i'm alex whit. right now. stay right where you are. it's time for "a.m. joy." >> using a ddly nerve agent, assad choked out the lives of help men, women and children. it is in this vital, national security interest of the united states to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. tonight i call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter. >> good morning. welcome to "a.m. joy." in april of 2017, donald trump announced a missile strike against the regime of syrian

dictator assad in response to syria's use of nerve gas against civilians. one year later the world is reacting to reports of yet another devastating chemical attack on civilians. be warned the images you're about to see are graphic and disturbing. dozens of civilians including children were killed in a rebel held town near damascus currently under sieged but the russian backed forces. the state department condemned the attack and pinned the blame on russia, saying they upt bear responsibility for the brutal targeting of count is syrians with chemical weapons. it's unclear exactly how the united states respond. right now american foreign policy exceptionally ruder is even by the standard of the trump era. trump's new pick of pompeo has yet to be confirmed and uber hawk john bolton starts his job on monday. the president tweeted about

syria only after a typical weekend morning tweet storm attacking "the washington post" and fraizing fox news. in true trumpian fashion he blamed the crisis he's facing on barack obama. if president obama had crossed his stated red line in the sand the syrian disaster would have ended long ago, exclamation point. animal assad would have been history. joining me now colonel jack jacobs, natasha bertrand and rosa brooks. colonel jack, i will read you the update. he's added to that, many dead including women and children. mind is chemical attack in syria. area of atrocity is in lockdown making it accessible to outside world. president putin, russia and iran are responsible for backing animal assad, big price to pay. open area immediately for medical help and verification

and other humanitarian disaster for no reason whatever. donald trump was recently saying as tuesday that he wanted to pull out completely in syria and now he's not only tweeting about what's happening there but he's invoked the name of vladimir putin in a negative way, something he's never done. >> since he made the comment about pulling out from syria, the central command commander who's responsible for that region said, no, bad idea. and i think that the -- the tweet involving putin is of real interest. trump has been disinclined to say anything bad about putin. that has all the fingerprints of john kelly or jim mattis who helped him craft a response to what happened with the chemical attack. i think that trump, to give him his due, does from time to time,

not always, does from time to time get horrified at humanitarian disasters and i think responds in a visceral way so i think he was easily convinced probably by kelly to write that tweet. putin probably recognizes there's nothing in it but public relations. i think that trump probably did feel very strongly about it. >> why do you suppose things seem to have been deteriorating so rapidly in syria or isn't just that we haven't been paying attention to it? >> we haven't paid much attention to it but the situations of the rebels have been deteriorating for quite some time. one of the reasons why assad conducted this attack was because that was one of the last rebel strong holds in and around damascus. when the central command commander said just the other day that isis is just about finished. that's been the main thrust of our attack. it started out we were going to

get rid of assad. we're not getting rid of him. we're going after isis. especially after russia and iran started to get involved in syria, we had no interest in confronting iran and russia inside syria. our focus became isis and very, very close to destroying isis all together except for a small area in the east of syria, but this pocket of resistance against assad is near damascus. not surprised he did what he did. >> just for people who have not following this. explain for us all the sides. you have syria, the assad fighting a rebellion against himself that was part of the arab spring which he put down with extreme prejudice. you have isis which has a strong hold in syria or its main strong hold in syria. >> had been until we started dropping bombs on them. >> and then who's sides are iran and russia on? >> they're on their own sides. it's very interesting they have their own objectives inside

syria that are complementary. russia would like to have influence but it principally wants warm water ports so it can get in syria because otherwise his black sea fleet is bottled up in the black sea. love to have those ports. wants influence. iran, on the other hand, all they want is influence. there's really a proxy war taking place inside syria between iran on the one hand and people on our side on the other that includes saudi arabia and the kurds. >> yeah. >> to jump ahead, when we pull out, the kurds who have been our principal allies are on their own and the people who are most against the kurds are, oddly, our own ally the turks. so the kurds, the real losers in all of this other than the syrian people are going to be our allies the kurds. >> let's play from tuesday.

