he has incredible genes and that's the way god made him. >> articulate, very healthy, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. the president nominates his doctor as new cabinet secretary. >> mika, you know, he runs a 4.340. i mean, he's amazing. >> he's hot. >> at the time this doctor came out and basically -- he said things about his weight that just don't seem to be true, said a lot of things that didn't seem to be true. everybody was shocked how dare you question this doctor. you weren't there, he was there. >> this doctor knew what he was doing. >> this doctor actually specializes in the form of medicine that you call quid pro quo. it's a new -- it's sort of a new sort of -- >> yes, and also flattery. despite that quick shift in the news cycle stormy daniels isn't going away. >> no. >> neither is bob mueller who is reportedly looking into whether

the president talked about pardoning former aides under investigation. that would be huge. >> that is huge. >> and sad. welcome to "morning joe." it's thursday, march 29th. with us we have a lot of people because we have a lot of news this morning. mike barnacle. political writer for the new york times. former treasury official steve rattner. joyce vance, law professor at george washington university. jonathan turley and new york times reporter michael schmidt who had another big scoop. >> what's new. >> he'sincredible. >> mike, we could talk about so much right now, but first let's talk about day five of the president. i guess it's day five. maybe even more than that, that this stormy daniels news has frozen the president of the united states yet again.

this is yet to happen. i know i was critical of the legal techniques stormy daniels' lawyer was taking but if you look at it through the -- through the lens of politics, my gosh, this guy has done to donald trump and stormy daniels as done to donald trump what donald trump was able to do to people like marco rubio and jeb bush and other political giants for a year and a half and that is freeze them, tongue tie them and get them trying to fig dwrur out, how do i respond to this because he has no response and he's hiding. >> you have that exactly right, joe. the lawyer for stormy daniels is doing to the president of the united states and the presidency exactly what donald trump did to nearly every republican candidate during the primaries last year. and we don't pay enough attention to this. we talked about it yesterday, but because there's so much else going on, the fact that the president of the united states

has not really been able to release a public schedule of his activities during the course of the day for nearly a week now is astounding when you think about it. >> it really is astounding and nick, this president has always been a perpetual motion machine as it pertains to tweets, press releases insulting statements, whatever it took to keep the news cycle going he churned it up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. this week, since stormy, silence. >> correct, joe. the president is on spring break on twitter. he's lying low. and it could be that he's met his match. i think that stormy daniels is the ex- par more the president deserves. she is is match playing the media, getting attention, playing her game and getting her facts out. she is a master at it and so is her lawyer.

it's kind of interesting to see her go head to head against a president who also has some of that ability. >> and you know, mika, the interesting thing is that if the president is frozen by this one legal challenge from stormy daniels and her attorney, yesterday was -- you had one story after another story after another story coming out that shows the legal challenges to this president continues to mount. that's why we have enough lawyers, enough attorneys on this show to actually start our own law firm this morning, but instead, we have -- we actually have quite a few throughout the three-hour show to talk about all of the new legal issues that just exploded yesterday. >> well, this could be critical. let's get to first that report from the new york times for which michael schmidt was part of the reporting team. it says that president trump -- the former head of president trump's legal team raised the prospect of pardons for michael

flynn and former trump campaign chair paul manafort. just as special counsel robert mueller was building a case against them. three sources tell the new york times that dowd's conversation with michael flynn's lawyer occurred sometime after dowd took over last summer as the president's personal lawyer. at a time when a grand jury was hearing evidence against flynn on a range of potential crimes. the times also reports that the pardon discussion with paul manafort's attorney came before his client was indicted in october. the washington post reports said dowd over the summer relayed to manafort's lawyers that a pardon was a possibility. the fbi raided manafort's home in the early morning hours of july 26th. yesterday dowd told the new york times quote, there were no discussions, period. as far as i know, no discussion. white house special counsel ty cobb said in a statement quote,

i have only been asked about pardons by the press and have routinely responded on the record that no pardons are under discussion or under consideration at the white house. but others with roles in the trump white house say there have been pardon conversations and reportedly talking to the special counsel about it. two people with knowledge tell the new york times that during interviews with mueller's investigators in recent months, current and former administration officials have recounted conversations they had with the president about potential pardons for former aides under investigation. according to a person briefed on the conversation in one meeting with lawyers from the white house counsel's office last year, trump asked about the extent of his pardon power. the lawyers explained that the president's powers were broad and in other meetings with senior advisors, two sources present say the president raised the prospect of pardoning

michael flynn, joe. >> yeah, so michael schmidt, john dowd says your report is inaccurate. tell us about it. >> well, the interesting thing about what dowd said yesterday is that while he said it was inaccurate he echoed other parts of our reporting and that was that he thought the case against flynn was flimsy. he said what would we have pardoned flynn for? comey said he did nothing wrong. sally yates said he did nothing wrong. i don't know what he did wrong and that echos what we had heard which was that the president thought it was a nonsense matter related to flynn and that they were -- that was part of the argument when he talked to his lawyer. he said why d why would you plead to such a thing? we can take you out this way. the thing that you have to understand about all this is that it comes back to one basic question. was john dowd out on his own freelancing? was he simply just running his mouth, talking to other lawyers, or was he doing this at the behest of the president.

people that know john dowd -- >> michael, you have the president of the united states himself talking to people asking about the possibility of the flynn pardon, asking about what he can and can't do as president of the united states pardoning others. so that does seem unlikely that dowd would be going out on his own without the president's support or advice, isn't it? >> well, people that know dowd say they find it hard to believe that he having such a high profile client with such power would go out and do such a aggressive thing. it would make -- have such aggressive discussions with that. at the same time, what you have to understand about dowd is you have a lot of undisciplined things here. he's made a lot of unforced errors throughout his time as the president's lawyer including most recently with the statement that he put out although he looks like we had been told he did it at the president's behest. but that's the thing. when mueller keys in on this

issue, that's what he'll have to figure out. >> yeah, jonathan turley, there is a bit of a split, like so many -- like so many of the questions that surround bob mueller's investigation, there is a split of legal opinion on the president's power to pardon. is it an absolute power? is it a power that the founders never intended for a president used to protect himself, so once again, just like indicting a president, the question of whether a president could obstruct justice by dangling the prospects of a pardon out in front of people that are subject to a probe that goes back to the president at the end of the day, once again, a legal issue with a big question mark over it that a judiciary that is appearing to be more and more hostile towards the president of the united states will have to take up. >> well, i think that certainly a prospect. i think what we can say for certainty is obviously the

president can pardon flynn. >> right. >> we saw in george bush sr. he pardoned people in the iran contraaffair that could have potentially incriminated him but they did not ultimately in that scandal but in terms of obstruction i think we have to keep in mind that the president asking for the scope -- description of the scope of his authority is not going to be any type of obstruction. the issue of an attorney for the president going to a potential witness and offering a pardon obviously gets closer because obstruction cases are basically a quilt like allegation. it's composed of a number of insular acts that individually may not be incriminating but together form a different picture. what is curious about this, if john dowd is lying, if he did in fact raise this issue, it's just truly baffling. there's no reason why he would have to mention that.

it would be obvious to everyone that that power exists. and so the question is why would you even broach the subject given the potential as we see now. the other problem for john dowd is that if there's credibility to this report it's obviously coming from a credible source, it does create the chance that he could be pulled in front of a grand jury. mueller has not been intimidated by attorney/client privilege. many of us have criticized him in the past of calling attorneys and turning them into witnesses against clients. he's the type of guy that tends to pull attorneys into grand juries. >> and joyce vance, here we have once again a situation where bob mueller knows all. if you have a question of whether john dowd floated the idea or donald trump floated the idea of a pardon in front of michael flynn, guess who knows better than anybody? bob mueller, because he's been talking to michael flynn for a very long time.

it really is remarkable that there's hardly a story that we're reading about in the new york times, washington post, wall street journal or any newspaper that bob mueller hasn't already been digging into for months now. >> that's how it always is when you're a prosecutor, you're reading in the press frequently about evidence that you took in the grand jury the previous month or a couple of months ago, very often the press gets it wrong or the story is incomplete, so i think it's a safe bet that mueller and his team know a lot more than what's become publicly available here. what i -- you know, i look at this evidence a little bit more strongly than jonathan does. i think evidence that the president's personal lawyer dangled pardons in front of two key witnesses potentially against the president, that's evidence any prosecutor would be proud to have in a courtroom. it's possible that the president could take an action that's legal on the one hand, issuing a

pardon, but could do it for an improper motive and we know that this is a legal problem. we all remember governor in chicago who did something that was absolutely legal and within his power. he appointed a new senator to fill a vacancy but he took a bribe and the entire course of conduct involved was illegal so it's possible that both things can be true. trump can issue a pardon but it can also be part of an illegal course of conduct and that means the question really is that age old question, what did the president know and when did he know it. >> well, you know, i would just caution one aspect about this. that is there was a joint defense agreement with many of these defendants. there's a lot of discussion between attorneys. clearly if i was defense counsel for flynn, a pardon would have weighed heavily in my calculations in what to do for my client and so this is by no means something that's unexpected. it's a subject that no doubt was

being discussed on the defense side. i think these are small stitches to make out an obstruction case. that doesn't mean that this quilt can't be created but i think people shouldn't overplay it. >> well, it's stitches in a very large quilt perhaps, but mika, remember it was michael flynn who said of this legal defense fund that people were talking about putting together, hey, i want no part of that and when there were talks of pardons he said hey, no part of that either because robert mueller actually gave general flynn what many would consider a sweet heart deal and this is a man who could have possibly been brought up on kidnapping charges, being part of a conspiracy to kidnap somebody, and instead all he got was a very minor charge. and he's been talking to bob mueller for a very long time. that's why it would make so little sense for dowd to be lying. he appears to be lying, but then

again, it didn't make any sense for gates to lie while he was offering his proffer to mueller but he did that anyway. these people just apparently still, mika, don't understand who they are dealing with when they cross paths and don't tell the truth to robert mueller. >> oh, well, we're learning that robert mueller's team has formally alleged a link between two top trump campaign officials and russian intelligence during the 2016 campaign. in court documents filed late tuesday the fbi says that trump campaign chair paul manafort and his deputy rick gates were in contact with a person who had an on going relationship with russian intelligence and allege that gates said he knew that the person was a former russian intelligence officer. the revelation came in the presen presentencing report who pled guilty to lying about contacts

