living with autism and the family and friends who lovingly support them. that does it for me this afternoon. "deadline white house" with nicolle wallace starts right now. >> hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. quick, paging john kelly, the president is loose on the true man balcony and i think he's scaring the kids capping a morning of twitter rage where he launched attacks on his own justice department and fbi, amazon, cnn, nbc, mexico, democrats and so-called caravans of people traveling through mexico. he addressed the children and families gathered on the south lawn for the annual easter egg roll. >> i want to thank the white house historical association and all of the people that worked so hard with melania, with everybody to keep this incredible house or building or whatever you want to call it, because there really is no name for it. it is special. and we keep it in tip-top shape. we call it sometimes tippy-top

shape and it's a great, great place. >> it has a name, a very, very famous name. while signing children's autographs, reporters asked the president whether daca kids should worry about getting deported. here's what he said to them. >> mr. president, what about the daca kids, should they worry about what's going to happen? >> they have a great opportunity. the democrats are really letting them down. a lot of people taking advantage of daca -- >> now, what is behind the apparent mania of a president filibustering a crowd of kids flanked by the easter bunny and his largely unsmiling wife? phil rucker and robert costa with a great explanation over the weekend. they report, this is now a president a little bit alone, isolate and had without any moderating influences -- and, if anything, a president who is being encouraged and goaded on by people around him one confidant said. it really is a president

unhinged, unquote. the president's guests at mar-a-lago this weekend reportedly included goaders don king, bernie karik. nowhere to be seen was john kelly, the beleaguered white house chief of staff and overall disciplinarian nor forces eager to restrain the president from acting impulsively who have resigned or been fired, end quote. joining us to discuss the newly unshackled donald trump, some of our favorite reporters and friends from the washington post white house bureau chief phil rucker. at the table john heilman, nbc national affairs analyst. jeremy peters, reporter for "the new york times" and msnbc contributor and michael crowley, senior affairs reporter for politico. two of you got here through the april snowstorm. phil rucker, let me start with you, your reporting was perfection. this is the way the president has been described to me -- and i remember when sarah palin gleefully described herself as

finally unshackled at the end of the 2008 campaign, things didn't really go that well for her at that point. but the unshackling was riveting. >> yeah, and that's how president trump feels. look, he's 14 months into the job. he feels confident in his own decisions. he feels like he doesn't need a chief of staff, he doesn't need advisors telling him what to do, that he knows what to do and that his gut instincts are what's best to drive the country. and increasingly he's acting upon those impulses and instincts. he's always felt those impulses but there have been the first year of the presidency people around here trying to steer him in a different direction, trying to slam the brakes on some of these decisions, inform him of the consequence, maybe convince him for an alternate palth. but now trump is doing as he pleases. we saw it with the trade tariffs a few weeks ago. we've seen it with the decision to have talks with north korean leader kim jong-un. and we saw it over the weekend with these tweets about mexico and immigration and the daca

program as well as the tweets, rather, attacking amazon with falsehoods that his own white house officials have repeatedly tried to explain to him, tried to explain to him the truth, that the u.s. postal service benefits and profits from amazon, that the washington post is not, in fact, a lobbyist for amazon. but he doesn't seem to be listening to them. he's just saying what he believes and what he thinks. >> so, i follow you on twitter. i saw you fact checking some of those tweets in real time especially as they pertain to the washington post. i wonder if behind the scenes you hear from anybody in the white house staff just about the idiocy in the things he tweets. are they acknowledging there is nothing they can do about it, is that where we are? >> that's pretty much where we are. they feel there is nothing they can do with it. with regard to the amazon thing, i mean, he's had these eruptions over amazon countless times privately with his advisors

present, with friends present. he hasn't always tweeted publicly about them, but it's existed there in the ether for a while and he chooses not to believe the factual information that he's presented. with daca and the immigration tweets over the weekend, he seems to be just conflating the daca program with border security and kind of getting it all confused in these tweets. i don't know if that's purposeful or not, but clearly he has been briefed by his staff on what the facts are and he just chooses to believe what he wants to believe. >> john heilman, i want to read you one of my favorite quotes from axios over the weekend. trump's island -- anyone has heard them use this expression about themselves. this is not the media using a derogatory term that trump's inside campaign staff and white house staff doesn't use themselves. axios writing, the miss fits or deplorables as some people call them offer the president insight into the perspective of various constituencies, middle america,

the trump base, evangelicals and populist nationalists. was there a diagnosis that he'd grown detached from the misfits? did someone think things weren't going well? it seems those are the only people who are unshakeable and happy with what he's doing. >> look, i think the political overlay on this is something that has been consistent from the time that he took office until today. his base matters to him. it's like his binky. and he does -- he never wants to let go of the binky and normal president who had won election with -- by losing the popular vote, winning as narrowly as he did, if you think about george w. bush in 2000, first thing you would do is think if i'm going to get big things done in washington, i need to expand from where i am right now because majority of the country isn't for me. trump has never accepted that analysis. and so all of us who think in conventional terms and think, how can we put -- we want to see

