>> wow. that's remarkable. >> this is quite the white house transcript. >> that was remarkable on so many fronts. >> yeah. >> inaccurate on just about every front. >> he doesn't understand. it's 50/50 on that. that was the president speaking outside church before easter services president trump railed against mexico, democrats and the immigration policy known as daca, which he got completely factually wrong. >> he also was using language from a fox news script that had been playing earlier this morning. >> that was the last thing he saw and heard so it came out of his mouth. that's his pattern. >> it's unbelievable. nick, it's unbelievable. >> sad. >> you had a busy weekend this weekend, didn't you? >> i did. >> the president apparently did, too. golfing. watching fox news. going to church. but he said people were trying to flip over the border to take advantage of daca. they're about 11 or 12 years

late. >> yeah. >> when you had to do that before 2007. >> if the fox news feed goes in one ear and comes out the other ear and comes out the mouth it becomes something about daca people coming over the border. okay. mr. president, people who are applying for daca are already here and they are not coming here from mexico now. they are already in america, just fiy. >> fiy. >> trump tv or people who feel they work for trump on tv. i don't know how they spend this one. good morning, everyone. >> they're not qualified. again, daca recipients are not qualified unless they got here before i think it was, what, june of 2007? >> so we're stumbling into monday, april 2nd here. with us we have political writer for the new york times and msnbc political analyst, nick confessore and columnist associate editor, for the washington post, david ignatius

and jon meacham. >> i thought it was interesting, mika, if you look at what the president said and this weekend i was struck by all of the false information coming out of the white house, it seemed like a more steady pace. >> yeah. >> then on top of that, i actually saw an ally of the president using a lot of local news stations to run a propaganda clip. so here you have an entire broadcasting system running a propaganda clip. >> this is pretty frightening. >> attacking news agencies while the president himself was running a lot of fake news stories. >> well, and i find the anchors to be frightening, too, that they did this. so it goes all the way down to who actually let the words pass

through their mouth without thinking about them. early last month, reports surfaced that the largest owner of television stations in this country, sinclair broadcast group, was planning to force anchors across the country to attack other media outlets for sharing, quote, fake stories. the broadcaster is known for pushing a conservative platform and mandating must-run commentary. over the past week or so, anchors nationwide were required to read from the script, not their own commentary, the commentary of their company as this mashup from dead spin illustrates the results are chilling. >> hi, i'm fox san antonio jessica headily. >> our greatest responsibility is to serve our treasured communities. >> eastern iowa communities. >> mid michigan communities. >> we are extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism

that cbs 4 produces but we are concerned about one-sided news stories plaguing our country. >> sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media, more alarming some media outlets publish the same fake stories without checking facts first. >> the sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media. >> more alarming some media outlets policies completely aren't true without checking facts first. >> unfortunately some members of the community platforms to push their own personal biased and agenda to control exactly what people think. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

>> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> jon meacham, i think we would all agree that. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> a national broadcasting system that is shoving propaganda down local anchor's throats -- >> then reading them. >> straight, straight from the pen of somebody who is a trump acolyte is really, really chilling. >> it's kind of beyond chilling, right? it's state media, essentially. it's one of the things that we've always, as a country,

prided ourselves on a free press. people can accuse us of thinking alike sometimes. they don't do that anymore, but back mid century, but at least that was a free choice. this is something that's sort of fascinating. i guess only donald trump can do this, could unify fears of corporate media plus first amendment people plus true conservatives who should be worried about large institutions dictating the reality for others. so, anyone worried about any of those issues should be, as you say, chilled by this. >> david, this is -- it looks like something that we would mock the russians for during the days of provda, and yet again you have donald trump, you combine this with donald trump

attacking actually respectable news outlets that actually fight hard everyday to get it right, while donald trump in his white house and his allies are churning up their own fake news. they're lying to the american people throughout the weekend over the past year, year and a half, but they're trying to discredit those who are actually calling them out on their lies and now they're using an entire broadcast system and i'm not sure who advertises on these stations, but they're basically advertising for america's new provda. >> joe, that mashup was funny. it had me almost giggling, the repetition over and over again of these lines, but obviously it's not funny. i found myself wondering what those journalists, those people who decided i want to be in the news business and i'm going to work hard at my local station. i want to be in that business of sharing information, telling the truth to people, what they felt

reading these can lines and what they're going to feel when they see around the country people -- they probably don't know that everybody was saying the same thing. they will now. and i hope people in our business -- i think we're the best check against this. wait a minute, i'm not going to do that. i believe in this business. i didn't come into journalism to repeat the same things over and over again, but that's one check against people trying to put things down the throats of journalists in quotation marks to get this uniform lineup. >> yeah. >> i'm surprised not one person said i'm not going to read this. that's stunning to me. really depressing. why are you in this business? >> and nick, there is, of course, a business angle to this. >> right. >> donald trump gave sinclair a sweetheart deal and they're paying him back. >> that's right. sinclair is trying to acquire even more tv stations and trying to make this deal go through, so

it's easy to look at this as a way to win some favor in the trump administration and win some favor with the president's appointees at the fcc. there is certainly a business angle to this. and if just kind of picture these people with even more stations and having this happen over even a bigger part of the country, that's what we're going for in the future. >> you look at what happened this weekend, mika, and you actually have a reason for sinclair to believe if we attack everybody else, if we blindly follow the president, we'll be rewarded because if we actually did our jobs, we would be attacked. and we saw that happen with a lot of people that work at david's paper the washington post this weekend. the president has no problem calling the media enemies of the state. has no problem constantly lying about them. he has no problem being angry when they call him out on his own lies. what's so interesting is as

those news anchors from around the country were saying that this weekend, you know, and they were instructed to recite words that legitimize the president's agenda, it was donald trump who was lying. he lied about the daca program. you just saw that. he said people were crossing the border to take advantage of daca. well, unless they had a time machine, like i said, if they had a delorean, if they went back to the future to before i think june of 2007, they could have taken advantage of it. but he lied about daca. he lied about amazon. and post office rates. he lied about "the washington post" who happened to publish his story about donald trump's finances. and all of that just days after websites, including info wars

and others, accused parkland survivor david hagg of not being at the parkland massacre. that was picked up by mainstream media, by the way. hostile to the parkland students. the president's allies also picked up the fact -- false attacks that chairwoman of the republican national committee, for instance, one of the more depressing things belief it or not in a depressing political weekend, she tweeted democrats hate our president more than they love our country. i'll say that again. democrats hate our president, says the gop chairwoman, more than they love our country. steve schmidt responded, ronna, do you mean democrats like seth maulton, who served five tours as a marine office in iraq?

or medal of honor recipients senator bob kerry or purple heart recipients senator tammy duckworth? shame on you. yo your. >> border patrol agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the border because of ridiculous liberal laws like catch and release. however, the president tweeted the border is, quote, getting more dangerous. caravans coming. some view this phrasing as trump's reaction to a fox news segment about central american migrants where caravans appeared on skreep. oh my god. >> it's amazing. he sees caravan of immigrants headed to the u.s., which is just an absolutely preposterous story. and then he goes, jon meacham,

then he goes to church. he makes a statement outside of church, repeats it verbatim as having all the facts wrong and saying he's going to destroy a trade deal with mexico and canada that helps farmers in iowa and across middle america as much as it helps anybody just because we now learn that trump is, quote, unleashed, quote unhinged, that he has nobody around him anymore to say, mr. president, actually you're dead wrong. the story is dead wrong and you're spreading a lie if you go out there and say that. >> yeah. there's no evidence that he would care even if someone were there to say it. is there? >> no. >> really? there's no distinction. we're however many months into america held hostage here in april of '18.

the great hope was however against the facts of the campaign were that somehow or another there would be a line between or separate fears between the showmanship and substance that somehow the great ship of state would take care of the substance of the presidency. it seems to me that that hope is still there because, you know, as churchill repeated to have said you can always count on americans to do the right thing after we exhaust every other possibility. so there is some of that. but those -- that fear, that distinction between showmanship and substance is pretty much gone. and i think that people who were willing to take a flier on, unconventional president, we had enough of the bushes and clintons, we want to shake things up, you know, when does

the substance happen? when does that person get paid back for enduring all of the chaos? and the final point i would make here is the idea that what comes out of a president's mouth matters enormously is under enormous strain. i've been very skeptical of and very hesitant to say that he's changing the presidency. you know, we know the presidency isn't changing him, but is he changing the presidency. but i do think that there is a point at which the devaluation of what a president says and really the erosion of gravitas is going to have a significant global impact, not only american cultural one but a global one. >> it already has. >> it already has and it's getting worse, david ignatius. the president is just doing -- he's just doing things without

input from anybody else, he'll watch fox news, go out and make a statement to royal the markets. get angry because hope hicks is leaving. he will decide to start a trade war. the chinese now are responding with tariffs of their own towards u.s. products that are going to hurt american consumers and also going to hurt american manufacturers, american farmers. here you have the president going out again because he saw fox news segment going out talking about, quote, caravans of people coming to the united states. and saying that he's going to up end a trade deal that binds north america together and again helps farmers in the middle of america as much as anybody else. >> we don't know, joe, whether people are going to begin to tune these remarks out. but i'll give you two examples from friday that show the real world effects of these

off-the-cuff remarks. i had a south korean ask me are the president's comments about holding the new trade deal that was just negotiated with south korea, which is a bit of a breakthrough, hostage until the negotiations with north korea, is that real? does he really mean that? or is he just ad libbing? they really didn't know. but they were sort of mortified at a time when they're conducting the most sensitive diplomacy for their country that this would be dropped on them. then the president made another off the cuff remark thursday night he said we're getting out of syria soon, we're getting out of syria very soon. there were frantic calls from our troops who are deployed there trying to maintain order, maintain control. this has been a heck of a fight in eastern syria and thank goodness the isis killers who

were there had been vanquished, but our troops on the ground are kind of reading the reporting from washington and wondering has the president just decided we're leaving? they couldn't get any answers. that's the situation. they couldn't get any answers back. just to say one final point, to me the worst of this was that on easter sunday, a day when we try to reflect deeply, we had the president basically taking these kids who have done nothing, who have been here in this country at least 11 years, who are blameless, who are just living here trying to do their work, turning them into bargaining chips and saying i'm not going to do anything about those dreamers until they build my wall. and suddenly human beings were in this really brutal effort to give him the win that he has decided that he has to have. it's been a depressing, disturbing process. but again, it has real world consequences for people.