with gates. according to the document van der zwan had a series of calls with gates and identified as person a in september and october of 2016. the conversations concerned potential criminal charges in ukraine. the talks occurred while gates still worked on the campaign and he is now cooperating with the probe. raising the question posed by politico, how much is he telling mueller about trump? manafort under a court imposed gag order declined to comment. the news keeps getting worse. >> well, it does. and jonathan turley, let's go back to you. here we have an example of a high ranking official in the trump campaign telling bob mueller supposedly from what we can gather that he had contact with a russian intel officer in the heat of the presidential campaign. what's the impact? >> well, it obviously doesn't look good and it's something that mueller is rightfully

pursuing. it's bothersome when every time we find a new character, like they're a walk on for the pirates. it's like all of these characters are not exactly redeeming and you wonder where they find all these. now, the only defense that the trump team i think would likely raise is that this dealt with a criminal charge in the ukraine, it's not clear they were discussing the campaign. but this russian saturated circle of friends is rather disturbing and obviously mueller has a great deal to work with here. >> and you know, if you go back to let's say -- if you go back to the months in between the election, steve rattner and donald trump's inauguration or you just look at what was said in january and february of 2017 by people like mike pence, donald trump, sean spicer, other people connected to this campaign, they categorically

deny talking to any russians. mike pence famously saying we only spoke to citizens of the united states. and there were blanket denials that they ever spoke to any russians during the campaign. this was of course after they had a meeting in don jr.'s office, after manafort and gates apparently had meetings and spoke to one russian contact after another after jeff sessions had so many meetings with russians, but forget all of them after jared kushner did the same and forgot to write all of those meetings down on his disclosure forms. yes, it's -- we have this drip, drip, drip. so now here we are finding out in march of 2018 that in fact there was contact between the highest levels of the trump campaign and russian intel officers. maybe that's not quite as shocking as it was back in january of 2017, but you know,

it just -- the water just keeps getting warmer and warmer and you can almost see this -- the boils start up. >> yeah, look. of course you have trump himself having said repeatedly that he had no contact with the russians, he had no business with the russians, he barely knew any russians and then there's a pending examples already of business that trump did with the russians let alone what we don't already know about and while some of these connections we can't make yet, maybe mueller has made them, it is pretty extraordinary that every time you turn over a rock you find a russian under it. and it just -- it just seems to -- it just -- there's a lot of smoke. we don't have the actual fire yet, but there's too much going on here not to believe we're going to find out a lot more stuff. >> you know, it seems when you look at this story as it unfolds especially yesterday, the link to russia. the direct link to russia. there's no such thing as a

former intelligence russian official. but you have to ask yourself the question and wonder, how much more can they pile -- can the special prosecutor pile on manafort in order to get him to finally collapse and cooperate. >> the real thing he has on manafort is financial crimes. his money laundering over a long career of making money abroad and allegedly secreting them in kayman accounts and bringing it back on shore. he can put manafort away for a long time just on that. right? and manafort knows a lot about trump. and what we're seeing now is the long list of people in trump world who had connections or contacts with the one kind of russian or another, some with obvious kremlin ties, some less obviously. we're talking kushner, manafort, gates, flynn. and the list goes on and on. that there was a -- a constant web of relationships and when you step back and look at all of them, you start to wonder, like, was there a corner office in

trump tower where they would come and hang out? because it is so overwhelming, forget collusion. these were just relationships they had, they were deeply intertwined. >> yeah, and again, relationships, mika, that time and again the -- everybody it seems inside the trump administration and on the trump campaign lied. they lied repeatedly about meetings that they had with russians. they lied about meetings that they had in don jr.'s office. they lied about how -- how that meeting came together. the president of the united states himself drafted up a statement that said that the meeting was all about adoptions in russia when in fact the meetings were about -- as we now know, them possibly colluding with the russians to get dirt on hillary clinton. one lie after another lie after another lie. and it's not just bob mueller

that would look at the repeated lies over a year and a half to newspapers and to the press about what they were doing with the russians and trying to gather intent. it's -- it's any prosecutor would be asking why they were doing this and at some point americans, even those that voted for donald trump will be asking the same too. i mean, the president loves running around saying no collusion, no collusion. maybe he's right. maybe he's wrong. maybe we just have to let this investigation play out to its proper ending, because i know the information that came out yesterday was a bomb shell for everybody. >> well, yes, going to get to that right now, but imagine last july the president was tweeting about his pardon power, so i'm sure mueller's team is just sitting watching these tweets go by, letting the tweets to an extent speak for themselves. we've been following these lies, drip, drip, drip, but today feels like a fire hose because

there's also this. the plaintiffs in a lawsuit accusing president trump of accepting unconstitutional gifts from foreign interests are handling progress in their case. a federal district court judge is letting their case advance, though it's been limited only to payments involved the trump international hotel in washington. the suit was filed by washington, d.c. and the state of maryland accusing the president of violating the constitutions anti corruption clauses. last night the trump hotel near the white house was hit with a light projection reading this. crime scene, do not enter. >> joyce vance, as -- as we've said before on this show, the president of the united states from his first week or two in office actually declared war on the federal judiciary. talked about republican judges and said that those republican

judges in washington state were -- were, you know, questioned whether they actually had authority or not. and we're seeing judges strike back time and time again. how big of a deal is this ruling that -- that we actually can start to have a -- have hearings and have inquiries into whether the president is violating the clause? >> this ruling is a big deal. this is the first of the emollments clause cases that's been able to move forward and even though it's limited solely to the claims by trump tower, those claims may be very powerful because what they involve are other allegations by other hotel owners that their business has dropped off while the president is making a lot of money based on the fact that people who want to curry favor with him are able to do that by going to his hotel and spending their money there. and those claims are very powerful, frankly, and i think

the interesting aspect of this as you point out is the reaction of the federal judiciary. my expectation is they will take revenge on the president for all his comments against them by acting with a high level of integrity. by scrupulously reviewing the claims and by acting consistently with the law in all regards, by upholding the integrity of the judicial branch, they'll in essence be delivering a very loud response to the president as judges across this country have been doing. >> steve rattner, you look at what the president's been doing not only in d.c. but also in mar-a-lago, you read the washington post reporting and you see all of the established organizations that have fled mar-a-lago because they don't want to be tainted with donald trump's reputation and yet you see a lot of people that have

gone in who would try to curry favor with the president. that of course happening in mar-a-lago but also happening a great deal in his washington, d.c. property. >> look, it's quite extraordinary on many levels. first of all, there is this whole emoll youments thing where mar-a-lago and it's become the swamp and they all spend a lot of money there. and then you have characters like elliot who the times has been writing about the last few days who's basically used his position as finance chair of the republican national committee to engage in what you couldn't call anything other than news peddling with all these sleazy foreign governments. when he goes and says i can get you in to see trump or somebody on the hill and you pay me for it. one of the ironies about this whole thing that has struck me that a guy coming here saying he was going to drain the swamp has brought the swamp in greater

depth than at least i've ever seen around washington before. >> yeah, michael schmidt, he really has brought the swamp to washington, d.c., and i've got to believe in the coming months we're going to see a -- the unemployment rate even possibly drop down into possibly the high threes because of all of the washington lawyers that are going to have jobs just based on the news that we've reported the first 20 minutes of this show. it really, seriously, it really is remarkable, is it not, the number of legal challenges that continue to explode and possibly take down this administration. >> yeah, but at the heart of the problem is that the president can't seem to find lawyers himself to represent him. he really just has one personal lawyer working on this, working on the mueller part of this. and he has tried in the past few weeks to go out and get a top lawyer, someone who is a former

federal prosecutor that has deep experience dealing with complex criminal investigations just like this one. and time after time, the firms for these lawyers are saying, we cannot do this. this is too controversial of an issue for us to get involved with. our employees would go nuts if we were to represent donald trump and we cannot allow our partners to work on this. the president continues to search for more lawyers. they say that they'll have some soon, but at the end of the day, it's just jay for now. necessarily in dealing with someone directly like bob mueller. >> and mika, if you are an attorney in washington, d.c., and you specialize in the sort of law that donald trump is -- needs a lawyer badly in or you're a former federal prosecutor and you think there's a possibilities that you would be part of a legal team that

would be firing bob mueller, then you -- you understand that being a part of donald trump's legal team at that point would literally or figuratively put the mark of cain on your forehead for the rest of your life in washington, d.c. your ability to get a job in the future would be wiped clean, because there are few attorneys, few former federal prosecutors, few former directors that have -- that carry more respect than robert mueller, iii does and the president is not going to find any attorneys that will ever put themselves in that position. >> michael schmidt, thank you so much for your reporting this morning. jonathan turley, joyce vance, thank you for your analysis. lots still to get here on "morning joe." we'll break down yet another shakeup in the trump cabinet. can the president's doctor win confirmation to lead one of the biggest departments in the u.s.

government? >> that is -- by the way, that is some doctor. i would love him. maybe do a public report on me. >> he would give you such a good report. >> scarborough weighs 185, 1% body mass. it's unbelievable. >> not. the attorney for the attorney for president trump raises. >> i'm confused. >> i wouldn't let this guy protect my hamster. >> bell, your hamster has quite a few legal issues. >> yes and i wouldn't let this guy handle them. >> you're saying now that the attorneys are getting attorneys? >> it's the attorney's attorney, but he's coming on tv as a friend and making an utter fool of himself. >> do you think maybe the attorney's attorney two or three week from now will get an attorney and all three will go on anderson cooper and everybody will scream at each other and call each other thugs? >> serious new questions about the $130,000 to stormy daniels. what it means for her case and his. straight ahead on "morning joe."