people around him that will both protect him from going off the rails on one side and turn him in some way into a more conventional president, someone who would reach out to a broader swath of america. we are all destined to be foiled because trump does not have any interest in that. what he has an interest in is clutching his binky ever tighter and to the extent that these other people congress -- conventional people try to get him out of that, i want to go back to people who make me comfortable, people who tell me what i want to hear. i don't think it's that he isn't in touch with the constituencies, he loves to hear it echoing in his ears. >> he loves the love. i have also heard that john kelly doesn't plan on quitting at any point and this humiliation we're witnessing is something that he's willing to endure. and if it means he has to force the president's hand, so be it.

how much sort of -- how far do you think the president will go? we know it's an established fact he didn't fire -- he doesn't like to fire people face to face. he lets other people do it or he does it via tweet. how much worse can things get? obviously there are people that work in the building that have seen the president sounding like a total boob. it's called the white house. why didn't somebody shout out white house? melania elbowed him, like the building has a name. or the bunny. is there a person in there? that was one of the weirdest things i have ever seen and the weirdest presidency i have ever witnessed. >> what you're seeing is trump reminiscent in the days of his campaign when he felt like ings in were going very well. and when he feels like things are going well, even though that may not match up with reality, he gets very reckless. so, as far as whether or not i think he can get any worse, this is probably about as impulsive as we've seen him lately.

never say never. i'm consistently amazed and surprised by this administration. who knows what could be around the corner next. i think what you're seeing here is the let trump be trump ethos take hold here. the people who are around him, the people he's been talking to the past couple weeks, months, cory lewandowski, dave, back in the inner circle. those are the people who always felt that it was useless to try to constrain trump. >> right. >> to put up guardrails around him. i think john kelly, to be fair, has also kind of realized there are limits to how much he can do to kind of reign trump in. >> phil rucker, take us through some of the that color. you have that in your piece, that his week started with some of the names that jeremy just listed and ended with your accounting of who had crossed paths with him at mar-a-lago. take us inside some of that. >> yeah, so, last monday night he had over a number of officials for dinner. they ate steaks in the residence of the white house. corey lewandowski, the campaign

manager from 2016, dave bossy, jared kushner, the president's son-in-law and brad par stale, the 2020 reelection campaign manager. it is important to note cory lewandowski is someone kelly tried to ban from the white house. the president is the president and he let him in for dinner clearly and he's sort of in the inner circle now. and then there was also a dinner at mar-a-lago thursday. the president was dining on the patio there with his wife melania and other family members and saw don king, the legendary boxing promoter, who is an old friend of donald trump's and king came up and joined them for dinner. i actually called king the next morning and asked him, you know, don king, what did you and the president talk about? don king said he brought up stormy daniels in front of melania there. >> oh, god. >> and told president trump he thought it was really a disgrace and utterly ridiculous stormy daniels was a top news story. the president nodded in

agreement. >> let me ask you something. it was pot sited to me today, phil, what is actually going on inside the president's inner circle is something he likes very much, a power struggle. this person likened it to the middle east, with the saudi arabia on one side, iran on the other, all the conflict in the middle east is sort of along those two axes. on one side is the family, jared and ivanka, and their disciples, people like hope hicks, jared's now departed spokesman, surrogates who fell into that camp. on the other side is john kelly, people he lays his hands on. the communications director's fight is so bloody is the candidates all hailed from those two distincted branches of the president's orbit. he enjoys watching them bloody each other. how much is that at play now? >> that is part of the dynamic. i think a broader dynamic is kelly is losing influence as you guys were alluding to earlier in the show. he just -- he has a little bit less support and influence. he used to be in the oval office

all the time watching over the president, controlling who comes and goes and who gets on the phone. and he just has less control now. he's been cut out of some decisions. he was not a key factor in deciding, for example, that larry kudlow should be the new economic counsel director or that john bolton should be the new national security advisor. these are major staffing decisions in the west wing that are not being made by the white house chief of staff right now, in part because kelly has some diminished power there. but there is a broader struggle underway and i don't think it's going to end any time soon. i'm told on the communications director front to look for the job to remain unfilled for a while now. trump may kind of let things be as status quo with hope hicks gone and not want to put somebody in there right away. >> you're a better source along both those family lines than i am. you and phil both are. what do you hear about sort of that great clash of civilizations? >> the clash between which civilizations? >> between the family and people that want to let trump be trump, the people that have been