>> so the president, meanwhile, his complaint about big drugs and people flows from mexico, contradicts his own claims of major drops in his first year. take a listen. >> since the day of my election, we've already cut illegal immigration at the southern border by 61%. >> i'm very proud to say that we're way down on the people coming across the border. we have fewer people trying to come across because they know it's not going to happen. >> so, i'm sorry, nick, the president says people are flooding across the border after he says people aren't flooding across the border that they've actually stemmed the tide of it, which of course the tide was stemmed as we said repeatedly during the election when he was saying build that wall. the tide was already going down. in fact, it was reversing. there was a negative flow back into mexico. >> right. so the net flow of migrants

decreased under obama because obama was actually pretty tough on border crossings. he didn't want to make himself a point of being tough because it was bad politically. >> he was criticized. that's fake news. it's not fake news. the president was criticized constantly by hispanic groups. >> absolutely. >> and immigrant groups for being too tough on border crossings and it was actually, like you said, really knocked down. >> now the president has an incentive to hype up the problem and say it's getting worse when it's actually getting better. instead of taking a victory lap, because, yes, people are afraid to come in because they fear they cross the border illegally trump's i.c.e. will be there and push them back. so there has been a drop off. >> so what is this about? what's his incentive? >> because a politician like trump has to keep escalating the sense of crisis to say it's always getting worse and turn to me because i can make it better. that's been his style to talk

about american carnage. >> i'm confused. can you replay that clip, alex, where he said things are getting better because again we said it constantly through the campaign that the border crossings that were so bad under george w. bush was cut back severely by barack obama, he was attacked constantly by hispanic groups and immigrant groups and the numbers are there. border crossings were down dramatically and even the president admitted this, of course he took credit, but that's fine. this is what the president said here. play this. >> since the day of my election, we've already cut illegal immigration at the southern border by 61%. >> i'm very proud to say that we're way down on the people coming across the border. we have fewer people trying to come across because they know it's not going to happen. >> no, actually they weren't for a while and leaving more. >> again, so then we have three,

four, five years of that trend and then the president of the united states brags about it. of course he takes credit for it, but so be it. and then this weekend he just, again, he just starts lying like he always does. but again, you contrast that with what happened with the sinclair broadcasters. >> yeah. >> and it really is. it's part of a much bigger plan, which is lie, if you're the president of the united states. attack news agencies and reporters who were telling the truth, and then buy off propagandists who really are again -- i really want -- can we play the end of that clip as we go to break? >> it's incredible. and chilling. >> it really is. i can't. >> and heart breaking. >> jon meacham, does that not remind you so much of what we as americans and what those of us

in the free world mocked from soviet block countries during 50, 45 years of the cold war? and we said, that's what separates us from them. they're stooges that just repeat the lines that are fed to them. >> greed. >> by the government. state-run agencies. >> and air brushing people out of photographs and remaking recasting history in a more congenial light, having no respect for fact, which was the clearest metaphor for the fact that they didn't really respect the individual rights of people to determine their own destiny. i mean, it sounds very grand for a monday morning, but that's what we're talking about. you know, you have now and really kind of an unapologetic assault on truth as we've understood it in the country and

assault on reason and assault on the democratic lower case d norms that helped us build a country that people wanted to come to and built a society that conquered the communistic one in the most existential struggle in human history. and you knnoknow why? >> that's what we're talking about so everybody can start the week on a cheerful note. we're not going to set our hair on fire. but believe me, historians will be looking at this and saying, the people who spoke out against the erosion of democratic institutions in this time were the ones who were on the right side of history. >> absolutely. >> let's start this week out on a cheerful note and thank god that we are all given the right to actually speak truth to power and we're all given the right to call out these lies. we still are. and i just do want to say

something just because i want to go to break just playing a clip from these sinclair hosts again -- >> they're so-called journalists. >> and i just want to say that maybe david ignatius is right and maybe they didn't know that what they were doing would be repeated across the country, you know, i always think about that bench line, you don't really want to judge another man or woman until you walk a mile in their shoes. you don't know what their economic standing is. you don't know how much they need that job. you don't know if a child of their's is sick or if they need that money to pay their rent for their mother who is ill. you don't know. so i'm being very careful this first time. i don't think we should judge these people. i do think, though, that

certainly they and all of us are on notice now. there has to be from within sinclair or from outside from advertisers there has to be an understanding that this style propaganda has to stop. >> look, you can say you shouldn't judge. you don't have to judge. just be honest about what you do. if you're just reading a prompter and you don't care what the words are, then you're an actor or you're just acting them out. but if you're a journalist, you can do better. >> well. >> i'm sorry, that's not judge mental. that's the truth. they can all do better. >> i'm just saying that was the first time that we know that that happened. let's see what happens moving forward. i'm sure a lot of people are going to look at what happened and have serious second thoughts about it, not allow it to happen again. as we go to break -- >> okay. so what prompted these factually inaccurate and contradictory charges over the weekend? "the washington post" has some clues. also ahead, david shulkin

says he was fired. the white house says he resigned. it's not just about bad optics at the white house, this time there's real implications of who is in charge of veteran affairs. we'll have a live report on that. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. >> dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

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all right. so the president's weekend charges came after a week or more of turnover in his administration, during work the president sought the advice of former campaign operatives and hard core supporters. as "the washington post" reports, meeting with his political soldiers corey lewandowski and david bossy and brad parscale and son-in-law and senior adviser jared kushner, white house chief of staff, john kelly did not travel to mar-a-lago this weekend but stephen miller, a prominent proponent of hard line immigration policies has been at trump's side. and the president reportedly dined with fox news host sean hannity on friday night, who was later spotted a the president's golf club. >> so, david ignatius the washington post has a story and others have been talking about trump unleashed, others close to

him are saying it is trump unhinged. where are we in april of 2018 in this presidency? >> joe, my impression is that president trump increasingly feels unburdened of the aides who were trying to restrain him, trying to caution him, trying to bring what outsiders would think of as order to the white house. and is increasingly following his own instincts that means diminished power for john kelly, his chief of staff, it means that communications organization that really is running on three wheels at best, more and more we get the impression that the president feels good about the way he's communicating with the country. poll numbers are up a little bit. we have to think carefully about what that tells us. i think donald trump in a sense from the day he took office has

been running against the elites. he runs a daily show of attack, ridicule, criticism of folks like us, of people in congress. and a lot of the country buys that. so i think we need to look at what's happening and understand that the president thinks that this is helping him succeed. and again, as we said so often on this show, it comes down to republicans in congress and around the country will say, wait a minute, this is our party. we're heading toward midterm elections. we're not comfortable with where this is going but i think the president today is. >> nick, this is what we predicted. it's the worst case scenario for the republican party. remember, in february of 2016, at the beginning of the campaign, writing a washington post column asking, so is this where the party of abraham lincoln dies? and it certainly is where the

political life of a lot of republicans seem to be dying because while the president's numbers go between 35 and 42%, you can't say that for the republicans in congress. their fate, their fortunes are going strait downhill. you see the interests of donald trump die verging wildly from the interests of any republican that doesn't want nancy pelosi to be speaker of the house. >> the house is on the ballot and president trump is not. two of the people he dined with this weekend are authors of a book called "let trump be trump." that's why he wants them there. >> which one was there? >> corey lewandowski and david bosse are co-authors of the book. unleash the trump or unleash the cracken, however you want to put it to be more of the core politics and core campaigner he wants to be, to not be hedged in by concerns of how it might look. he likes that. he likes that freedom.

as you point out, he is a toxic president for republicans in many parts of the country. and the election is going to be about him. it doesn't matter what the republicans campaign on. they'll have this guy in the background who is pushing out votes for them. >> right. so, the election is going to be about donald trump. but donald trump is not going to be campaigning. any republican that thinks they can get away with what donald trump has been able to get away with, i mean, they're just as foolish as hillary clinton thinking she could get away with what bill clinton could get away with. bill clinton was bill clinton. barack obama was barack obama. donald trump is donald trump. and republicans -- >> let's pray. >> are going to pay a high, high price if they don't distance themselves from this guy. still ahead, a record number of democrats are running for congress this year, but republicans are choosing to focus on someone who isn't on the ballot, hillary clinton.

we're going to bring in msnbc political reporter alex seitz-wald for his latest reporting. >> seriously, do they really think that outside of the fevered swamps of talk radio and late night cable news that people are going, oh wait, hillary clinton, yeah. that's attacking hillary clinton. >> she lost. >> is going to stop my health insurance costs from exploding. our help me get my kids into school. >> yeah. we'll be right back.

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if you look at the map of the united states, there's all that red in the middle where trump won. i won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward and his whole campaign, make america great again, was looking backwards. >> so those were hillary clinton remarks on trump voters last month. while she has since conceded that hir comments, quote, upset people and can be misinterpreted, following a rebuke from red state democrats like senator claire mccaskill, her words bug ammunition for new republican attack ads.

