>> interesting last point there about separation of church and state in a country almost 90% catholic. one pub owner said close to half a million people steam into dublin every weekend. by his thinking, why deprive good friday visitors of a good visit to a iconic friday pub? that is our broadcast. thank you so much for being here with us. whatever your persuasion, we wish you a good weekend. good night from nbc news headquarters in new york. tonight on "all in" -- >> we're going to end the government corruption and drain the swamp in washington, d.c. >> new allegations of corruption from the swamp of donald trump's creation. >> you're right about the swamp. say it again. >> tonight what looks like the most egregious abuse today from a member of trump's cabinet.

plus why robert mueller's investigators detained a mystery trump ally at an airport this week. new reporting on the drinking games inside the white house personnel office, examining the trump fence and thing one, thing two. >> it's not offense, it's a wall. >> and as advertisers pull away a fox news show, what is with all the vitriol aimed at parkland shooting survivors? >> welcome to the revolution. >> "all in" starts right now. >> good evening, from new york i'm chris hayes. it sure looks like the climate change skeptic that donald trump installed to lead the epa, scott pruitt, took a bribe from the wife of a top energy lobbyist who gave pruitt a sweetheart deal on a koncondo where he liv for six months last year. it's precisely the sort of objectionable ethical arrangement that the president

promised to eliminate. and ben carson, is currently being investigated for alleged live using his office for his son's private gain and who, byes watt -- by the way, tried to order a $31,000 dining table for his office. the swampiest is pruitt. he is now reportedly on the verge of rolling back rules requiring cars to be cleaner and more efficient. peru s pruitt is supposed to fly coach when he conducts government business but he's taken dozens of private flights. the epa spent $43,000 to install

a soundproof phone booth in his office and he managed to go through $120,000 in public funds for a single trip to italy. that cost is due in part for the roughly 30-person security detail pruitt insists he needs, which is far in excess in the past for epa administrators. then there's his latest ethical breach. >> when he first moved to washington, pruitt lived in this apartment. the owner, the wife of a personal friend, a top energy lobbyist who has multiple clients doing business with the epa. he reportedly paid $50 a night to rent only one room. similar apartments go for $6,000 a month. but sources say he used the entire unit and his daughter, a

white house intern at the time, stayed in the other bedroom free of charge. >> now pruitt was getting the sort of deal many could only dream of, a fancy condo in a prime location where he could keep his stuff yet only pay for the nights he slept there. that's a pretty good arrangement. by the way, his daughter could stay in the other room for free and all of that for the low, low, low rate of $50 per night. compared to this on air bnb, for this apartment he would have had to share with someone other than his daughter. the finding of an epa ethics officers was apparently dated today, the day the story broke, to argue there's nothing to see here, quote, "administrator pruitt's housing arrangement was not a gift." and there's one more odd twist tonight, last year pruitt's security detail broke down the door of the condo when it was

believed pruitt was unconscious and needed to be rescued, he was reportedly discovered waking up from a nap. the apa used public money to reimburse the condo's owner for the damage. joining me is the energy reporter at bloomberg news. a great piece of reporting, jennifer. you have what looks like a sweetheart deal, not a fair-market deal that the administrator is taking advantage off and there's been the lobbyist has that connects to a trip he took to morocco, is that right? >> to some degree. within of the lobbyist's clients is shenir energy, the first company exporting liquified natural gas ouf the the united states and last december pruitt took a trip to morocco to tout the benefit of liquified natural gas. he didn't actually lobby epa and

the energy department is the one that controls that. it was odd to see administrator pruitt being the ambassador for natural gas. >> just to be clear, the argument is this isn't in the epa's purview, it an energy issue, we lobby them. if it's not in the epa's purview, why is he taking the trip to morocco to extoll the virtue of liquid natural gas. >> that's the question we don't have an answer to. maybe it has something to do with his general interest in domestic oil and gas. pruitt is on the front lines of the president's push to embrace american energy. >> there's a memo out that epa released from deputy general counsel to the general counsel that basically exonerates pruitt and says it's fair market value and as such everything is on the

up and up. the thing that's odd about this is the memo is dated today. >> right. one of the really interesting things about the story is that there was no prior review, no indications there was any review of this living arrangement. perhaps the administrator never thought it was a problem or would cause challenges down the road. it wasn't submitted to ethics officers really until the news of the story broke by abc yesterday. it was at that time that ethics officials were briefed on the details of the arrangement. epa staff had to go and get docks in question, the lease and cancelled checks. it was only then that there was this review that culminated in the memo released today. >> there's reporting at cnn that the white house is frustrated with fpruitt controversy and tht his, quote, goose is cooked. >> we're being told there's quite a lot of frustration. we're hearing white house