around, and then the people that were trying to sort of have some -- i mean it's all relative. >> i go back to what jeremy says which i think is right. those people who thought -- you had john kelly who came in and said it's not my job to manage the president, it's my job to manage the white house. he recognized when he walked in there was a limit to be the adult in the room. that instinct has been reinforced dramatically over time. there is no one who thinks, looking at the way -- i think there is a state for a lot of people not in the old-time trump tower campaign crew or the family, for a lot of them, they, like us on some level -- you can criticize them as enablers in a variety of ways. they look at the situation and say, i don't quite understand why the president feels so confident because -- >> right. >> you know, in some ways his presidency is in as much peril as it's ever been. the interview with mueller is coming soon. the president is increasing

promise, everything is going great. then you run up against that thing of even the people who claim to know him best don't understand what is going on in that head of his and throwing up their hands and saying, whether we want to say let trump be trump or not say it, trump is going to be trump. >> okay. so, this is all slightly entertaining, not really, but until you get to national security. and i want to read you two things. and get your thoughts through the foreign policy prism. jennifer rubin writes, public servants don't want to work in this white house. trump spinners who assured us during the campaign would workout because stellar people would be there were mistaken. trump is making sudden decisions without much staff consultation, wagering they will pay dividends. one of those things was proposing a white house visit for the russians and that call on the 20th, the do not congratulate call in which he of course he did congratulate, we counted 15 nato allies who haven't been to the west wing yet. >> amazing vladimir putin hasn't been to the white house since 2005.

>> 2005. >> and, look, and it's very interesting that we learned about this once again through the russians. you guys will all remember when the russian ambassador and foreign minister came to the oval office last year, that unbelievable moment when the russian media released photos of the meeting and we learned a lot about it from the russians before we did from our side. so, classic russian technique -- >> let's remind people about that. that was when he said to, was it kislyak and lavrov, he had just fired comey and he said, i'm so happy to get rid of this nutjob. it relieved all the pressure on me. >> it was like out of a bad tv series, right? you could never imagine a conversation that blunt and sort of comical happening in the oval office with the russians at a time when he was under investigation for colluding with the russians. and then on top of everything else, he allegedly leaks classified information about a counter terrorist operation. so many things went wrong there. but back to what we're talking about here, classic russian move to be the ones to disclose, by the way, you might be interested

in something your president said he didn't tell you, he invited vladimir putin to the white house. that is so important to vladimir putin. he is a man who wants to shed his international pariah image who wants to be meeting with world leaders in the classest places to be treated like big man who has a seat at the table and is a totally legitimate global actor, particularly at this moment when he stands accused of using a weapon of mass destruction in a narrow form against a former russian military intelligence official living in great britain. and so it's an astounding moment to be talking about this at all. and white house didn't deny it. they said it was one of several locations that trump talked about having a possible meeting with putin at. i would be astounded if that actually happened. but it shows that, you know, this president who ignored his talking points when he called putin to congratulate him on an election that was widely seen as an anti-democratic sham is not interested in the advice of the people around him. john and i were talking before the show. the administration has taken some notable policy steps to get

tough on russia, which we can talk more about. but there is this incredible disnance between trump's own words, attitudes and actions and some of the things his administration is doing and it's very strange. >> to one point. you think about the western world, nato allies and others, are trying to present a united front against vladimir putin because of what he did on british soil and so the president then gets on the phone with putin, hey, maybe you should come over to the white house and see me. the president is, whatever his motivations are -- and there are obviously -- we all have theories about that. the bottom line is that is going to become public and it is going to allow putin and the russian s to do what they've done, which is to try to drive a giant wedge between donald trump, the alleged leader of the free world and the rest of the free world. he's giving them weapons to wage a public -- a fight of public diplomacy where the russians can say, well, the west is allied against us. president trump still likes us. >> let me ask you, is he giving

them the weapon or is he the weapon? >> trump himself? >> yeah. >> we don't know the answer to that. look, what the white house says is trump believes you can do two things at one. you can have a tough policy position and extend a hand to putin and say, look, i have to get tough on you. you understand why. can we work this out, can we be reasonable? it will be better for world peace, it will avoid a nuclear arms race. but this president i think has lost the benefit of the doubt when it comes to these issues. the way he talks about putin has been strange for so long. predates the situation. going all the way back to trump in the campaign and before the campaign saying that we don't know who shot down that airliner over ukraine which everyone else says it was the russians. we don't know who poisoned another russian dissident in the u.k. putin is a killer. you say he's a kill earn. i don't know. we have lots of killers. i think he's lost the benefit of the doubt on these questions or at minimum deserves intense scrutiny and skepticism. >> it's this pattern where the more you accuse him of something

