have $130,000 payment made to silence somebody. 10, 11, 12 days before a united states presidential campaign. and it looks like as trevor

potter said last night, looks like you could have a real problem in terms of campaign finance violation. i certainly know if i had done that when i was in condition, if anybody i had known when i was in congress did that where you had somebody paying $130,000 and wasn't reported on your fec filing you would be going to court in short order. what does it all mean. >> i think there are a couple of things that happened. one is that the stage is set now for a colossal fight in court. she's obviously released many of the details that the n nondisclosure agreement was designed to withhold from the public. she's also made official what was eluded to in the past, that she was in her view threatened by this individual in the parking lot. and so now we have to watch for the most obvious steps. i think michael cohen is likely to push this out of federal

court back into arbitration. i think stormy daniels will resist that but in terms of the campaign finance issue that's what we've been talking about for a couple of weeks because i think that is a real danger. i've said from the beginning that this does look like an in kind contribution along the lines of what john edwards was charged with. >> now, do you agree, john than, that this actually may be even more compelling than the john edwards case because this happened not a year, year and a half before an election, this happened 10, 11 days before an election and it was obviously hush money and you had somebody, what, taking out a second mortgage or a loan on their home paying it off and then complaining that donald trump never paid it back. even if trump did pay it back, it's not reported before the election. doesn't that give bob mueller an

awful lot of leverage to talk to cohen and say, hey, buddy, i've got you here already. if you would like to give you the manafort treatment and dig in the last 20 years of your work, i can do or you can cooperate with me now. >> i do think that it's stronger because of the timing but i should say that i was critical of the john edwards charge. i thought it was a fairly weak case, ultimately it did not lead to his conviction. but a case can't be made. what's notable the four categories given to the president's counsel for the sit-down with mueller does not include this issue or a number of other issues. in many ways that's good news for the president because this is a mess. michael cohen made this much, much worse for his client. it took someone like michael cohen to actually make stormy daniels look virtuous. it is a serious problem that the president is heading into and he's going to have to find a way

to thread this needle. >> ainnd michael cohen now has lawyer himself and sent a letter to the lawyer for stormy daniels and denying it writing, you and your client's false statements about mr. cohen accuse him of criminal conduct and constitution statute among other claims libel per se and intentional infliction of emotional distress. it would also appear that your statements of alleged criminal conduct are being made to obtain an advantage in a civil dispute which is also improper. the letter continues, i hereby demand you and your client cease and desist from making any further false and defamatory statements about high client, that you immediately retract and apologize to mr. cohen through the national media for your statements on "60 minutes" and make clear that you have no facts or evidence whatsoever to support your allegations that my client had anything to do

whatsoever with this alleged thug. stormy daniels whose real name is stephanie clifford is embroiled in a legal battle over a 130,000 disaster nondiclosure agreement agreemeshe signed daye the election. we heard this weekend "vanity fair" reported it, we heard it elsewhere, emily fox reported that now mueller is starting to ask questions about payoffs to other women. are we starting to move down a new trail in this investigation? >> oh, i think we've been moving down that trail for quite some time. we harken back to what is said, we don't know exactly what mueller is doing. we don't even -- we're not even coming close to knowing what he has but at least with regard to that, i mean the thing that struck me about the payments, the women, stormy daniels'

appearance last night is that after it was over, i was thinking to myself here's a woman, she admits to spanking the president. the united states, about to become president, having sex with the man who is about to become president and it's like change the channel and people are saying, yeah, no surprise. >> the most important part that she was threatened with physical violence if she told her story and has been continuously bullied and intimidated by this is just the one trick pony of michael cohen donald trump's lawyer. that's all they know how to do is try to tell people they'll ruin their lives and they should be silenced. >> the key date for the payment. >> exactly. the key date for the payment is everything. this is -- i don't understand how you can have six figures flowing changing hands and it

not be a campaign finance violation given some of the lesser charges that so many people have gotten in trouble on in the past. >> yeah, heidi, so many of these things that happened with donald trump come at voters so quickly. but when you have the "60 minutes" interview like that, suddenly it becomes water cooler talk. suddenly you have people talking about it around the office, and suddenly people start bringing it up to members of congress. is there any reason to believe maybe this cuts through the noise and some republican, some evangelical leaders actually start to apply some of the same standards they applied to bill clinton 20 years ago? >> yes and no. yes, i believe that this will now be embedded in our water cooler culture, this is an interview that i imagine we'll see the ratings were pretty high for this and there was obvious very embarrassing details in

here, joe, and quite frankly real similarities between the stories that stormy daniels told and that karen mcdougal told, dinner in the hotel suite. do you remind me of my daughter. statements that he and melania had separate bedrooms and so that lends credibility but at the end of the day, like you said at the top, expectations were raised so high, particularly with a lawyer tweeting that picture of the cd-rom. we were expecting to see some kind of evidence. i think that the salacious details mean we will be talking about this for a long time along with the threats, she suggested that possibly there are witnesses that she put her conversations with donald trump on speakerphone so there may be other people out there who can verify it the. like you said potentially another interviewer will follow up and say, hey, is this a picture of the man that you

recognize or, you know, provide some detail, some physical description of who that person may be. donald trump's detail at the time was very well known. it's not hard to establish who those people were. so i think it's the beginning of something. the question is whether avenatti and stormy daniels have the evidence they raise the expectations for. >> jonathan, it is interests as a young lawyer i remember being told never overpromise. underpromise, overdeliver and the jury will look possley on you. you know, underpromise, overdeliver, the judge will be presently surprised at the end of the hearing. it seems to me that we have an attorney that's done just the option. he overpromised. he sent out a tweet with pictures of a cd-rom suggesting some big explosion and told us two weeks ago that she was

threateninged with assault and we would find out more on "60 minutes" when, in fact, we found out nothing new on "60 minutes" and doesn't it just leave a big question mark over your head, we know what bob mueller wants. we now how bob mueller can leverage this to get michael cohen to talk. but we still don't really know what stormy daniels wants and why she wants it other than a big payday. >> well, i mean the question, of course, is all of those issues that weren't addressed. you know, anderson cooper didn't pursue those questions so we don't know what will come out after this interview and, you know, anderson felt as comfortable as much as introducing "debbie does dallas" to the audience. a lot wasn't addressed. >> can i ask you that, jonathan. i mean we shouldn't hold him to

a lawyer's standard but she goes some man threatened me and said, boy, that baby sure looks nice, it would be a shame if she loses her mother. and he doesn't go, who was it? >> oh, i'd recognize him. >> what did he look like. does he look like this person that works for donald trump? did he look like this person that works for donald trump? it's not that hard to follow up. you wonder if they had a deal before the interview. >> a lot of lack of follow-up including on credibility. stormy daniels saying i didn't want my kids to find out about this and it sort of left you with, what, you had a career with dozens of porn movies and you were afraid your kid would find out you had a consensual relationship with the president. those kind of disconnects weren't followed up and the fact is stormy daniels is not very credible. she signed false statements. that doesn't mean what she's saying is not true. as you know, joe, we deal with people all the time that have less than perfect records.

but we're really still wondering what is in that safe and also what is their concrete this terms of evidence that we haven't really seen yet? what is clear now this ball is in play. that nondiclosure agreement has been blasted into small bits. what we will see in the next few days will be very important. >> so now let's go to the man that most people in the washington community considers the edward r. murrow of porn stars and presidents, david ignatius, i go to you now. >> talk about john -- >> yeah, exactly. so we have all of this as a lurid backdrop to a chaotic week where the president enraged conservatives with one of the most reckless omnibus spending bills ever. it was this sort of omnybus

spending bill that led us to drive newt gingrich out of town in 1998. you then have the chaos of tariffs and china saying, okay, you want to get into a tariff war, great, we'll go into a full lone tariff war. you had the dow and s&p fall a great bit on friday and then you had perhaps most worrying for the international community and a lot of conservative republicans who aren't neocons, the appointment of john bolton and, david, as we look at all the chaos that's moving forward, the first question is, what's the national security council going to look like after john bolton fires two-thirds of his staff there and the other one-third quit in protest. >> well, you know, the ones that who are left will be talking about stormy daniels.

we know that because they have a water cooler at the nsc. >> yes. >> i think that it's going to be very tough to work for john bolton at the nsc as it was at the state department. he is famously a difficult boss. the nsc job historically is the role is to be the honest broker to balance the different government agencies, departments and give a consensus to the president to let each person, each party speak their case in making position. bolton is not a person who's ever shown any ability to do that so i think it's going to be tough to make the process work. i worry most when i think about bolton about our allies. we are depending now on the strong alliances that we've got around the world. especially to deal with north korea. bolton is somebody who needs to keep south korea on board. he needs to reassure japan.

we're not going to do anything crazy here. the president will meet and talk and we're going to seek a resolution. in the case of iran and the iran nuclear deal, he has to reassure a europe that increasingly fears that their security is going to be put at greater risk by american moves. is bowlen the person who can do that? if he isn't, he's going to fail on an essential piece of being national security adviser. at the end of the week, so many instances of chaos, this is the one that i think allies look most closely at. >> well, david, let's be clear because there were a few conservative writers out there trying to defend -- well, a few neocons trying to defend the appointment of john bolton saying that any suggestions of him being a warmonger is greatly exaggerated. this is a man who wrote an op-ed in "the wall street journal" not so long ago calling for preemptive first strikes, military strikes against north korea when just about every

other military planner would tell you that could lead to the death of half a million koreans and within a week. here's a man who calmed for the preemptive bombing of iran and still claims all these years later his role ginning up support for the iraq war was the right thing, that, in fact, the iraq war was a worthy cause and actually the only mistake that was ever made in that war are the greatest mistake was when barack obama brought the troops home. this is a man who seems to have a default switch that says use the military, go to war whenever possible. >> joe, i think he's the rare person in washington and around the world that hasn't learned anything from the experience of the iraq war certainly our military has, most policy makers have.

i'm also struck by the paradox of seeking to negotiate a nuclear agreement with a north korea that's genuinely threatening where it's important to have that agreement. at the same time that you're about to throw out the window an agreement that was so difficult to achieve to restrain iran's nuclear program. it just doesn't fit. and i think that somehow they have the idea that getting tough on the one makes it easier on the other. i think it is going to work in the opposite direction but no question that around the world this set of issues surrounding foreign policy, the president heading toward the waterfall with this new paddler on the side, john bolton, that's going to scare people. people will wonder is general mattis till the go to guy who can restrain the president as he makes these decisions. >> boy that, is going to be quite a dynamic. the secretary of defense and the national security adviser.