i want to go to you on this. this is donald trump on tuesday talking about getting out of syria. >> i want to get out. i want to bring our troops back home. i want to start rebuilding our nation. we will have as of three months ago $7 trillion in the middle east over the last 17 years. we get nothing. nothing out of it. nothing. and as you remember in civilian life for years i said keep the oil. i was always saying keep the oil. we didn't keep the oil. >> rosa, the "the new yorker" reporting this week when donald trump's generals urged him not to do that, they cited the danger after sad and iran and its allies and hezbollah filling the vacuum where u.s. troops have worked so hard to liberate. trump was unconvinced by an impatient with the advice. sources familiar with the debate told this reporter more than once he said, why do i have to

be the one to do this? what do you make of what sounds like a redirection from donald trump or whoever wrote his tweets this morning? >> well, to be fair, president obama in some ways did get us into this mess and donald trump is now stuck with it. we have a morally and strategic broupt approach to syria and not a lot of good options right now. the best option available to us, unfortunately is the one the trump administration is least willing and able to try which is serious diplomacy and when you don't have a secretary of state and you're in the middle of turnover of your national security adviser, when you dismantle the foreign service, it's hard to do that. there is, of course, a total irony in trump trying to deflect this on obama. trump has done exactly what president obama did and was really beaten up for in the context of afghanistan, which is to say, when you say we're getting out when obama said we're getting out of

afghanistan, you essentially say to the enemy, hey, don't worry. we don't really care, so do what you want and trump basically just did that in syria. he said, i don't care. do what you want. i plan to leave and assad did exactly what he wanted which is to try to eliminate the last remaining rebel strong hold safe in the knowledge that donald trump isn't really going to do much about it. >> the last time that there was a chemical attack, donald trump did do something about it. about 90 days in, they launched a missile strike. here's the homeland security adviser tom bossert on abc this week and he talked about whether or not that could happen again. take a listen. >> this isn't just the united states. this is one of those issues on which every nation, all people have all agreed and have a agreed since world war ii this is an unacceptable practice. >> is it possible there will be another missile attack? >> i wouldn't take anything off the table. >> rosa, keeping in mind that donald trump ran as essentially more dovish than hawkish in saying we spend too much money

and too much time in this entire region. his base agreed with the idea of us not getting pulled in, but now you have his national security adviser making it sound like pulled in we may be. what do you make of that? >> this is a dangerous situation that we are in a situation in which we run a very serious risk of getting into a direct military confrontation with multiple major powers, including russia which does have nuclear weapons. we've got nothing but bad options here, diplomacy is probably the best of the bad options but a missile strike against assad, a discrete will accomplish nothing lasting. it will be symbolic. anything more serious than that, any more serious effort to go in there, take military action against assad, i don't think president trump issing to do that would risk a direct confrontation with russia and russia has been a bad actor in that region as they have been in many other regions, but russia

is not a country that we want to get into a shooting war with. i don't expect anything much to happen except something purely symbolic. i do think trump's advisers, they don't like this but they know perfectly well there's not much for us to do and we don't have the capacity to get into the kind of diplomatic surge that is what we should be doing right now. >> natasha you've been reporting so much on the russia interference with our election, donald trump's extreme deference towards vladimir putin. this is the first time we heard him tweet about putin in a negative light. what is the benefit of your reporting on what is the white house's thinking at this point? is there a turn in which the white house feels that it has no choice but to take a more negative tone toward russia as we saw in this tweet this morning? >> well, like we saw last year when they did this one off strike against the assad regime that was expected to really anger russia because russia and

vladimir putin is one of, if not the top ally of assad, the president of syria, it was very in effective. it was a strike that was completely divorced from any kind of coherent policy. it was based more on emotion than an actual strategic long-term effective approach to dealing with this conflict in syria. whether or not they actually start to come out now and be tougher on russia in terms of its support for the assad regime and, you know, the fact that it's in there with iran and they're all cooperating to bolster his regime, that remains to be seen. whether or not it's actually effective is another question, but it is very interesting that trump did name vladimir putin directly in this tweet in a negative light. it's definitely a shift. whether or not that's backed up by actual policy is another question entirely. he right to a certain extent. obama did not follow through on his threat to, you know, this red line that was crossed about

seven years ago by the assad regime or about five years ago when they killed over 1,000 people with chemical weapons. he did not act then and of course russia entered the conflict making it much more difficult for there to be an actual solution to this. once you had russia enter supporting assad there was no simple solution. >> we have now john bolton coming in who certainly has no problem running right over red lines. he seems to want to have multiple theater wars in his rhetorical guise. >> it's very easy to say that. >> yeah. >> i see -- talking about bolton is interest interesting. i see him having an influence on trump. trump likes him and all the rest, but i see eventually an enormous clash between bolton on the one hand and mattis on the other. at some juncture, mattis may be over this or some other