he's offended by, the more he gets his back up. no, no, he'll keep doing t. >> yes. i have a 6-year-old. i know what that's like. let me let phil rucker -- >> he's undermining nato. there are other times it's cost free. this undermines a piece of geo strategy the allies are trying to execute against the russians. >> phil rucker, let me give you the last word and tie this into all your reporting over the weekend. it seems this is an extension what you covered. he's unhinged, part unhinged, meaning he's not going to follow directions when they say do not congratulate vladimir putin. he's going to congratulate him, he's going to invite him over for a play date. catch me if i can. >> that is exactly right. as we've seen trump's administration, ratchet up pressure against russia, expel the diplomats, we haven't really heard a word out of the president's mouth condemning putin or condemning the actions of putin. it's very strange and quite note worthy. >> do you understand anything

from his mouth to be forthcoming or imminent? >> not that i'm aware of. i just know he speaks what he believes and he's not going to just say something because his national security advisors are telling him to. >> john bolton is going to have so much fun. phil rucker, thank you so much for joining you. when we come back, a presidential pal and confidant talks president trump, bob mummer and jail time. move over fox, you have competition. president trump has a new media crush. who he singled out and why their influence is far reaching more than fox news. not all are on board. we'll show you an unlikely member of the resistance.

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one of the things that makes the president who he is is that he's a salesman. and salesmen at times tend to be hyper boll i can, right? and this president certainly has tended to be that. that's okay when you're out on the campaign. that's okay when you're working on congress. it is not okay when you're sitting talking to federal agents because, you know, 18 usc 1001 is false statements to federal agents, that's a crime, that can send you to jail. >> chris christie with a warning to the president ahead of his apparently upcoming interview with robert mueller. don't lie. don't exaggerate. don't try to mislead the special counselor you could go to jail. an avalanche of punishing reports in just the last two weeks show us four clear threats out of the mueller investigation, all converging on the president himself. mueller has subpoenaed the president's businesses, suggesting there could be

concerns about foreign money laundering or that a foreign power could have some kind of leverage over the president. there are concerns that pardons were promised by the president or his lawyer leading mueller to potential obstruction of justice prosecution. new reports on the campaign's contacts with russian officials. that could be part of the collusion piece of the investigation. and, of course, there is the issue of hush money allegedly paid to women who say they had affairs with trump, a lot for bob mull tore -- mueller to ask about if and when he and the president meet. barbara mcquade former u.s. attorney, now an msnbc contributor. matt, let me start with you. the mueller investigation today was described to me by someone from law enforcement who admonished the iceberg analysis and said it isn't an iceberg. it is an underground civilization with little bees working in so many, you know, rooms and towns and part of the city. you have no idea what you have

no idea about. >> it's like an ant colony. every once in a while we see little pieces of it pop up. i think the best example is we found out a few weeks ago he's probing these interactions between the trump campaign, the trump white house and the united arab emirates and go betweens for the united arab emirates which we had no idea weeks before. i suspect there are other lines of inquiry he's investigating we won't find out for weeks or months to come. when you look at the danger to the president, if he sits down for an interview, chris christie talked about hyperbole. i put myself through college selling vinyl siding. there is a difference between hyperbole and what the president does. he lies about big things, about little things, about things in between. when you look at it with the pattern of his activity from the beginning of this investigation, you know, the reason people lie to investigators, usually isn't because they have some kind of death wish, they go in and want to commit a crime and want to go to jail. it's because they're trying to cover up wrongdoing. the president -- excuse me -- from the beginning of this

investigation has tried to cover it up. has tried to stop the investigation directly with the fbi. has tried to get other people to intervene with the fbi. of course, most recently we found out has dangled pardons in front of potential cooperateers. >> we have 437 more questions for you, sir, we'll let you get a drink of water and let barbara mcquade field a couple. i'd like your thoughts on someone like chris christie who can pickup the phone and give the president advice personally would lay down a marker like that. it's my understanding he's warned the president that he's warned the president's advisors, and there is this fear sort of a friend getting in the car drunk that the president is driving recklessly toward something that, for people who care about him, could be very damaging to him. sitting down with mueller. >> yeah, well, in terms of why chris christie is telling him this strategy on television as opposed to picking up the phone,

i don't know. >> i'm sure he's also told him on the phone. it's really got the feeling of sort of sounding an alarm. >> yeah, well, there are many people who have expressed this idea it would be incredibly dangerous for president trump to sit down with robert mueller and have an interview with him because of his loose relationship with the truth, shall we say, and as chris christie puts it, hyperbole. the counter point i'd like to put to that is robert mueller and responsible prosecutors do not lay and wait and set traps for people their interviewing. it is a quest for the truth and they want to get information. as matt said, people don't lie because they want to commit a crime, they lie because they're covering something up. to make a false statement that is prosecutable, you have to show two things. one, the is material. it is about an important fact, not some detail. the other is the person then and there knew that the statement was false when they made it. and so to just exaggerate or engage in hyperbole really wouldn't be enough to have a provable false statement offense. so, it is a very real possibility if president trump should lie about something that