officials all the way up frankly to the president are frustrated by what they see is kind of an unforced error, they're frustrated by the bad headlines, especially on the back of so many controversies, not just those by pruitt. his star still shines in some quarters of the white house but there is definitely a a sense of frustration over there. >> jennifer, thanks for being with me. >> thank you. >> joining me is john podesta, he was chief of staff for president clinton and he just wrote an op-ed in the "washington post" called enough is enough, scott pruitt needs to go. mr. podesta, you wrote that before the news about the condo deal. let's start with the condo deal

and work backwards to what you wrote in the op-ed. do you think that scans ethically to you? >> of course not. i mean, i think the more we learn about it, the worse it looks. up kno you know, i accused him of being in bed with the lobbyists, now we know the lobbyists were renting him a bed at a discounted rate. he was getting a condo at a low-market rate. they cooked this up to pretend they were only renting him his bedroom but now we know his daughter stayed in the condo as well. it's not bad enough that that looks sleazy. mr. pruitt spent 40,000 of our taxpayer dollars to fly first class to morocco to support the export of natural gas, which he has nothing to do with. but the husband of the lobbyist who owns the condo is a lobbyist for the largest gas terminal exporter in the united states, the on one at the time he went there. so the whole thing stinks.

more importantly, i think pruitt has done a horrible job protecting the environment and protecting public health. you know, the issue i had focused on was his decision not to ban over the recommendation of his staff a very dangerous agricultural chemical that causes brain damage in children. so he's just a mess and i think it's time for him to get out of there and for him to be replaced. >> where does he rank to you in this administration? i mean, there's obviously been a lot of folks in different cab in the agencies who either have had real ethical issues or seem to be sort of at war with the actual agency they're running. where is pruitt in that list? >> well, you know, i think he is very high, maybe tops the list of people who both have ethical challenges, have abused taxpayer dollars but also, as i said, have taken and turned upside down the mission of their agency.

and i think that really demonstrates the conflict he has that he's working for the polluters and the lobbyists rather than for the american public and particularly for the health of the american people and particularly children. so, you know, it's some have had ethical challenges, some have done things that were really untoward and not in the public interest. pruitt exemplifies the place where the beams cross. >> so are you surprised, not surprised, by his ability to endure? i mean, tom price had a sort of downfall over the amount of travel he was doing. pruitt has done lots of travel, rabid up real cost, first class, $120,000 to italy, $40,000 flight to morocco, he's got this condo deal, at war with his own administration he's running. how has he been able to survive? >> the one thing you have to say

about pruitt is from his days at attorney general, he's a man on a mission. and he's been effective at trying to tear down the protections that epa has put in place to protect the environment, to protect people's public health. and that was something i guess that is approved of in the white house. so whether it's -- now the new attempt to try to roll back auto emission standards which will cost consumers literally billions of dollars and expose more kids to the risk of asthma or whether it's his reversal on the clean power plan or his decision not to ban this dangerous agricultural chemical, i guess he's doing what the president wants him to be doing. and if you have to give him some grudging credit, he's somewhat more effective at it than someone like ben carson or some of the other cabinet officers. >> i think that's probably right

on the money. i have to ask this finally. i mean, you -- obviously you were on the clinton campaign and you ran against donald trump, who relentlessly attacked hillary clinton and the people in the clinton circle for being corrupt, for self-dealing, for the swamp, et cetera. what is it like to watch these kinds of stories come out where literally the head of the epa is renting a an apparently below-market condo from an energy lobbyist and remember those attacks during the campaign? >> well, look, i think trump has always been someone whether in business or in politics as someone who says one thing and does exactly the opposite. you know, he stiffs his contractors, he stiffed his workers and now he's stiffing the american people. if this is his idea of draining the swamp, i think all of washington is going to drown in it. >> john podesta, thank you for making some time. >> thanks, chris. >> with me now, former governor