>> for 2016? >> no. joining us now national politics reporters for nbc news alex seitz-wald, he co-wrote a piece for msnbc how republicans are running against hillary clinton again. if you follow campaign news, it may seem like the 2016 campaign never ended and at least one way for some republicans it has not. the gop has gone negative or clinton for more than 14 years and don't think her absence from the ballot is reason enough to stop now. also with us from washington, white house correspondent for pbs news hour yamish. good to have you both. >> alex s there any evidence that think works? >> it might. >> campaigns against a person who is never going to be on the ballot again actually can motivate voters on election day? >> right, joe. i think 2016 as we enter the third year is the longest year in recorded history. look, this is all about the

republican base. you can't use nancy pelosi, hillary clinton is a proven republican base motivator. they're constantly talking about the iranian 1 story or why they need a special prosecutor to look into alleged bias at the fib. this is a year when we know the republican base is less motivated for democrats. they're looking for anything they can find to turn those people out to get people excited about voting in this year's election. her approval rating has gone down. so we'll see. this is a beta test. this is early on. but if it works f they get good data back, we'll siee a lot mor of hillary clinton in ads. >> it was very clear that republicans were voting their interests. they were voting very specifically how am i doing? how is my health care doing?

are my taxes too high? am i going to be able to afford to send my second kid to college? i mean, it was never an esoteric, i can't stand somebody who ran for office two or four years ago. i'm baffled that republicans think this will still work. >> i think it might work because in some ways they're desperate because they know that donald trump even if he's not on the ballot or campaigning in those states that he is what's on everyone's mind and that the president has been saying all sorts of things contradictory to what his supporters said he wanted. one thing i found baffling is this idea that the president was introducing people in his cabinet that would be war hawks. we know that the people that are in these countries the people in these states i should say are people who don't want their kids to be sent to different countries to fight wars. people who are not seeing their wages go up. they are people who want to see change and want to see someone do better for them. what we're seeing or they're

seeing instead is a president who is going back on at least some of the things that he promised them. >> so alex, this is nick confessore here, tell us why conservative strategists from your reporting think that hillary clinton is so kind of uniquely potent symbol, what pieces of what they want to activate in politics does she hold together and represent politically? >> well, if you think about it, they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars and decades attacking her, building her up as this villain among conservative voters. and the comments like the ones that you played a the top of the segment from her in mumbai where he is reminiscent of the deplorables comments, backwards parts of the country, they're using her as a stand-in for all of elite liberal america looking down its nose at you and you can get back at them by coming out and voting for republicans this fall. and they're continuing to advance that narrative in conservative media. it's, as yamiche indicated it's

about about whattism. they want to point to other things, other directions to insulate themselves and they think hillary clinton can help them do that. there's a risk there, the a.p. just interviewed josh holly who ran a clinton a ad and he didn't want to talk about donald trump. i don't know how you have it both ways. >> jon meacham, can you give us any examples of where a defeated presidential candidate is a effective tool. >> republicans tried to run against jimmy carter as long as democrats tried to run against herbert hoover, but that never worked. >> right. >> ronald reagan won a landslide in 1980 and republicans got their heads knocked off in 1982. it doesn't work. >> right. and there are the old early morph ads of you're a teddy kennedy liberal and denimocrats

tried to use newt for that. i think there's something more el mental going on. i think one of the reasons -- and maybe they're not fully conscious of it -- that people on the right or people in trump land would be continuing to bring up secretary clinton is that she's the absolution for the people who took a flier on trump and are trying to figure out if they have any justification for it. >> well, and by the way, jon, that's always -- >> they can vote for her. >> that's always -- i'll let you continue -- that's always a justification when ever i'm talking to a trump voter, so tell me -- and i just want to know, i'm asking you respectfully. >> yep. >> are you still glad that you voted for this man who you tell me you hate, this man who you

tell me embarrassing you, their response is i sure wasn't going to vote for hillary clinton. >> exactly. i was in a swing state last week, very important state, talking to a republican party official who said -- was worried about trump but said, as you conversation you've had i'm sure, but you know, we couldn't have had hillary. there hasn't been -- law enforcement hasn't finished what they should be doing with her. and i was sort of like, what planet are we on exactly? but i think that -- i think if you bring secretary clinton up, then you feel a little bit freer and maybe a little cleaner about your choice of trump. but of course underlying that is you feel grimy about having sided with this man who is

president. and so i think this is an entire exercise in trying to assuage guilt. >> which is why, mika, everybody says look at donald trump's 42% or 80 or 90% among republicans, that's a mirage and that's a mirage because when you ask that question it's trump or clinton. it's never trump or another conservative. it's never trump versus a tough republican. it's never trump versus mark cuban. it's never trump versus ben sass or trump versus go down the list. >> alex seitz-wald, thank you very much. we'll be reading your piece on msnbc news.com. speaking of clintons, another blast from the past, ken starr is waying on stormy daniels. what he's saying about the former porn star's legal battle with the president. also we'll talk about facebook and nick's story and i'm going to ask nick are things

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david ignatius, on monday morning, where do we stand with the latest on north korea? >> joe, the president and his advisers have really important plans to make. the president promised he's going to have this extraordinary meeting with north korea's kim jong-un by may. we have a south korean preliminary meeting set for later this month on april 27. this really is probably the most momentous piece of negotiation that president trump will do during his presidency but the preliminary work from everything i hear is very fragmentary. how much should me go for? should this be a grant bargain or an introductory meeting

followed by working groups? they're big questions. there's an effort in the interagency process as they call it to sort this out but to be honest this is not a healthy one. we have john bolton who doesn't like the idea of these talks at all coming in so i've got my eye focused on that. >> david ignatius, thank you very much. still ahead, hope hicks, h.r. mcmaster and gary cohn are all gone. so who's keeping everything stable in the white house, if you could call this stable. we'll bring in phillip rutger. plus, amid a new scandal, could scott pruitt be the next trump administration official to go in chris christie seems to think so. "morning joe" will be right back. and packages. and it's also a story about people. people who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams they're handing us more than mail

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international politics from tuft university, daniel drezner. good to have you on this morning. >> dan, it would be great to start with you. donald trump is now because he saw a fox news report that had a lower third that talked about a caravan of people coming to the united states, he's saying he's going to scrap nafta, can you talk about theism pact on middle-class americans if, in fact, the president did scrap nafta or carry through on his threat because he didn't like a banner on the bottom of a fox news show sunday morning? >> sure. just about everything we know would be more expensive. real estate prices in most of the southwest would crumble. and we'd be reverting back to our pre-1985 relationship with mexico which you might say was extremely fraught and conflicted. on the whole this would be a net loss, i would say. >> well, that's a good way of putting it. among the things the president said we will analyze, early last

month reports surfaced that the largest owner of television stations in the country, sinclaire broadcast group, was planning to force anchors across the country to attack other media outlets for sharing "fake stories." the broadcaster is known for pushing a conservative platform and mandating must-run commentary. over the past week or, so anchors nationwide were required to read from the script and as this mashup from deadspin illustrates, they did. take a look. >> i'm fox san antonio's jessica headley. >> our greatest responsibility is to serve -- >> our communities. >> the communities. >> eastern iowa communities. >> mid-michigan communities. >> we are extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that cbs 4 news produces. but -- >> we are concerned about the one-sided news stories plaguing our country. >> plaguing our country. >> the sharing of bias and false news has become all too common

on social media. more alarming, some media outlets published these same fake stories without checking facts first. >> the sharing of biased and -- >> false news has become all to too common on social media. more alarming, some publish these same stories that aren't true without checking facts first. unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think. this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremery dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our dem zb. >> i this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous

to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our demdemocracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> mika, you started in local news and i'm wondering what you do when somebody hands you a script and your general manager says -- as some of these did -- here's the script, you have to read it, you have no choice, if you don't read it, i get fired. what do you do? >> i think for some of the people in some of those boxes that we saw who might be starting out there may be a pass given but i don't understand reading that. i don't understand reading that just acting it out like they did. those were seasoned journalists. >> what about your first -- >> you are the front line of defense in terms of telling the truth to your audience. you have to be arable to pube back. you have to look at something and edit it, put in the your words, your voice and try to

bring objectivity to the table. this was a disgrace across the board on the part of the journalists involved who were acting out a script rather than understanding and the perspective of the news and pushing back when necessary. >> i was going ask what if you were a first or second year person at hartford but chances are good if they're on air they've been there a while. >> those were a lot of very seasoned journalists and some people starting out and in many cases those were the journalists who are the highest paid in the market. i noticed a lot of men who were maybe in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. those are the highest-paid journalists in the market by far compared to the women sitting next to them. i can tell you that for sure. and they should know better. all of them should know better. this is a really embarrassing moment for journalism. at this point, we can't afford to be anything less than perfect. we have to try and strive for perfection and fairness everyday

and this was a massive failure. >> and it was ripped, nick, straight out of the play book of donald trump which is attack mainstream media, talk about fake news while donald trump, as we'll show in a little bit, spent the whole weekend spewing out fake news but you say there was an economic incentive for sinclaire? >> sinclaire is trying to get bigger and bigger and acquire more and more television stations so they can do more and more of this and it's obvious to me that part of this is currying favor in this administration hoping to win approval for mergers, for more acquisitions to get bigger and bigger. this could be the future of local news in our country. >> nick, also, it could be an economic -- sorry, it could be an economic ploy just as well, well, gee, this worked well for fake news, why don't we try in the our own local market? >> there's a contradiction

behind a local news conglomerate. it's supposed to be something hyper local and as a result of that it's connected to the local economy, the local flavor and then you have to national imposition of values on it. i'm not sure if this is very effective. that looked like a hostage video. when conservatives say "media bias is insidious" it's because people who are engaging in it don't think it exists. it's internal, it's natural, it's an inclination shared by everybody around you so it's cultural. it exists in the ether. it's also by emotion an emphasis, it's not so direct and obvious like this. i feel like this is more propaganda. >> we conservatives -- not you, because you were probably not even born when the wall fell but we conservatives -- >> i was there. >> we conservatives mocked forever the soviets and the fact that the state would type out their scripts and they would

read news scripts that were obviously repeated like robots were reading them and now that you have "conservatives" and this is not conservative but people will say oh, look at the conservatives reading their scripts, it's nothing to do with conservatives, it's trumpian and it does smack of like what -- state run media for an autocrat. >> and soviet citizenry were in on the joke. they knew the channel 1 announcer was the state voice and that channel 2 would tell you to go back to channel 1. that was the joke inside the soviet union. >> yamiche, as a reporter, am i being too difficult on our fellow journalists here? this really for some reason upset me more than hearing the president do what he's been doing ever since he took office, which is spreading lies and mischaracterizing the truth and trying to undermine the tenets

of our government and of journalism but to see anchors just reading the script mindlessly, is there more responsibility they should hold hear? >> well, i think there are two things going on, the first is that it's terrifying if you're a reporter or journalist to watch journalists say things that mimic what the president is saying, mimic these ideas that we think are trying to pull apart journalism and trying to get people to not believe in journalism. so there's that going on. but there's also this idea that these journalists are making a living. joe talked about we don't know what's going on in these people's lives, most people can't walk away from their job, if their boss says to do something, you do something. >> agreed. >> but the most important thing is we're still living in a society where journalism can also in some ways expose bad journalism so in this case you have dead spin, you have "morning joe" today showing people hey, this is not going to be okay and when sinclaire thinks about doing this again, they're going to know "morning joe" is going to again go on air