is black and white, but the idea that just because he's a salesman he's walking into a trap i think is not a fair assessment of things. >> but three of his comrades from the campaign did fall into that exact same trap, didn't they? i think at least three people have pleaded guilty to providing false statements to mueller's prosecutors. >> yeah, but i wouldn't call it a trap. i would say they made a did deliberate choice to lie to investigators. robert mueller has made it very clear that if you come in and lie by making a materially false statement, that you know then and there to be false, you will be charged. and i think that sends an important message to other people that they might talk to who might be tempted to lie in that situation. and as we just heard, robert mueller knows so much more than the rest of us do that would really be a foolish choice to go in and think you can snow them by lying in answering their questions. >> matt miller, we know the interview is on the president's mind. so sad the department of justice, in quotes, for reasons i can't pretend to guess, and the fbi are slow walking or not

even giving the unredacted documents requested by congress, an embarrassment to our country. what is this about? >> you know, he has a very warped view of justice. i think the reason it's in quotes is because he thinks the department of justice kind of ought to be as he once said, he wanted his attorney general to be his protector, to be his roy cohn. he thinks the department of justice ought to exist to protect him from prosecution and to go after his enemies. and this request about releasing documents has everything to do with going after his enemies. there are these two committees on congress that are still examining the hillary clinton e-mail situation and whether the fbi and the justice department were correct not to prosecute her are turning over documents, but holding some back because the department holds back, for example, grand jury information, information that relates to ongoing investigations, and the republicans aren't happen by that because they still want to talk about this clinton investigation two years after the fact. and the president isn't happy about that because he still wants to talk about hillary clinton. and he still wants to have a second special counsel to

investigate hillary clinton and investigate everyone involved with the justice department because he just cannot sit back and let the department do its work and proceed just based on the facts and the law. >> john heilman, jeff sessions thought it was a bad idea when jim jordan suggested a special counsel. trump's appointees at the fbi were the ones that were troubled by an unredacted version of the nunes memo coming out. it's like beating up his kids. he's railing against his own appointees running these agencies, not on his behalf, but at his request. and it seems to me that the fisa process, i think some of the questions were about the fisa process. a former very senior justice department official said, you know what, someone should call his boss and say, fine, we'll investigate the fisa process. the fisa court is the most incorruptible part of the justice department and carter page was such a shady bleep, bleep, bleep. if someone wants to see --

reauthorizing a fisa warrant every 90 days, bring it on. >> i'll just say two things about this. the first is it really bears remembering. most people remember this, but it bears making you recall. hillary clinton was under investigation. the investigation went on for a long time. it was the biggest political albatross around her neck the entirety of her campaign. it made her campaign against bernie sanders harder, it made her campaign against donald trump harder, in the final days when it became clear the investigation was being reopened because jim comey did something unprecedented, it cost her the election. the notion that we are going back as if to say she didn't pay a big enough price, right, she's not president of the united states. she arguably lost because of it or it was one of the key reasons why she lost. and the handling of the -- the way the justice department and the d.o.j. handled it did her no favors. it's not like it helped her politically. >> and they're all gone. >> she's not president of the

united states any more. it's fundamentally ridiculous. i'll say one thing about the fisa thing. it's interesting to see trey gowdy, the person along with adam schiff who probably has the best insight into the classified material on which these fisa application s were made, trey gowdy coming out over the weekend saying congressional investigations -- congress cannot be trusted any longer, including his fellow republicans who are now hounding rod rosenstein on these matters. they cannot be trusted to investigate this. it's a joke that that guy trey gowdy who ran the benghazi investigation is now saying about devin nunes and bob good lot and the rest of them that they cannot be trusted to investigate this in a serious way tells you an awful lot. >> wouldn't be the only republican either. tom rooney basically said the same thing. this process is just corrupted to the core, i think. but looking at where chris christie, what he's saying earlier, it's funny because that's not novel. what chris christie is saying is perfectly sane baseline legal

advice to a client. bob mueller does not have donald trump's interests in mind. their interests are very different. and the only person who seems to think it's a good idea that donald trump sit down with bob mueller is donald trump. >> and donald trump is still desperately dialing for lawyers. posted on that, mr. president. matt miller and barbara mcquade, thank you for spending time with us. when we come back, donald trump's love affair for fox news -- there is competition for his affects. we'll show you the media organization grabbing headlines for towing the president's line. whether it's a big thing, small thing, or something unexpected, pnc will be right there when you need us. because when it comes to your finances, if you focus on today, tomorrow has a way of working itself out.