christine todd whitman, administrator of the epa under george w. bush. as someone who had this job, does this arrangement that he was renting from the wife of energy lobbyist scan to you, is that okay? is that kosher? >> no, of course not. we did everything to make sure there was a good distance between me and anyone who had business before the agency. we were very careful. if there was certainly lobbyists, we'd never have that kind of a personal -- not relationship because maybe you know them outside of their lobbying times, but this kind of thing where you're renting an apartment and clearly getting it for less than market value. you just wouldn't put yourself in that position. i never was allowed -- i talked to my chief counsels and my counsels, the chief came from new jersey with me, and we said, look, if someone has an issue before the agency, you don't meet with them. you have to be very careful about that. you can meet with business of course when they have

generalized things but if they have a specific issue before the agency, the administrator has got to maintain some form of separation so that you can be an honest judge when the issues come forward. >> i keep wanting to ask someone who has had this job before and have i you here now about all the things i've seen. i don't know, i've never been the straightor the administrator of the epa but a 30-person detail service sound like a lot to me. am i wrong? >> i had two. i didn't have 30 when i was governor. you had four who traveled with you and two who went ahead and somebody at the house but you never traveled with that many. i certainly never had a private phone booth put into the office at the epa. there is a room downstairs that is totally soundproof if you need to be in that kind of situation. but there are so many things that are counter to what the agency is about.

what really worries me is the damage being done for all of us, to all of us. john podesta mentioned the tail pipe emissions, rolling that standard back. it makes no sense from a financial point of view because most of the auto companies have already planned for that -- >> they've already done it. >> they've already done it. a lot of the utilities are encouraging people to move to electric cars. but we know that studies show that some 300,000 people a year in this country die from dirty airborne-related causes. do you really want to make that worse? the agency is about protecting public health and the environment. i'm all for taking a look at regulations, there are some that have outlived their usefulness, new technology has superseded the kind of things that were required, but this is mindless. anything that had anything to do with barack obama, it's gone, good, bad, indifferent, we don't care. it just going to do real damage down the line. swhat's so troub.

>> should pruitt have to go? >> i don't know who would come in his place, that's the problem. he's certainly doing what the president wants him to do. he is not the energy lobbyist and yet he's acted like that on many occasions. i think he believes in what he's doing absolutely and i believe the president believes m what he's doing. so he'll probably stay there and i don't know that you get someone else that would take a different tact with this president. >> christine todd whitman, thanks for your time tonight. that was really illuminating. >> you're welcome. >> next, a surprising development in the mueller probably today. another trump ally reportedly detained and investigated at the airport. tonight he's telling nbc news what they wanted to know. those details in two minutes. who worked with vmware... to develop technologies to help redirect the flow of blood

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>> if you're having a hard time following all the threads in the mueller investigation, i have bad news for you. there's a new character in the investigation. i present it out ted malloch, a professor, an informal adviser to the trump campaign, big booster. today he told nbc news he was detained by the fbi at boston's logan airport on wednesday after a flight back from london that he was served a subpoena from the special counsel's office. also, questioned on the spot in the airport. malloch said agents asked him about roger stone and whether he ever visited the ecuadorian embassy in london where julian assange lived since 2012. he says agents searched his cell phone and he plans to appear for further questioning april 13th. for more on another new character, here's harry lipman, former federal prosecutor and department of justice lawyer. first of all, how common is it to do this move where you grab the person as soon as they land at the airport? >> yeah, and you have an order already to capture his cell phone. they had totally done their homework.

they said they knew he was a big fan of the philadelphia eagles. and then they begin to hit him with all these questions. it's not uncommon. you want to initially question somebody when they are off balance. but it's going to be coupled with of course, the grand jury subpoena. and what's significant, chris, you know, you're right. it's a new thread. you pull that thread, we have a whole other chapter here, and i don't think malloch will turn out to be a huge part of the probe but remember what we find out from about the probe is only what witnesses or defendants let us know. and here we have malloch who goes right to ferage and cambridge analytica and roger stone. it's this breathless kind of new development that shows you know, mueller is not thinking about the red line, the blue line, the yellow line. he's just thinking about the

finish line and plumbing the death penalties of everything that is involved here, i'm sure to trump's great chagrin. we're back in tom clancy territory with a very rich complicated brew centering around the 2016 release of the wikileaks documents. >> that's what struck me. i mean, we've got the reporting yesterday that from a single anonymous source over at cnn gates was told when they were seeking his cooperation, we don't need you for manafort. we have manafort. let's talk about russia and the trump campaign. this guy says yeah, they're asking me about roger stone, about wikileaks. that indicates to me they are on the scent of the thing in question, was there collusion, was there cooperation, did the two entities work with each each other. >> completely. as you say about gates, we thought he was there to stitch up manafort. now we have reason to think it's all on the collusion side of