and say these people are doing it again so we're living in a society that's trying to check that. if you're a reporter in sinclaire, you have to wonder to yourself, can i do there again? is credibility going to be hurt? now people have you in this reel and the next time you try to go to the next market, they'll say "aren't you the guy that was parroting and saying journalism was dangerous for the democracy? why do i want to hire you?" but it's not easy to leave a job, especially in a local market. you're still not making a whole bunch of money that you can walk away that day. >> the thing is, it's interesting, we are talking about economics, i just said before maybe people are trying to replicate this on a local level but mika, as yamiche said, this will hurt people's careers. it will hurt them in the marketplace. advertisers will look at this just like right now they're looking at what laura ingraham did and they're going to say do

we want to be connected? i have to say on that front, i find it so laughable that people are saying david hogg is a brown shirt because he is talking to advertisers and asking whether they want to advertise in the free market and people are making decisions based on their economic best interests. but as you step back out, in the long run advertisers aren't going to want to be associated with this and, yes, anchors that do this now it's on their reel for good and this is a no-win proposition. i suspect they probably won't do it again but we'll see. dan drezner, though, i guess what's so troubling is we've had people running around like, oh, i don't know, myself talking about donald trump's autocratic tendencies and something the sas about a judge, what he says about the federal judiciary,

what he says about mueller, his lack of regard for the rule of law. same thing with the media. enemies of the people. attacking cnn constantly, showing violence towards figures representing cnn or saying things about certain nbc hosts, et cetera, et cetera. this is the first time i can see a line where you directly can draw a line between the bullying, the threats, the erdogan type response to media criticism and you can actually see a cause and then an effect. sinclaire says, hey, okay, we can actually curry favor with this president that has autocratic tendencies by turning our local stations into a multitude of pravda outlets. is that concerning to you? >> of course. but this isn't the newest thing we've seen on this which is

don't look at sinclaire as a media company, look at sinclaire as a company that wants to curry favor with the federal government. think about when if 2017 when you had companies bragging about opening up factories in the united states -- which they were probably going to do anyway, but crediting donald trump with doing that which allowed him to tweet it out. or think about the announcement of bonuses to workers after the tax bill was passed. again, primarily that money went to share buybacks but it was good pr and it was a win-win arrangement because companies could again curry favor with the trump white house. in some ways, this is a similar play where clearly donald trump has personalized all policy made in this administration, which is to say that the way you do well until this administration is to flatter the president. and in some ways he's far more -- has a far more fragile ego than most of his predecessors so as a result you have people like sinclaire or other companies doing anything

possible to essentially extend an olive branch to the white house and therefore won't stand up for their own principles or the principles of a free press. >> and just to yamiche's point and your point about these journalists, i do understand the precarious situation that they are in. i remember ripping up the paris hilton script on this show ten years ago and i almost got fired for that so -- and that was about pop culture versus news. but this is about everything we're about. right now everything is on the line so you want to inspire fellow journalists to step up and i believe that ones that do will last the longest time. >> it's so important to look at what's just happened this weekend where you have, noah, sinclaire acting as a pravda-like outlet and then you have the president of the united

states attacking amazon because amazon's owner also owns the washington so there's the carrot and there's the stick. sinclaire, here's the carrot, you kowtow to me like i'm erdogan and i will help you at the federal level. i'll pull strings for you. if you're critical of me i will threaten amazon with new taxes and i will lie about their affect on the post office and i will lie about their affect on local taxes. >> this would all just be sort of nonsensical and almost saturday to watch if the presidency were not endowed with such authority. maybe what emerges from this moment is a paradigmatic shift away from the idea that we need to have this unitary executive, this all powerful executive authority so the next president who decides to rail against fox

news or "washington post" wouldn't have any authority in that matter and we say this is somebody ranting and not worth our time. but because the presidency is so powerful we have to generate a lot of interest and obsess over his little passions or what have you. it's frustrating and i would like to see more democrats and republicans agree that the president should haven't this much power. that he shouldn't lord his power over us and preoccupy our imaginations. >> as the "chicago tribune" points out, though, federal regulators have found the postal services contract to deliver some amazon orders has been profitable for the postal service. the paper adds people who buy products sold by amazon pay sales tax in all states that have a sales tax. the "tribune" also says the post office's losses are mostly due to pension and health care costs, not to its deal deliver packages for amazon. >> again, a fact maybe some of

those sinclairecasters can do tonight, they can do a fact check since they're concerned about fake news, that donald trump lied about amazon, lied about the "washington post" and he did so because he didn't like the fact that they're reporting the news. phillip rutgcker of the "washington post," you had a fascinating column that answers questions a lot of us were asking this morning which is why does the president seem even more unhinged than usual? >> yeah. well a few things are going on, joe. one is that the president has become increasingly confident in his own decisions. he understands how the office works, he knows how to call his shots. his advisers would not pull out of the paris climate accord or

the world will fall apart and then he sees the world doesn't fall afpart so he's acting on hs own impulses. he's also removing restraining forces, people like hope hicks, gary cohn, h.r. mcmaster, staff secretary rob porter. these are people who spent several hours a day with the president and would try to convince him to slow down. they would slam the brakes on some of his ideas, try to veer him in another direction and he's surrounding himself more and more with advisers who are going to try to tell him what he wants to hear and encourage his instincts and help execute upon them. so some of the president's confidante's we spoke to, bob costa and myself, they're really alarmed. they feel like this is a president becoming more and more isolated an unhinged. >> phil, nick confessore here. from your perch from the amazon underground lair of the potomac

at the "washington post," tell us about the state of play in the white house. you have heard from the beginning of this administration this idea of caging the president or surrounding him with people but his natural state has always been in the private sect or the way he like to operate is closer to what he's arriving at right now, correct? >> that's exactly right. what he's doing at the white house is replicating what he had on the 26th floor of the trump tower in manhattan. he ran the trump organization, him on his cluttered desk calling people on the outside to make decisions. he had a staff, he had lawyers who helped him with his litigation, he had a secretary to field his calls but he got his advice from friends on the outside, bankers, media personalities, from even rival developers and businessmen and he acted everyday waking up not sure what he's going to do but acting on impulse and gut. he believes he has the best gut instincts of anyone out there. a lot of people would question

that but that's his belief and he's following through on that and i think that's what this presidency is fast becoming. >> i guess if you take inheriting $200 million from your father and going bankrupt, going $9 billion in debt as working for him, then, yes, it worked fabulously for him. noah, this is how donald trump operated inside of trump tower. even during the campaign while everybody else was doing what they were doing, you know what donald trump did all day? he was on the phone calling people. that's what he did at the trump zblorgs he's not a re organization. >> he's not a reader. >> he says in the book, "i don't plan. i get on the phone, start calling people and wait for things to start happening." that's what he said in "art of the deal." he doesn't plan, doesn't read, just gets on the phone and calls and see what is falls out of the sky. that's our president.

>> i am concerned about the not-reading thing. [ laughter ] >> can you elaborate? >> well, i could but i'd rather have you read it. >> i remember after the first or second debate i told this story before, we went in and i joked about it and said do you read? >> you asked him seriously. >> do you know how to read? if somebody gave you a page to read could you read it? >> i saw his eyes widen. >> and he held up his mother's bible "of course i read." >> well, some people are visual learners, some people like to be told they have rivals interpret information for them. i find text to be illuminating because you can read subtext and understand what an author is coming from. that's how i internalize information but i'm not sure whether he's being surrounded by people who are going to entirely reinforce his instincts. john bolton is an interventionist as we understand him to be. he's a mill tarrist, he's got something of a rational view of

international relations based entirely on hard power. not a big institution guy. that reinforces donald trump's instinct but from the campaign he was for retrenchment. he was for redesigning american foreign policy to be much more introverted so i'm not sure whether on the foreign policy side he's getting only his instincts reinforced. there does seem to be conflict there. but i wish he would read more. >> he's tweeting again. we'll pull those up. dan drezner? >> he's tweeting again. >> what's interesting, dan, is that -- >> wow. >> you take, like, for instance syria. there's a concern right now that the advances that the united states has made pushing back on isis in iraq and syria, a lot of concerns that we're going to lose whatever advantages we got

because trump is saying we've abandoned the kurds and we're going withdraw our troops. you think john bolton, if you followed his policy instincts throughout the year would say on to damascus so you do wonder how this going to shake out. >> i agree with noah. i think syria will be an interesting test case for whether or not donald trump's own instincts -- and he said this i believe in a speech in ohio last week -- where he wants to withdraw u.s. forces from syria, i think there was an aid suspension as well over the weekend but his advisers, even the ones he just hand-picked again, john bolton, mike pompeo at state and i'm sure jim mattis at defense, none of them want to immediately pull out of syria. in the long run they do but they think doing so now would be adverse to american interest and it will be interesting to see to the extent to which they can push back. in some ways this is a test of whether or not the ones he's

picked that he feels more comfortable with, can they influence his opinion still? or does he feel unchained now that he's grown into the office or he thinks he's grown in the office. in some ways syria will be the test case. >> here's the three-fer the president put out on twitter. "mexico has the absolute power not to let these large caravans of people enter their country. they must stop them at the northern border which they can do because their border laws work. not allow them to pass through into our country which has no effective border laws. congress must immediately pass border legislation, use nuclear option if necessary to stop the massive inflow of drugs and people." >> wait, wait, wait, what's the nuclear option? >> border patrol agents and i.c.e. are great but the week dem laws don't allow them to do their job. act now, congress, our country is being stolen." and finally, "daca is dead because the democrats didn't care or act and now everyone wants to get on to the daca

bandwagon. no longer works, must build wall and secure our borders with proper border legislation. democrats want no borders, hence drugs and crime." >> so what that is, it's very -- >> joe? >> it's very obvious that we will call those three tweets, historians will look at those three tweets and they will label them ode to ann coulter. because ann coulter has abandoned donald trump and also fox news is talking about caravans. >> this same show that made fun of the kids on the day of their march, just ripped them to sleds saying they didn't know what they were talking about, no thank you for what you have to say. the same show that covered the marches in charlottesville and thought it was a proper evoking of emotion to watch those marches but found that marches when they are young people are ineffective, unnecessary, and in

some ways negative. >> donald trump has always proven he is terrified of his hard, hard right base and coulter has been insulting him because he won't build the mighty wall conservatives have been attacked him saying he was going to be impeached that he was going to lose because of the 1.3 pork omnibus bill. it seems to me it's just donald trump throwing red meat out there. hard right -- not conservative, whatever you want to call them -- are attacking him. >> i guess the tweets are pretty much the upside of the trump presidency if you're an immigration hawk, for example. that's what ann coulter said in an interview. she said "i liked the tweets, that's why i was giving him a positive review." hoping the policy would follow.

the president had an opportunity to get his wall, at least a lot of it from congress, and he has been unable to negotiate that compromise deal. he even had the prospect of getting mexico to pay for it with the imposition of a border adjustment tax and that wasn't satisfactory to this white house. they have moved on from this wall at every opportunity and there's not a lot of appetite for a giant boondoggle on the southern border among republicans in congress so if you're going to get it, you were probably going to get it last year. >> for the same reason we said before, mika, it's not the crisis that it was when george w. bush was president. the numbers have dropped precipitously and donald trump even said so himself so if you want to say that's fake news, attack donald trump because he's been running around giving speeches and having white house ceremonies where he's talked about how the border crossings have rapidly declined. >> phillip rucker and daniel drezner, thank you both. >> dan, go sox, good start.