we'll see how it works out, jonathan turley thanks for being with us as us. we really appreciate it. and still ahead on "morning joe," we're going to be talking to the lawyer at the center of the story, stormy daniels' attorney michael avenatti plus new details on how the president spent the weekend at mar-a-lago, reportedly fuming about one already fired official while plotting the replacement of another. the chaos continues. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. today, innovation in the finger lakes is helping build the new new york. once home to the world's image center, new york state is now a leader in optics, photonics and imaging. fueled by strong university partnerships, providing the world's best talent. and supported with workforce development to create even more opportunities. all across new york state, we're building the new new york. to grow your business with us in new york state,

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you know what's not awesome? withgig-speed internet.te, when only certain people can get it. let's fix that. let's give this guy gig- really? and these kids, and these guys, him, ah. oh hello. 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. voters by a large margin want to see the mueller probe continue its work. now, get these numbers, 72% of registered voters believe that robert mueller should be allowed to finish the investigation while only 11%, one out of ten,

believe he should be fired. now, breaking down those numbers really actually gets more interesting. 83% of democrats, of course, want the probe to continue to the end. 76 of independents want the probe to continue to the end and, get this, 57% of republicans believe that robert mueller should be allowed to finish his investigation and only 25% of republicans believe that he should be fired. john heilemann, that is what the kids might call a sea change. where republicans now are starting to see the indictments of all the russians, starting to see the indictments and cooperating witnesses from donald trump's own administration and starting to say, okay, well, we don't know exactly whether the president is guilty but want to see it play out till the end. that certainly shows and we've seen this trend for some time

that the public support of robert mueller just continues to grow. >> yeah, and, look, i think that's -- almost no one in our political life and robert mueller would say he's not part of our political life but doing his job as a prosecutor and lawyer but he is maybe the most important political figure in the country now besides donald trump. he -- there's no one in our political life with numbers like that. you know, 80% support among democrats, 75% support among independents and seven points north of 50% among republicans so that's an extraordinary degree. almost unprecedented in american life where we see that in a polarized country that kind of support and it is growing, i think, as people as you say, as more of the evidence comes out and more of the dimes are issued people want to know where this is going to lead and one of the things he tapped into here is the sense that there are obviously partisans on both sides. fierce loyalists to the president and fierce critics. for most there is some degree of

unease and some -- the doubts have been raised, questions in their mind, things they want to know about. they don't want to see the country in crisis, they don't want to see impeachment but want to know the truth about what happened in 2016 and they want to have the questions that they have in their minds resolved and are putting their faith in mueller in a very solid way to be the guy who will deliver them in the end the truth and the facts about that. >> well, and so some questions are obviously being raised about donald trump, about facebook. if you look at the numbers, facebook's numbers are falling precipitously, now we have cambridge analytica coming in there. i think americans want to know the truth and at the end of the day republicans and democrat as like, the majority of them actually believe that no man or woman is above the law so right now if you look at these numbers, the marist numbers and compare them to other political figures, other public figures in

america it looks right now like robert mueller, if he's not the motion trusted man in america, in american life he is one of the most trusted men. >> joe, i'll just quickly say if you're donald trump as we've all been talking about for weeks if not months and thinking i want to fire this guy bob mueller, if you're donald trump and you're just being a purely political actor, you look down at those poll numbers and recognize the political jeopardy you would be in if you tried to make a very clear, obvious move against mueller you realize the headwinds you would face if you're donald trump. >> donald trump has to know that all of this has been visited upon him because he fired james comey. and i'm sure that's what ty cobb is telling him every day and perhaps that's why dowd laughed. he didn't want him to testified but dowd talked about how mueller had to wrap up his

investigation. joe digenova had a conspiracy theory about bob mueller. i don't think he an an accident he got on there because ty cobb has to tell the president how bad do you want to make this for yourself? so, we'll see. but what we're talking about, lawyers, as the president decide what is his next steps will be against a very popular special counsel and robert mueller's investigation, he's down to just one personal lawyer working full time on the case. and that's a religious freedom expert jay second la -- and joe digenova and his wife, victoria toensing said they can't join because of conflict of interest but could assist in other legal matters. shortly before the announcement trump cleared, many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the russia case, don't

believe the fake news narrative that it is hard to find a lawyer who wants to take this case on. fame and fortune will never be turned down by a lawyer. though some are conflicted. the problem is that a new lawyer or law firm will take months to get up to speed if for no other reason to charge more money. can't be stressed enough, he's a sitting president with personal wealth and few if any white shoe firms want to work with him. anybody that knows donald trump and has known him for over a decade knows why. first of all, he doesn't tell the truth. that's a nightmare for any lawyer. if you can't as a lawyer get your client in a room and say you have to tell me the truth. if you don't tell me the truth i can't represent you. i can't do my job. they know, one, donald trump

doesn't tell the truth and, secondly, donald trump doesn't pay his legal fees. donald trump doesn't pay any fees. he gets the bills and then he brags about suing people so he pays them maybe 50 cents on a dollar so what credible lawyer, what credible law firm wants to step into that, mike? >> let's focus on door number two that you just mentioned, the principal reason why he's not going to be able to get a lawyer from, you know, a terrific lawyer from new york or washington, d.c. represent him because they know his history. exactly as you just spelled it out. the other aspect of this and you were just referring to it and talking about it with john is bob mueller. i mean, one of the reasons bob mueller is so popular and he's not popular in the sense personally popular but what he's doing is favorable to the american public is that you don't see him on tv. you don't see any leaks out of the mueller operation. people respect what he's doing.

and the fact that the trump organization, the trump presidency is now confronted with bob mueller, looking for a lawyer of mueller's capability to represent him is an impossible tank. no lawyer, very few lawyers are going to want to do this. >> let's do a casual survey here. who would you want representing you, the team that bob mueller has lined up or donald trump's lawyers? >> duh. >> exactly. it's a no-brainer and that's what is so ridiculous about donald trump's tweets yesterday. because he does -- he's showing his desperation quite frankly. all throughout the '80s american lawyer documented all of the white shoe firms he wouldn't pay. he has this reputation as just not paying his legal bills. he thinks that that's a sign of skill. i personally think that you should pay people for the work that you do for them. >> controversial point of view. >> controversial point of view and now you look at how he is not able to enlist the best and brightest because not only do you have to deal with a client

who won't listen to you and take your advice and expects you to get them out of the situations that he will put himself in, he won't even pay them. >> yeah, you know, we were talking a second ago about poll numbers and facebook actually, those poll numbers going down. mark zuckerberg, i don't know if you saw it but he is still apologizing over the cambridge analytica scandal and his company keeps taking a hit. i want to bring in right now the co-founder and ceo of axios, jim vandehei. he joins us now with some exclusive new numbers and, jim, man, this -- so many things have hit facebook and it really does seem remarkable that you have a company that is this powerful that is this wealthy that is at the center of american cultural life and the people at the top of their company seem woefully ill-equipped to handle one

crisis after another. you wonder if they've invested any money in crisis management there or if the people at the very top be it mark zuckerberg or sheryl sandberg just aren't listening. >> yeah, our poll, joe, showed a massive drop in the favorable ratings of facebook. given all the coverage you've been talking about on the show for the last month or so. i think what happened here, you had a company that was treated as just as a gem of american society for a decade, got no scrutiny. every story about zuckerberg and sandberg extremely positive. big growth. huge platform. one of the most powerful companies in the history of mankind and then suddenly, basketball, they start getting hit with stories about manipulation related to the election. bam, you get hit with data breaches, suddenly people start acting, well, wait a second. what does facebook know about me? it turns out it knows a lot about you and tyou, the

individual, gave it to them and now in crisis and i don't think they know how to handle crisis and just starting to get their footing. >> jim, it's heidi here. there's still a lot of evidence that could be in the data imprints that facebook holds in terms of this russia investigation. how all of that information was used and to what extent by cambridge analytica. any sense that on the hill, there may be subpoenas coming to facebook in this investigation to type out specifically who the operators were behind this data because all along there's been speculation that the russians had u.s. help and that facebook may have some of those answers as to who the helpers were. >> yeah, i think on that front what facebook says, what sheryl sandberg has told us in the past they're turning over everything they can to be helpful and russia interference in the

election. i think lawmakers, they don't really know what to ask for. they don't know that much about technology, many of them, unless you're on the relevant committees and know they are frustrated and know voters are frustrated and would like to have mark zuckerberg appear before that committees and probably more likely than not now. but in terms of them digging deeper there aren't that many that have that level of expertise. robert mueller does, i think one of the most fascinating things about whatever materializes from robert mueller is he's going to bring together all these epic stories into one tale. he's got the russian interference and manipulation of platforms and everything else he knows about donald trump that we don't even know yet about donald trump. and facebook is at the center. it is interesting because of that i think one of the biggest shifts you're see something among democrats and liberals in terms of their view of facebook. because they blame facebook. many of them blame facebook for the election of donald trump and

that is becoming a huge political problem as well. >> all right. jim vandehei, thank you so much. greatly appreciate it. coming up on "morning joe" the president calls for more power over the budget process. even sending his treasury secretary out to advocate for something that's already been ruled unconstitutional. we're going to play that sunday morning classic for you straight ahead. ♪ directv now gives you more for your thing. your letting go thing. your sorry not sorry thing.

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one life is worth more than all the guns in america. this is not a red versus blue issue. this is a morals issue. >> we are not here for bread crumbs, we are here for real change. we are here to lead. we are here to call out every single politician. >> it's time to stop judging you that look like me or my brother. it's time for america to notice the everyday shootings are everyday problems.