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i we worked with pg&eof to save energy because wenie. wanted to help the school. they would put these signs on the door to let the teacher know you didn't cut off the light. the teachers, they would call us the energy patrol. so they would be like, here they come, turn off your lights! those three young ladies were teaching the whole school about energy efficiency. we actually saved $50,000. and that's just one school, two semesters, three girls. together, we're building a better california. unfortunately, some members of the media -- >> some members of the media -- >> some members of the media -- >> some meem berz of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias. >> to push their own personal bias and agenda to control what people think. this is dangerous to our democracy. >> yeah.

nothing says we value independent media like dozens of reporters forced to repeat the same message over and over again like members of a brain washed cult. i guess what i'm saying, sinclair, as a news organization, i believe you make no sense. >> move over, fox. donald trump has a new media crush. he might not be familiar with sinclair broadcasting, but it's quietly become the largest owner of local tv stations in the country, 173 of them nationwide. so, anchors at many of those stations last week recited the same exact strip called the must run. people noticed it was a promotional campaign, one that sounded a whole lot like donald trump's comments on the fake news. after some pretty widespread criticism from the public, the president responded on twitter writing, quote, so funny to watch fake news networks among the most dishonest groups of people i've ever dealt with criticize sinclair broadcasting for being biased. sinclair is far superior to cnn and even more fake nbc which is

a total joke. but we're going to let you makeup your own mind on this. here's just part of the viral video that made this conversation explode over the weekend produced by dead spin. >> hi, i'm fox san antonio's jessica headily. >> i'm brian wolff. >> our greatest responsibility is to serve our treasure valley communities. >> last cruises communities. >> but we are concerned about being responsible news stories in our country. >> plaguing our country. >> in a memo obtained by nbc news to some sin clear employees today, the company's senior vice-president of news insisted the goal was to reiterate our commitment to reporting facts in a pursuit of truth. joining our discussion is sophia nelson, author conservative opinion writer, former gop counsel for former house committees. republicans have battled for generations to sort of find places more friendly to

conservative principles, the idea of media bias is one that is very familiar to me. the dissemination of scripted propaganda and accusations of fake media is very alarming to me. what's your reaction? >> nicolle, i share that concern greatly. look, of all the things we hold dear in this country within our constitution and the bill of rights, i would argue that if thomas jefferson were sitting here with us, he'd say it as he said, if i had to choose between a free press and the government i'll keep the free press. the free press is sacrosanct to who we are because it's a check on us. it's a check on our leaders. it is there to give we the people the proper information that challenges us, that provokes us, that makes us know when we need to maybe replace somebody at the ballot box. so, i am with you 100%. i'm not only alarmed. i'm pretty angry about it frankly because what's happening here isn't so much that donald trump is the problem. he is. but we the people are the problem, nicolle. what is wrong with us? why are we asleep?

why is this okay? why are so many people repeating the fake newsman tra and attacking the fbi and the cia and every institution we hold dear? there is a problem here and we're on a very slippery slope and it's dangerous. >> jeremy, i thought was notable that two of the people who seem to see this coming were the last two presidents. george w. bush in an interview on the today show talked about the important basically the same message sophia just articulated, a free press when they are tough on you they are so central to who we are. and president obama in his final news conference in the white house briefing room on the way out, all presidents have their tough times with the media. but he took some time in that last press conference to talk about the importance of a free press. it seems like the people who know best and the people challenged most aggressively by the media are the ones sounding the loudest alarms about losing this sort of sacred american thing, free press. >> the comments you could never imagine, nicolle, this president

ever uttering. >> ever. >> what is so troubling about this and really kind of what's almost like the existential problem the media has right now is it is happening against the backdrop of just a decline in its overall popularity, credibility and sustainability as a business. so, what you have here is a president who, i think one of the most overlooked aspects of his victory is the fact that americans still get most of their news from local television. it is the number one news source for americans. it is a big part of why he caught on so quickly and why he was elected. but he also understands the vulnerabilities in the media. and what's worse than that, though, is his willingness to lie about it. his willingness to say, no, i not only disagree with this story, i not only think it's wrong, but it's made-up, it's fabricated, it's something we've never seen before from politicians ever. politicians who have illegitimate and legitimate gripes to pick with the press. what trump and what now sinclair is doing is conflating this idea

of fake news, which is the purposeful manipulation and fabrication of fact with stories that they find somehow unflattering. and that is really what's chilling to democracy. >> i'm sure everyone around this table has been through the experience of reporting something accurate, taking it to the white house for comment, being smeared with the fake news label, only to two, three, 12 days later have it be your seven sources told you it was. i want to ask you, you know, this isn't an accident. and this was the deal that jared kushner said of this purchase, sinclair bought the tribune local stations and said of the agreement with sinclair which owns television stations and packages news for their affiliates to run, they heard his remarks. that was kushner speaking about how they won. i think that might have also been where he talked about the brilliance of his digital strategy and cambridge

analytica. we'll see how that boom ranges on him. taking advantage of friendly media outlets is certainly the prerogative of any campaign. is there any sign that sort of approving this merger crosses any line when he's railing against the at&t/time warner merger and raising eyebrows about that? he rail on amazon, on twitter and seems to revel in moving the markets. are they playing with fire here? >> i think they are and that is obviously a concern you haven't had to this degree with any president. i think since maybe richard nixon who thought about the media in such an incredibly transactional and i think a lot of people would say cynical way. so, he can only see the washington post as this arm of jeff bezos and being tied up with amazon and bezos' desire for profit. i see no discernible pro am son agenda in the washington post. and i don't know what bezos' personal agenda s. >> isn't that a window how he must run his businesses?