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thank you for making america great again. >> how could you have voted for him? >> he talked about jobs, jackie. we almost lost our house the way things are going. >> have you looked at the news because things are worse. >> not on the real news. >> oh, boy. >> wow. that's incredible. that was a clip of the new season of rose actianne. >> those are pretty extraordinary numbers. >> i'm not into these comeback shows but that looked fun. nbc news has confirmed the president called roseanne bar to

congratulate her on the ratings win. she and her character are trump supporters in the current political divide is a major theme of the show. tomorrow we'll take a closer look at this interesting moment in pop culture. >> mike barnacle, it is -- it is a part of american popular culture that nobody's really effectively spoken to yet and that is of course something that we all know. all families have people on both sites of that political divide and sometimes it can get tough around the household. some people were talking yesterday like this was some radical idea. i said yeah, it's so radical that norman leer did it 45 years ago with archie bunker. there was america and they learned how to laugh at a miserable political divide in america back in the late 60s,

early 70s. >> well, we see and we saw last year in 2016 what happens when you ignore roseanne's audience and don't go to michigan, you lose. they're real people, they have legitimate grievances. the cast, it's spectacular and joe, as always, everything good enriching in life is somehow connected to the red sox. this show is produced by tom warner. >> there you go. >> and may i also add, mika, to liverpool as well. >> up next we'll talk to a senate of the veteran affairs committee after the president fires the va secretary and tries to replace him with the white house doctor. >> who said he weighed 145 pounds and all muscle. >> retired admiral, a leading voice on military matters. and big developments between

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mark mazzeti mazzeti. i gave him his first job, i think in government in the first reagan term when i suggested that he find a spot in the white house counsel's office. he was very effective for us. he was effective in the -- in the first bush administration. controversial in the second bush administration. john has some very deeply held views, many of which i disagree with fundamentally, but he's a -- i think he's -- i know he's a patriot and he's an extraordinarily able and capable public servant. >> that was james baker who served as chief of staff and secretary -- treasury secretary under president ronald reagan and secretary of state and chief of staff under george h.w. bush commenting on president adding john bolton as his new national security advisor. joining us now, former nato supreme allied commander,

retired four star navy admiral. he is chief international security in diplomacy analyst for nbc news and msnbc. also members of the armed services and veterans affairs committee. richard blumenthal of connecticut. good to have you both. i'd like to ask you about james baker's comments. he talked a lot about message discipline and how there was a lack of that in this white house, but he also mentioned bolton not so bad. what do you make of that? >> i think the issue with john bolton is going to be that he instinctively reaches for the hard power instrument. in other words, the combat solution. so look for tension to ramp up in the arabian gulf. look for tension to ramp up on the korean peninsula. look for tension in the south china sea. he has taken consistently hard

edged positions. he's working now for a president who is not experienced internationally and will be influenced by that reach for hard power. i actually think the person to watch assuming he's confirmed is mike pompeo. he'll be the pivot guy between jim mattis who is in my view kind of the voice of reason and john bolton who is going to be reaching again an again to move us in a hard power direction. >> yes, we move to a cabinet where the voice of reason, the voice of moderation has the nickname mad dog. but you are exactly right. and -- and with all due respect to james baker and i think most of us around the set have great respect and a biding respect for james baker, iii. that said, john bolton has talked about the possibility of unilateral strikes against north

korea, bombing iran, still justifying the iraq war all these years later when there really is no justification for what we did in 2003 as a nation and that most of americans supported at the time. but now almost every american understands that it was a dreadful mistake, a historic mistake. so let me just ask, if you were still having a leading role in the united states military and you had to -- you had to take young men and women into war zones would you be more or less comfortable with the president listening to john bolton's advice day in and day out in the west wing? >> i'd be less comfortable. no one hates war like a soldier or a sailor and i think if you had that personal experience on the battlefield the way jim mattis does, the way john kelly does, i think grow are far less inclined to reach for that instrument of combat power. let us hope that we'll continue

to see good advice from secretary mattis. i think we will. >> mike barnacle. >> senator blumenthal, yesterday the president announced a new head of the va potentially, dr. jackson. he has never run anything. he gets high marks from both people in the obama administration and despite his physical with donald trump and the explanation of it, gets high marks as a surgeon and as a doctor but he's never run anything. this is a vast bureaucracy that ill serves some of the most wonderful people who have served in behalf of the united states of america for years. >> it's a little bit like asking someone who's never climbed a mountain to begin with mount everest. the va is the mount everest of public managing both in significance, it deals with our nation's heroes, there is no excuse for failing to meet the

highest standards but also in terms of difficulty because it is a sprawling bu rock reaucrac taking the health care facilities alone. the largest health care challenge in the united states running those hospitals, many of them very well run, for example the west haven facility in connecticut is a center of excellence in many ways, but it is also at the forefront of dealing with some of the most challenging medical problems m post traumatic stress, it's doing a lot of good work but the management challenges are extraordinary, so dr. jackson is going to be scrutinized very closely i can tell you as a member of the va committee, i will have some tough questions for him. >> this is not a new issue. this has been going on for decades and the idea that in state after state after state despite some admirable facilities, no doubt about that, that you can stand at the registry of motor vehicles line and get quicker treatment than

you can going to the va having served multiple tours in afghanistan and iraq. >> i'm concerned. i don't know dr. jackson. i took a good look at his background. he's an emergency room doc. he's deployed into trauma centers so he's seen the sharp end of the spear, but i think you're on the right know to say this is an enormous challenge taking this on. i'm tempted to say this is an administration full of generals, maybe we need a few admirals but i think in reality, i think he's going to have a very, very steep learning curve. we need to -- we need to look at his credentials and see if it makes sense. >> let me ask you, somebody that served in the armed services committee, had more military retirees in my district i think than any other district in the nation, we had to struggle through the transfer into

tricare. i always had people at town hall meetings when i went across the country would talk about bureaucracies in america and they would always talk about how bad the irs must be or the social security administration. i always told them that in terms of incompetence and in terms of -- of pour service to their consumers, everybody was a distant, distant second to the va. now, that was back in the 90s. but it doesn't sound like it's gotten any better over the past 20 years. what is the problem? why can't government -- why can't the federal government take care of the men and women who literally put their lives on the line, put their families on the line by leaving for one tour after another tour. why can't we get that right, admiral? >> i think there's two problems. one is kind of psychological and one is practical. the psychological one is this

kind of sense, joe, and it's utterly inaccurate, but that the nation ought to really focus on the active duty military because they're out there fighting the fight and so much attention att and so much approbation goes for those folks, the active duty so we need to break that psychology and think that is a continuum of service. the practical problem is sort of see paragraph one of the psychological issue is the disconnect from active duty to when you become a veteran. you've got very, very good health care as an active duty person. getting across this scene that we need good osmosis to get across that seam and get those records. those two systems don't talk to each other so your records in a practical sense drop off the planet effort when you become a veteran after this active duty

experience so psychological and practical. >> senator, you sent a different topic to the mueller probe with your colleagues to the chain of command at justice below sessions and rosenstein to say, look, a commit to protecting the mueller probe should something happen to those above you. what was the purpose of this letter? why now is and what is making your worried their statements on the record about this are important now? >> what were worries me and the reason i led that letter is the swirling reports, credible, unspecific, unconfirmed, about the potential for donald trump firing bob mueller as special counsel. he tried it once, he fired james comey, the tweets are increasingly erratic and extreme. his legal team is in turmoil and bob mueller is at the oval office door knocking hard and the trump surrogates are threatening this investigation, asking for a special counsel to

be appointed to shut it down and so a number of us are increasingly concerned on both sides of the aisle. now my republican colleagues are more inclined to take a wait-and-see attitude but the reason for this letter is we want a college from the top justice department officials who would replace rod rosenstein if he were fired or if he resigned that they would not interfere in this investigation. that it be allowed to go forward. and as we've seen from the most recent reports of john dowd talking pardon to some of the key defendants, this kind of obstruction of justice is literally happening in realtime before our eyes, it's almost a textbook example of what obstruction of justice could be. that kind of offer of pardon is very damning and powerful evidence that the president was

intending to tamper with witnesses and the deniability will not hold water. >> admiral stavridis, i wanted to get your reaction to a few things that have happened over the next couple days. against the backdrop of what we've been hearing, mika and i have been hearing it from our contacts inside the national security community, i know you've heard it just as much or more that six months ago many people were telling us it was a fait accompli that there was going to be a ground war on the korean peninsula. that there was going to be a bloodbath, that the united states and north korea was headed to a very hot, very dangerous possibly regional conflict. over the past few days we've seen kim jong-un go to china, the president had kind words about that meeting in a tweet and then, of course, news that north korea and south korea were going to be getting together and

talking about possible traitiea. how significant of a development do you see in the past 24, 48 hours in possibility averting that bloody dreadful war on the korean peninsula? >> let me give you my numbers in the for whatever it's worth category. i still believe we have about a 10% chance of a war on the korean peninsula that's quite high and i would put that level about double where it was two years ago when kim jong-un really began this aggressive series of tests, i think there's a 20% chance, joe, that there will be conflict, bullets fly but that both sides step back. here's the good news. i think there's about a 70% chance we can negotiate, we can have a diplomatic solution here. what we ought to say to ourselves, you know, that old expression things are going to get worse before they get better. i think here unfortunately they're going to get better but

then they're going to get worse again because the fundamentals are bad here. having said all that, we ought to grasp the opportunity here. we ought to say let's go to the table, let's have the conversation and we ought to try and encourage a move to four-party talks, that's north korea, south korea, u.s., china. in the end, all roads to pyongyang lead through beijing, we need their help so let's try to get all four around the table, i think we have a 70% chance from walking away from this thing in one piece. >> those are some odds, admiral james stavridis, sobering. senator richard blumenthal, thank you as well. coming up, from stormy daniels to russia, president trump is drowning in legal drama, what a former trump campaign official is telling bob mueller about his ties to russian intelligence. then there's the reported talk about possible pardons for paul manafort and michael flynn.