>> i have a dream that enough is enough. >> more security will not work. arming teachers does not work. >> we cannot keep america great if we cannot keep america safe. >> we need to arm them with pencils, pens, paper and the money they need. >> we would not need metal detectors and clear backpacks and more weapons in our streets if there weren't weapons of war in the hands of civilians. >> all right. just a note to my friends across the political aisle on both sides, if you're fighting teenagers who survived a mass shooting in their school and saw their classmates die, you're losing the political debate. better just to sit back and say nothing than to do what a lot of you were doing this weekend.

truly inspiring words from a lot of these students. now, in the wake of last month's school shooting in parkland, florida, student survivors galvanized hundreds of thousands with a unified message. enough is enough. and while there are no official numbers rally organizers estimate that 800,000 people attended the demonstrations in the nation's capital. meanwhile, a majority of americans say they do support stronger gun safety laws to reduce violence. according to the latest fox news poll, 91% of americans support universal background checks on all gun buyers. 84% according to the fox news poll favor requiring mental health checks. 72% in the fox news poll support raising the legal age to buy all firearms to 21 years and as we go to break, with more images from over the weekend, we'll show you people who stood up

across the nation and said, enough is enough.

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coming up, the lawyer for stormy daniels will join us on "morning joe." we'll try to nail him down, the lingering questions people still have after his client's much-hyped "60 minutes" interview. plus, lawrence o'donnell joins the conversation. "morning joe" back in just three minutes. a boom. this year, we're taking it up a notch. so in this commercial we see two travelers at a comfort inn with a glow around them, so people watching will be like, "wow, maybe i'll glow too if i book direct at choicehotels.com". who glows? just say, badda book. badda boom.

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so frank can focus on the beat. you hear that? this is frank's record shop. and this is where life meets legal. you heard them say he's not planning on doing this again. i think they should >> i think they should give the pat line-item veto. >> that's been ruled unconstitutional by the supreme court, sir. >> again, congress could pass a rule, okay, that allows them to do it. >> no, no, sir, it would be a constitutional amendment. >> chris, we don't need to get into a debate in terms of -- there's different ways of doing th this. [ laughter ] >> john heilemann, what do you say when both the president of the united states and the treasury secretary are proposing

unconstitutional measures to justify the president's signing one of the biggest pork barrel omnibus packages of all time? that's like donald trump saying i know i just signed this bill but i'm going to build a spaceship and i'm going to mars and mine precious metals and we'll make the money back that way. so you have two choices, who had the most interesting quote of the week? was it steve mnuchin recommending something unconstitutional several times in front of chris wallace or rick santorum saying that students who saw their classmates' organs blown to shreds and opened up by ar-15s, instead of marching for gun safety should learn cpr. go. which one? >> i think the steve mnuchin

thing speaks ignorance where the santorum thing speaks a dark heart so i'm more appalled by santorum and by him being representative of a thing you alluded to in the last segment where the opponents of sensible gun legislation decided to lash out -- and santorum is one example of the stupidity and darkness of their response -- but there were many of them who lashed out at the victims in parkland and the kids who were out exercising -- wherever you stand on the issue, you look at that kind of civic engagement, you look at that passion and emotion and you should be -- even if you oppose what they're arguing for you should say this is an incredible thing. instead these people are attacking these kids in unconscionable ways so i give the award for most rebullsive performance of the weekend, if

those are my two choices, i give the performance for its disvirtue and its representative quality of some of the behavior on the other side to rick santorum. >> and mike barnicle, you even had false memes where they had pictures of a student shredding a constitution which, of course, was a false image and they're going around lying about the students. again, we can disagree with some of the things that the students say, maybe some of the students go a little too far but who in the world, what adult thinks that attacking these students is somehow going to help them win a debate? again, even if you are 100% lockstep with the national rifle association's three lobbyists in washington, d.c. who are pushing

this debate to a position so extreme that even nra members across america don't agree with them, why would you attack students who are protesting earn said the of just staying with the issues? you're not going to win by attacking students who saw friends shot up and gunned down in class. >> i think, joe, the obvious answer would be why are they doing this? they're afraid. they know a wave has been set in motion. the wave is coming right at them. you can stack up the stories of the weekend that we've discussed thus far, stormy daniels on "60 minutes," steve mnuchin's it's okay to be unconstitutional, rick santorum cpr instead of common sense and none of them, none of them, can stand alongside emma gonzalez. none of them. the sounds of silence, mute on

tv for nearly six minutes was stunning. anybody who watched it, realized that's our future. these children -- and they are children, and emma gonzalez, that's our future, not the politicians. >> and marches -- sometimes vrjs have great impacts, sometimes they don't. there's no doubt the marches we've seen this year, the women's march we saw at the beginning of last year had a profound impact on how many people registered to vote, how many people went out to vote and had an impact in races like virginia and in alabama. there's no doubt. donald trump is least favorite, his lowest demographic group are among younger voters and millennials. there's no doubt this is going to get people energized, younger voters are going to register and a lot of younger voters will

make a difference this fall. it's up to the republicans between now and thisfall to decide whether they want to do anything to suggest they want these younger voters' support or not. so this hour we're going to have with us again former aide to the george w. bush white house and the state department's elise jordan. we have columnist and associate editor for the "washington post" david ignatius. nbc news national reporter heidi przybyla, and joining the conversation, former u.s. attorney for the northern district of alabama and an msnbc contributor joyce vance and also the host of msnbc's "the last word" lawrence o'donnell. mika has the morning off. lawrence, let me ask you. first reaction to the "60 minutes" interview last night, what's the impact? >> well, it's continuing the story. it's that thing that stormy daniels and her lawyer have been able to do which is continue a

story to which they're not adding very much but they manage to at each stage push it along so you'll have questions for michael avenatti when he comes on here that -- you're going to try to advance where the story got last night so i think that's their mission is to try to keep this story out there and now that stormy daniels has gone out and clearly violated the confidentiality agreement on television, this is a real legal challenge to the president and let's see what the president says about this. the striking thing that is unique about this is that trump has not dared to speak one word about stormy daniels. has not dared to say she's not telling the truth, has not dared to attack her. michael avenatti last week said on television, said to chris matthews that what he was doing was firing a warning shot at

donald trump. no one has talked tougher directly to donald trump on tv than michael avenatti and donald trump is afraid to mention his name. so donald trump is giving this story a dimension that no other trump story has had -- which is the absolute silence of donald trump. >> it's fascinating. joyce, what's the legal impact of what you heard last night. do the possible fec violations put robert mueller in a stronger place? stronger position to get michael co-then cohen to cooperate? >> it looks like this has to be some sort of campaign finance law violation. personally, in almost 30 years as a lawyer, i've never paid a porn star out of my own pocket for a client so this has to be some form of a contribution from cohen to the campaign. that would violate election law.

it makes cohen very vulnerable and certainly mueller could exploit that vulnerability if you wanted to have leverage over him as a witness. i thought frankly the interview left some questions unanswered and was a little bit surprised. it seemed to problem a it wimis more than it delivered, certainly along the lines of proving a threat. she told a story about a threat. i didn't hear hard evidence that linked it to the trump campaign or a specific individual. i suspect that that detail will unfold in the next few days and that will be something that could be of interest to mueller as well. >> elise jordan, i'm not exactly sure how donald trump, how michael cohen, how anybody gets around that $130,000 payment because as a lawyer it's just unethical and it's just not done

to forward $130,000 for a client in any case, you just don't do it and, what, 30 years? 25 years since i passed the bar i've never heard of one lawyer doing what michael cohen has done and then secondly when you go to the political side of this bizarre payoff, i remember we used to obsess over the amount of ribs our f-- or fried mullet or iced tea that was contributed to us in these big fund-raising events and rallies because those are in-kind contributions and if you don't write every one of those in-kind contributions down, the fec comes after you. now, $130,000, 10 or 11 days before a presidential campaign, i'm sorry, that -- these conservatives out there saying

it's much ado about nothing, nothing about the law -- they know nothing about the law and the federal elections commissions laws, either. this seems like the big deal of the entire interview last night. >> joe, i'm not surprised you've never out of the goodness of your heart just given $130,000 to someone, a client, that's what this whole story is just so utterly unbelievable and at what buoyant is the truth going to come out? it's been a slow build constantly. can you just imagine if this situation had been flipped and it was a payoff for bill clinton? everyone in the right wing media would be up in arms about it and they should be. why are we letting cash, six figures before a presidential campaign slow in and not asking questions about it? this is i think more perilous to donald trump's presidency than the russia investigation even. >> this is so perilous.

it's something jonathan turley said from the very beginning. if i had ever heard of a congressman, congresswoman, senator, governor, paying $130,000 -- having a third party pay $130,000 to -- for hush money, are 10, 11, 12 days before an election, i'm sorry, that's negligence per se. you know that person is going down so it's going to be very interesting to see whether bob mueller is reaching out to michael cohen this morning or whether this ends up all in donald trump's lap. here's a clip from the "60 minutes" interview where anderson cooper and stormy daniels talks about the threat she says was made towards her. >> i was in a parking lot going to a fitness class with my infant daughter. i was taking seats facing back

fwhards the backse -- in the backseat and guy walked upped on me and said to me "leave trump alone, forget the story." then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said "a beautiful little girl, it would be a shame something happened to her mom." and then was gone. >> you took it as a direct threat? >> absolutely. i was rattled. i went into the class and my hands were shaking so much i was afraid i was going to drop her. >> did you ever see the person right again? >> no, but if i did i would know it right away. >> you would recognize the person. >> 100%. even now if he walked in this door i would know. >> did you go to the police? >> no. >> why? >> because i was scared. >> john heilemann, how did he look? that would have been a good follow-up question. describe him to me. have you seen certain people who

have hung out with donald trump for a decade? did this person look like any of those people? i just don't understand why there wasn't a follow up there. >> i find it a little baffling in a sense because everybody who's in our business from the moment that michael avenatti made the claim on this air that stormy daniels has been threatened everyone in our business and in the world of politics has been speculating what about that person might be on twitter and other places, a lot of names have been raised, some familiar, some less familiar so heidi i ask you, what's the explanation for that? is there some possibility there was a pre-arrangement where anderson cooper was not meant to pursue that line of inquiry further? do you think it's a mistake that michael avenatti teased the element of this on television and there was no wayoff in the