circumstance is going to go to trump and say it's either him or me and trump's going to say it's him and you're out. you've got two strong personalities who feel differently about the role of the military issuing of power, how you use it and how you integrate it with all the instruments of power and i think one of them will leave. >> neither of them have any record of military service but donald trump enjoys being around generals and telling them what to do. thank you all very much. up next, donald trump isn't mad at scott pruitt at all for his free spending ways. he's still praising him. stay with us. really passionate about- i really want to help. i was on my way out of this life. there are patients out there that don't have a lot of time. finally, it was like the sun rose again and i was going to start

fighting back now. when those patients come to me and say, "you saved my life...." my life was saved by a two week old targeted therapy drug. that's what really drives me to- to save lives. where we're changing withs? contemporary make-overs. then, use the ultimate power handshake, the upper hander with a double palm grab. who has the upper hand now? start winning today. book now at lq.com.

we use our phones the same way these days. so why do we pay to have a phone connected when we're already paying for internet? shouldn't it all just be one thing? that's why xfinity mobile comes with your internet. you can get up to 5 lines of talk and text included at no extra cost. so all you pay for is data. see how you could save $400 or more a year. plus, for a limited time, get a $250 prepaid card when you buy any new samsung. xfinity mobile. it's a new kind of network designed to save you money. click, call, or visit an xfinity store today.

thank you to secretary shulkin. general. r. mcmaster. i wish rex tillerson well. gary cohn the president of goldman sachs. hope hicks, director comey, the greatest businessman in the world, general mike flynn. sean spicer. he is a wonderful human being. i like mr. bannon. reince priebus is really a star. secretary price who's behind me. i'm really at a point where we're getting very close to having the cabinet and other things that i want. >> wow. the white house has been rocked

by firing after dramatic firing. donald trump continues to defend those who may be should be fired. like scott pruitt. trump defends the ep battled epa administrator again saying pruitt is doing a great job and quote, while security spending was somewhat more than his predecessor, scott pruitt has received death threats because of his bold actions at epa. record clean air and water while saving usa billions of dollars. rent was about market rate. travel expenses okay. joining me now is tarra dell and reuben smith. his management style is about chaos. but now you have his chief-of-staff, his second chief-of-staff or maybe third and a half, two and a half, threatening to resign allegedly on multiple occasions just weekly as his management style, his style of dealing with donald trump apparently is to threaten

to resign. there's a lot of worry if he were to resign the other general in the cabinet, general mattis the second of defense also resign of the cabinet is getting smaller and smaller. is this classic trump or has he deteriorated since you dealt with him? >> i think he's definitely deteriorated since i've had my experience with him and i think it's clear that he's deteriorated. when it comes to scott pruitt i don't think that trump actually cares that he's a grister. he doesn't care that he's literally looting the epa but what he does care about is the fact that he's gotting caught looting the epa. he doesn't want to fire him. he doesn't want to get rid of any of the griftors. he's carved out no tariffs for her companies.

so this is -- this is how he operates. i do think, though, nonetheless at some point scott pruitt dominating the headlines in the way he has and the fact that scott has been revealed earlier, stories came out despite stories coming out about him being a looter, all this extravagant spending on taxpayer dime, he continues to loot and he's shown that he does not care and that will be his undoing. >> jennifer, not only that but he also is thinking of not just not getting rid of scott pruitt but giving him a new job just moving him over to attorney general. he was the former attorney general of oklahoma. he's been an ag, came from a corrupt state. the idea that he's thinking of actually just putting him in a job where he would be the chief law enforcement officer in the ut. that's where we're at right now. >> it is unbelievable. the only thing that having worst

scott pruitt at epa would be having him at the justice department. whatever you say about jeff sessions, it doesn't appear that he's looting as was correctly pointed out, the taxpayers money. i do think, however, that there is a natural tendency for trump to get rid of, because that's his personality, to get rid of people who have any spine, any background, any expertise in the field in which they were appointed. it's not only that he's deteriorating, the quality of his advisers which was never very high is going lower and lower and you're going to wind up with people who are essentially the same as the fox news people that he pays attention to. this is a very distressing situation. i would point out to my republican friends who have been apologizing for trump all the way. they said don't worry about it.

he'll have the best advisers around him. i never bought it and the best advisers don't want to work with him. >> at a certain point, the most senior, the most experienced person in the white house is john bolton, right? if all of the people that everyone has been saying, don't worry, mattis is the one he'll tackle -- don't worry, kelly is the one who calm him down. there have been a series of these people. if donald trump gets down to the bear minimum where all he's got left are yes men and people from tv, we end up with john bolton having extraordinary power in the white house and that i don't think comforts anyone. >> there are deep concerns with john bolton being that person. first of all, the role is supposed to be national security adviser, not national security advocate. you're not supposed to take one position on all foreign policy which, by the way, for bolton is aggressive and keep hammering that into your president. you're supposed to present him options on all sides.