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>> reporter: how about michael flynn, would you consider a pardon? >> i don't want to talk about pardons for michael flynn yet. we'll see what happens. let's see. >> after michael flynn's guilty plea in december, the president held his fire on possible pardons but did tell everyone to stay tuned and the "washington post" reported last july that trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the russia probe. all that against the backdrop of new reporting that trump's lawyer raised the prospect of pardons for michael flynn and paul manafort with their lawyers last year. a lot going on this morning. welcome back to "morning joe." >> this is a full employment act

for lawyers in washington, d.c. >> there's a lot of lawyers being hired and some of them are not so good. anyh anyhow, we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, political writer for the "new york times" and nbc police cal analyst nick confessore, former treasury official steve rattner and joining the conversation, washington bureau chief for "usa today" susan page, editor-in-chief of law fare and msnbc legal analyst benjamin wittis, robert costa and washington investigations editor at the "new york times," mark mazzetti who is part of the reporting team on yesterday's big scoop of the pardon talk. >> i want to start with bob costa. bob, the question in washington this week is where in the world is donald j. trump? this has been -- i didn't thica of a week where donald trump has been more low key since june of 2015 when he first announced he

was running for president. he disappeared. >> disappeared publicly joe but privately sources both on capitol hill and inside the west wing say he's been quite busy and there's some tension right now because congressional republicans are saying to the white house no more with this cabinet reshuffle, it will be tough enough to get through the process for secretary of state and cia in the coming months before the midterm elections yet the president keeps moving forward with shulkin getting rid of the veterans affairs secretary and there is other things in the works that he's looking at and this makes the the white house on edge about what the president will do next, whether it's calling roseanne barr or moving on the cabinet member. >> like you said, bob, they have so much to try to tackle before they're up -- before they try to get out of town probably in september so they can start campaigning in the fall and there will be very, very heated hearings on some of the

president's picks. ben, let me ask you about what appears to be a full employment act in washington, dc for attorneys. of all the news that was breaking yesterday, what do you find the most compelling and what do you find the most troubling for the president? >> i think it's a full unemployment act. the president can't find a lawyer. he keeps shedding his existing legal team and not replacing them with ever more prominent legal superstars. look, i mean the story that the "times" broke yesterday about conversations about pardons with attorneys for -- by the president's counsel with representatives of manafort and flynn is a very interesting development because it shows what we've all sort of suspected

which is that the president is not merely thinking about whether the fire bob mueller and get rid of the investigation that way but has flirted with the idea of pardoning all the people that mueller -- or some of the people mueller might rely on for the investigation and might be squeezing or have squeezed and dealing with the investigation that way. so it's sort of another indication that the president is figuring out ways or thinking about figuring out ways to make this investigation go away which is kind of what we already knew but it's a very vivid sill administration. >> it's also another example of yet another corner of the law where we don't have defined parameters yet. it seems whether you're talking

about whether a president can be indicted or not, that's still an open question despite the% that many people months ago were saying it wasn't and on the question of pardons -- i think you have jack goldsmith said on your site that the president had almost unlimited powers, others say, though, that the founders never intended the pardoning power to allow a president to pardon those that were part of his own investigation so these are just two examples of cases that the supreme court may be having to decide before this is over. >> and count among those a third which is probably more immediate than either of those two which is can the president be compelled to testify to a grand ju jury. if the president and bob mueller cannot come to an understanding about giving a voluntary interview to the mueller

investigation, mueller has the option of issuing a subpoena and that would trigger that question of whether the president is amenable to that subpoena or whether he has -- whether a grand jury can in fact not compel them to give testimony. >> and of course that will probably be the question most immediate immediately answered and also it seems the trump legal team needs to be careful in some of their challenges because they may begin a losing streak that will end in a place they don't want it to end. mark mazzetti, let me ask you about the breaking news that flashed across all of our phones and tv sets yesterday afternoon and that was that the president did in fact discuss pardoning manafort and flynn. what can you tell us? >> last year john dowd, until recently the president's lawyer made this outreach to two

lawyers, lawyer for paul manafort, lawyer for michael flynn and this happened before flynn cut a deal with the special counsel and before manafort was indicted and we still are trying to report out what happened during that conversation and what the president knew but it's certainly significant as ben raised this question of while the president does have very broad pardon power, was this a dangle to keep both manafort and flynn from cooperating with mueller? and if that was, could that be construed as some kind of witness tampering? so that is the central question, i think, out of this development. >> so this new development, obviously there has been talk for a while of the president's pardon powers, his desire to exercise them, his desire to go kind of -- and be interviewed and show that he can do it.

is this white house now hurdling towards a confrontation with bob mueller in the end? >> i think you see both with the mueller case and with this discussion of pardons you see the president and the white house laying the ground work for taking those -- possibly taking those steps. the president has been attacking the bob mueller investigation as partisan, calling it fake news, saying there never should have been an investigation so that lays some political ground work i think for moving and keeping his base with him if he did take these very controversial steps and we should remember that previous modern presidents have made very controversial pardon, starting with president ford pardoning the president nixon after his resignation and george w. bush pardoning caspar weinberger and bill clinton pardoning mark rich, so there is history of presidents taking the political heat for making pardons that for one reason or another they think serve the

national interest or their own interests. >> mark, it's steve, an impression one has up here is that john dowd wanted to get off of this train to preserve whatever is left of his reputation and get out of washington more or less intact. with that said why would john dowd so flatly deny your report in the "times" today. there was know kwification, no nothing and he's on his way south there's no need to protect the president at this point. >> i'm not sure. i'm not sure why he would deny it. you say there's no equivocation. i thought some of the wording of the statement was interesting but i'll take your point. at the same time we're feeling very confident in our reporting so why he responded that way i can't say. >> well, mike barnicle, i'm sorry but they're a

preponderance of people involved with donald trump lying when telling the truth might be easier. what seems so shortsighted here is bob mueller knows the truth. he's been talking to the former national security adviser, general flynn, for how long? six months? nine months? so they know the truth. they know the news mark broke last night, in fact whatever donald trump or donald trump's lawyer said to flynn's lawyers, mueller knew this months ago so it raises the question why does trump and those around trump, why do they keep lying about all of these matters? whether it's tie they talked to russians in don jr.'s office who are they talked to about pardons when they know it's all going to see the light of day and they'll

be called out on their lies. >> it could be, joe, the wlurz have come and gone representing trump could be in a state of shock that they decided to go to work for him so the rest of it i don't know. but one thing is clear in all of this. despite the fact that there's no leaks from bob mueller's office, what you do hear from people who have been interviewed by bob mueller's team is that each of the people that at least i have spoken to, there's at least two, they are stunned at the level of knowledge that bob mueller has about the daily on goings of the period of time that the mueller team is investigating but bob cotta, i would like to ask you with regard to this whole pardon story that has been exploding for the past couple of days, certainly. the white house counsel, don mcgahn, has a unique role in presidential pardons. according to your reporting or what you've heard do you know

whether don mcgahn has ever been asked or whether the president has ever used the word "pardon in conversations with don mcgahn. has he had any role whatsoever in all of this fact-finding and as well as rumoring. >> wm r well, we saw the president mention pardons when he was asked a month ago so the issue floats around this white house. mcgahn is in this interesting role where he is counsel to the president of the united states, not a personal lawyer for president trump and there have been real tensions between the white house counsel and the president over how to handle the russia probe. you think back to the flirtation the president had with firing bob mueller and getting rid of the special counsel, mcgahn made clear he was against that decision and he may step down if the president moved in that direction yet mcgahn, like kellyanne conway and others, has been a real survivor in this

white house in part i'm told because mcgahn steps back a lot. he counsels the president when necessary but he's not trying to be involved in day-to-day political decision making. he knows his role. >> it's amazing how silent the president has been of late given the fact that he runs his mouth on absolutely everything but here we go with this next story. the lawyer for porn star stormy daniels has been seeking for a judge to declare that his client is not bound by the terms of a non-disclosure agreement about her interactions with president trump since donald trump didn't sign the document. last night, david schwartz, the attorney representing the president's attorney michael cohen -- but not on this matter -- said the president had no idea about the agreement or others that cohen arranged. >> it seems like a simple question and you are cohen's spokesperson in this so can you say unequivocally that the

president was never in any way aware of the $130,000 or the agreement itself? >> the president was not aware of the agreement. michael cohen never told him and you asked a bunch of questions so let me cover that. you asked 12 days before -- >> not aware about the agreement. what about the money? >> he was not aware about any of it. he wasn't told about it. michael cohen left the option open. that's why he left the signature line. michael cohen chose not to go to him. you have to understand the structure of the trump organization and michael cohen's role, it was much than attorney and client. he had great latitude to handle these matters. >> so they happened with such frequency that you wouldn't need to tell him about a $130,000 payment. >> michael was the fixer. we all know it so it could be anything. there were a ton of matters that took place that michael fixed and donald trump wasn't involved

in every single matter and the reason -- there was a line there for "e"dd". >>denison. >> and the line was blank. he left the line blank. >> oh, my god. >> it's hard to tell which side is putting out a story that seems more implausible. in this case you have cohen's attorney saying that this just happened in the matter of course where you had an attorney for donald trump who supposedly is worth $10 billion having to take out a second mortgage on his house? >> something like that? >> a credit line on his house to pay off $130,000. >> par for the course. >> hush money 10, 11 days before a presidential election. that doesn't hold water. >> i don't know why they have the attorney for the attorney who's just a friend on this

issue talking. someone needs to tell him to stop talking. schwartz's comments left at least one legal expert stunned. renato mariotti wrote "michael cohen's attorney just claimed on out front cnn that trump was not aware of the stormy daniels agreement or the payment which means there was no contract between trump and daniels and daniels can release the materials, why would he admit this on national television?" >> let me ask you and we'll go to mike barnicle. do you agree with that assessment. if donald trump was not party to this agreement as donald trump's lawyer lawyer -- is a friend on this matter. >> only a friend on this matter is claiming on national television and it seems that's been cohen's argument as well. then does stormy daniels have to comply with the terms of the nda? >> look, i am not an expert on

contracts and i wouldn't want to represent myself to be. >> oh, come on. come on! porn stars, though! >> it seems to me very hard to argue that an agreement between two people, one of whom does not know the agreement took place let alone voluntarily entered into it could be considered enforceab enforceable. i would say further more that as a practical matter, stormy daniels will win this because for the president to actually come after her for allegedly violating then day that he didn't know about let alone sign he would probably end up having to subject himself to a deposition and the costs of not collecting on whatever money he thinks he's owed as a result of her supposedly violating this agreement are so de minimus

compared to the potential damage he could do himself by sitting for such a deposition, see bill clinton's deposition in the paula jones case, that there's simply no way that he is going to successfully enforce this agreement even if it could be enforced. >> mike barnicle, it does not make sense that -- and, again, i am no expert in contracts law either and my grades in contracts law in law school proved that. at the same time, if donald trump didn't even know about this contract, there is no meeting of the minds and no contract between donald trump and stormy daniels. >> despite the graf at the of these stories that we have been discuss i

discussing. there's always room for slapstick clown show humor and michael cohen's lawyer provided it with that clip when nick confessore, he described his client, michael cohen, as "michael was the fixer." >> nice. >> if i ever hire a lawyer whose goes on cnn and describes me as a fixer i'm going fire that lawyer. fixer is not a nice term. it's like watching the lawyer from the simpsons go on cnn and it's full employment for lawyers, maybe, but not the best lawyers, i don't think. >> but, look, the whole thing is completely preposterous. you have a lawyer who allegedly put the second mortgage on his house to get $130,000 to pay off a porn star for donald trump who never knew about any of this? come on. >> and didn't know the porn star apparently. >> well, there's a picture of him with the porn star. >> remember, joe, michael was the fixer. >> >> michael was the fixer, thanks so much.