things with manafort and others. he was involved with this so-called person a who is constantine clip nick who was a russian spy operative. we're down in the muck of russian collusion big-time. and again, we only learned the parts of the elephant that individual witnesses tell us but we know from these pieces that mueller is very focused on the whole 2016 mess. >> i think that's right. i think you talk about the parts of the elephant, right in the fable of the blind man with the elephant, that that's how we're seeing the mueller investigation. i'm struck george nader for instance who was also caught in an airport, i hadn't thought of him as a key part of it. but when you start to look into it, it's like he might it be another sort of transmission vector here. it makes me wonder about the scope of this thing in terms of what we see and what they see. >> to the extent you wonder, i would assume that it's broad. malloch is a guy how turns

around and starts talking. i'm sure there are other people who get a lawyer and go to the grand jury or fight it. there's so much we don't know even about whom they're speaking with and beyond that what that are vetting. again, i was really struck but how they had done their homework. this guy comes off the plane and they've got him chapter and verse. and very much, the only reason to focus on this fellow is because of his ties to the whole chapter of wikileaks and julian assange and russia collusion and that's a whole kettle of fish there. >> harry litman, thank you very much. >> thank you, chris. >> coming up, the remarkable lengths the president will go to to avoid having to personally fire anyone and what we're learning tonight about the drinking games being played inside the white house. ht now... aah! ...i would have said you were crazy. but so began the year of me.

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you spoke to him. he made no mention of the fact that he was about to terminate

you? >> that's correct. >> and then you found out via tweet. >> yeah, right before that, the chief of staff kelly gave me a call which i appreciated, gave me a heads-up. and so -- but that was much after the phone call. >> last night on the show, former veterans affairs secretary david shulkin made a stunning revelation. he said he spoke to the president on wednesday the same day he was fired and there was no mention he was going to fire shulkin. later the president fired him with a tweet and announced he would tap his own doctor to replace him. not only does the president seem to have a problem for what he became famous for on tv but the office responsible for vetting some of the personnel suffers from short comings some of the most pronounced in history. a former director of appointments in the new jersey governor's office, chris lue,

former secretary of labor in the obama white house who worked inside the white house for years and bets see woodruff for "the daily beast." tara, this is not a new thing but it just is amazing to me the guy who became famous for saying you're fired cannot do it no matter what. he was clearly teed up in that conversation to just say the words to david shulkin you're fired and can't do it. >> and he wasn't even face-to-face. they were on a phone call. it's easiest to do it that way. here's the thing. i own a small business. unfortunately, i've had to let two people go in the course of operating my small business. and i will tell you, even when it's for cause, it is extraordinarily difficult. but that's what leaders do. >> i mean, there is no one -- by the way i will just say, i talked to someone last night who has a good sense of trump's personality. and said he hates personal conflict. which, by the way, is extremely relatable. i find the fact that he can't pull the trigger to fire anyone

one of the more endearing aspects of the president. chris, this speaks to a broader problem which we are seeing from rob porter to the ethics problem in all the different agencies to the people who keep finding had andrea kosinski keeps finding things in their background. there is a quality control problem with people in this white house. >> yeah, you know, chris, staffing a government is serious work. and it needs serious people. and this remarkable piece in the "washington post" today that looks at the white house personnel office shows they don't have enough people doing this job, they're too inexperienced and they haven't been vetted themselves, which is remarkable. "the washington post" found there are people who work at the white house personnel office who themselves have inflated their own resumés and who have arrest records.

so donald trump can blame senate all he wants for the fact that he doesn't have people in place, but this is his on personnel office that is falling down on the job. >> here's another excerpt from that "washington post" piece. the ppo office is on the first floor of the eisenhower executive building became something of a social hub where young staffers from the administration stopped by to hang out and smoke electronic cigarettes. betsy what, did you make of that piece? >> i was reached out to by a former trump administration official who was outraged about it and in particular was very irate about one detail that comes in towards the end of the piece. this is the detail of katia bullock, special assistant to the president, in four white houses. she's a veteran and knows how it works. four of her relatives have all gotten plum administration positions during this administration. she says she had nothing to do with it. sources i spoke to said they believe that's impossible. these positions that bullock's relatives got are great jobs and come with the same quality of health care comparable to the president's quality of health care. frequently people who get these jobs get security clearances which can be worth tens and