bolton's not reflecting that capability. but more deeply disturbing are current revelations coming out about bolton and cambridge analytica and bolton's pack and super pac which he's still tied to. he spent about a million dollars on cambridge analytica's data. this is our national security adviser. who's supposed to advise on risk and national security risk to the president and he's wrapped up in that very risk we're concerned about. >> donald trump is obviously not experienced in anything to do with governance. >> right. >> he doesn't know his own mind because he changes his mind depending on what's on "fox and friends" this morning or whatever hannity says and he's been surrounded by people who themselves don't know or just are there, apparently or maybe just there but while they're there they're scooping as much of the federal treasury as they can. viewing the job as an opportunity to live well while

slashing away their departments. what kind of government at this point are we left with, because we are talking about bolton who to frank's point is all tied up in the manipulation of american's data as the guy with the most policy knowledge and john kelly who's supposed to be helping keep things together, he seems to be just as much as disaster as trump. >> and that's the problem. you just laid it out. remember, government at those high levels under any circumstance attracts the most ambitious people. so now you have a president that they know is not someone who is a strong and talented leader. if he was a strong leader then they wouldn't feel so comfortable leaking every single thing they did. you'll have basically the only people that are going to want to come into this administration are people who only solely want to set themselves up for later and pull the most that they can out of the federal government for them, their friends, their family and their crow anies and

that's what's happening. trump own personnel office, that's riddled with political appointees, hacks and criminals. literally people with criminal records are picking cabinet secretaries and undersecretaries. that's what's happening right now. people with records are doing that in this office the presidential personnel office which is understaffed and staffed with incompetent people. >> i do feel in a sense, jennifer, like the government of the united states is carry-on, being picked apart by eventual tour who are just attacking the body at every point and picking up pieces of it. the people who are supposed to guard against this in the united states constitution are congress. here's susan collins of maine who says she wants to stand up to trump and generally backs around. here she is talking about the state of the world today and the spending of pruitt. >> this daily drip of

accusations of excessive spending and ethical violations serve to further distract the agency from accomplishing its very important mission. i think congress needs to do some oversight. afterall we don't know the extent of the recommendations made by mr. pruitt's security team, but on policy grounds alone, i think scott pruitt is the wrong person to head the epa. >> jennifer, keeping in mind that senator collins did vote against pruitt's nomination. she said she'll vote no -- i don't know, do you feel that any spine is sort of being generated in the backs and bodies of any republicans, anyone on capitol hill? >> excuse me? are the republicans not in charge of congress and both houses of congress? do the republicans not have oversight authority now? i don't remember, no, not a

single one. not a single hearing on trump's conflict of interest, not a single hearing when they pull up scott pruitt and make him sit in a chair and answer questions. none of it. they have obliterated their oaths of office and this is true. this is on congress as much as it is on the president. they rubber stamped all of these people who are incompetent and underqualified and had ethical issues going through and sometimes very narrowly because all the democrats voting against them and they're refusing to provide any oversight. i will say for the democrats, this is a wonderful opportunity to point out to the american people why it's important to change the control of both houses of congress. stop this? apparently you'll have to have democrats because republicans won't do it. >> frank, the only time we are hearing the word oversight thrown around is when the fox news republicans say they want rod rosenstein to disgorge everything he knows about fisa

warrants. that's all they want is to protect donald trump from robert mueller. that's it. >> this is an oversight by congress when they're digging into something like this. this is a desire to expose for partisan purposes. we got situational ethics on steroids here. let's mike crow manage the fbi and expose everything to the public that's secret, classified and helps protect the nation. >> it is a sad state of affairs. we don't have good news for you on this sunday. thank you all. coming up, stephanie ruhle joins me to talk about trump's latest efforts to destroy the world, the world economy. we here at "a.m. joy," we do want to do our part to boost the gdp. you can now purchase "a.m. joy" merchandise. you can buy tons of amazing "a.m. joy" swag. more a."a.m. joy" after the bre.

liberty mutual stood with me when this guy got a flat tire in the middle of the night, so he got home safe. yeah, my dad says our insurance doesn't have that. what?! you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™. liberty mutual insurance.

need a change of scenery?