>> 3-1, man. >> still ahead on "morning joe," the man who investigated former president clinton's relationship with monica lewinsky is weighing in on stormy daniels' allegations against donald trump. what former whitewater independent counsel ken starr has to say about the president's porn star scandal. plus, the white house says david shulkin resigned, but david shulkin says that's not true. how the semantics could set up a fight other who should succeed as v.a. secretary. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. >> since day of my election we've already cut illegal immigration at the southern border by 61%. [ cheers and applause ] >> i'm very proud to say that we're way down in the people coming across the border. we have fewer people trying to come across because they know it's not going to happen. ed opt. i'm not really a wall street guy. what's the hesitation? eh, it just feels too complicated, you know? well sure, at first, but jj can help you with that.

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you know what's not awesome? gig-speed internet. when only certain people can get it. let's fix that. let's give this guy gig- really? and these kids, and these guys, him, ah. oh hello. that lady, these houses! yes, yes and yes. and don't forget about them. uh huh, sure. still yes! xfinity delivers gig speed to more homes than anyone. now you can get it, too. welcome to the party. >> it's a serious question, did the president know, did he

authorize, all those sorts of things have to be sorted out but remember bob mueller was appointed to investigate whether there was collusion and this is obviously is way far removed. i'm not saying it's not a serious matter but it's way far removed from somewhat the special counsel was authorized to do. this becomes an issue then for rod rosenstein to say does it need to be investigated under the regulations and is mueller the right one to do it and rod might very well -- rod rosenstein might very well say, you know, you need to stick to the issue and let's get through with this issue of collusion. you stick to that and let's appoint mary rowe as special counsel. >> that was former whitewater independent counsel kenneth

starr weighing in on the stormy daniels story during a podcast interview with our next guest, chief investigative correspondent for yahoo news michael isikoff. very good to have you on board. he's the co-author of the number one "new york times" best-seller "russian roulette, the inside story of putin's war on america and the election of donald trump." also with us, former gop counsel for the house oversight committee, now a contributor to nbcnews.com, the editorial page think, sofia nelson, she's the author of e pluribus one. michael, we'll start with you, especially given the book that you author ed is ken star on to something where investigation needs to stay focussed? there are questions of campaign finance violation as it relates to stormy daniels, correct? >> correct. it was a fascinating interview because starr has been outspoken

for some time about the need for mueller's investigation to be allowed to poe seed without interference from the president. he's been quite critical of president trump's tweets and efforts to influence the investigation, call it a hoax and all that. he sees parallels between that and the attacks on him when he was the whitewater independent counsel from the clinton camp. but the stormy daniels controversy was kind of a new issue for him and there's a certain consistency there when he saw what he perceived as potential criminal conduct by bill clinton and lying under oath in the paula jones case about his relationship with lewinsky he believed it needed to be investigated and he sees potential illegality -- potential illegality -- because of the payment to stormy daniels

during the campaign that could be a campaign finance violation and if so, who's going to investigate it. that's where it got interesting. he thinks it needs to be evaluated. he think it's sufficiently far afield from what mueller is doing so somebody else needs to take a look at it and that ends up on the desk of rod rosenstein, the deputy attorney general. >> i was going to say, from the clips that we played, at least, of yo of your interview he sounded skeptical that this fell into bob mueller's domain. >> he did and you could say well lewinsky seemed far afield from the whitewater business deal that starr was investigating back 20 years ago but the parent smart that just prima fascia there are legitimate questions there, the fact that this was

money paid in the closing days of the campaign hadn't been paid six months earlier or two years earlier even though the affair as alleged by daniels took place a decade ago. so what he was saying is the equivalent of a preliminary investigation. the problem is, i don't know how you get there with a preliminary investigation. the only way you can determine whether or not the money was paid for campaign purposes is to get e-mails, to get texts and to question people under oath to know what was michael cohen talking about, did he discuss it with his client or discuss it with anybody in the campaign? we don't know the answer to those questions and a preliminary inquiry can't get you there. you have to take the next step and issue some subpoenas. >> sofia, nick confessore here. there from your perspective, is bob mueller over his skis? is his probe too broad,

encompassing too many different topics that are too far afield from his original brief? >> not at all. i believe bob mueller does have the authority to investigate this and i thought the interview that michael did with judge starr was great. the parallels are unbelievable. i was working on those investigations in the clintons, whether it was whitewater or the money investigations about the alleged money laundering or things with the chinese and et cetera and it turned into a situation where judge starr has been on white water so long, then the lewinsky thing broke then the paula jones issue came up through that, then issues of perjury. it's the same parallel. i think it's ironic that judge starr would say he's not sure if bob mueller has that authority when i think he does. the special counsel is looking for patterns and what we see here is a pattern and practice potentially of the president of the united states bribing people, paying them off, maybe

threatening people. doing it through the campaign, through his lawyer, and his lawyer's lawyer has been on tv for the last couple weeks i think getting his client in a lot of trouble but i think bob mueller has the authority to look into this. i don't see where there's a problem with this at all and i agree with michael, you have to get there. you can't keep saying somebody else needs to do it. it fits into a pattern and practice that he's looking for about whether or not the president's character and demeanor is such that he could have colluded with russians, that he could have threatened somebody. they fit in the same pot. >> mika, one of the interesting things we've overlooked, when we talked about the president being untethered. some on the inside have said unhinged. it's interesting that you know how all of donald trump's lawyers were scared of him talking to bob mueller? they ought all that bob mueller was smarter than donald trump? thought donald trump was a fool and would be too easily tricked by robert mueller?

thought that this guy would humiliate himself and maybe get himself arrested. they think he's so much smasrte than donald trump, donald trump is standing to people on the inside saying i'm not as stupid as you think i am and he wants to sit down and talk to robert mueller so perhaps donald trump, that's one of the things we're seeing from him being "untethered" that he's not surrounded by people that think he's too stupid to talk to robert mueller. >> we asked him during the campaign who do you turn to for advice and he said he turned to himself, that he has a big brain. >> maybe he doesn't think he's too stupid to talk to robert mueller but certainly his lawyers and those around him -- that are gone now -- thought he was too dumb, too stupid to talk to robert mueller. >> he talks to himself. >> now he's untethered thinking maybe i'm not that stupid, maybe

i can talk to robert mueller, maybe his education isn't that much better than me. he's a small's guy. >> i went to wharton. >> princeton guy. >> but trump tells you he went to an ivy league school, too. so maybe mueller's ivy league school isn't better. maybe mueller's education isn't better than trump's education. maybe trump is not more -- dumber, maybe trump's not dumber than bob mueller. >> you might be right. >> that's at least what these stories are telling us. >> look at him so far. fascinating. >> facebook ceo mark zuckerberg -- >> he's a smart guy at times. >> responding forcefully to apple ceo tim cook for criticizing facebook's use of its data. here's cook followed by zuckerberg. >> we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customers. if our customer was our product. we could make a ton of money.

we've elected not to do that. [ applause ] we care about the user experien experience. we're not going to traffic in your personal life. i think it's an invasion of privacy. >> mark zuckerberg, what would you do? >> what would i do. i wouldn't be in this situation. >> i think that argument that if you're not paying that somehow we can't care about you to be extremely glib and not aligned with the truth. the reality here is that if you want to build a service that helps connect everyone in the world, there are a lot of people who can't afford to pay and therefore as with a lot of media having an advertising-supported model is the only rational model that can support building the service to reach people. that doesn't mean we don't -- that we're not primarily focused

on serving people, i think probably to the dissatisfaction of our sales team here, i make all of our decisions based on what's going to matter to our community and improve the experience and focus much less and very little on the advertising side of the business. >> but you see that's just not tr true. they've misused 50 million -- nick, you did the story but they misused the information of 50 million people, you're hearing horror stories of voice mails and text messages coming up. talk about the operation that facebook has set up. it's just extraordinary. like most foreign countries would love to have the ability to mine information of people as much as these people do. >> facebook and google have a bigger set of data and knowledge about every person in america

than any government agency anywhere. >> in the world. >> in the world. they have built a very powerful machine for collecting information and selling access to it. so when zuckerberg says the advertising side of the business, that is the business. it's the reason they are a huge business and worth billions and billions of dollars. what they do is suck up everything they can about you, who you like, who your friends are, how you travel on the web and tell advertisers how to reach you best based on that information. now it makes for good advertising and targeted advertising but they know everything about you and for some people that's scary. >> give us details. they know everything about you. like what? >> they have -- all right. so for example if you have your phone and you log into facebook somewhere they have the place you logged in so they can see the places you were at as you're traveling. your brucie i browsing history, places you're visiting, who you like, who your friends are with and how you engage with content

on their platform. for a lot of people, facebook is the internet so when they go on the internet they're going on facebook and a lot of their activity takes place on facebook. what we know is that when you have all that information in a systemic way, you can know an awful lot about a person and they have built this into something very powerful and successful. we saw a memo from a top executive last week who said, you know, people having this platform is what we do, it's de facto good, if terrorists can use it to plan attacks, so what? and that would give you, i think, an insight into the mind-set how they see themselves. i'm not sure they understand themselves mentally what they're doing because they tell themselves the story that they're about connecting people. that's just one part of the business. the money is the advertising. >> sophia, chime in. there are other tech companies that may have this problem as well in their own way. >> he makes a great point.