hundreds of thousands of dollars of income after you leave the administration. those are really valuable. these jobs come with generous salary packages. to get to have four off your family members get jobs like that in an administration when you are in a position that involves hiring people is something that my source told me would have resulted in congressional hearings if it was happening under democratic administration. and my source is a die hard republican. this is a former trump administration official who said if it was a democratic president and we were getting this story, there would be hearings. >> that is remarkable. it speaks to the fact as far as i can tell, and i know people that worked in the obama administration. >> right. >> there is no vetting being done whatsoever. i honestly think no one -- just basic vets the kind you used to when you were running the boards and commissions office for the governor of new jersey. >> we would do three-way background checks on people and which take less time and we

would do four-way background checks on. for people we didn't do collection on, they would have to fill out the judiciary questionnaire which by the way a lot of people trump nominated lied on their questionnaire and literally faced no repercussions. even if you are being vetted and given the paperwork of being vetted, no one's checking what they're putting. when they're being caught, there is no mechanism from congress or leadership from congress to hold anyone accountable. >> how did it work in the obama administration, chris? >> it didn't work like this. we had a professional operation in presidential personnel. the trump people have about 30 people there. we had multiple times that. we had people that had experience running large organizations and we took it seriously. one of the amazing statistics is that there are over 200 key positions in the trump administration for which there is no nominee. we're in an opioid crisis, there's no drug czar. the president's going to meet with the north korean leader.

there's no ambassador to south korea. he added a controversial question to the census. there's no census director. there are real consequences when you're not filling these jobs. >> one more piece of color, betsy, from that piece in the "washington post" what the personnel office is like in the white house. january, the folks in the office played a drinking game in the office called icing to celebrate the deputy director's 30th birthday where you walk up and give him a smirnoff ice that is four or five years old. not to be petty but that's a little done. but it gives you a little bit of -- >> i thought it was a new thing. we didn't play that when i was in college. it made me feel like an old person. >> it gives you a sense of what the operation is there. i guess i wonder as someone who reports on this white house, what is your general sense of what the level of competence is generally in that place? >> it's not great. part of the reason is trump has sent a message from the top down that the only thing that really matters is loyalty to donald trump. >> right, right. >> and competence is not necessarily part of that.

we know from the early days of the transition, there were signs in the transition team office that said never trump equals no job. if you eliminated everyone who said they were a never trump republican which is what this administration did, you eliminate a vast swathe of the washington republican establishment. okay, that's what trump campaigned on. great. guess what, the washington republican establishment includes a lot of lawyers who would have been the doing the legwork of vetting people to get jobs in the administration. all those resources were tossed out the window and the result is that you get a bunch of people who while loyal are not necessarily super duper experienced. >> walking around vaping and icing each other. i want to play this last bit of sound from carl higbie. he's someone who got a job over at the americorps agency. this is the kind of thing, this is just an example of the sorts of things this guy is on the record saying. >> the culture that is breeding this welfare and the high percentage of people on welfare in the black race, it's a lax of

morality. >> i have somebody who lives in my condo association that has five kids. they don't have jobs. they're there all the time. i bet you can guess what color they are. >> i was called islammophobe the other day. no, i'm not afraid of them. i don't like them. >> that's on the radio. when that came out, he was fired and promptly hired by the super pac working with the president, which sends a message what they view as tolerable and not tolerable. >> that's exactly right. trump basically is surrounded and has hired racist homophobes, mercenaries as i say amateur mercenaries and criminals. that's what this administration has come down to at this point. the double standard for everything this guy has said about black people literally applies to donald trump. literally. >> a culture of lax morality. tara, chris lu, and betsy woodruff, thank you for joining us. still ahead, laura ingraham that

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it all right here. ready to go? peloton. thing 1 tonight, we've all seen how obsessed our president is with building a wall on the southern border. he's been very specific about the fact it has to be a real wall. we already have quite a bit of fencing along the border with

mexico, but, no, that is not good enough. >> they all say the fence. first of all, we're going to build a wall and it's going to be a real wall. okay? >> on the fence, it's not a fence, it's a wall. we just misreported it. we're going to build a wall. >> it has to be a properly built wa wall, not a little fence like they would have. >> definitely a wall, not a fence. but here's the thing, along the way trump got even more specific about the wall. >> you think of a wall as a wall. but honestly, you do need some see-through ability. >> you need to have a great wall but it has to be -- has to be see-through. >> we want vision and be able to see through who is on the other side of the wall. >> so a wall you can see through. well, there's a name for a see-through wall. that's thing 2 in 60 seconds. actually, you do. harmful bacteria lurk just below the gum line, and if you're not taking care of your gums, you're not taking care of your mouth. so now i use this. crest gum detoxify.