the kayak price forecast tool tells you whether to wait or book your flight now. so you can be confident you're getting the best price. giddyup! kayak. search one and done. your society was led by a woman, who governed thousands... commanded armies... yielded to no one. when i found you in my dna, i learned where my strength comes from. my name is courtney mckinney, and this is my ancestrydna story. now with 5 times more detail than other dna tests. order your kit at ancestrydna.com with pg&e in the sierras.e detaand i'm an arboristests. since the onset of the drought, more than 129 million trees have died in california. pg&e prunes and removes over a million trees every year to ensure that hazardous trees can't impact power lines. and since the onset of the drought we've doubled our efforts. i grew up in the forests out in this area and honestly it's heartbreaking to see all these trees dying.

what guides me is ensuring that the public is going to be safer and that these forests can be sustained and enjoyed by the community in the future. one man is dead after a fire broke out saturday afternoon in an apartment in manhattan. trump tweeted about the fire, quote, fire at trump tower is out. very confined.

well built building. firemen and women did a great job. thank you. the residential floors of trump tower do not have sprinklers which were not required when it was built in 1984. in later years, trump lobbied against legislation to mandate sprinklers in buildings like his but dropped his opposition when the city agreed to grandfather in existing structures like trump tower. so far there's been no statement or comment from the president about the man who died or the six firefighters who were injured. up next, trump's trade war. stay with us.

i'm all about my bed. this mattress is dangerously comfortable. when i get in, i literally say, ahh. introducing the leesa mattress. a better place to sleep. this bed hugs my body. i'm now a morning person. the leesa mattress is designed to provide strong support, relieve pressure and optimize airflow to keep you cool. hello bed of my dreams. order online. we'll build it, box it and ship it to your door for you to enjoy. sleep on it for up to 100 nights and love it or you'll get a full refund. returns are free and easy. i love my leesa. today is gonna be great. read our reviews then try the leesa mattress in your own home. order nowand get 125 dollars off, plus a free pillow worth 75 dollars; and free shipping too. go to buyleesa.com today. you need this bed.

a hilton getaway means you get more because you get a break on breakfast get an extra day by the pool get to spend more time together get more from your spring break getaway with exclusive hilton offers. book yours, only at hilton.com afi sure had a lot on my mind. my 30-year marriage... ...my 3-month old business... plus...what if this happened again? i was given warfarin in the hospital, but wondered, was this the best treatment for me? so i made a point to talk to my doctor. he told me about eliquis. eliquis treats dvt and pe blood clots and reduces the risk of them happening again. not only does eliquis treat dvt and pe blood clots. eliquis also had significantly less major bleeding than the standard treatment. eliquis had both... ...and that turned around my thinking. don't stop eliquis unless your doctor tells you to. eliquis can cause serious and in rare cases fatal bleeding. don't take eliquis if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. if you had a spinal injection while on eliquis

call your doctor right away if you have tingling, numbness, or muscle weakness. while taking eliquis, you may bruise more easily... and it may take longer than usual for bleeding to stop. seek immediate medical care for sudden signs of bleeding, like unusual bruising. eliquis may increase your bleeding risk if you take certain medicines. tell your doctor about all planned medical or dental procedures. eliquis treats dvt and pe blood clots. plus had less major bleeding. both made eliquis right for me. ask your doctor if switching to eliquis is right for you.

we're not running a trade war. if you read this thing, you'll see this is just a proposed idea which will be vetted by ustr and open for public comment. nothing's happened. nothing's been executed. >> you would support it if the president pulled the triggers? >> yes, i would. i absolutely would. after we made the first round, the chinese response was unsatisfactory to put it. so the president's trying to get their attention again. the process may include tariffs. i cannot rule that out. >> trump's national economic director larry kudlow has seemed to change his tune. this latest battle started with trump's threat on tuesday to increase tariffs on chinese manufacturing imports by 25%. he followed that up on thursday with another threat, an

additional $100 billion of tariffs, a proposal that sent markets into a tail spin. china responded with tariffs on a various of products including soy beans. joining me now, stephanie ruhle. msnbc host. and the cohost of my daily medicine which i cannot stop watching. let's talk about larry kudlow. one of my first gigs in this business was going on his show as a guest twice a week. he was consistent in one thing. he was a free trader. he was antitariffs. i was on that show enough of that, that was larry kudlow. what is he doing now? >> that was larry kudlow two weeks ago. we've got 20 years of sound bytes and quotes of him saying that tariffs hurt the poorest americans out there. he said that as recently as trump announced the aluminum