i'm one of those people that uses social media a lot. you have a public page, you have a private page. this whole facebook stuff for me is scary. you consider should i delete my page but i think for mark zuckerberg to say he's not concerned about the advertising side of the business is disingenuous at best. this is what makes facebook the power thus it eerhouse that it billions of dollars and the advertising on the market are important to him. i don't think anybody's buying it, mika. >> how ironic it is that there are a lot of people on facebook that use it talking about conspiracies about big brother yet it's facebook that's big brother that's allowing them to use -- facebook doesn't care whether the news is fake or true, they just care about the information they're getting from people that are spreading the

misinformation. >> conceptually i'm less concerned than i would be if there were a public sect ornishive the. you do have some agency. you buy into the terms of service. however because i'm less concerned becauabout the people facebook and google today doesn't mean i'll be less concerned in ten years or 15 years. this is a lot of power to be in the hands of a company that frankly we don't know the evolutionary trajectory of it. it's the same model i would apply to government. just because you like it today doesn't mean you'll like it tomorrow. we should concerned about this much power centralized and i'm not sure that will be the status quo for long. we'll start to look at this as a trust. that will be appropriate to look into it with interest in breaking it up. >> we'll talk more about this. sophia nelson, thank you, michael isikoff, thank you as well. we'll be listening to your podcast skull duggery. coming up, two parts

surrounding epa chief scott pruitt. first that he was charged $50 a night to stay in a stylish d.c. condo. the second part, the condo was partly owned by the wife of an energy lobbyist who has direct ties to the oil and gas industry. >> that's not the weird part. that's bad. the third part is the secret service goes in and they kick down the door because they think he's dead but he's sleeping in the middle of the day. that's the weird part. and then the epa paid $2500 -- >> that doesn't happen to you? >> i don't sleep during the day. wait a second, i don't sleep. >> what it means for latest embattled cabinet secretary. that's ahead on "morning joe." >> middle of the day he's sleeping.

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this wednesday marks 50 years since the assassination of dr. martin luther king jr. joining us now, author of the new book "the the promise and the dream, the untold story of

martin luther king jr. and robert kennedy." quote, at the time when the name of martin luther king was on everyone's lips, kennedy he never mentioned it that day. it's no doubt that, as the village voice's jack newfield was to write king's death gave kennedy the purpose his candidacy had loss with lyndon johnson's withdraw. his would be a broadened version of king's own strangely before he's been buried. >> david, it's a bit ironic that april 4th, 1968 spoech was considered the highlight of kennedy speech, of kennedy's campaign and maybe one of his greatest speeches ever, yet

kennedy himself had little use at times for king. >> well, they had a very difficult relationship which i guess is not surprising when you think about it. i mean, they had fundamentally different backgrounds. they had fundamentally different temperaments. one was the kons president mat politician, the other was a man of the clothe. most fully, and people sort of forget this in are a way, they were of different races and they were of different races at a time when there was a real camp between the races. why was bobby kennedy so keptic skeptical of king? >> i think he wasn't as skeptical as he was pragmatic. >> did he resent the fact that king pushed his brother too far? >> i think he recognized politics mattered more than anything else and king was a

inconvenience, was an irritant to the kennedys. king jeopardized the southern votes for the kennedys. king was a distraction from the foreign policy agenda of the kennedys. king was a troublemaker and king had to be managed and that was challenging because king had his own agenda. king thought the kennedys were the best hope for civil rights and he was going to push them and he kept pushing them. so there was a natural tension between them and they were going to reseventy one another. king can was asking for things and kennedy was saying not fwhonow, not now. >> and bobby was the enforcer. martin luther king gave his speech in 1863. he lived on this cloud, had a

heroic status and then he was assassinated in apr'68. >> he is become more ambitious, part ly at bobby kennedy's insistence. bobby kennedy said, you have to come up north and king came up north and had his head handed to him in many ways. coming into chicago, there was an established daily machine and he was much resented. then king moved into the whole vietnam question and became one of the most vocal critic of the vietnam war. even though kennedy was moving in that direction, king was ahead of him. kennedy wasn't quite sure what to do with it. so kennedy had the to keep his distance, even then, from king. >> talk to me about this.

we had martin luther king, an african-american man, knowing that he pushed bobby kennedy dodd thing for him, so using the media in a way. bobby kennedy knows e doesn't water to push mlk too far because he has this powerful voice. how did these two deal with carrots and sticks with each other.. >> i think it requests constantwas constantly a matter of carrots and sticks. martin luther king helped kennedy get elected. you had to keep his happy. but you couldn't affiliate yourself with him too explicitly. amazingly, it's very hard to believe now, but the south was still in play at this point.

he was really a problem to be managed. there were things to be gained from him. king got them. when they sprang ding king from jail in 1960 on the eve of the election, massive numbers of black voters went to the polls and swung key states in the north and effectively got him elected. so they had to be careful with him. >> the book is "the promise and dream." out now. david, thank you very much. >> my pleasure. and this wednesday on the 15th anniversary of dr. king's assassination, we will bring in a number of special guests, including martin luther king iii and tom brokaw live from memphis. still ahead, president trump spent much of the weekend on twitter putting out decidedly untrue statements. we're going to run through them. plus local anchors forced to profess a message on news

stations across the country. the video is next. "morning joe" is back in 90 seconds. ng go thing. your sorry not sorry thing. your out with the old in with the new, onto bigger and better thing. get the live tv you love. no bulky hardware. no satellite. no annual contract. try directv now for $10/mo for 3 months. more for your thing. that's our thing. visit directvnow dot com in these turbulent times, do you focus or plan for tomorrow? at kpmg, we believe success requires both. with our broad range of services and industry expertise, kpmg can help you anticipate tomorrow and deliver today. kpmg.

mexico has to help us at the the border. if they're not going to help us at the border, it's a very sad thing. mexico has to help us at the border. and a lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of daca. and we're going to have to really see. we had a great chance. the democrats blew it. >> wow. as noted on twitter --

>> that's remarkable. >> this is quite the transcript. >> that was remarkable on so many fronts. as well as inaccurate. >> or you you doesn't understand. that was the president speaking outside church before easter service. president trump railed against mexico, immigrant, and the policy known as daca which he got completely factually wrong. >> well, completely wrong. and he also was using language from a fox news report that had been laying this that morning. >> it's the last he saw and heard so it came out of his mouth. >> nick, it's unbelievable. you had a busy weekend, didn't you? >> i did. >> the president apparently did, too pb golfing, watching fox news, going to church. but he said people were trying to slip over the border to take

advantage of daca. you had to do that, like, before -- >> if the fox news feed goes in one ear and comes out the other ear and comes out the mouth, okay, mr. president, people who are applying for daca are already here and they are not coming here from mexico now. they are already in america. >> i just don't now how to respond by trump tv or people who they work for trump on tv. good morning, everyone. >> and they're not qualified. again, they're not qualified unless they got here before i think it june 2007. >> so we are stumbling into monday. we also have with us columnist and associated editor for "the washington post," david ig fashus. also with us, john edwards.

>> you know, mika, i thought it was interesting. if you look at what the president said and this weekend i was struck by all of the false information coming out of the white house. and then on top of that, i saw an ally of the president using a lot of local news station toes run a propaganda clip. so here you have an entire broadcasting system running a propaganda clip. >> this is pretty frightening. >> attacking news agents while the president himself was running a lot of fake news stories. >> well, and i find the apgers to be frightening, too. they did this. so it goes all the way down to who actually let the words pass

through their mouth without thinking about them. early last month, reports surfaced that the largest owner of television stations in this country, sin collar broadcast group, was planning to force anchors across the country to attack other media outlets for sharing, quote, fake stories. the broadcaster is known for pushing a conservative platform and mandating must-run commentary. over the past week or so, anchors nationwide were required to read from the script, not their own commentary, the commentary of their company as this mash up from dead spin illustrates the results are chilling. >> our greatest responsibility is the to serve our treasure valley community. >> the communities. >> eastern iowa communities. >> michigan communities. >> we are extremely proud of the quality of balanced journalism

produces. but we are concerned about -- responsible news stories plaguing our country. >> the sharinging of false newses has become all too xhn on social media. more alarming, some outlets plush these stories without checking the facts first. >> sharing of bias media has become all too common on social media. >> publish these same articles without checking facts first. >> they push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think. this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous can to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

>> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> and john meachum, i think we would all agree that -- >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> a national broadcasting system that is shoving propaganda down local anchors' throats, straight from the pen of somebody who is a trump accolate is really chilling. >> it's kind of beyond chilling, right? it's state media, essentially. it's one of the things that we've always, as a country,

prided ourselves in a free and raucous press. people can accuse us of thinking alike sometimes. they don't do that any more, but back in the day and then free choice. this is something that's sort of fascinating. only donald trump could do this, could unify fears of the corporate media plus first amendment people plus true conservatives who should be worried about large institutions dictating the reality for others. so anyone worried about any of those issues should be chilled by this. >> david, it looks like something that we would mock the russians for during the days of pravda. yet you have, again, donald trump. you combined this with donald trump attacking actually

respectable news outlets, they fight hard every day to get it right, while donald trump in his white house and his allies are churning up their own fake news. they're lying to the american people throughout the weekend, over the past year, year and a half. but they're trying to discredit those who are actually calling them out on their lies and now they're using an entire broadcast system. and i'm not sure who advertises on these stations, but they're basically advertising for america's new pravda. >> joe, that mashup was funny. it had me almost giggling, the repetition over and over again of these lines. but, obviously, it's not funny. i was wondering what those journalists, those people who decided i want to be in the news and part of my local station, i want to be in that business of sharing the information, telling the truth to people, what they

felt reading these canned lines and what did they feel when they see that around the country people were -- the they probably don't know that everybody was saying the same thing. they will now. i hope people in our business -- i think the best check against this is the people who believe in this business. i didn't come into journalism to repeat the same things over and over again. that's a check against people trying to put things the down the throats of journalists, in quotation marks, to get the uniform line out. >> i'm surprised not one person said i'm not going to read this. that is stun to go me. why are you in this business? >> and, nick, there is, of course, a business angle that donald trump gave sin layer a deal and they're paying him back. >>. >> sinclair is trying to make this deal go through.