to me what that says is i am crypt so th corrupt so they must be corrupt. >> this is totally consistent with the historical model trump fitsz in, which is the wealthy businessman, cut throat, some people will say corrupt, who goes into politics and just sees media in incredibly cynical terms. he's not intellectually curious. he's not interested in discovering more about the world. he's not interested in righting wrongs, investigative journalism. doesn't want anybody poking around into political corruption. he thinks everything he sees in the news is furthering someone's agenda and in his mind it is an agenda that is out to get him. it is a political agenda that is out to destroy him. he doesn't understand news media for its own sake, news gathering for its own sake. or if he does he never says anything to suggest he does. >> here's an important thing -- this is not to excuse trump's behavior, but i do think it is an important window where we really can understand how he thinks about this. the world -- he interacted with

the media a lot in new york for years and years and years. >> and himself and as his spokesperson. >> a lot of different ways. again, that example is ludicrous, make fun of t. the reality is in this city, if you -- if you are a big player in the city and you're not a political player, you don't talk to "the new york times." you're talking to gossip columnists, tabloid journalists and people who cover reality television on both tv and in print. you are going to discover there are a lot of dirty deals that get done. there are a lot of people doing -- it is corrupt basically and you can do those things. he had 20 years of dealing with some of the shadyest people in journalism. not the high-end people at "the new york times" or city hall -- >> he was on the phone when i was a reporter in new york. if the legislature in albany was passing a millionaire's tax, i covered. who was the first person i called? he was the easiest guy to get on the phone. >> i'm trying to put you on the

other side. >> thank you. >> let's be clear. there are journalists who are high minded and in pursuit of the truth like jeremy. again, we all know people who have been famous in new york city who do get a jaundiced view because their main places where they get covered for years and years is on "page six" and in the gossip columns, on e entertainment television. there's a lot of transactional stuff that goes there. i think that's what feeds trump's sense that all of journalism is cynical because most of his exchanges for a long time were done with the kinds of journalists and institutions who did engage in a lot of really cheap, cynical behind the scenes transactions. >> sophia, go ahead. >> i was going to say back to kushner, though, i want to ask the question, why is he still there in here is a guy who has security clearance issues. he's meddling in the middle east. he's meddling in saudi arabia. he's meddling now with television, fcc things and sinclair and they're cutting

deals. what is this guy doing at the white house? and to john's point, this is not trump and the trump business. this is the united states of america. this is the white house. this is our country and you can't do here what you were able to do on wall street and new york, wherever you did it and that's the problem i have. again, it goes back to we the people. what in the hell is wrong with us that we continue to just sit here and act like this is okay? it's not okay. >> i'm with you. you come sit at our table and we have to get you next time. >> i'm fired up. >> i can tell. thank you so much for spending some time with us today. we hope to see you again soon. when we come back, the secrecy around donald trump's finances is under assault. that is based on new reporting from our next guest. why the president's legal woes may lead to unr5aveling of his most closely guarded secrets. that's next.

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trump's finances under siege. that is what the washington post is reporting. writing, three different legal teams with different agendas are trying to pry open the trump organization books. on one side is robert mueller and on another stormy daniels and in the most direct assault, the district in maryland have sued trump alleging he's improperly accepting gifts orem oluments from foreign governments from his businesses including his hotels. the third prong poses a risk because he could choose between his presidency or businesses as columnist writes. trump my be ordered to do something. skploez what he received from foreign governments an permanently jettison his ties or reject payments and other things of value. with us now is david farnthal and this reporting of yours is the first time i've seen the

three legal threats laid over something that i never thought would happen. which is that trump might finally to disclose his tax returns and other financial information. where do you put the likelihood of that happening -- and which one of the three -- it seems your sense is the maryland and d.c. cases that could force that first? >> well, all of them have some chances. stormy daniels case, what they are seeking is e-mails, internal communications because trump organization employees were the ones involved in setting up this nondisclosure agreement. the mueller case he seems to be doesing so far about documents from a trump tower in moscow, possible deal. and the om oluments would ask for interactions between the trump hotel and d.c. and state and foreign and governments. but can the states that are suing trump get to that point. there are still legal hurdles to clear. >> let me read from your piece. you write that i think under pretty much any reading of the