tax. he obviously has to walk a very fine line here but how's he going to do it? it's just negotiating tactics while you have the president saying our trade war already occurred and we lost and you have steve mnuchin saying, well, it could be a trade war. the fact that larry kudlow is saying we're negotiating behind the scenes. there's no negotiating happening. the tariffs had not yet been put in place but playing chicken on the world stage is certainly not a responsible or wise way to negotiate. >> xi jinping is no shrinking violent. i will target kentucky bourbon and target specifically the products in state where republicans are running them. i want to play to the point larry kudlow who is invited on the show, by the way. please come on the show. stephanie and i talk to you together. here's larry kudlow on "state of the union" just this morning being asked two weeks ago on his position on trade. >> you wrote an op ed titled, mr. president, tariffs are

really tax hikes. wouldn't tariffs if president trump actually pulled the trigger be a huge mistake? >> no. by the way, we didn't like the blanket tariffs. we didn't like the blanket tariffs which would hurt our allies as much as or more as our enemies. >> you would support it if the president pulled the trigger on the hundreds of billions of dollars against china? >> yes, i would. >> you would? >> i absolutely would. no free guy disagrees on this subject. the guild, the brethren of the economics profession have all agreed that something has to be done. >> is that true? >> first of all, the brethren of the economic profession. you know who's not in that brethren peter navarro who is considered a whack ado. china is launching an economic war against us and you know how we would have fought back against it being part of tpp which the president pulled out

of and kudlow is making an argument forever. with the united states along with our allies have to use the pressure that we can to make china fly straight. who are our allies in an america first agenda? tpp canada stayed in tpp, they're rocking on without us. mexico? they get their corn from the united states. they're now starting to get some from argentina. soy beans, they're now going to brazil. the beat goes on without us. >> if donald trump is so, you know, upset at china and wants to fight hard against them, his daughter manufacturers her shoes in china. i don't see any action there. china is as close to our shores as in the caribbean. a building boom taking place in the caribbean, china's at our doorstep. what is donald trump doing about any of that? >> nothing. donald trump is right and is bold in saying, let's address this head on, but the action

steps he's taking just aren't working. let remind you who's advising. peter navarro and wilbur ross china is a currency manipulator. we can end up in a trade war and xi jinping can work this out for years. trump can't. midterms are coming. >> to that very point, donald trump on friday in a radio interview, talking about the fact that he's acknowledging that what he's doing is going to bring pain to his own people. take a listen. >> i'm not saying there won't be a little pain but the market's gone up 40%, 42%, so we might lose a little bit of it. we'll have a much stronger country when we're finished. >> any validity to that? >> i could accept, maybe you have to take a little bit of pain in order to have a long-term solution, except this

little bit of pain simply makes no sense. and we're watching the president have mixed messaging from his own team leaving the markets skiddish. remember who owns the market? 401(k)s, retirement funds. >> pension funds. >> having to deal with this nonsense for what, so larry kudlow, i hope you're right. i hope there's master negotiating going on behind the scenes but the united states we don't get the protection of going bankrupt like president trump's business had the benefit of doing four times. this is our economy. >> absolutely. larry kudlow, please come on the show. i would love to talk to you again, my friend. i want to move on to a new issue, concern about the u.s. virgin islands and that what happened there. the double whammy of being hit by two hurricanes and the devastation that followed. you just came back from there recently. >> i came bang and went and reported like you did right after the storms. irma hit and then maria hit and

when maria hit and it hit those islands too, we stopped talking about them and they weren't getting a huge amount of aid. i went back seven months later and my mind was blown. through government support, through philanthropy and volunteerism, it's amazing. they really are open for business. you'd be surprised. >> let's play a little bit of that. >> yes, the sun is shining. there are people back on these shores. but for locals, look at this church i'm in. this puddle of water as though a storm hit yesterday, a piano no proof. there's kids playing behind me in a make shift school. how is the community recovering? a combination of materials, money and manpower. >> it sounds like they've gotten it together, the question is, is the federal government here in the united states, their government doing much to assist? >> some. bloombergs with the federal government are doing it together and it really is -- the president talks about infrastructure, these