t easy to look at this as a way to win some faf with the trump administration. picture these people with even more stations and having this happen over an even bigger part of the country. still cocome, completely contradicting his success. stay with us. >> what we're saying is that donald trump calls donald trump a liar. >> and whether he knows that or he doesn't get it is the big question. we're going to fact check it all. but first, bill karins with the snow. stop it. >> we have 2 inches of snow at

laguardia airport. delays around 09 minutes. some areas just have wet pavement, but once you get outside the heart of new york city, snow is accumulating and it's still snowing hard. april 2nd, april fools' continues. the snow will be exiting by about 11:00 in new york. 1:00, it will be exiting all of the northeast. if you got to work or if some people are in school, it will be easy getting home. an additional one to two inches and that will be about it and then it will be gone. so the rest of the country, we're warm. up here, billings to minneapolis, this will have severe weather and snow with it. montana through south dakota, up to 2 to 4 inches. minneapolis, across the green bay, that's 4 to 6 inches of snow. this is going to be tonight into tomorrow and tomorrow evening in areas of northern michigan. but here is what is more severe and more dangerous. 40 million people are at risk

including an enhanced risk of storms. indianapolis and paducah and area of all the western half of kentucky. we'll watch that tomorrow. we life leave but hopefully the last winter storm of the season. this is up there about 30th floor of rockefeller la squaw. this is the story of green mountain coffee roasters dark magic told in the time it takes to brew your cup. first, we head to vermont. and go to our coffee shop. and meet dave. hey. why is dark magic so spell-bindingly good, he asks? let me show you. let's go. so we climb. hike. see a bear. woah. reach the top. dave says dark magic is a bold blend of coffee with rich flavors of uganda, sumatra, colombia and other parts of south america. like these mountains, each amazing on their own. but together? magical. all, for a smoother tasting cup of coffee. green mountain coffee roasters packed with goodness. when did you see the sign? when i needed to jumpstart sales. build attendance for an event.

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let's fix that. let's give this guy gig- really? and these kids, and these guys, him, ah. oh hello. that lady, these houses! yes, yes and yes. and don't forget about them. uh huh, sure. still yes! xfinity delivers gig speed to more homes than anyone. now you can get it, too. welcome to the party. i'm. i'm fox san antonio's jessica headily. >> our greatest responsibility is to serve our treasured -- the communities. >> eastern iowa communities. >> mid michigan communities. >> we are extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that cbs news 4 produces. but we are concerned about -- responsible one-sided news stories plaguing our country. >> the sharing of bias and false news has become all too common

on social media. more alarming, some media outlets public the same stories without checking facts first. >> the sharing of bias and false news has become all too common on social media. >> more alarming. >> without checking facts first. unfortunately, some members of the communities use platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think. this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. >> the those news anchors from around the country were saying that this weekend, you know, and they were instructed to recite words that legitimize the president's agenda, it was donald trump who was lying. he lied about the daca program. you just saw that. he said people were crossing the

border to take advantage of daca. well, unless they had a time machine -- if they had a delorian, if they went back to the future to before i think june of 2007, they could have taken advantage of it. but he lied about daca. he lied about amazon and post office rates. he lied about "the washington post." who happened to publish this story about donald trump's finances. and all that just days after websites, including info wars and others accused parkland survivor david hogg of not being at the parkland massacre. that was picked up by mainstream media, by the way. hostile to the parkland students. the president's allies picked up the false attacks that chair woman of the republican national committee, for instance. one of the more depressing

things, believe it or not, in a depressing political weekend. she tweeted democrats hate our president more than they love our country. i'll say that again. democrats hate or president, says the gop chair woman, more than they love our country. steve sch mi dt responded, hey, ronna, do you mean democrats like seth moulton who served five tours as a marine in iraq, our purple heart recipients like senator tammy duckworth? shame on you. your capacity for disgrace is positively trumpan. >> so let's go deeper into the president's easter sunday lies. quote, border patrol agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the border because of ridiculous liberal democrat laws like catch and release. yet catch and release is not a

law. however, the president tweeted the border is, quote, getting more dangerous. care ca caravans coming. >> it's amazing, he sees caravans of immigrants headed to the u.s., which is an absolutely preposterous story, and then he goes -- john meachum, then he goes to church, he makes a statement outside of church, repeats it, at the they have all the facts wrong and is saying that he's going to destroy a trade deal with mexico and canada that helps farmers in iowa and across middle america as much as it helps anybody just because we now learn that trump

is, quote, unleashed. quote unhinged. that he has nobody around him any more to say, mr. president, actually you're dead wrong. the story is dead wrong and you're spreading a lie if you go out there and say that. >> yeah. there's no evidence that he would care, even if someone were there to say it, is there? >> no. >> there is no distinctation. and we're however months into america held hostage here in had april of '18. the great hope was, however against the facts of the campaign, were that somehow or another there would be a line between or separate spheres between the showman ship and the substance, that somehow or another the great ship of state would take care of the substance of the the presidency. it seems to me that that hope is still there because, you know,

as churchill is reputed to have said, you can always count on americans to do the right thing after we exhaust every other possibility. so there is that. but that sphere, that distinction between showmanship and substance is pretty much gone. and i think that people who were willing to take a fire on an unconventional president, had enough of the bushes and the clintons, we want to take things up. you know, when does the substance happen? when does that person get paid back for enduring all of the chaos? and the final point i'd make here is the idea that what comes out of a president's mouth matters enormously is under enormous strain. and i've been very skeptical and very hesitant to say that he's changing the presidency. we know the presidency isn't

changing him. but is he changing the presidency? but i do think there is a point at which the devaluation of what a president says and really the erosion of gravitas is going to have a significant global impact. >> it already has. >> and it's getting worse, david ignatius, the president is just doing -- he's just doing things without input from somebody else. and here you have the president going out, again, because he saw fox news, going out talking about, quote, cara vans of people coming to the united states. and saying that he's going to up end a bill that binds north america together and helps farmers in the middle of america as much as anybody else.

>> we don't know, joe, whether people will begin to tune these remarks out, but to me, the worst of this was on easter sunday, people who have been here in this country at least 11 years who are blameless, who are just living here trying to do their work, turning them into bargaining chips saying i'm not going to do anything about those dreamers until you build my wall. they're in an effort to give him the wind that he has decided he hassed to have. it's been a depressing, disturbing process. it has real world consequences pore people. coming up, president trump is sidelining his generals and bringing in his own political soldiers. john kelly was nowhere to be

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easter egg roll. remember last year when the president hosted the easter bunny? mike pences was on the border with south korea. that was fun. peter, let's talk about epa chief scott pruitt who is facing mounting ethics report about a condo he used owned by an manager lobbyist. what more can you tell us? and what about the strange die many namics where he were asleep in there or something. >> there was a series of stories. i reached out to the white house to see if they had any comment on scott pruitt this morning. they said to me, quote, we'll talk about that later. but the bottom line is, the questions are focussing on the fact that scott pruitt during his first six months of this

administration was rent ago condo and paying $50 a night to stay there. that is well below market rates. this is significant, obviously, because that would appear to be a gift, if you receive any gist of that kind below market rate. the e.p.a., we reached out and they said more broadly that they had cleared this, that it was approved. that separate item you were asking about was his security detail as reported by some other outlets were concerned when they thought he may be unconscious. but suffice it to say, the government taxpayers paid back the family, that lady who owned the place to have the door put up in its place. the questions about scott pruitt are not going away. chris christie who was part of the vetting process had this to say about it. >> the president has been ill served by this and mr. mr.

pruitt is going to go, it's because he should have never been there in the first place. >> did he have to go? >> i don't know how you survive this one. if he has to say, it's because he never should have been there in the first lace. >> it's also a series of new questions being raised today about david shulkin, now gone va secretary. shulkin making the rounds, maintaining that he did not resign, that he was fired by the president saying that it was his commitment, hissen plan, his intention to stay to work on behalf of america's veterans. again, this morning on television saying he was fired, not resigned. the white house has been saying that he resigned, that he received a phone call from john kelly before the president tweeted about him. all this comes as hope hicks, communications director who some viewed as a moderating force is gone and the president has been increasingly speaking to some of

those voices from the past. anthony scaramucci, reince priebus have been whispering into his ear. here is your first look at the official trump golden egg. this is what folks today have an opportunity to purchase if they're interested. >> i like it. >> do you buy the white house easter -- >> you can. >> tradition, you do buy it. >> and gold. it's gold, of course. >> thank you, peter. coming up, the new yorker profiles the rising leader of saudi arabia in his quest to remake the middle east. how the crown prince's mission intersects with the white house and jared kushner. also ahead, we'll speak to the man who is about to be nominated as a pastor to south korea when he got a call from the white house that he was no longer wanted. he joins us next on "morning joe." [phone ringing]

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president trump and japan's prime minister, shinzo abe will hold two days of talks in mar-a-lago. abe has said that he wants to remind trump of shorter range missiles and other north korean security threats beforehand. joining us now at csis, today makesing his first appearance, victor cha. welcome aboard. i am glad we have you here. >> we would like you to be on our ambassador in south korea, but what happened? >> well, first i should start off by saying, you know, every administration has the right to choose the people that they want. >> of course. >> and they have the right to

change their minds, as well. >> they chose you. >> i was asked almost about a year ago to take this job. went through policy questions and vetting. in the end, after about nine months or so, they decided it wasn't going to work out. >> was it specifically because you argued against the strategy of -- >> so we had extensive policy consultations and part of my job was to offer my expert opinion. i offered my views and in the end, you know, we thought -- >> and your view was? >> well, i just didn't think that had it's smart to carry out military strikes. >> what's the -- -- we hear a lot of different estimates. you've been in the middle of this and you've studied it.