>> he is a fixer and this is a hot mess. this is a wreck and it shows the level of stupidity that this woman could end up being the key to bringing this president down. a lot of people have asked that question, could stormy daniels be the key to bring the president down because of the way this contract came about and anything else that might have come along with it, including threats. >> i don't think so but we'll see. >> he is so silent it's deafening and fascinating. add to this the justice department is poring resources into house republicans' demands for other investigations after an outcry of the surveillance of trump campaign foreign policy adviser carter page. the justice department inspector general announced he will refviw the fisa applications. and fbi director chris wray says he is doubling the number of

bureau staff from 27 to 54 to comply with house republicans' documents requests concerning corruption in their hillary clinton e-mail server probe. it comes after congressman devin nunes leveled this threat. >> when we get back in two weeks, if the 1.2 million documents aren't in the capitol then he should immediately move to hold department and justice and the fbi in contempt and if we have to vote on contempt then we should immediately move to impeach those officials. that would be using the full power of the congress. >> and that comes as house democrats want to subpoena the department of defense for records relating to a report that former trump campaign chair paul manafort promised a chicago banker a job in the administration in exchange for $16 million in home loans. joining us now, a top democrat on the house oversight committee

to take part in this conversation, congressman steven lynch of massachusetts. congressman lynch, joe, wrote a letter with congressman elijah cummings yesterday urging committee chair trey gowdy to issue the subpoena after the department ignored a request for the information sent a month ago so they're trying to sort of untravu unravel this. >> i remain confused and maybe because you're dealing with republicans day in and day out in congress, i remain confused how devin nunes and donald trump somehow believe there was a conspiracy to help hillary clinton be elected president of the united states when it was mccabe and mccabe's actions which ultimately led to his firing a day or two before he was going to get full retirement that actually got the news out that the clinton foundation was

being investigated actively, which was a devastating bit of news for hillary clinton and then of course it was james comey's letter 10, 11 days before the actual presidential election that probably did more to make donald trump's election possible than anything else. so i remain confused. where's the grand conspiracy to help hick when it seems that the fbi actually got in her way of winning in 2016? >> well, joe, your confusion is well placed. comey did -- he ultimately handed the election to then-candidate trump by questioning with with 11 days without time to respond he basically threw the question of whether the investigation was continuing regarding hillary clinton and the e-mails back into the mix. our problem has been with getting subpoenas of some of

these activities of trump's associates within the committee, myself and the full committee ranking member elijah cummings. there have been zero subpoena requests granted on behalf of the committee with respect to the white house, this is despite the fact that we've got four trump associates that have pled guilty. we've got five under indictment and you would think that when the lawyer for manafort and gates plead guilty -- when the lawyer pleads guilty you would think that that would give rise to sufficient suspicion to issue a couple of subpoenas but we've got zero from trey gowdy. instead devin nunes with the cooperation of mr. gowdy are investigating the fbi. so it's confusing and counterintuitive. you would think they would be

interested in enforcing the rule of law but that's not the case with this white house. >> congressman, how frustrating is it for a member of congress -- forget the committees you're on, forget your specific interest in specific topics that you've just talked about, how frustrating is it for a member of congress to sit there and you know each and everyday the speaker of the house paul ryan allows devin nunes to conduct himself as head of his committee with the way he is conducting himself? >> it is shameful. there's no other word for it because it's not only reflecting on him but i think it reflects on congress as an institution where it is supposed to be our job to be a check and balance on the white house and yet under mr. nunes especially, running over to the white house after classifies briefings, informing

the white house what is going on, he has become a cool for the white house but there is a day of reckoning coming. november is coming and that would mean that mr. cummings would be the full chair of the oversight committee, i'd be the subcommittee chair on national security and i think at that point we would begin a relentless pursuit of the truth which frightens the white house a great deal, i'm sure. >> congressman lynch, thank you so much for being with us and thanks to cummings who has been on the forefront of this. we appreciate it. ben, i'm curious about the devin nunes inspired investigation of the fbi and the fisa process. what do you think we see coming from that? >>, we i think it's important here to zoom out and to understand the damage that devin nunes has done over the last

year. there used to be this thing called the intelligence oversight system in which congress -- not perfectly, not without political valances and sometimes partisan disputes conducted impartial oversight of the intelligence community and that has been destroyed in devin nunes's attacks on the fbi and casting of aspersions on people for really doing their jobs with respect to the fisa process and blowing intelligence sources and blowing fisa targets and we've never seen anything like this since this system was created and it's going to take -- i'm not sure it's going to be possible but it's going to take a real leadership to rebuild what nunes has destroyed and the

nakts his reaction is led's do more is a galling and upsetting this. it's not what congress should be doing. not only is he not trying to find out the truth about russian interference in the election and the many counterintelligence concerns that one would have about the current administration and its campaign, he's actively trying to destroy the institutions that are investigating it and it's shame. i think of all the negative legacies that hang over a man who i've had great respect for since he was 22 years old, 22-year-old staffer that worked with me and worked with others in congress, paul ryan, there are many things i've been disappointed in over the past

year, year and a half with paul, i still have great respect for him but one of the most shameful part of his legacies will be that he allowed devin nunes to compromise the fisa court process, one of the most secretive and one of the most important in our battle in trying to protect the homeland and also allowing devin nunes to continue to go on a witch-hunt against the federal bureau of investigation, men and women who proudly work day in and day out to protect you at home and to protect your families and your communities, to protect your states from terrorist attacks. >> may i add something to that? >> yes. >> so you know for a lot of people fisa is an acronym and a word and it doesn't -- people understand it has something to do with surveillance.

fisa is a process. it's a process that is managed with really attentive care by people and these people are nameless, they work extremely hard and the purpose of this process is to protect americans not merely from terrorists but also from government espionage of the sort that happened during the watergate and pre-watergate era that led to the passage of fisa in the first place and when you attack this system, you are attacking the civil liberties protections and the mechanisms that we have for keeping the fbi at bay. >> to round out this segment, bob costa, what are you looking at today? >> you're looking at the president trying to get his bearings on infrastructure. he'll be traveling before he

heads to florida to get his legislative agenda jump started but mika at this point most legislators, republicans i'm talking to on capitol hill say they're bunkering down preparing for the midterm elections. . they don't mention major legislation to roll through this year. >> and mark ma saidty, on the big pardon talk story, what's day two of the questions you'll be looking at. >> the obvious question is the extent that dowd consulted with trump or trump ordered dowd to make these calls. i time what the president knew and when did he know it is still the operative question here because that gets to the intend of these calls and the intent of what the president was thinking. >> mark mazzetti, benjamin wittes, robert costa, thank you all. susan page, stay with us. coming up, outgoing v.a. secretary david shulkin takes a parting shot at the president on his way out. >> did he actually give his real

weight? >> no. >> nbc's peter alexander joins us live from the white house with new reporting on that. "morning joe" is coming right back.

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>> the privilege of my life is to serve as vice president to a president who's keeping his toward the american people and assembling a team that's bringing real change. >> what an incredible honor it is to lead the department of health and human services at this pivotal time under your leadership. i can't thank you enough. >> mr. president, thank you for you t honfor the opportunity to serve. >> mr. president, thank you for the opportunity to help fix the trade deficit. >> i want to thank you for getting this country moving again and working again. >> thank you, mr. president, it was a great honor traveling around you for the country and an honor to be here serving for

your cabinet. >> on behalf of the entire senior staff around you, mr. president, we thank you for the opportunity and blessing you've given us to serve your agenda and the american people and we're continuing to work very hard everyday to accomplish those goals. >> my god. it's so painful. massive suck-up party. last year, president trump soaked up the praise of his cabinet, many of them who are no longer in the administration. that served them well. suck up and leave. now he's nominated his doctor to lead veterans affairs, two months after the personal physician gave a glowing medical assessment of the president's health. he stopped short of calling him hot. joining us from the white house, nbc news national correspondent peter alexander. peter, what can you tell us? >> the president is going with his gut here, picking dr. ronny jackson as his nominee to be the head of veterans affairs, again, this emphasizes the president's interest in personal relationships, perhaps above all

el else. to be clear, jackson has no experience managing a sprawling government bureaucracy, certainly one like this that is plagued by problems, the second-largest agency in all of government. as for david shulkin who is on his way out, he's speaking out about his departure, expressing real frustrations. he was affected by a bruising ethics scandal for foreign travel he took with his wife but he pushed back on the idea of privatizing the v.a. in a new op-ed he says it will hurt veterans. members of the administration had a different opinion about that and he writes "as i prepare to leave government, i'm struck by a recurring thought. it should not be this hard to serve your country." it's interest to hear the way he characterizes washington. he says it's ok to sick, chaotic, disrespectful and sob ver -- subversive. we're reminded of the

president's past praise of shulkin laughing about the fact that he would not need to use the key words "you're fired." >> i also want to express our appreciation for secretary shulkin who is implementing dramatic reform throughout the v.a. i have no doubt it will be properly implemented. right, david? better be, david. [ applause ] we'll never have to use those words. we'll never have to use those words on our david. >> is any more change coming? i guess president trump knows. we'll see him when he walks to marine one later. in the past several weeks, tillerson gone, mcmaster son gone, gary cohn on his own term and hope hicks. mika? >> peter alexander, thank you. it's incredible. we'll be talking to outgoing secretary david shulkin tomorrow on "morning joe." he'll be our guest.

susan page, what's your take away on that and everything else going on this morning? this has been an incredible morning of news. >> i think one of the things when you look at the latest cabinet shuffle is the way the president is surrounding himself with people who are unlikely to disagree with him. people who will reinforce his gut instincts of what it is he wants to do you look at people like rex tillerson or hr mcmaster in the foreign policy sphere but also ronny jackson going to be nominated to run the second-largest bureaucracy in the federal government so i think that does raise some concerns about some white house veterans about whether the president will be hearing voices of those who disagree with him. >> >> thank you so much. it's well known president trump doesn't love it when other people get the cover story instead of himself. so did "time" magazine just seal

jeff sessions' fate? we'll look through the new issue and ponder if trump wishes he was on the cover once again or maybe he'll just make a fake one for himself. it's all straight ahead on "morning joe."