"60 minutes" interview? what do you make of that? i think a lot of people tuned in wanting to know because he seemed to suggest you will learn everything ant the threat if you watch the "60 minutes" interview and yet we watched it and heard details but not the main things which who is the person who issued it? >> if i had to speculate -- which is what this is, john -- i know they had a lot of material to work with and cbs had to make a judgment about what they were going to use, what they weren't. obvious to all of us, it was a logical follow-up. i doubt anderson cooper would have agreed to pre-conditions beforehand but i don't know that first hand, i will say based on my own reporting, guys, because i was the reporter at the time at "usa today" who was reporting on the second incident where stormy daniels says she was threatened which was into signing the statement saying thun of this was true and i will say that as a reporter my radar

went up that something was not right because i got a statement from stormy daniels but it was sent by donald trump's attorney, michael cohen and when we reached out to stormy daniels' attorney for comment, they would not comment so there was something fishy about that, again we had no information at the time that there may have been a threat involved but it didn't feel right that we couldn't get her own attorney to verify that that was even her signature. >> david ignatius, let's talk about some other things that have happened over the past several days. most of the weekend more people in washington, d.c. that i've talked to are for more concerned about john bolton than stormy daniels. as admiral from vie -- from --

stravridis said he is incapability of building consensus. if you talk about the national security advisers that have done it right, everybody talks about how brent scow confident was somebody that gave the president a range of options. certainly around our household we talked about dr. brzezinski. but there is a history of people that know how to build consensus. john bolton seems to be the opposite. >> it's a job that's required balance, trustworthiness, the honest broker version of the job is the one that's become the model. john bolton has shown up in none of the qualities that would make him that kind of person. when he came up for confirmation to be u.n. ambassador in 2005, one of the devastating comments

made about him was by a man named carl ford who was head of the intelligence bureau at the state department who described him as a kiss-up kick-down giend -- kind of guy. somebody who was always trying to do his superiors' bidding but tough to work for. he was known for pushing intelligence about threats that he thought were important e ideological ideologically, tried to convince people cuba had a biological weapons program, there was no real evidence of that, he was very militant about syria and syria's chemical weapons program. he tried and succeeded in preventing inspectors from going to iraq to look at iraqi chemical weapons. if they'd gone, they might have discovered, hey, they haven't got any in the run u.n. to the 2003 invasion so there's a long legacy that gives people an image of him who is somebody who

is very partisan, has his thumb on the scale, wants a certain outcome and if he wants to have any chance of being a successful national security adviser, he's going to have to come in and say, folks, you've seen me on fox news, you know my policy views, i'm here to do something different now. i'm here to run this process for the president. >> and soon after george w. bush appointed john bolton to the united nations even george bush said he wasn't an honest broker, lawrence o'donnell said he wasn't somebody he trusted. there has been an effort by a few people out this weekend to suggest that is the mainstream media is being unduly harsh on john bolton, that john bolton is not a warmonger, that he is simply somebody who flexes his muscles to make peace at the end of the day. there's a guy who wrote in the "wall street journal" that we needed to have preemptive strikes against north korea which many experts believe could kill 500,000 people on the

korean peninsula almost immediately. he talks about strikes against iran and after all these years, after all the mistakes in iraq he still says that was the right move to make, invading iraq. how dangerous is john bolton when it comes to america's national security? >> the most important thing in any pursuit is what have you learned from your mistakes? what have you learned from others' mistakes? and what has john bolton learned from vietnam, for example? . we don't know. we do know he's learned nothing from iraq but his threats about north korea are the most disturbing of all because he really at this point is ready to launch an attack on north korea. that me sumbly would trigger a possible nuclear response from north korea to south korea of probably immediately if not a nuclear response it would certainly trigger a massive

military response on -- and the suffering would be on south korea immediately and as you said possibly hundreds of thousands of casualties and john bolton has no answer to that. he has -- there's nothing -- he's never said, oh, no, here's my scenario, here's how it works, here's how you can make a strike on north korea where they won't retaliate. they won't fire a shot. he's never described this plan of his. >> because there is no plan. >> right. >> it's -- the plan always is, david ignatius, shoot first, ask questions later. we've talked about iraq a lot and i said iraq has made fools of us all. i'm not talking about you, but most americans supported the invasion of iraq and most americans, an overwhelming number of americans were opposed to the surge and then most americans wanted us to get out in 2011. if you look back strategically,

all three of those were strategic mistakes. the more people were on the wrong side of what was the best strategic suggestion but almost all americans would agree -- even people like me who were wrong about us getting into the war figured out quickly after there were no weapons of mass destruction that it was a mistake and yet here's john bolton looking at perhaps the worst foreign policy debacle of our lifetime. maybe in the history of america still saying it was justified. that it made strategic sense. >> joe, what's strangest about this is that one of the reasons that donald trump i think had traction with the electorate in 2016 is he expressed this frustration about a country that keeps going war in the middle east and gets so little out of

it, we spent over a trillion dollars and what have we got to show? . that's donald trump's view of these conflicts. he's very reluctant, for example, to get further involved in syria even to maintain the presence we've got there now. bolton has shown no signs of that retrospective look. bolton interestingly has been through his whole career kind of a gadfly. he's been the guy on the far right who olympics the balloons of others, he's very smart. he's good at a debate. now he's not a gadfly. now he's the person who's got to run the process and that's the challenge for him. can he make that transition into doing something he's never done before? if he doesn't this will be an even more chaotic national security process that we've seen and one that will upset allies because the national security

adviser is often the person who overseas to our friends in europe, in asia, who count on knowing what u.s. policy is. >> joyce vance, i want to end the block by going back to a poll we showed last hour. it was a marist poll and americans were asked if they trusted robert mueller and wanted him to finish the investigation. 72% of americans want him to finish the investigation. only 11% think he should be fired. only one in ten think he should be fired and you start breaking this down party by party, joyce, the most telling part of this even among remembers, almost six in 10 republicans say let robert mueller finish the investigation. only 25% say he should be fired, only 8% of independents who will make a huge difference in the swing districts on whether snoeps is speaker of the house or paul ryan and 4% of democrats

think he should be fired. john heilemann was talking about this that robert mueller has somehow become one of the most trusted men in america. there are few people in have this much kvs in the american people. so many institutions see their numbers collapsing, rural just seems to become more and more trusted with the american people everyday. how does that impact where we are in this investigation and where we're going? >> trump has remarkably suck seeded ee ee eed in doing some other public figure has been able to do and that's to bring democrats and republicans together over the question of robert mueller. he's competent, he acts with integrity, he does it quietly and out of the public spotlight and what i think is heartening here is one of these bedrock institutions of american democracy, the justice department, the rule of law

process that says no man is above the law, not even the president, that that process is strong, that the american people support it and whether mueller decides that the president or any of his close advisers should be indicted or whether he decides that no criminal misconduct occurred, the american people will be able to have confidence in the conclusions that the special counsel process that the investigation reaches, that's an important positive piece of news for all of us. >> joyce vance, thank you so much and as always, roll tide. >> roll tide. >> lawrence o'donnell, i'm going to give you the last word. by the way a very good name, by the way, for a show but the last word, what do you think about the mueller poll showing that even among remembers they want donald trump to stay out of the way and let robert mueller do his job? >> that's why i was staring at you when you had it on the screen, i was fascinated by

that. there's no support for firing robert mueller. what you see in those numbers, if rural is fired, we have a public reaction that is unpredict to believe put it mildly. it's very hard to say just what the public would do because clearly they would object. i don't know. i can't imagine that people would take to the streets in a march of protests over firing of a special prosecutor but if donald trump sees that poll and thinks he still has the political power to fire rural then he can't read those numbers. >> no, he can't. and certainly republicans in congress will be forced finally i think to step forward because the blowback from reporters would be extraordinary. it would be an obstruction of justice and it would be an

obstruction of justice count that would hang over all the republicans in congress that kept their mouths shut. lawrence o'donnell, thank you so much. we will be watching you on "the last night" weeknights at 10:00 p.m. eastern. heidi, thank you so much for being with us. david ignatius, thank you as well. as always, we greatly appreciate it. still ahead on "morning joe," she was perhaps the other star of last night's "60 minutes" interview with stormy daniels, reporting by "vanity fair's" emily jane fox who is referenced repeatedly in the interview and she joins us next with more when "morning joe" returns.

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>> he's like, wow, you, you are special, you remind me of my daughter, you're smart, beautiful, a woman to be reckoned with. i like you, i like you. >> that was stormy daniels last night on how donald trump allegedly compared her to his

daughter ivanka. with us now, someone who's quite familiar with both stormy daniels and ivanka, emily jane fox, she has a new piece -- actually has a couple on both topics. john heilemann, take it away. >> i want to get to the most recent piece which is the notion that bob mueller might be looking at payments made to women, not just dels but other women paid for their silence. give a sense of what you have to report? >> a source directly familiar with the line of questioning told me that there have been questions posed to people who they have interviewed about payments made to them and i don't know which women the questions were, i don't know if they were specific but there have been questions posed and so that answers one of the major questions that was left hanging last night during "60 minutes"

where there were experts asked do you think that this is read meat for bob mueller so the answer in "60 minutes" was yes. it seems the source provided an answer for me. >> do you have a sense -- this is a question i think that will come up as -- if mueller is, in fact, looking at this stuff. the president has tried to draw a red line where he said don't look at my business dealings, you can only look at the electi election. it always seemed to be ludicrous that if you're asking questions about collusion, the president's history with russia is relevant. these questions, however, if you were a pro-trump defender, you would ask the question, what does that have to do with russia? what does this have to do with collusion? on what basis does bob mueller take his inquiry away from the questions of how russia may have influenced the election and towards questions of the president's consensual relations

with various womens towards contractual relations he might have to buy their sigh difference? what's the basis on which mueller would extend his investigation into this direction? >> you have to put this into context. this payment was made 11 days before the election so it's extricable with the election. completely tied to what happened and i think the way this could be used is a way to talk to other targets and subjects in the investigation saying, look, we may have you on something that is an illegal campaign donation, what else do you have for us? >> you know, mike barnicle, the question also may be what is -- what's a land deal have to do with monica lewinsky? that's what the clinton people were asking in the 1990s. once these things start moving they can go in any direction. >> joe, that's correct.