public/private partnerships. they could be the path forward in recovery because where fema has red tape and they can't go on, that's where private industry comes in and they can build the roofs and bring the generators in. if you went back today, your mind would be blown. not everything's up and running but a lot of it is. puerto rico is a very different story. >> very different story. i'm going to bring you back on. stephanie ruhle, always fun to talk to you. thank you for making all of this madness make sense. >> thanks for having me. coming up in our next hour, two former sinclair employees join me love and bishop barber join me. more after the break. i text in full sentences. i refer to every child as chief. this hat was free. what am i supposed to do, not wear it? next thing you know, i'm telling strangers defense wins championships. -well, it does. -right? why is the door open? are we trying to air condition the whole neighborhood? at least i bundled home and auto on an internet website, progressive.com. progressive can't save you from becoming your parents,

but we can save you money when you bundle home and auto. i mean, why would i replace this? it's not broken. i mean, why would i replace this? capdynamic lightingrs elevated comfort powerfully efficient and one more thing the world comes with it ♪you can go your own way... the 2019 jeep cherokee

i'm all-business when i, travel... even when i travel... 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. but i'm not only here to speak about school shootings, i'm here to speak for the urban communities that have been speaking out about this way before february 14th, 2018. their voices are just as important as ours and they need to be heard. this is a very important subject and it's -- it's -- it needs to change. although it's been 38 days since the parkland shooting, nothing has changed and we need change now. >> parkland survivor aalayah

eastman is continuing to lead that change with other high school students from around the country. she's joining with new york high school students who have formed youth over guns to combat gun violence and highlight the loss of young lives. they're planning an anti-gun march for june 2nd that will begin at trump tower making it the first of its kind in new york history. >> the national walkout pretty much gave us the courage and gave us the strength to say, hey, enough is enough. >> joining me now is aalayah eastman and ramon contreras. thank you for being here. i'm going to start with you. you have made this point over and over again that it has to be about more than school shootings, we need to broaden out this conversation. why did you feel it was important to come back to new york where you have a lot of family and do a lot of 5d vadvo?

>> i lost my uncle. this is home. i lost my uncle 15 years ago. it needs to be addressed in all spectrums. >> i was looking at statistics before you came out. the united states had the most mass shootings in the world by far. the u.s. has had 90 mass shootings between 1996 to 2012. philippines, 18. yemen has a full-fledged civil war going on only at 11, france at 10. we have violence on a scale that is unlike any other in the country. school shootings, 17 since parkland. an average of 1.4 shootings per week. americans own the most guns in the world. by cnn, americans own nearly half the estimated 650 million civilian owned guns in the world. with that level of violence and gun ownership in the country, how can we stop "the cycle"? >> first of all, one is too

many. it's not okay that school shootings are even happening. we need to come together, the youth, and those who are fighting this issue, especially in communities of color fighting this, we need to come together and not worry about the headlines and make the change. >> why did you decide to launch your june 2nd youth march from trump tower? >> we need to stand -- it's a symbol. we need to send a message to washington, to the nra and to president trump. this is not okay and no more schools can be shot up and no more guns can be in our communities. >> and that it's not going to blow over. we're going to keep talking about it. >> new york, aalayah is a state that has strict gun laws and yet we see it happening here. it happened to your uncle. we see gun violence happening here. if a state like new york with strict gun ownership can't stop this, you teens have solutions and we haven't been able to

figure it out, in your view what should be done to change this endemic? >> common sense gun control. no civilian needs a rifle. even handguns, you have to be mentally stable to own these weapons. if you're going to own it, you need to own it for the right leans. >> it is a hunting state outside of new york city, but in the city one of the other issues, ramon, is that you have neighboring states to places like new york that have loose gun laws and people can bring them in. are those the kind of issues that you guys are talking about? >> yes. these guns are going into our communities of color. when they come into our communities, there's a lot of killings going on. we need to stop those guns from coming into our states. >> there's been a focus, thanks to you, aalayah and others who say, wait a minute, we need to broaden this conversation. is the media doing a good job of getting that story out? >> no, not at all. >> give us instruction. what do we need to do

differently? >> the media recycles the same faces over and over and over and over. there's over 3,000 students at stoneman douglas. there are so many untold stories that haven't been told yet. try and widen your spectrum and everyone not just the same faces. >> not only different faces, ram money, get out of florida. >> we want to bring aware n wawo the issue. we want to elevate the voices that have been ignored for decades in this fight for gun control. >> what other states is youth over guns operating? >> we're heading out to baltimore in a few days. within the next couple of weeks actually. we're going to keep spreading from there and try to reach out to as many communities as possible. >> how are you taking the time to take care of yourself? >> yes.