what is the impact of a military strike on north korea if north korea decides to use weapons against south korea? how many people could die in a week? >> a lot. what we have to remember is that we're talking about a battle space that is very concentrated. in addition to the -- >> half a million people, possibly a million people? poem as many as a million people, shire. and there are, on any given day, 230,000 to 250,000 americans who live in south korea and another hundred thousand in japan, which would be in range of north korean missiles. that's the size of a u.s. city, right? and that had is what we put at risk, not even including the koreans and japanese. >> what's the state right now of u.s.-south korean relations as we hear of an upcoming summit but the president, again, this weekend, striking out talking

about possible trade restrictions against south korea? >> so there are many peoples on the table right now. there's obviously the coordination of policy on north korea. there's a free trade agreement that's just been renegotiated that the president has, right after renegotiating it, said he would hold it back possibly. there's defense cost sharing negotiations where the united states wants south korea to pay more for the stationing of u.s. troops on the peninsula. so there are a lot of issues in play right now and you have a conservative government here in the united states and a progressive government of south korea. so it's challenging. >> so we have the upcoming possibly of bilateral meeting between the president and kim jong un. we've heard a lot about the aspirational aspects, the positives that could come out of that, neutralizing the threat by the united states and korea. what are the worst case scenarios? >> so to me, the worst case scenario is a summit that fails. i mean, i used to do

negotiations in the president bush administration, bush 43. and usually you want the summit to come at the end after you've had a year of negotiations. in this case, they're having it at the very beginning. there is not nearly enough time before the end of may to negotiate anything. the worst thing is that they walk out of this angry at each other and there's no place left to go, there's no more diplomacy because you've used your biggest card up front. >> so who will be preparing for the talks? >> usually for a summit of this nature, the nsc staff is the key body working on this. obviously with john bolton being the new security adviser starting next week, he would have a very big role in organizing what would he be the best path forward.

it's certainly made a point about international norm and a preventive strike. i remember when he was under secretary of state, and my guess is that he will allow this summit the to take place, but not allow a relieve in sanctions. >> what about preventive strikes against north korea, preventive strikes against iran? >> you know, i don't think it's helpful from a diplomatic perspective. i think from the perspective of this administration, they see it as putting pressure on north korea. they're all about pressure on their negotiating partners. they've used sanctions and now they're using potentially the threat of a military strike to try and bring north korea to make better deals at the negotiating table. >> we have a situation with china where we're sort of cutting them out of this

process, they're beginning to reassert themselves. how much is that pressure that we're putting them on trade becoming an an legislature with their issues with north korea? >> certainly chinese cooperation on keep pressure on north korea is paramount. 90% of north korea's external trade today is one country and that is china. so it's very important to stay in synch with north korea. but the chinese is playing their own game now. they just met with the north korean leader and they can back channel trade to take sanctions pressure off the north koreans. >> victor cha, thank you very much. welcome aboard. >> and you've been at csis for a while. >> yes. >> was dr. brazinski polite to you? absolutely terrific. we had long conversations about asia. he would point out all the holes in my logic. but he was fantastic. >> and funny, right? >> very funny, but tough.

>> funny in a very tough, intimidating sort of way. >> i see funny, you see tough. up next, it's a major flaij flash point for foreign policy, a country run by a young leader taking the reigns from the family dynasty. "the new yorker ope"'s dexter n on "morning joe." for leisure. so i go national, where i can choose any available upgrade in the aisle - without starting any conversations- -or paying any upcharges. what can i say? control suits me. go national. go like a pro.

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the crown prince of saudi arabia is poised to take

hollywood by storm today, reportedly meeting with heavyweights robert murdoch and bob iger, among others. his tour of the u.s. hits los angeles months after the kingdom announced it was lifting its 35-year ban on public cinemas. one of the issues on tap, how to build an entertainment industry completely from scratch. l also in store for the crown prince, a meeting with oprah win fro. the saudi prince's quest to remake the middle east and he's doing it step by step. the question, is it maybe too

fast? >> how have things shaken out so far, dexter? and where does he stand now as far as controlling power in saudi arabia? >> well, he's in charge. you know, he's not the king his father who is more than 80 years old, 82 i think is still nominally the the king. but mbs, and that's how he's referred to pretty much everywhere, he's in control and he now controls the army, he controls all the police, all the security agencies. he's made a lot of enemies and i think there are some people who are worried about his security. but he's in charge. he's very ambitious and very impatient and he's moving very,

very quickly. >> was the percentage effective with stifling dissent ors was the message received? >>. >> well, i think both. what is interesting about the percentage, he billed it as an anti-corruption compare. which it was. skraub is aware in oil money and corruption is everywhere. so the people he went after by and large, they hadlty of money stowed away and he was trying to recoup some of that. but i think there was an agenda in addition to clawing back some of that public money, i'm going to take out my rivals and he's certainly done that. he has essentially removed anyone who could challenge him for the thrown.

so at the moment, he's sitting very pretty and he's all alone. but that's dangerous, yes. >> i think the bid to create an entertainment industry is fascinating. once you unleash that, if that is even possible, it almost addresses every social issue directly in kind of a confrontational away. >> yeah. i spent some time in saudi arabia. one of the things you notice when you're there, i had no idea, but every year, saudi arabia sends like 70,000 students to the united states to go to college. it's a country of 25 million people or so. 70,000 kids are coming home every yearing having lived in the west. and so they come home and they're impatient and they want to live. and they've tasted the freedoms of the west and some of them don't want to go back to the old

way. so, you know, they want that. among the young people, there's a lot of enthusiasm for this, for the change, and i think a certain amount of patience for what, you know, even the ugly side of he's doing. >> nick. >> dexter, commentary magazine, i'm -- it's no secret that saudi arabia and iran have something of a conflictual relationship. a bloody incident on the gaza border with israel. i don't suspect it was a surprise that the hamas-led as good gaza government. to what extent is the exacerbating the conflict? >> i think a lot of this is mipmip in

my piece. again, he's a young man in a hurry. so he's waging war in yemen. he tried to overthrow the government in lebanon. he got involved in the peace talks with the palestinians. and all of this is towards a kind of wider view towards consolidating arab world against iran, across the persian gulf. that's the main enemy. they've seen the iranians sort of gain everywhere across the middle east over the past decade, and they want to push back, and i -- and so my article kind of details mbs' relationship with the white house, particularly with jared kushn kushner, on kind of this campaign and the plan to push back on the iranians. all these flash points that you're seeing in the middle east over the past eight months, like, they're all connected. they all come back to saudi arabia. >> dexter, it is a 180 turn from

barack obama's policy for eight years of trying to deal with iran, at times being hyper critical of our sunni allies in egypt, saudi arabia and across the middle east, isn't it? >> definitely. if you remember, president obama said in a kind of well publicized interview with jeffrey goldberg of the atlantic, he said the saudis are our friends but they need to learn how to share the neighborhood with the iranians, and, you know, that made the saudis very angry, and i think it's fair to say that this white house doesn't agree with any of that. they don't accept the status quo as it is. they don't even necessarily accept the legitimacy of the iranian government, and so there's very much a kind of -- everybody's on the same page here to take a much more aggressive stance in the middle east. and i think, you know, now with john bolton and mike pompeo

coming in, i think, you know, things could get interesting. >> okay. >> to say the least. the piece is in the new issue of "the new yorker." dexter filkins thank you. up next, why the office responsible for vetting government officials may need some vetting of its own. so, that goal you've been saving for, you can do it. we can do this. at fidelity, our online planning tools are clear and straightforward so you can plan for retirement

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with the fastest retinol formula available. it's clinically proven to work on fine lines and wrinkles. one week? that definitely works! rapid wrinkle repair®. and for dark spots, rapid tone repair. neutrogena®. see what's possible. a little known white house office responsible for vetting and placing thousands of staffers in key posts across the government. >> so it's very important? >> these people's jobs are important. >> the people that run the country and -- >> apparently, it's in utter chaos. an investigation by "the washington post" found the presidential personnel office has struggled to place qualified people in critical positions since the inauguration. most staffers in the department have been in their 20s, some with little professional experience, apart from their work on trump's campaign.

the ppo has reportedly struggled to keep pace with its enormous responsibilities and their office became something of a social hub where young staffers from throughout the administration stopped by to hang out on couches and vap. at least one instance included a drinking game. the white house confirmed both the happy hours and the drinking game, saying it was a way to net work and let off steam. i mean, why are we surprised? >> i mean, this is, again -- >> hope hicks, she was 29 by the time she left. >> what if barack obama's personnel office had people lounging, vaping, vaping on the couch, while doing drinking games? where the person who finds the vodka has to drink it? >> that sounds like a lot of fun. i don't think there was vaping in 2009 but there was a running

theme among conservatives that the obama administration was very young, very green and sort of just coming off the fraternity row. >> right. >> so i think we're kind of flirting with reliving here. >> i want to go back to the dexter filkins conversation. it is really one of the greatest shifts in foreign policy. does have to do with the middle east. with barack obama starting in 2007 seemed to be almost obsessed with striking a sort of detant with iran and would do anything to get there including throwing allies overboard and things seemed to be completely turned on their heels by the trump administration. >> it seems like quite a bit. to look back on the obama administration being a failure at stems from a desire to seek reproachment with iran. the overtures were already out. it prevented the president from

addressing this in a forceful matter. there was a report out who confesses that we believed syria needed to go, and we needed to sacrifice syria to iran in order to appease iran, keep it at the table. this is why we're in the position we're at. it seems like you could draw a straight line. and also, by the way, to allow the shiite militias in iraq to sort of fill the vacuum we leave when we escaped. stems from a desire to seek a sort of reproachment with iran. >> why don't you wrap talking about what we started the show with, the sort of prove-esque statements that local anchors are forced to read? >> while we cover a lot of the failures that this president has put forward in his ability to deliver for his country, it is on us to do our best to stick to

the facts and to give perspective and i am hearing in light of our coverage this morning that there may be some journalists who refuse to read that, and we're going to look more into that, as well as speaking to some people at facebook today so a lot to talk about tomorrow. >> that does it for us today though. thank you so much for watching us. we greatly appreciate it. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage. >> thank you, joe, thank you, mika. hi there, i am stephanie ruhle, back and excited to see you all this morning because there's a lot to cover. starting with unleashed over the holiday. you know who i'm talking about. hours after wishing his twitter followers a happy easter, the president lets loose with a barrage of tweets aimed at amazon and the daca program. >> a lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of daca. and we're going to have to really see. they had a great chance. the democrats blew it. >> all this, b