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the start of construction on trump's border wall. those photos are part of a project in calexico, california, it's been in the works nine years. and it's to replace a little over two miles of existing wall built from recycled sheet metal. and second, take a closer look what they're replacing the old wall with. customs and border patrol calls the replacement a bollard style wall, a bollard is a post. it's a wall made out of posts otherwise known as a fence. they are literally taking down an existing wall and replacing it with a fence which is also another way of describing what you might call a see-through wall. in just over a year, president trump has managed to reinvent the concept of a fence and gosh darn it, he is going to get that built. >> we need walls. we started building our wall, i'm so proud of it. we're getting that sucker built. you think that's easy? people said, oh, has he given up on the wall? i never give up.

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there are massive problems with criminal justice in america of course, but every once in a while there's a story i find especially infuriating. this is one of them. a texas woman was just sentenced to five years in prison for voting illegally in 2016. five years. crystal mason has argued her illegal vote was an accident. shortly before the 2016 election, you see, she had been released from federal prison serving just under three years for tax fraud.

she was released under community supervision but says she was never told according to texas law, you can't vote while still under supervision. so on election day she cast a provisional ballot and that decision has landed her back in prison for five years. mason said at the time of her arrest you think i would jeopardize my freedom? who would as a mother and provider leave their kids over voting? the "fort worth star telegram" reports she was taken to jail. at the conclusion of her trial a chorus of small children waved and said "bye-bye, big mama." mason's attorneys filed for an appeal. it's clear she did break the law and ignorance of the law is no excuse. what should her punishment be? here's a similar example. this woman in iowa intentionally voted twice for donald trump because she said the polls are rigged. she was sentenced to two years probation and $750 fine or this former colorado republican chairman steve curtis, a talk radio host who claimed during the election only democrats

commit voter fraud was convicted of filling out his ex-wife's ballot in 2016, forging her signature and mailing it in. steve curtis received no jail time. he was sentenced to probation and community service. what would our founding fathers want us to do about this president? i'm tom steyer, and when those patriots wrote the constitution here in philadelphia, they created the commander in chief to protect us from enemy attack the justice department just indicted 13 russians for an electronic attack on america. so what did this president do? nothing. he's failed his most important responsibility - to protect our country. the question is: why is he still president?

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it's a drone! i know. find your phone easily with the xfinity voice remote. one more way comcast is working to fit into your life, not the other way around. to be held accountable. i don't care who you are. a bully is a bully and they must be held accountable and that's what we're trying to do here. >> david hogg is refusing to back down over his push for advertisers to drop laura ingraham's show on fox. the controversy began when ingraham mocked hogg. he's rejected by four colleges he applied to and whines about it. hogg said pick a number one through 12, pick that company next to the number and it was a list of ingraham's advertisers. they released plans to drop ads from the fox news show not because of the political position but because she was personally attacking this kid

who has chosen to get politically active after, let's remember, surviving a mass murder at his school. she's not the only one. it seems that huge portions of the right confounded and threatened by these kids and trying to create alternate reality where they are liars or actors or brown shirts or out for a more nefarious purpose than simply saving their lives. joining me media matters and eric of share blue and senior advisor and national spokesperson for move n.org. why are people losing their minds over these kids? i really mean that. >> this is not unusual for the conservative media. this is how they respond to everybody and everything. it's just that in this moment they have the attention and capability to tell their story. this is absolutely normal. >> what sparked it is the march. there is a simmering contentiousness towards the kids. millions of people show up on

saturday across the country to protest both trump and the nra. monday morning national review put up a david hogg is a demagogue. that was the sounding bell. it was a war all week on specifically hogg and the problem with ingraham, she fell into it when right wing picks a villain to have to dehumanize. ingraham saw him completely dehumanized and jumped the rail into this weird social bullying. had nothing to do with guns. >> if you look at what these kids have done in just a little bit over a month since the shooting, they have literally changed the modern day playbook on organizing and creating a movement. they were able to get florida to pass the state legislator to pass a bill and turn it into law. that is amazing. the nra got dropped by delta, by united, by dicks, i mean, these kids are making things happen in a way that we've never seen before. >> i just want to be clear.