it's correct in almost every major investigation we've heard of over the past 20, 30 years. it's something you're not looking for that they trip over while looking for the bigger thing and find the lethal thing. >> exactly. look at spiro agnew, for instance. spiro agnew didn't go to jail because of watergate, he went to jail because of irs violations. look at the people around nixon. most of them, a lot of them didn't go to jail because they had anything to do with the break in or conspiracy, they went to jail for a variety of different reasons. >> it's always like that. emily also in "vanity fair" you have a column in the april issue that details how ivanka trump is handling her role at the white house alongside her husband jared kushner and the impact it's having on their reputations. in the piece you write in part "according to one long-time friend of the president, if it came down to donald trump saving himself or defending his son-in-law, there would be no hesitation. you think he's going to tie himself to the kid, you don't

know anything." this person said. "if it's going to cost him his legacy, not a chance." according to one former trump adviser, the president is keeping kushner around in part because he fears letting him out of his sight, particularly if he gets indicted which invites the question if ivanka trump had to choose between her husband and her father, what would she do? do you have an answer to that question? >> i don't and we're far away from that point, at least right now. it's an interesting web these people have all weaved and their motivations far and wide for all of them. there is obviously a duty that ivanka feels to her father, that's in part why she came to washington to stand by her father and serve in his administration but jared kushner provides her a security that she never had growing up. he provides her stability and the kushner family is also very independently wealthy in the way the trump family is not.

we don't know the full extent of donald trump's wealth because he won't release his tax returns but there is an incentive for her to stay with jared kushner when it comes down to choosing between her father and her husband if it comes down to that. it's an impossible choice to even predict. >> you know, emily, that was one of the things that surprised me about the article, how much wealthier jared kushner is than donald trump, how much wealthier the kushner family is than trump and, of course, with trump it's a lot of booms and busts and booms and busts but you talked about them reporting how much money they were worth. the overwhelming majority of it came from the kushner side of the family and only a small, small pittance came from the trump side. >> sure, we're talking about big sums of money. i believe the number we put in the final piece was that ivanka in the year since the election made $12 million so she would be fine just on her own but --

>> i know, i said small pittance just to get under the president's skin. compare that, though, to the jared kushners and kushner obviously himself has more money than donald trump, right? >> it's hard to say, it's hard to say exactly how much the president is worth because we have no idea he's blustered for years about how much he's worth and reports have blown back on that and he has not released his tax returns but jared kushner at 37 is worth a tremendous amount of money. it's unclear how much donald trump at 71 is worth. >> so let's talk about the numbers before we go to break? what were the numbers when they had to report how much they were worth? ivanka trump $12 million and jared kushner how much? >> i think it was -- their combined net worth was over $700 million at the last financial reporting and the $12 million

figure was how much she had made within a year. so factor it in. the gap is quite wide. >> overwhelming majority of the money coming from the kushners and not the trumps. emily jane fox, thank you so much. great to have you on the show. we'll be looking for your new article in the april issue of "vanity fair." boy, john heilemann, can you believe the disparity there between the trumps and the kushn kushners? >> well, yeah, although as emily points out, we don't really know about what donald trump is worth. i come back to the earlier comment. if you think about where this is headed, joe, and it will be fascinating, the comment was would donald trump if he had a choice between saving himself or his son-in-law, we know what he'd do, he's throw the son-in-law overboard but the reverse question is relevant. as bob mueller puts pressure on kushner, if kushner had to save himself would he be willing to

throw his father-in-law over the side of the boat? and i think if -- in a heart beat, says mike barnicle. i think that's where we're headed. bob mueller will try to roll up jared kushner, put kushner in a situation where he's potentially being indicted and say i'm going to indict you unless you flip on your father-in-law. i think both cases, both of those guys would happily flip on the other one or willingly if it came to saving their own skins. >> well, they'll protect themselves. then you have eric snochneiderm in new york city state moving full steam ahead on both trump and the kushners and in those cases there is no presidential pardon so things are about to become far more complicated for both families. coming up, we've been mentioning his name a lot this morning and in just five minutes, attorney michael avenatti joins the conversation live on "morning joe."

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being back with us. a couple questions that weren't answered last night maybe you can help us out on. you tweeted out a picture of a cd and said "if a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is this worth?" what's on that cd and why didn't we hear from stormy daniels last night about the contents of the cd you were teasing last week? >> well, we're not going to disclose it this morning as to the content and i think the reason why and the reason why you didn't hear from her last night is because we're in the process of -- we here in the middle of a lawsuit, a legal fight and we have to be strategic and surgical in the way we go about this. i understand that -- >> but didn't you do a hashtag that said "60 minutes" suggesting you were going to reveal the contents on "60 minutes"? >> i think i made it clear in the appearances that followed was that that was a warning shot relating to the fact that if the president and mr. cohen were going to declare this didn't

happen or call my client a lawyer is that there were going to be consequences and we haven't heard from them. they haven't denied the affair or the fact the president knew about the agreement or that he knew about the $130,000. >> they're threatening you. they're threatening your client so release -- if you were holding that to have leverage over them in case they threatened you, game on. so what's on the cd? >> again, i won't answer what's on the cd but why don't they answer questions like i'm answering about what they knew and when they knew it. i think it's year my client is credible. it's clear they've been lied to by mr. cohen and it's clear that donald trump is covering this up? >> what are you waiting for? what is the trigger that has you releasing physical evidence? >> well, we've already released some physical evidence. we've released e-mails and documents, there's more coming down the pike. we're in the very early stages

of this. we'll be methodical and surgical in the way we go about it. >> you showed a cd and teased you had information on there. what's the triggering point for you to go ahead and show the world what's on the cd? what has to happen first? because you said that they had to threaten you. they've already threatened you. >> no, i didn't say they had to threaten me. i said they should not deny the affair or that it took place and if they did so there would be consequences but i want to be a good attorney if i laid out -- i wouldn't be a good attorney if i laid out on msnbc what our strategy is going to be legally, would i? >> well, what does that have to do? you're teasing it. >> no, i'm not teasing it. >> what does that have to do? evidence is evidence is evidence. what does that have to deal with your legal strategy? >> i'm not teasing anything.

everybody wants immediate gratification in everything in life. guess what? it's not going to happen. >> no. let me show you, counselor, exhibit a. this is your own tweet where owu said, hey, look at this, world. if a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is this worth with how many question marks after it. then you have 60 minutes -- i mean, that is you teasing it up. that is you baiting the public. that is you telling everybody, hey, look what i've got. look what's coming. >> it doesn't matter how many times you ask me the question, i'm not going to tell you what's on the cd or the dvd now. do you want to talk about the content of the interview? do you want to talk about the sending of the goon to the car door with the little girl in the back seat? do you want to talk about where is the president and mr. cohen? >> that's next, michael. but the first thing i want to know is i'm trying to figure out why you teased that and then didn't follow through with the

contents. >> i've answered. >> and also what's the trigger for when we find out what's on the cd? >> i answered the questions. i'm not going to answer any further. >> okay. so let's go now to the next question which is about the threat, the goon comes up in the car and threatens her. anderson cooper didn't ask about the physical description of the person who approached her. can you tell us what he looks like? >> i cannot. but my client can. she can describe it in great detail. i think it's important that the viewers know the original content of my client was about two hours if in length. i was the there for the entirety of it. there was a lot of things the cut out in preparation of the final piece. there were many details excluded and i think many of those details will surface in the coming weeks and months. >> so she knows how he looks. have you shown her pictures of people that have worked for

donald trump? shas she identified the person that made the threat to you? >> she has not identified the person as of yet. we're in the process of trying to conclude exactly who that was. i'm confident we're going to get to the bottom of it. there's no question that it could have only come from one place. it didn't come from the magazine, it didn't come from her, and there's only one other party involved. >> will you seek phone records from the trump organization to try to figure out if some of donald trump's associates were making calls to las vegas that week? >> we're going to seek all kinds of records related to this, no doubt. >> just to go back to this question just because of the history here, right? you were on the show when you first revealed the fact that she had been physically threatened. we did learn more about it in terms of the details. i'm not suggesting that at all. you suggested there were a two-hour interview. i ask you now, given that the " 60 minutes" interviews was you

no in our rearview mirror, was she asked to try to identify who the person was in the course of that interview and unaired portions of it? >> to. >> do you have any idea why that would be the case? >> no. >> have you had a discussion with her about the physical description of the person who there it threatened her.? >> i'm not about to get into the conversations of my client because that's privileged. i have to be careful with her. >> are you saying you're not at liberty to disclose or -- >> in a case like this, generally, you would expect an turn to have those communications with their client if the attorney was competent. i think i'm a competent guy. >> do you have a suspicion of who that -- is the person identifiable to you? do you have an idea in your head who it was that threatened her? >> not yet. >> so this is not a question of privilege. it's a question of you have not in your mind identified a prime culprit, either the person who appeared at the car or -- you don't know a sense of who that would have been. i know you're suggesting it was someone connected to donald

trump, right? at least in the background. >> i think common sense dictates it. who else would have known of the impending story? >> i understand. >> who else would have sent someone to appear at the car door? >> i get the implication. i'm ask you whether you at some point have someone in your mind for who you think was the prime candidate who was behind that threat. >> no. >> anyone? >> it could be anyone in the world. >> i wouldn't say it could be anyone in the world. i think she can describe the culprit, the perpetrator in great detail. i don't think there's any question where this individual came from. >> do you worry that by tweeting out the picture of that cd you overhyped what was going to be revealed in the interview? do you think you raised the expectations so high? because yesterday you tweeted and you tried to clamp down on the expectations for what the rehe veal would be. >> no. i think expectations generally got a little out of control, quite honestly.