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>> i am disappointed in the attorney general hernd not ha s have recused himself almost immediately after he took office and if he was going to recuse himself he should have told me prior to taking office and i would have quite simply picked somebody else so that's a bad thing not only for the president but the presidency. >> that was president trump in the many times he's voiced his displeasure in the attorney general and completely misunderstood the job of attorney general. >> also, mika, he's suggesting that somehow rkdyou should haved an attorney general that would have gotten into a delorean, gone into the future and tell

donald trump what was going to happen. it's just pure insanity. >> his inability, insanity is what you call it, his inability to intellectually grasp reality is staggering. joining us now -- >> i'm just saying that particular ethics debate. >> part of what he thinks is insani insanity. >> alex altman is here with his new issue entitled "nobody is above the law, the trials of jeff sessions." it looks at how the attorney general has turned trump's rhetoric into reality and emerged at the most effective enforcer of the president's agenda whether the president appreciates it or not and i'm not sure the president fully appreciates it. >> he does not. tell us about the story. you have a president who seems to be doing the president's

bidding. he lets everybody know he would love to fire him if he had the chance. >> the story which is written by molly ball looks at the dissonance of the president's assessment of the attorney general and what jeff sessions is doing. as you said, he had been extraordinarily effective at operationalizing the trump agenda and the key parts of the trump agenda, cracking down on crime and immigration. he's rescinded daca. so he has taken the rhett rake that trump talked about. >> we've watched over the last few months the ways in which the president has hounded and humiliated his own appointee at justice jeff sessions. why did sessions stay and what about his agenda and the things he wants to accomplish?

>> i think everybody person who goes to work for donald trump is making a bargain so to speak and the bargain is, you know, in exchange for being close to or the ability to manipulate the levers of power, to execute policies that they fought for their entire life, they're going to go and work for tempestuous, difficult to work for, who will subject you, in session's case, to ritual humiliation. so sessions has fought his entire life, sometimes in defiance of his republican colleagues, to pursue a very punitive agenda when it comes to crime, to crackdown on immigration practices. he's long been opposed to the legalization or a path to citizenship for undocumenteds and he ceases in trump someone who is going to be a pitchman for those ideas and who will allow him to carry them out and put the justice department behind them. >> also, nick -- sorry, alex, it's steve rattner. let me ask this question the

other way which is why doesn't trump fire sessions? sessions is recused from the russia investigation so if he doesn't want this guy, he's obviously not afraid to get rid of people, though he does it in a unique way. why doesn't he get rid of them? >> i think aides have tried very hard to prevail on the president that firing the attorney general could be a comeyesque mistake. it certainly would raise questions about the rule of law, about whether or not trump was trying to affect the russia investigation in untoward ways and the political ramifications of that could quite well be very damaging to him so, you know, i think many people around trump have told him that firing sessions would be a bad idea. that doesn't mean he won't do it at some point. certainly there's a worry that getting rid of sessions who, you know, many people around him believe is doing the president's bidding would be a significant

mistake. >> you add the fact that he is a united states senator, mitch mcconnell wouldn't take kindly to the humiliation of a former united states senator and then add on top of that we heard topf it before. donald trump faced a lot of backlash from the right and the far right when he talked about firing jeff sessions before and also from mainstream conservatives that have known jeff sessions and fought alongside jeff sessions for 20-25 years while donald trump was giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to the democratic national committee, nancy pelosi, chuck schumer. he's one of them. >> the first point that you raise seems to be critical here. alex, i'm wondering in the context of this piece, you probably can't answer the question. nobody can. why is it that donald trump seems so ignorant to the fact that the mothers important player in this whole sessions versus the president routine we've been listening to is

mcconnell. mitch mcconnell is not going to hold confirmation hearings for a potential new attorney general appointee. because of their reverence in respect for a former united states senator, jeff sessions. >> yes. i don't know it's necessarily a reverends for sessions. certainly respect for sessions in the senate. a bit of an outlier among the colleagues often fighting for policies they didn't agree in. remember, he was one of the really lonely figures who wound up consulting a bipartisan immigration reform a lot of republicans believed was good policy and good politics for them. certainly true. concern about the constitutional lines that trump might be crossing if he got rid of sessions and tried to bring in somebody else. as you rightly point out those confirmation hearings for whoever it would be a bear. >> thank you so much. greatly appreciate it. we're going to be looking forward to seeing the new issue of time magazine that's on sale

tomorrow. what do we have? still ahead, so much. including updates in the stormy daniels lawsuit. several developments in the russia investigation. the special counsel's first alleged links between the trump campaign and russian intelligence. what a former trump campaign official is telling bob mueller. plus the "new york times" michael submit joins us with new reporting on the talk about pardoning paul manafort and michael flynn. >> this is a bunch of legal problems for the white house. dead serious. we'll be right back. >> get your popcorn. let's begin.

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he's very articulate when he speaks to me. i've never known him to repeat

himself around me. he says what he's got to say and he speaks his mind. >> tell me how a guy who eats mcdonalds and ken tucky fried chicken and diet cokes and never exercises is in as good a shape as you say he's in. >> it's called genetic. i told the president if he had a healthy diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200 years old. he has good genes. just how good made him. >> the president nominates his doctor as new cabinet secretary. i'm sure. >> mika, you know, he runs a 4340. at the time this doctor came out and basically -- said things about his weight that just don't seem to be true. said a lot of things that didn't seem to be true. everybody was shocked how dare you question this doctor.

you weren't there. he was there. >> this doctor knew what he was doing. >> this doctor actually is specializes in the form of medicine that you call quid pro quo. it's a new, sort of a new medicine. >> and also flattery. >> despite that quick shift in the news stormy daniels isn't going away. that would be huge. and sad. welcome to morning joe. thursday, march 29. with us we have a lot of people because we have a lot of news this morning. . former treasury official steef rattner. former u.s. attorney for the northern district of alabama d and. law professor and "new york

times" reporter michael schmit who had yet another big scoop for the paper yesterday. >> what's new. >> he's the ted williams of reporting. >> he's incredible. >> mike barnicle, mike, we could talk about so much right now. first, let's talk about day five of the president, i guess it's day five. maybe even more than that. that this stormy daniels news has frozen the president of the united states yet again. yet to happen. i know i was critical of the legal techniques stormy daniels' lawyer was taking. if you look at it through the lens of politics, my gosh, this guy has done to donald trump and stormy daniels has done to donald trump what donald trump was able to do to people like marco rubio and jeb bush and other political giants for a year and a half and that is freeze them, tongue tie them, and get them trying to figure out how do i respond to this

because he has no response. he's hiding. >> you have that exactly right. michael ab leeny, the lawyer for stormy daniels is doing to the president of the united states and the presidency exactly what donald trump did to nearly every republican candidate during the primaries last year. the fact the president of the united states has not been able to release a public schedule of activities during the course of the day for nearly a week now. >> it really is astoundsing. this president has always been a perpetual motion machine. as it pertains to tweets, insulting statements. whatever it took to keep the news cycle going. he turned it up 24 hours a day. seven days a week. this week since stormy, silence.

it could be he met his match. the expar minor he deserves. she is his match. demanding attention from the media. playing the media. getting attention. player hing her game and gettin facts out. she's a master. kind of interesting to see her go head to head against a president who also has some of that ability. >> shows the legal challenges this president continues to mount. that's why we have enough lawyers, enough attorneys on this show to start our own law

firm this morning. >> let's get to first that report from the "new york times" for which michael schmit was part of the reporting team. it says that president trump the former head of president trump's legal team, john dowd, raised the prospect of presidential pardons for former national security adviser michael flynn and former trump campaign chair paul manafort. just as special counsel robert mueller was building a case against them. three sources tell the "new york times" that dowd's conversation with michael flynn's lawyer occurred sometime after dowd took over last summer as the president's personal lawyer. at a time when a grand jury was hearing evidence against flynn on a range of potential crimes. the times also reports that the pardoned discussion with paul manafort's attorney came before his client was indicted in october. "the washington post" reports that one person familiar with the outreach said dude over the summer relayed to manafort's lawyers that a posttraumatic stress disorder was a

possibility. the fbi raided manafort's home in the early morning hours of july 26. yesterday, duowd told the "new york times" there were no discussions period. as far as i know, no discussion. white house special counsel said in a statement, i have only been asked about pardons by the press and have routinely responded on the record that no pardonens are under discussion or under consideration at the white house, but others with rolls in the trump white house say there have been pardon conversations. and a reportedly talking to the special counsel about it. two people with knowledge tell the "new york times" that durr interviews the mueller's investigators in recent months, current and former administration officials have recounted conversations they had with the president about potential pardonens for former aides under investigation. according to a person briefed on the kfconversation in one meeti

at the white house conference last year, trump asked about the extent of pardon power. lawyers explained the president's powers were broad and in other meetings with senior advisers two sources present say the president raised the prospect of pardoning michael flynn. they say your report is inaccurate. tell us about it. >> the interesting thing dowd said yesterday, he said it was inaccurate, he; owed other parts of our reporting. he thought the case against flynn was filimsy. he said what would we have pardoned flynn for. that was part of the argument when he talked to his lawyer. he said why would you plead to such a thing. we can take you out this way.