ingraham's tweet, which to me was more petty than vile, just grow up. what's wrong with you? it wasn't disgusting but there is the washington times, david hogg would have made a good brown shirt. that's a verbatim quote of a piece. this photo of emma gonzalez holding the photo, they doctored it to make it look like she was ripping up the constitution. they are objects of the two-minute hay. now, the thing that i do understand, right, is the idea that because you have gone through a horrible trama, you are necessarily correct about what your policy position is, which i feel like people in the right feel like what is put out there. i remember there were surviving family members of victims of 9/11 who were for torture or for guantanamo or iraq and people in the nrc that lost loved ones committed by unauthorized immigrants and for building a wall.

i get the fact that because you have suffered a trauma does not mean you're right on policy, right? we all agree on that? >> yeah. >> the way to deal with that is not to go after the people that suffered trama. we did not see this on the other side. we didn't see people going after the family members of the folks that appeared in the rnc. >> that's right. this is who they are. i was thinking back when this happened, laura ingraham, has she ever gone after a child before? during the refugee crisis in central america all those children were leaving, at one point she was playing footage of them moving and dekraaiicrying fact that we were giving them resources and food and then she started playing the taco bell commercial. her point was to attack these kids who were in extremely bad situations and saying it was our own policies encouraging them to do this. that was not abnormal for her, either. this is her default.

>> fox has found one or two in particular students from parkland, i haven't seen any liberal to try to take them out at the knees. i don't know anything about his family, i don't care about his family, he's great speaking. >> exactly. good for you. you feel differently about this issue. you suffered this trama, you're going to the white house. >> right. >> go to it. >> maybe you'll see the liberal. i think the construction of this is this movement is being led by kids, which we haven't seen with gun movement and they are getting things done. they grew up in the internet era. they grew up -- >> that's the other thing. >> think about it, they grew up reading "harry potter" telling them kids can change the face of history. this is what they know. >> if you've ever been on a subway and been roasted by teenagers. that's what i feel like we're watching and there is a weird crazy jujitsu meme on the right,

the shooter was like a victim of bullying. no, this is like a real thing that's out there. this disgusting idea that the murderer was a victim of bullying and that the villains in the story are these kids. >> to piggy back off what she said, one of the ways they are changing things is leapfrogging. they didn't ask the nra to change their behavior. they accepted they won't do it. so we're not going to bang our heads against the wall. we'll by pass them by going to those who have power over them. five years ago you would see a petition, please, fox news, do something to laura ingraham. but they bypassed it. they accepted they have to bypass it. >> they moved on. they went past us and said you won't do anything, fox news, so we'll get to where it hurts, money. >> this is the problem because once advertisers leave, they won't come back. rush limbaugh is still on the air and he's not recovered in terms of his bottom line. bill o'reilly doesn't have a job, breitbart has a fraction of

the advertisers. fox news says we'll bring new advertisers in. who will step forward and say i want to be on the laura ingraham show? i don't think anybody will step forward in weeks. >> she went after a kid, a teenager in a petty, awful, awful way. it's like really, 4.1. that's the gpa you're going to go after? so silly. >> there is something -- i think you're right. i keep coming back to what is it about these kidding driving people insane? you're right, it's the effectiveness. i'm trying to come up -- >> in over a month. look how successful they have been. >> after sitting and watching. >> right. >> and the daily grind of gun violence in this country, murder after murder, suicide after suicide. >> nothing happens. a couple days of grief and that's it and everybody moves on. >> i don't think they are interested in persuading other people. part of what the right is trying to do is hold the line. it's important to go after the kids not to persuade the people they may lose. they are trying to keep their people together. that's a testament to how these

children, how effective they've been. >> thank you-all. before we go, quick reminder, my book, "a colony in a nation" is available. good evening i'm lawrence o'donnell and this is tonight's "last word" live from los angeles. no one got fired from the white house today, no one forcefully escorted out of the building by security. every cabinet member who had had a job at breakfast today still had the same job at sun down today because the president of the united states spent his 104th day playing golf. so far the golfiest president of all time has not actually fired anyone while playing golf, except possibly some caddies who are not on the white house payroll. many inside the white hous