i don't think me tweeting that cd had anything to do with it. the interviews i gave on friday made it clear that the contents of that weren't going to he necessarily be disclosed. but i want to go back to something because i want to make sure i understand this. sending someone to a car door, a mother's car door -- let me finish pp -- a mother's car door with her baby in the back seat and stepping up on her and basically telling her that her life is in danger if she talks about mr. trump, that's not a big deal? i mean, have we gotten to a place -- >> i think it's horrible. >> you've got to let me finish. >> let me back it up because that's exactly what i said. >> i think it's a big deal. >> i believe she has such a strong case and is it necessarily in her interest from a communications standpoint to have her lawyer overhyping what the reveal is going to be. that's why i'm asking that. i think it's horrible. >> i don't think anything has been overhyped. and i'll put my conduct over the last three weeks as her counsel

up against anyone else. i think a lot of people have commented on the job i've done for her and i'll stand behind it. >> what about the first lawyer that she had? there's something fishy with that. why -- that first relationship, was there any relationship with the trump organization and how that counsel ended up representing miss daniels? >> i'll be honest with you. i think ts there's a lot of very tough questions relate to go that relationship and relating to that issue and that's all i'm going to say about it. >> hey, michael, let me ask you a couple of follow-ups. one on the alleged threat. she has -- she got a good look at the man -- i assume it was a man. she got a good look at the man and she can identify features of that man? >> yes. and, in fact, what she has said, and this was cut out and i'll share this the with you, that initially when she first saw him, she was taken by how attractive he was and she, you know, was taken by how

attractive he was and she immediately remembered what he looked like. and then, of course, his threat happened and terrified her. that's what she would say if she was sitting here. she's very credible on this. >> so she remembers him, says she could remember him today if she saw him. she didn't go to the police, though, before, because she said she feared for her well being, correct? >> correct. >> have you taken her to the police since, since we're where we are now? it would make sense for her to actually go to the clark county police and file a complaint now. has she been taken there since? >> i'm not at liberty to discuss who we've discussed it with in law enforcement with at this juncture. >> would it not make sense, though, that if she were threatenened to go to the las vegas police or the clark county police and file a complaint that her life was threatened? >> it might. >> wait, no, hold on a second. why wouldn't it? just -- let's just talk

generally, not this case, but why would somebody not want to go to the police when their life is threatened? >> well, i'll tell you, when you have a pending civil case, sometimes you don't want to involve law enforcement because if law enforcement launches an investigation, then witnesses start claiming the fifth amendment and, in fact, the opposing party can seek a stay in the civil case so the case can go what they call in the icebox. the case could be delayed or year or two or three years. so that's one example of why you might want to do that and there's others from a legal perspective, joe. >> when you're standing before the judge and he asks us, when you're saying donald trump didn't sign this deal so we don't have a valid nda, the judge then turns to you and says, well, counselor, your client took $130,000, it was valid enough for her to take the money, what's your response to that? >> my response is very clear. it wasn't just about the $130,000. my client was to receive

multiple other pieces on of legal consideration beyond the $130,000. she was to receive a release from mr. trump, only mr. trump would provide that. she was to receive a representation relating to him staying away from her and her family. only mr. trump could provide that. there's a whole host other or forms and consideration that my client never got. we are highly confident this agreement is going to be thrown out. it's trash. it's not worth the paper it's printed on. >> so if it's thrown out, she returns the $130,000? >> sure, absolutely. we already offered to do that weeks ago. >> yeah. all right. john. >> i just want to ask you, just to go to the $130,000, one of the things we discussed on the air the other day was mika determined how that number got determined. and you suggested in that conversation that was something we would learn more about in the "60 minutes" interview. it seems to me that wasn't answered or discussed in the interview. so i'm curious whether you can shed any more light on that, how that number was arrived at between the parties.

>> well, again, at the time that i sat with you, i knew the content of the full interview. i didn't know which pieces were going to make their way into the final piece, just to be clear. >> yeah, i understand. >> but the $130,000 i think was a number that was provided by mr.co.en. >> so you're -- again, because it wasn't in the interview last night, i'm just curious whether that was a single offer, she was offered 130 and she took that number or was that arrived at through negotiation? the number, again, to mika's point that day seems like a low number given the range of these kinds of settlement number. there's still some can curiosity i think on people's part how did you end up with a number that seems so small given how close it was to the election, given how obviously the president, now president, could have driven a harder bargain so it raises questions about how it ended up being that low. >> i think that raises some of the questions your colleague raised earlier prior to her prior representation. i was not involved in those

negotiations. >> one simple question. where do you go from here with this? >> the we are only getting started. we are going to get discovery in this case. we'ring going to get to the bottom of what mr. trump knew and when he knew it and whether he knew about the agreement and where this $130 payment came from. and i think as you saw the expert state on "60 minutes on," this has serious consequences. this isn't just about sex in a hotel room in lake tahoe. it's not about that. this is about the cover. it's about mr. cohen lying to the american people about this agreement and the fact that mr. trump didn't know about it anything. i mean, the idea -- let me say this. the idea that mr. cohen drafted an agreement entirely on his own without any knowledge of mr. trump and he never expected mr. trump to ever know anything about it, then why did he put mr. trump if in the agreement and why is there a signature line for mr. trump if he never thought mr. trump was ever going to know about the agreement? it makes no sense. this is a lie, but it's not a good lie and we're going to get to the bottom of it and we're going to blow it on out of the

water for the american people. and when the truth comes out, the truth is going to be very, very ugly for mr. cohen and the president. >> what's the levels of confidence you have in maybe deposing the donald trump at some point? >> very, very high. >> really? >> really. we're not going to need much time. we're going to need probably two hours or less. these is are very straightforward questions. i noticed he tweeted this morning. why doesn't he just tweet -- if, in fact, he claims this to be true, why did i not doesn't he tweet she was never in his hotel room, he never knew anything about the agreement, he never knew anything about the $130,000. he sends out this surrogate on network television yesterday to call this a hoax. yeah, it's a hoax. it's a hoax like 9/11 and the moon landing. that's the kind of hoax it is. >> joe. >> we have commented that donald trump has attacked just about everybody in public life but he's never attacked your client and, obviously, he has his concerns. i'm wondering, again, just going

back to 30,000 feet for people that are trying to follow all of this, what does your client want at the end of the day? why is she doing this? >> well, at this point, she wants the truth and nothing but the truth to be laid bare for the american people. the american people deserve to know what happened with this agreement, whether mr. trump knew about it, whether he knew about the $130,000. and what happened in connection with that payment. she wants the lies to -- she wants -- joe, she wants the lies and the deception and the games to stop. this is a very simple matter when you really get down to it. >> and why does that matter? >> well, it should matter to all americans. it should matter to all americans whether -- >> no, why does that matter to her? it's not her responsibility to stick her neck out and go through this and as she said have her family go through this. why does this matter to her? >> it matters to her, joe,

because months ago when mr. cohen gave his initial statement to the "wall street journal" and followed that up with information that was disseminated through the press that that information and those statements were false about her, she's upset about it, she's angry about it and she didn't deserve to be treated that way. that's why it matters to her, joe. >> michael, thank you so much for being with us. we greatly appreciate it. >> thank you. so john highlymeilman, whatu think? >> beyond the question of the legal dispute here, there's obviously going to be a certain amount of speculation about the tactics here or the strategy here, how it ultimately gets resolved. the kwn he he raised at the end of the interview where he basically said, look, if this is not true and donald trump's representation is that he never had an affair with her, that this is all just a pack of lies, donald trump who is generally outspoken on almost every matter, why does donald trump

not just come forward and say that in his twitter feed right now if he's representing that none of this has ever happened. and i think the implication there is donald trump recognizes that it would be problematic for him as this case plays out if he were to makes those statements in his twitter feed. i think that's an important thing to keep your eye on that ball. i will say that i will continue to think -- and i'm not a lawyer and i've never been engaged in the kind of chess moves that michael is in this kiernd of a case, but i will say i continue to think that the dvd and the picture on of it was maybe a little too cute and he didn't need necessarily to do something to tease the interview in quite that way to get across the message that he says he was trying to get across. yeah. mike barnacle, if i had teased out had there been twitter back in 1873 when i was practicing law and i had teased out some evidence, i would not want to go in front of a judge the next day

because the judge, if not scolding me on the record would be rolling his eyes and certainly would be looking -- let's just say looking less charitably upon the very reasons why i was in the courtroom in the first place. explain that to me and, again, i'll just keep going back to it. i understand why the political world is interested in this. i understand why bob mueller is interested in this. but at the end of the day, is there any answer other than for money, for commercial -- for commercial reasons why stormy daniels deciding to move forward now with this? >> well, i don't disagree with you, joe. nor do -- i mean, yesterday michael tweeted that last night, "60 minutes" was just the beginning. but i will tell you this. having seen a lot of lawyers up close and personal in big courtroom fights looking into michael avinotti's eyes, i

wouldn't want to be donald trump's lawyers. he's not going away and this case is not going away. >> joe, i get why she's doing this. she's been bullied. it's a case of taking on a bully. it's about what she believes to be true and having everyone, you know, try to silence her. it's about speaking her fruttru. i completely, as a woman, i get why she would want to do this. >> very good. still ahead on "morning joe," porn stars aside, there's another person whose body of work is colliding with the white house. john bolton, he hs a long history of controversial decisions. how is that going to impact his role as national security adviser? plus, one of our next guests say saturday's anti-gun rally was washington's largest protest ever, but those numbers may be in dispute. we've talked about numbers in dispute before, haven't we? here now, though, is bill carin

wes a check on t karins with a check on the forecast. >> all the problems in the middle of the country this week. severe weather will be this theme and flash flooding, maybe even river flooding, as well. today, abilene, texas, maybe a few tornados and tomorrow we take the severe weather threat and push it to dallas, waco, 11 million people at risk. i don't think we're going to have any huge tornado outbreaks. that's good. i think the flooding will be the bigger story this week. flood watches from st. louis to tulsa. this will be the first round today and later tomorrow and we're going to do this all through this week. by the time we're all said and done, the purple is three inches of rain, the pink is five. those are the areas that have the severe risk of significant rainfall and possible river flooding. it's a cold start on the east coast, but we have some sunshine for you this afternoon.

we're drying things out in california. we tracked all the mess in the middle of the country last week. tuesday to wednesday we start to spread into kentucky. the end of this week, we warm up on the east coast, but not a lot of sunshine. all the great weather will be found from the four corner region back to the west coast. we'll keep you posted on that flood threat. we'll bring it to you here, hopefully not too much damage, though. new york city, we had a decent weekend. we would love to get rid of this march chill on the eastern seaboard. not until the next couple of days. maybe thursday gets warmer. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. last years' ad campaign was a success for choicehotels.com badda book. badda boom. this year, we're taking it up a notch. so in this commercial we see two travelers at a comfort inn with a glow around them, so people watching will be like, "wow, maybe i'll glow too if i book direct at choicehotels.com".