echoed. the thing you have to understand about all of this, one very basic question. was john dowd out on his own freelancing? was he simply just running his mouth talking to other lawyers or was he doing this at the behest of the president? people that know john dowd. >> michael submit, you have the president of the united states himself talking to people asking about the possibility of the flynn pardon, asking about what he can and can't do as president of the united states. pardoning others. so that does seem unlikely that dowd would be going on on his own without the president's support or advice, doesn't it. >> people who know dowd find it hard to believe he having such a high profile client with such power would go out and do such an aggressive thing. it would have such aggressive discussions with it. at the time, what you have to

understand about dowd is he's done a lot of undisciplined things here. he's made unforced errors as the president's lawyer. including with the statement he put out. although he looks like we've been told he did it at the president's behest. when mueller keys in on this issue, that's what he'll have to figure out. >> jonathan, there is a bit of a split. like so many of -- like so many of the questions that surround bob mueller's investigation, there's a split of legal opinion on the president's power to pardon. is it an absolute power. is it a power that the founders never intended for president to use to protect himself. so once again, just like indicting a president, the question of whether a president could obstruct justice by dangling the prospects of pardon out in front of people that are subject to a probe that goes back to the president at the end of the day, once again, a legal

issue with a big question mark over it that judiciary that is appearing to be more and more hostile towards the president of the united states will have to take up. i think that is certainly a prospect. all we can say for certainty is obviously the president can pardon flynn. we saw in george bush senior he pardoned people in the iran contra fair that could have potentially incriminated him. they did not ultimately in that scandal. in terms of obstruction, have to keep in mind the president asking for the description of the scope of his authority is not going to be any type of obstruction. the issue of an attorney for the president going to a potential witness and offering a pardon obviously gets closer. obstruction case is composed of a number of insular acts that might not be incriminating and

together form a different picture. what would be curious about this if john dowd is lying, if he did in fact raise this issue, it's just truly baffling. there's no reason why he would have to mention that. it would be obvious to everyone that that power exists. the question is why would you every broach the subject given the potential as we see now. the other problem for john dowd is that if there's credibility to this report, it's obviously comie ing from a credible sourc does create the chance that he could be put in front of a grand jury. moore has not been intimidated by attorney-client privilege. many criticized in the past for his calling of attorneys and essentially turning them into witnesses against clients. he's the type of guy that tends to pull attorneys into grand juries. still ahead on morning joe, one of the key questions in the russia probe. how much is rick yates telling

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w we're learning mueller's team. in court documents filed late tuesday, fbi says trump campaign chair paul manafort and deputy, rick gates, were in contact with the person who had an ongoing relationship with russian intelligence and allege that gates said he knew the person was a former russian intelligence officer. the revelation came in presentencing report for alex

va who pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his contact with gates. according to the contact, he had a serious of calls with gates and an intelligence officer identified as person a. high ranking official in the trump campaign telling bob mueller supposedly from what we can gather that he had contact with a russian intel officer in the heat of the presidential campaign. what's the impact?

>> it obviously doesn't look good. and it's something that mueller is rightfully pursuing. it's bothersome when every time we find a new character, it's like a walk on for the pirates. all these characters are not exactly redeeming. you wonder where do they find all these. the only defense the trump team would likely raise is this dealt with a criminal charge in the ukraine. it's not clear they were discussing the campaign, but this russian saturated circle of friends is rather disturbing and obviously mueller is a great deal to work with here. >> you know, if you go back to let's say if you go back in between the election steve rattner and donald trump's inauguration or you just look at what was said in january and february of 2017 by people like mike pence, donald trump, sean

spicer, other people connected to the campaign. they categorically deny talking to anyfamously saying we only spoke to citizens of the united states. there were blanket denials they ever spoke to any russians during the campaign. this was of course after they had the meeting in don junior's office. after manafort and gates apparently had meetings and spoke to one russian contact after another after jeff sessions had so many meetings with russians, but forgot all of them after jared kushner did the same and forgot to write all of those meetings down on his disclosure forms. yes, it's we have this drip, drip, drip. so now here we are finding out in march of 2018 that in fact there was contact between the highest levels of the trump campaign and russian intel officers. maybe that's not quite as

shocking as it was back in january of 2017, but you know, it just the water just keeps getting warmer and warmer. and you can almost see this boil start up. >> yes, look, of course you have trump himself having said repeatedly he had no contact with the russians. he had no business with the russians. he barely new any russians and then there's a competitive move of examples already that business trump did with the russians let alone what we don't know about. obviously some of these connections we can't make yet. maybe mueller has made them. it is pretty extraordinary that every time you turn over a rock, you find a russian under it. it just seems to -- there's a lot of smoke. we don't have the actual fire yet. too much going on to not believe we're not going to find out more stuff. >> nick, it seems when you look at this story as it unfolds, especially yesterday as the link to russia, the direct link to

russia, no such thing as a former russian intelligence official, a member of the gru. you have to ask yourself the question and wonder, how much more can they pile, can the special prosecutor pile on manafort in order to get him to finally collapse and cooperate? >> look, the real thing he has on manafort is financial crimes. is money laundering for over a long career of making money abroad and allegedly secreting caimans accounts and bringing it back on shore. he could put manafort away for a long time on that. and manafort knows a lot about trump. coming back, stormy daniels aside, one of the other legal cases involving donald trump. a lawsuit accuses the president of accepting gifts from foreign interests and the case just moved forward in federal court. morning joe is coming right back.

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handling progress in their

case. a federal district court judge is letting their case advance though it's been limited only to payments involving the trump international hotel in washington. the suit was filed by washington, d.c. and the state of maryland accusing the president of violating the constitutions anti-corruption clauses. last night, the trump hotel near the house was hit with a light projection reading this. crime scene, do not enter. >> as we've said before on this show, the president of the united states from his first week of two in office actually declared war on the federal judiciary. has talked about republican judges and said republican judges in washington state were questioned whether they actually had authority or not. and we're seeing judges strike back time and time again. how big of a deal is this ruling

that we actually can start to have hearings and have inquiries into whether the president is violating the clause. >> this ruling is a big deal. this is the first of the clause cases that has been able to move forward. even though it's limited solely to claims about trump tower, those claims may be very powerful. what they involve are allegations by other total owners that their business has dropped off and the president is making a lot of money based on the fact that people want to curry favor with him are able to do that by going to his hotel and spending their money there. those claims are very powerful frankly and i think the interesting aspect of this is you point out is the reaction of the federal judiciary. my expectation is that they will take their revenge on the president for all his comments against them by acting with a

very high level of integrity. by reviewing the claims and acting consistently with the law in all regards. by upholding the integrity of the judicial branch, they'll in essence be delivering a loud response to the president as judges across this country have been doing. >> steve, you look at what the president has been doing not only in washington, d.c., but also mar-la-go. you have a lot of groups. you read the work of "washington post" and you see all the established organizations that have fled mar-la-go because they don't want to be tainted with donald trump's reputation. yet you see a lot of people who have gone in to try to curry favor with the president. that happening in mar-la-go and happening a great deal in washington, d.c. property. >> look, it's quite

extraordinary on many levels. first of all, there is this whole emall you meant thingolum involved these really sleazy foreign governments where he goes and says i can get you in to see trump or something senior on the hill. you pay me several million dollars for it. so one of the ironies about this whole thing that struck me is a guy who came here saying he was going to drain the swamp has actually brought the swamp in greater depth than i've ever seen around washington before. >> up next, apple ceo tim cook criticizes facebook's approach to privacy and it happened right here on msnbc. we'll show you that next on "morning joe."

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this morning, big story, facebook announced major changing to privacy settings. yeah, apparently they're going to start having some. that's the new idea. >> we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer. if our customer was our product. we could make a ton of money. we've elected not to do that. we care about the user experience. and we are not going to traffic in your personal life. i think it's an invasion of privacy. i think it's privacy to us is a human right.

it's a civil liberty. something that is unique to america. now, this is like freedom of speech and freedom of the press and privacy is right up there for us. >> mark zuckerberg, what would you do. >> what would i do? i wouldn't be in this situation. >> okay. >> that was apple ceo tim cook not holding anything back regarding the ongoing controversies at facebook. you can watch more of cook's town hall hosted by chris hayes and kara as part of msnbc revolution series next friday april 6, you can also find it online at msnbc.com/revolution. before we bring in our next guest, nick, you're part of the "new york times" reporting team that really blew open the facebook story, facebook and cambridge analytica. tell us where it stands right now. >> you know, it stands where tim

cook has said it stands. facebook is facing the worst crisis in history. the crisis is because their very business model is under threat here. facebook exists to vacuum up all it can about you and everything you do on its platform and off its platform and sell that knowledge to advertisers. that is what it is. it's an advertising pseudo monopoly. if they have to restrict that and not use your data or if there are laws coming up in europe and the u.s. that restrict the data, that is a threat to bottom line. they have to figure out a way to snake through that. >> joining us now member of the senate appropriations on budge committee. research fellow at the hoover institution. also the policy director for mitt romney 2012 presidential

campaign. and an adviser on marco rubio's 2016 campaign. chris, i want to start with you and stay on the facebook story. mark zuckerberg said they're open to regulation. that's great. maybe he'll come in and talk to you guys. i don't know how facebook survives this. >> look, as you said, i think facebook survives this, but i think it's very important that facebook be forthcoming with the information. mark zuckerberg has indicated he will testify before one of the house committees. the senate judiciary committee, another senate committee interested in talking to mark zuckerberg. the focus i've had primarily on this has been how facebook and other social media including twitter were used in the context of trying to interfere in the 2016 election with an eye towards trying to prevent this from happening in the 2018

election and senator marco rubio and i have actually introduced legislation called the deter act to create big disincentives to disto your knowledge putin and others from doing it again. under this bill, if they got caught, they would face very stiff, very automatic sanctions under this bill, if they got caught, they would face very stiff, very automatic sanctions. we are very focused on preventing the kind of interference we saw in 2016. >> facebook, your neighbor in silic silicon valley. >> yes. >> in terms of history, they have only been around for a snap of a finger. is it your sense that people who are on facebook have any idea of the violences of their own privacy that are committed nearly every single day by facebook as part of their business model. >> mike, i don't know that they are. they're so captivated by the notion of being part of the social network. my colleague has just written a

great book about how facebook is an extension in a lot of ways about this networking and need to be part of a network that we've experienced over the entirety of human history. they don't recognize it. it's such a fabric of their lives. it's a difficult situation for people to be in. >> i wonder why. that's why i go whack to the question if they're going to survive ultimately if they take full responsibility to what happened and try to rectify it. steve, you worked for the "new york times." you understand the accomplipubl industry. if facebook is a publisher, they have to take responsibility for everything that goes through their filter of collecting and sharing it. it's impossible. >> we've also been investors in facebook. we're not at the moment. i spent a fair amount of time

studying facebook. use it for free. robust social network. i don't think any of us want to abridge it by sensorship or somebody sitting here deciding what is fake news. you need a lot more disclosure along lines of campaign reform advertising where we basically now force advertisers to disclose they are advertising on a particular case.