judge's order we can get discovery of his personal football information in that it re relates to governments. brian frosh said he and the d.c. attorney general carl racine plan to seek other documents related to the president's d.c. hotel. i think some people -- myself included -- get thrown by the word emoluments and tell us what it is and why it is at the center of the trump d.c. hotel. >> it is not surprising, it is unfamiliar. >> it we rename it. it needs to be called like corruption or fraud or double dealing. >> it is a skin care product or something you have to -- for babies when they are gassy. but so the idea is the constitution banned federal officers from taking what they call emoluments from foreign states. it was to keep foreign kings from buying off our ambassadors but no one has tested this claude. it is in the constitution since the beginning but nobody went up

to the line the way that trump has. so we haven't had case law to figure out what -- in 21st century terms what emolument means. and they said in this context emolument should cover a payment that a foreign government makes to trump hotel. say they are renting a ballroom or a bunch of hotel rooms. that is a payment to trump and he should be prohibited from taking. the u.s. government arguing on behalf of president trump, said, no, an emolument is like a bribe or a gift and somebody that gives trump a big pile of money for him taking an official act or doing something. it is up to the judge to make the decision that nobody has made in 200 plus years and determine who is right to see if we have anything in the trump hotel to match emolument. >> so he is really making history in every single category, including the legal one. what i loved about your reporting, take us through it, you tie together how michael avenatti's case could bring unwanted disclosure of his

businesses and can you take us through that and explain what you did. >> trump kept ownership of his business and a very private company that on purpose releases almost nothing to the public and what it does often is found to be false later on. so it is a company that doesn't like to show what it is doing. and now in the stormy daniels case, the avenatti, the lawyer, sought documents within the trump organization because micha michael cohen were acting on behalf of the candidate trump for this nondisclosure agreement and he wants to find out what direction might have come from trump himself. in the mueller case, we don't know what is has been subpoenaed but there has been some sent to the trump organization related to the business dealings with russia. there weren't any directly between them and the russian government. so we don't know what those will produce but they are driving at that privacy, piercing that veil

of sec resee trump tried to keep around his business even though he brings it into the white house. >> it is still remarkable that donald trump became president without releasing his taxes. but i want to read -- this was my favorite story in the paper. this is the second. kushners saw redemption in the white house and its away mirage. his son as a top aide to the president, mr. kushner, the father, even expressed hope one close family sfrefriend that he would receive a pardon. for the patriarch and his family the power is a well spring of trouble and reports that jared kushner's younger brother has opposed the presidency and has drove a wedge between them. josh has attended the women's march and march for our lives and donated to $50,000 for march for our lives. so what are holidays like at the kushner's? >> not so great.

back in the day you had the fact the campaign was -- chris christie had an important role and he put the father in jail. so it is not -- >> not talking about trump going to jail. >> so you've got the brother who is the apost ate brother. and then he's been anti-trump all along. but i think the more complicated story here and we could spend the whole day on is the notion of charles and jared kushner, their giant building, the huge towering towering inferno at 666 -- >> you couldn't make it up. >> 666 -- hell. >> the most expensive commercial raec real estate world and all of them expected trump would not win the white house and this would be good for the brand and they would go around to qatar and the uae and gather kind of dirty money and figure out this problem. and then all ever a sudden donald trump was president. and it meant that jared kushner if he was going to talk to

anybody with access of foreign money, he shouldn't do it but if he was going to do, do it in secret and number three there would be scrutiny, which is there now. and potentially at the state level and then they all are in legal jeopardy and political jeopardy and it could be a thing that goes to the heart of trump and his son-in-law's relationship at some point on multiple investigate fronts where either could be forced to turn on another. i'm sorry. >> jared has accentuated the problem. oops, we won the election but i want to be shadow national security adviser with middle east peace negotiations. >> and slash secretary of state. >> at the same time there are contacts with the foreign investors. and so that is something that he could have avoided but has not. >> so it is your paper story. i'll give you the last word. >> guess what jared kushner's biggest fear is? ending up like hi father in a federal prison. >> which is why he might have to

flip on his father in law. >> it is just getting good. thank you so much for spending time with us. we love your stories and when you join us. to our panel, thank you so much. that does it for this hour. i'm nicolle wallace, "mtp daily" starts right now with katy tur. always on time. >> you are on time. but you can't leave that cliff hanger and expect me to continue the momentum. that is not fair. >> you figure it out. >> staying with this, i promise it is a good show. nicolle wallace, thank you very much. and if it is monday, is the president misinformed or is he lying? >> tonight the end game of the president's daca blame game. >> the democrats have really let them down. it's a shame and now people are taking advantage of daca. >> plus the red shadow over the white house. will president putin come to washington? and sinclair on script. >> this is extremely dangerous to our democracy-