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now let's go to the man that most people in the washington community considers the edward with r. moisture row of porn stars and presidents. david ignatius, i go to you now.

so we have all of this as a lurid back drop to a chaotic week last week where you had the president of the united states enraging conservatives with one of the most reckless spending bills ever. it was actually this sort of object any bus spending bi omni spending that led newt gig rirch o gingrich on out of the house. you had the dow and the s&p fall a great bit on friday. and then you had, perhaps, most worrying for the international community and a lot of conservative republicans who aren't neo-cons the appointment

of john bolton. and, david, as we look at all the chaos that's moving forward, the first question is what is the national security council going to look like after john bolton fires two-thirds of his staff there and the other one-third quit the in protest? >> well, you know, the ones that were left will be talking about stormy daniels. waen that because they have a water cooler at the nsc. the nsc job, historically, the role is to be the honest broker, to balance the different government agencies, departments, and give a consensus to the president to let each person, each party speak their case in making policy. bolton is not a person who has ever shown any ability to do

that. so i think it's going to be tough to make the process work. i worry most about our allies. we are depending now on the strong alliances we have around the world, especially to deal with north korea. boltenon need to reassure japan we're not going to do anything crazy here. is bolton the person who can do that? if he isn't, he's going to fail on a central piece of the job of being national security adviser. so at the end of the week, you know, so many instances of chaos, this is the one i think allies look most closely at. >> and, david, let's be very

clear. there were a few neocons trying to bolster this saying this is a man who wrote an op ed in the "wall street journal" not so long ago calling for preemptive first strikes against north korea when judge about every other military planner would tell you that could lead to the death of half a million koreans within a week. here is a man who called for the premismive bombing in iran. and, in fact, the iraq war was a korthy cause and the only mistake that was ever made in that war or the greatest mistake was when barack obama brought the troops home.

this is a man who seems to have a default switch that says use the military, go to war whenever possible. >> i think he's the rare person in washington and around the world who hasn't learned anything of the iraq war. certainly our military has and most policymakers have. i'm also struck by the berra docks of seeking to negotiate a nuclear agreement with a north korea that's genuinely threatening where it's important to have that agreement. at the same time you're about to throw out the window an agreement that was so difficult to achieve, to restrain iran's puck here program. coming up on morning swroe, there are few things that unite a majority of americans, but

when it comes to robert mueller's investigation, democrats, independents and, yes, even republicans are all saying let him finish his job. that's coming up next on "morning joe."

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a new marist poll found voters by a large margin want to see the mueller probe continue its work. get these numbers. 72% of registered voters believe that robert mueller should be allowed to finish the investigation while only 11%, one out of ten, believe he should be fired. now, breaking down those numbers really, actually, gets more interesting. 83% of democrats, of course, want the probe to continue to the end. 76% of independents want the probe to continue to the end. get this, 57% of republicans believe that robert mueller should be allowed to finish his investigation and only 25% of republicans believe that he should be fired. john heilman, that is what the

kids might call a sea change. when republicans now are starting to see the indictments of all the russians, starting to see all the indictments and all the cooperationing witnesses from donald trump's own at administration and they're starting to say, we don't know exactly where the the president is guilty or not. but we want to see this may out to the end. that certainly shows and we've seen this trend for some time that the public support of robert mueller continues to grow. >> right. and i think that's -- almost no one in our political life, he is a -- he is maybe the most important political figure in the country now besides donald trump. there's no one in our political life whos has numbers like that. 80% support among democrats, 75% support among independents and 7 point north of 50% among republicans.

so that's an extraordinary degree, almost unprecedented in american life where we see that in a polarized country and his support is growing, i think, as you say, joe, as more of the evidence comes out, as more of the indictments are issued. people want to know where this is going to lead. one of the things that mueller has tapped into is there are obviously partisans on both sides. but for more americans, there is some degree of unease and the doubts have been raised, questions in their mind, things they want to know about. on some level, they don't want to see the country in crisis. they don't want to see a constitutional breakdown. but they want to know truth about what happened in 2016 and they want to have the questions that they have in their minds resolved. they ever putting their faith in mueller in a very solid way to be the guy who will deliver them, in the end, the truth and the facts about that. >> and so some questions are

being raised about donald trump, about facebook. facebook's numbers are falling precipitously. now we have cambridge analytica coming in there. i think americans want to know the truth. and at the end of the day, republicans and democrats alike, the majority of them actually believe no man or woman is above the law. so right now, if you look at these numbers, the marist numbers and xaur them to other political figures, other public figures in america, it looks right now that robert mueller, if he's not the most trusted man in american life, he's one of the most trusted men in american life. >> if you're donald trump and you're thinking, i want to fire this guy, bob mueller, if you're donald trump and you're being a purely political actor, you look down at those poll numbers and you recognize the political je jeopardy you would be in if you tried to make a very clear, obvious move against mueller. you realize the political

headwinds you would be facing. coming up on "morning joe," our chief legal correspondent reacts with our attorney with the attorney for stormy daniels. we'll be right back with more "morning joe." liberty mutual stood with me when this guy got a flat tire in the middle of the night. hold on dad... liberty did what? yeah, liberty mutual 24-hour roadside assistance helped him to fix his flat so he could get home safely.

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welcome back to "morning joe." president tru president trump spent the weekend at his mar-a-lago club asking about the implications of the stormy daniels interview. trump complained about the associates about the attention daniels was getting. he reportedly asked one friend about how the interview was going to affect his poll numbers.

meanwhile, three administration officials tell the associated press that trump is planning to oust veterans affairs secretary david shulkin over recent scandals in the department. two officials told the ap that an announcement on it could happen this week, depending on trump's decision. and that decision would be based on who the replacement would be. shulkin would join a list of high level departures in the last 3 1/2 weeks. among them, rex tillerson. according to "the washington post," president trump seems to still be infuriated by his top diplomate calling his a moron. in florida this weekends, trump continued to attack tillerson saying the recently fired secretary of state did not have the brains or the energy for the job. a friend of the president, chris ruddy, who spoke to the president on saturday said the

president only sees stability within his administration. >> the president told maine he's perplexed by all these reports there's kay he yoes at the white house or mass staff exchanges. he told me he thinks the white house is operating like a smooth machine, his words. >> we know now, we have the editorial director of the what examiner and the white house correspondent sarah westwood. if the president is surprised by the stories about the chaos that seems to contradict what the president says himself which is he has a theory where he likes seeing staff members tear each other's eyes out. i find the suggestion that the president thinks everything is stable to go against the president's own instincts. >> that is absolutely right. i don't think the president or

chris ruddy expect that to be taken seriously. clearly there is disarray and the departures that you mentioned. you didn't include the he depar turrets from his legal team. dowd resigned. digenova is out because of conflicts of business. i think the replacement of rex tillerson by mike pompeo and the replacement of hr mcmaster gets a team in place that trump will feel more comfortable with as he approaches two big things in may. one is the iran deal and the on other is the negotiation with north korea. he wants people in place who agree with him and who he will feel are are not going to undermine the position that he wants. to some extent, there's some

order. but mostly, there's disarray. >> and as we said last week, if you're the president of the united states and you're coming up upon what is going to be the most important foreign policy summit that you're going to have most likely in your four years as president, you should have your people in there that you trust, whether the rest of the world trusts them or not. >> that's exactly right. i mean, look, there's always suspicion inside the white house and outside amongst reporters that hr mcmaster and donald trump did not agree. obviously, the quotations that you've just given us from, you know, rex tillerson describing the president as a poron and the president still being furious about that and hitting back and saying that rex tillerson lacked the energy and the intellect, you can't go into the biggest negotiations of your presidency with people like that, you know, feeling that people like that might undermine you or undermine

your position. you want the political heft that pompeo has on your side and making the case for the policies you want. >> and certainly you want people in place if you're president of the united states that you can trust not to leak the contents of calls with vladimir putin. >> exactly so. >> yeah. sara, let's talk about the legal team that hugo brought up. you have robert mueller getting more convictions of russians, getting more people to cooperate with him. becoming seemingly overnight one of the most trusted public figures in america with the recent marist poll that we showed. and that trend, we've been moving in that direction for some time. on the other side of the ledger, you have donald trump that can't seem to hire a legal team that's going to be able to take on this guy and the legal -- legal all-stars that he has surrounding him.

it seems almost like the president is unilaterally disarming in the legal fight of his life. >> right. this is the absolute worst time for the president to be without a comprehensive legal time rieat now. he's prepare to go sit down with robert mueller or submit written questions to the special counsel. that's where he'll be the most exposed legally. but i think what we're seeing is a sense of frustration from president trump. john dowd is someone who for months has been reassuring president trump that the investigation was almost over, that by christmas it will be over, then by the beginning of 2018 it will be over. and now we're heading into april and it looks like the investigation is actually broadening in scope and intensity. so i think president trump is looking for someone who maybe could be a little more aggressive, who will indulge his impulses to attack mueller and to start stonewalling mr. mueller more than his colleagues

were permitting him to do in the past. >> we'll see bob mueller's investigation obviously going to be impacted by what happened last fight and the stormy daniels story. earlier this hour, we spoke with the porn star's attorney, michael avenetti on the heels of their interview with "60 minutes." this is what he said. >> i cannot, but my client certainly can. she can describe him in great detail. i think it's important that your viewers know the original on interview of my client was about two hours in length. i was there for the entirety of it. there were a lot of things cut out in preparation for the piece. we didn't have any editorial control over that, obviously. there were many details excluded and i think many of those details were surface. she has not identified the person as of yet. we're in the process of trying to conclude exactly who that was. i'm confident we're going to get to the bottom of it. there's no question it could

have come from one place. it certainly didn't come from the magazine and it certainly didn't come from her. so there's only one other party involved in this and that is the trump organization. >> let's bring in right now msnbc chief legal correspondent ari something melber. ari, so many questions about last night's interview and i do have questions about stormy daniels' lawyer sending out a picture of a cd and talking about a picture being worth a thousand words and then hashtaging 60 minutes. he overpromised. he underdelivered, something we're all taught in law school not to do with juries or judges. but also, it seems to me that he wouldn't want to do it in the court of public opinion because -- well, i'll just say it. the move looked bush league. what do you make of it? >> well, i think there was a lot of anticipation going into this had the interview and this is an