>> nobody is asking anybody to sensor them. there is a question of responsibility transparency. and protecting people's privacy rights. i would feel very angry about it. senator, is there is there a concern for facebook users. little bit like when the banks failed and people lost their money. a platform with 2 billion users worldwide and the question is what is facebook's responsibility with respect to overseeing that process. for example, during the fight and ongoing battle against isis. they invest a lot of resources

trying to track sort of communications between terrorists overseas. it's a separate issue about using the information of for the users for the purpose of advertising and the main thing there is they need to be transparent and clear with their users about exactly what they data can be used for. the focus is on the advertising political advertising especially because if you put an advertisement on tv, you have to also provide certain disclosures

although not enough when it comes to super pacs and they're starting to do that on a voluntary basis. >> senator, what's your instinct not on the advertising, you've got this through a combination of greed and arrogance misused this information in terms of selling it to vendors who for instance would call facebook and say we would like a list. do you have a list of 25,000 quite affluent homeowners in montgomery county, part of your district, part of your state, only whites, can you give it to

us? and facebook basically says well, what color money are you going to send us. they say green, they say send it and we'll give it to you. what's your instinct on that. >> my instinct is facebook and if not facebook through some kind of regulation that we make sure that users of that kind of social media clearly if they failed to do that, my view is there should be federal backstop. there's a lot of different pieces to this conversation. already talked about accomplishing. talked about use of privacy information. talked about use of platforms for political advertising and campaigns. so there's clearly a lot to look at here. and i do believe when it comes

to the use of the data it's important that people have that policies very clearly disclosed to them. >> senator, let me change the subject and turn to appropriations bill that was recently passed. lonnie might have a view about this as well. didn't get a lot of attention because of stormy daniels and all the other excitement. what it looked like and it's a bit of a loaded question. president got increase in military spending. all of his budget requests are heavily cut. he threatened to veto anything from that. ended up being a $500 million propose ration for now. how do the democrats feel about that whole outcome of that

confrontation. >> we think it is a good result. we think it's a good result for the country. as you said increase for defense and national security, but we were also able to make robust investments and things like education other important priorities to grow the economy. and that's exactly why fox news and the far right went wild because we saw a piece of legislation with robust investments, but virtually nothing for any kind of wall. there was money for border security as there should be. democrats have supported that. not for the president's wall which is why you know all the right wing social media lit up that night and president woke up that morning threatening to veto the bill. the reality is they did not conduct a good negotiation.

i mean, the president talks about how he's the great negotiator. >> look, i think republicans did get ruled on this. i don't think it's a particularly good bill for a lot of the policy concerns that republicans have had. the fact they got a deal, the fact they didn't get a shutdown suggests something working. there is some mechanism in place to prevent the kind of -- not every shutdown is like this. we don't want to go to a shutdown. the reality as republicans realize if they let this go to a shutdown during an election year, the blame would fall squarely on them. they had to get this done. even though the senator is right, a lot of these republican priorities didn't get funded and in particular for the president, very disappointing to not get funding for the wall. at the end of the day, let me be

clear. the process on capitol hill worked. just even though the white house had people in the room as part of this negotiation apparently they didn't tell the president. the president woke up and said he didn't like the bill. that's primarily because he was tuning into the fox news the night before, and, you know, people were going after him and others. you know, we'll see how the next round goes, but i actually think this was a good result for the country and avoided a government shutdown which we obviously support. >> senator, thank you. up next on this holy thursday, we'll bring in author and columnist, ross who writes

about religion for the "new york times." we'll ask him about the moral dilemma that faces some evangelicals in the age of trump 6789 we'll discuss his new book about pope francis and future of catholic church. morning joe is coming right back. how do you win at business? stay at la quinta. where we're changing with stylish make-overs.

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that was pope francis during his calm sunday homily in which he called for young people to continue raising their voices. one day after student led protests worldwide against gun violence. joining us on this holy thursday, "new york times" columnist ross douthat. his new book "to change the church." i haven't been more excited

about a pope since pope john paul ii. you also write about religion for "the new york times." i wanted to ask you a little bit about this president and support in the evangelical community for president trump. >> sure. >> is it at a point where they are perhaps forcing themselves to be blind to clear moral concerns, that this president is putting forward on a daily basis? and i understand that much of the evangelical community is about forgiveness. so it's with that in mind, there are daily lies, there is bullying and there is now a growing sense that this president has sort of a team of people around him that help him do that and have helped him do that over the years. why aren't we hearing more? >> i think it's a mix, right. i think you have a part of evangelical america that has

sort of talked themselves into the idea that many of these stories about the president are lies spread to discredit him, that he is actually, if not literally a godly man, someone who's sort of open to conversion, who's sort of on his way, who's potentially, you know, you have terms like king david thrown around where people say look, king david had a lot of wives and he, you know, killed in order to marry and still god used him for good. there's that narrative which i think is basically a form of denial. but then you also have a big chunk of evangelical support that i think is just very aware and has been aware since the vet beginning. all this was apparent during the campaign. it was apparent if you knew ning about trump beforehand. they voted for ted cruz or marco rubio in the primaries who may not give trump his highest approval rating. some of these evangelicals,

their approval for him will go down. but they voted for him and may vote for him again basically as a kind of defensive maneuver. they see liberalism sort of arrayed against them. and they see voting for trump as effectively it's like, you know, he's a bully but he's their bully and he needs protection. that's the more reasonable version of evangelical support. >> let's talk about leaders in the ehave been gvangelical comm. there are several very well read and know the difference between right and wrong. they know the difference between a lie and the truth. and yet nothing. yet, there's silence. and it doesn't matter whether you're liberal, conservative, republican, democrat, there are things happening here. like, for maexample, as a catholic, i love hearing from pope francis and i love hearing from our religious leader also right now for a little bit of

maybe a compass, a moral compass. where is the evangelical community on donald trump? >> the nature of the evangelical community also is that, you know, i just wrote a book about pope francis and the nice thing about catholicism, you know who is in charge, right. you can say, look, the pope, he's doing these things, they're interesting, they're reckless, they're fascinating, they're dangerous. if i set out to do the same thing about evangelicalism, there is no pope of americangell evangelicalism. billy graham had long since passed his leadership position. so what's happened is you have evangelicals who i admire a great deal like russell moore, the southern baptist leader, very critical of trump during the campaign. that continues. but you also have a lot of let's be frank opportunists, right.

jerry fall well is just one guy among many who sees an opportunity to claim a little bit of his father's past leadership by attaching himself to trump. i agree with you. there's a real failure of evangelical leadership. i think what you'd want to say is look, i supported him, i might feel like i have to vote for him again, but in the meantime, i'm going to criticize him the way we would have criticized bill clinton in a similar situation. but it's also that there is some of that and you don't hear it because it's drowned out by the opportunists who want to go on tv and say hi i'm, you know, paula white for instance, the president's religious adviser. she's considered a hearatic. so there is -- i mean, we in the media play a part in this as well i think.

>> mike barnicle. >> the book, "to change the church," i, like many catholics, when the pope assumed the position, was thrilled. and you felt churchgoers especially in america opening up again. catholics returning to the faith. but the pope has flaws. as most men do. especially with regard to the sexual abuse scandal. when he in argentina basically says about a bishop in argentina, i need more proof before i comment on this. what kind of, what happens to you when you come out with a book that has reality-based therapy for pope and the catholics in the book? >> the swiss guards come out. there's a special dungeon under the vatican. no, it's an interesting thing, because i think what this pope has done that's been sort of helpful for conservative

catholics like myself and some of the move he's made has sort of allowed conservative catholics to understand where liberal catholics were sometimes coming from during the last two pontificates. conservative catholics got used to the idea that anything the pope said you were going to defend. now you have a pope who is a liberalizer in a way i think sometimes is admiral but sometimes is dangerous. and that means conservatives have to get used a little bit to the idea they have to cite side the pope hopefully in a respectful way but in a way that gives them a sense of where other people are coming from. the bottom line with the pope is he is a charismatic populist. with all of the strengths and weaknesses that intails. when it comes to sort of the details of church governance. the stuff in rome. there actually hasn't been a lot of movement. it's been gestures. often remarkable gestures. and of gambles. i mean, the big gamble in the west is the pope's attempt to

basically sort of create a kind of truce with post-sexual revolution realities and, you know, open communion for the remarried and essentially give a permission slip to churches in places like germany and more liberal and secularized countries to change in ways conservatives like me think, you know, flirts with ha s wits wis little bit. we may get an announcement that the vatican has made a deal with the beijing, which would be an incredibly high-stakes move, to give beijing the power over the appointment of bishops in the chinese church. but it comes with a lot of risks. because you're pushing a lot of the church's moral credibility into an alliance with a regime that's getting more authoritarian in china. >> as you and i and mike head

towards easter sunday, tell us what the future holds for this pope. what next will he do in his papacy? >> i think his legacy will depend on how these gambles turn out, right. i think you can make a world in which looking back we say oh, you know, conservatives grumbled but showed a new way to be catholic in the late modern world. if those gambles don't work, if people don't come back to mass, if the german church and the american church continue to weaken, then he's an even more significant figure in a way, but he's one who could have pushed the church further towards division and schism. so there's a lot on the line. >> ross douthat, thank you so much. the new book is "to change the church, pope francis and the future of catholicism." we appreciate you being on. we are looking at a lot of

different questions today. the question front and center could be whether trump's attorn attorney's attorney will speak out again on stormy daniels. will the president get a legal team that does anything for him? will the revelations about the pardon talk open up new questions in the russian probe? things seem to be closing in but they seem to be closing in every day. that does it for us this morning. chris jansing picks up the coverage right now. >> mika, thank you. hello, i'm chris jansing in for stephanie ruhle. spring cleaning. the secretary is out and the white house position who lavished stress on president's health is in. >> i told the president if he had a healthier diet, he might live to be over 200 years. >> lawyer room talk. a new report that trump's former lawyer john dowd floated the possibility of pardoning michael flynn and paul