explosive story, even on its basic public pieces. but as you say, joe, there was a suggestion of other things coming that didn't. i think there were two things missing from the account last night for the stormy daniels side based on what they had said there might be. number one, as you say, the evidence that was promised that might be somehow a direct link back to mr. trump or might involve more than just allegations of disputed consensual affair was not offered. and when asked, she said i'm not going to get into it. and number two, the threat allegation is very serious. i would note, of course, that it first surfaced in an interview right here on "morning joe." that was the first time her side ever, through the lawyer, said there was this threat. but i want to be clear. something we raised in anticipation of the interview, that threat, while serious and like any threat of violence should be dealt with does not actually go to the current contract because they didn't allege that the threat was used

to get her to sign the contract. so that is important because there may still be a valid hush money contract here that she has to abide by if the signature argument doesn't hold up. >> so, ari, we asked avenatti this question and he sort of danced around it. let me ask you the same question. what does he do next legally? what are the next logical, legal steps for him in this case? >> well, they're playing offense in the public, but they're in defense in the arbitration proceeding. so the next thing he needs to do for his client to whom i think he's a passionate advocates as lawyers are supposed to be is he has to try to get this hush money contract situationing dealt with for her. which means if she can get out from under it, then they'll have no more legal liability. if she can't then michaelco sxn now donald trump who joined this suit publicly, if they win in

arbitration, meek they can keep her quiet, then she would have a debt, a potential fine and cost every time she speaks. that's the first thing she has to do. if they get out from under that, then it's open season and i expect we'll be hearing a lot from her. >> hugo, do you think this story still has legs or does the anti-climatic interview, while the threats were horrible, do you think that really this story kind of has gone its course? >> no. ir i think that it has legs in a political way. i don't think that it will directly damage president trump. i think he was elected when everybody knew he was a if philanderrer. a lot of people find it extremely distasteful and naturally so. but it will play against him in the midterm elections. i think women in particular, suburban women who the democrats most want to peel away from the

republicans are likely to punish the republicans because on of this. and this just, i think, makes the midterm elections even more likely to shift control of the house. i don't think the senate, but more the house in the midterm elections. so it could have -- the democrats will definitely play up this story all the way through till november. >> sara, the bolton appointment, you're in the fishbowl nearly every day covering the white house. and, you know, clearly now in pompeo and bolton, the president does have people who he assumed he would feel more comfortable with and dealing with. but the way the appointment was announced to the surprise of many in the white house staff to the consternation, apparently, allegedly, of both john kelly and secretary of defense mattis, that does not bode well for clearing up the chaos and confusion that exists daily there, does it? >> no, absolutely not. last week, president trump dispatched sara sanders to say

h.r. mcmaster isn't going anywhere, they have a great relationship, and within a week mcmaster was gone and bolton was in. what we are hearing is that was a result of the putin leak, the do not congratulate leak related to the call. president trump was so frustrated that that occurred, he suspected that it came from the national security team and perhaps it was time to remove mcmaster. even though that was a decision that was long in the works could be tied back to that leak. >> thank you so much. we appreciate you being with us. ari, stick around, if you will. coming up next, what the crowded saturday's march for our lives tells us behind the momentum for the new gun measures. your letting go thing. your sorry not sorry thing. your out with the old in with the new, onto bigger and better thing.

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for an electronic attack on america. so what did this president do? nothing. he's failed his most important responsibility - to protect our country. the question is: why is he still president? one life is worth more than all the guns in america. this is not a red versus blue issue. this is a morals issue. >> we are not here for bread crumbs. we are here for real change. we are here to lead. we are here to call out every single politician. >> it's time to stop judging youth that look like me or my brother any different than anyone else. it's time for america to notice that everyday shootings are everyday problems. >> i am a dream that enough is

enough. >> army teachers will not work. more security in our schools does not work. >> we cannot keep america great if we cannot keep america safe. >> we need to arm them with pencils, pens, paper, and the money they need. >> we would not need medal detectors and clear backpacks and more weapons in our streets if there weren't weapons of war in the hands of civilians. >> so saturday's march for our lives rally in washington, d.c. is among one of the largest ever in the nation's capital. let's bring in now professor on of sociology at the university of maryland dana fisher. she's been looking at the impact and the makeup of the weekend's demonstrations. dana, thanks so much for being with us. you know, in the past, sometimes these protests, and i'm talking about over the past 50 years, have ended up back firing. but in the case of the women's

march, we saw that those marches were used to organize, to get people out to vote, to make the difference in elections like virginia. talk about the makeup of this crowd and theprotests this weekend. who was there? how many first timers? and what impact do you think it's going to have in the long run of american politics? >> well, these are great questions, joe. first and foremost, i think it's important to note here while young people mobilize young people to participate, what's interesting is less than 10% of the people in the crowd were under the age of 18. that's 90% of the people there who actually can vote today. i think what's really important is that it turned out over a quarter of the people who had never participated in a protest before. these are people who are mobilizing around the issue potentially. and finally i think what's really interesting is that 16% of them were politically moderate. and that's the highest percentage of moderates i've

seen at any of these protest events since the inauguration. >> i'm struck by the numbers you used in here. the march was saturday. how did you do this research in such a short period? >> that's a great question. we used to use paper surveys. so we'd end up with a big pile of surveys. we moved to using tablets. we go through the crowd. we have bright pink tablets. so many people who were at any of these protests will probably see my team. the data then are able to be uplotted and i'm able to run statistics saturday afternoon which is what i was doing on my drive up here on the new jersey turnpike. i wasn't driving. >> do you have any information specific to the young voters who might have actually been registering to vote for the first time? at one of these marches? because what i find so interesting is with every event, they really are trying to tie in a voter registration component but we know a lot of the time the youth vote just still isn't going to come.

so what about the motivations of the younger voters that you saw? >> well, i don't really know specifically about the motivations around the younger voters. i know the motivations across the board were lower than the women's march in 2018. which i talked about here in january. one of the reasons i think that we can understand this is i think that the people who came out this time, i think it was a much bigger crowd, first of all, i mean, it was huge, and amazingly impressive. but to have such a huge crowd, you end up with all these new people who have not been as politically engaged. while civil engagement levels were consistent from the women's march 2018, when we look at the first-time participants, protest participants, their civic engagement levels were lower. these people may be activated by these voter registration drives as well as other types of political motivation they're getting from people in the crowd and people who organized the event. >> ari, you actually covered a lot of msnbc's coverage of the event. pretty extraordinary day there.

regardless of your views on this issue. what was your takeaway? what did you find most compelling? >> i thought they were clearly trying to make this a moral issue. the language. the mood. the coalition building. the energy around trying to put it in a civil rights context as well with people speaking from black communities that have faced gun violence. all that was very powerful to me, joe, because i think it -- i think it really shows what people are trying to do, dana, that goes beyond the policy debate about, oh, well, here's this exact piece of legislation and here's the exact, you know, state provision that should be changed or altered, took it to a broader level. i wonder what your research shows about what is still i think if we're all going to be honest, even those who feel encouraged or excited about what happened yesterday, wonder what your research shows about the difficult complexion situation of involving minors, children, in public policy and discourse

in politics. because while they're welcome and they're learning, they're not adults. became almost a talking point or a saying of everyone saying we're led by these kids but the younger you go, you go down to 10 or 8 or 6, at a certain point what does that mean? >> i think the biggest finding here that's relevant for your question is that because the young people were certainly leading and bringing people out and i would argue that basically the young people helped broaden the tent. so we had a lot more people coming out. so many new people who had not been participating before as well as so many political moderates. >> new adults. >> new adults. so what we see is the 90% out there over a quarter were actually new to protest. in some ways, that matters. i think the moral outrage that the young people experienced and spoke about during the event really mattered. i also think that the free music mattered. using free music has been a tactic that's been used historically to bring people out and get them involved and it

could work. >> all right. dana fisher, thank you so much. we appreciate your work on the jersey turnpike and we were beneficiaries of it. thanks. time now for some quick final thoughts. mike, what final thoughts do you have? >> off of dana's work over the weekend, pointing out obviously you could see it visually 10% perhaps were children, young people. 90% obviously older people. but they were parents. and i think that's the key to what's happening in this country off of this issue. parents. knowing what can happen or could happen to their children. listening to their children. and that's the key for the future electorally. >> i just got back from focus groups in tennessee and mississippi and i actually was quite surprised by how many gun owners wanted a reasonable change in gun control, and they were more open and receptive

than i ever expected. you know, these are individuals who own multiple guns in some cases. and they -- i certainly think the political tide in the country is in the direction of more gun control. >> and, joe, on the other big story the president's legal problems, my big thought to start the week is with the now departure of lawyers the president was going to add to his criminal defense team. he currently has more lawyers working on the issues around hush payments and women accusers than he has on his russia criminal defense team. >> and it is unbelievable that you've got a president who really is facing scrutiny, more scrutiny than ever from robert mueller and he's unilaterally disarmed. that does it for us this morning. before chris jansing picks up the coverage, we leave you with some more powerful images from this weekend's rallies across america. ♪ once in your life

♪ you may get the chance to stand ♪ ♪ against a column of tanks ♪ holding up your hand ♪ and once in your life ♪ you may get the chance to say ♪ ♪ words like deep within your hearts ♪ ♪ that change the outcome of the day ♪ ♪ once in your life ♪ you may dare hold out your hand ♪ ♪ to a stranger in need ♪ whose world you cannot understand ♪

♪ and how the world turns violently ♪ ♪ we're bothered by the savagery ♪ ♪ but we will not break ♪ not on bended knees ♪ we will not go down quietly ♪ we will not go down silently ♪ once in your life

♪ and the rest of the world turns violently ♪ ♪ we're bothered by the savagery ♪ ♪ but we will not break ♪ not on bended knee ♪ we will not go down quietly ♪ we will not go down quietly ♪ we will not go down quietly ♪ we will not go down silently

hi there, i'm chris jansing in for stephanie rule. this morning, stormy speaks out. the adult film star shares the intimate details of her alleged sexual encounter with donald trump including why she says she took money in exchange for silence. >> the exact sentence used was they can make your life hell in many different ways. >> hiring the best people. just days after the president shakes up his legal team, it all falls apart. joe di genova and his wife say they can't work with the president and that's not all. reports more cabinet changes could be imminent. >> i think he thrives on chaos. maybe that's the way to run a reality tv show. it's not the way to run the greatest country in the world. >> marching for their lives. hundreds of thousands across the country take to their streets to fight r