>> you have been on the move. >> yes. >> you're going back and forth between new york and florida. have you taken any time? you went through a traumatic experience? >> i haven't gotten the necessary time yet, but this is a good distraction and i'm happy that i'm able to fight for something that means so much for me. >> i had a chance to meet your mom. i'm sure she is to proud of you. you are an incredible advocate. >> yes. >> that's my last little advice. you are so smart. thank you. we will definitely be following your march on the second. >> thank you. >> much more "am joy" after the break.

ancestrydna makes over 10 million new family connections, every day. that's more ways to discover new relatives. people who share your dna. and maybe a whole lot more. order your kit at ancestrydna.com my time is thin, but so is my lawn. it's been worn down to ugly thin grass! now there's new scotts thick 'r lawn, the revolutionary 3-in-1 solution for weak lawns. with a soil improver to strengthen roots! seed to fill in gaps! and fertilizer to feed! the result, up to a 50% thicker lawn after just one application. ♪ ♪ now yard time is our time. this is a scotts yard.

here's the bottom line, i am proud to be the chief political analyst at sinclair. my goal with every segment is to tell you about facts which you may not already know and then my take on those facts. i am thrilled to keep sharing the truth and my perspective with you day in and day out. thank you for tuning in. >> well, good morning and welcome back to "am joy." former trump campaign spokesman boris epstein wasn't the only sinclair hire spinning conservative propaganda on the ones and twos. while sinclair usually leaves it up to the corporate picked talking heads like boris to blanket its 193 right wing stations, this week thanks to a mashup by the folks atz deadspin, sinclair has forced its local anchors to join in.

>> the sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media. more alarming some have published reports which aren't true without checking facts first. 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. >> that was one of the latest must-run segments sinclair media group requires all of the local news services it owns or operates to air. to the 39% of americans who live within sinclair ace broadcasting reach, some feel sinclair crossed the line by requiring them to trumpet antimedia.

we're disturbed by the editorial direction our leadership is taking and we want people to know that many of us at sinclair reject what our company is doing. we're writing this anonymously because if we spoke out under our names we could lose our jobs and potentially owe money to sinclair. the threats to the journalist's careers and -- soon they may increase from 39% to 72% if they purchase tribune media. joining me is curt cliatt. aaron wise, former news director in sioux city iowa. joining me by phone is chuck plunke plunkett. thank you all for being here. i'm going to start with you, aaron. a lot of people, you know, went

after these anchors who read these must-read statements and sort of, you know, made them out to be puppets. can you just explain the situation that they are in. the short version is they're all under contract. they're expected to do what corporate asks of them. if they had refused that would be insubordination. working for sinclair, it has what are called liquidated damages. they might have been liable for tens of thousands of dollars if they end up terminating the contracts. donald trump loftd ved it. they're worried about the competition of sinclair brods cast.

meanwhile, a little bit more of this vox article where journalists were pissed. most of the time we don't feel like we work for sinclair. we feel like local journalists who cover what's going on in our communities. they don't influence our stories. they feed us nationally focused content. concernin kirk, local news anchors are the most trusted. >> it's been a few years since i've been at sinclair. i have some communication from a producer who was there until recently. i just want to give you a couple of lines of what she wrote to give you an idea. it says the must-run content was always not balanced and working most recent election she means back in 2016 i knew it was time to make a change. i didn't feel like we were journalists anymore, i felt like we were being told what to do and what to say. joy, this is a company that

always wanted to centralize things. i pulled an article from david fokenflick when he was with the "baltimore sun." he was talking about weather central. what they were talking about doing is have remote weather casts. they'd have one weather anchor be on 10 or 12 stations. they had news central where they'd have all these national must-run stories that are swung the way they want them with a certain perspective fed out to many, many stations across the nation and have some local content put in. you were mentioning vox, joy. they have an interactive chart showing you if this tribune merger takes place, it's $3.9 million deal, it's only $3 billion. this takeover is larger than the

current market capitalization of sinclair. it would voinvolve major cities they don't have a presence of. in las vegas, eight stations. missoula, montana, they would control virtually all of the stations, portland, 11 stations. this is such a far cry, joy, from the way it was back in the day when i was a kid in 1975 starting in the industry when you had the 7-7-7 rule which was expanded to the 12-12-12 which was 7 a.m., 7 televisions, 7 f.m. that's when they were family businesses. >> aaron, you were nodding there. part of the challenge here because when we say own stations, they own cbs, abc, nbc affiliates. to the viewer they're watching nbc, abc, cbs. tell us how it feels as a news director to know that this

really trusted media. 25% say they have a lot. 60% some. the idea that a company to the outside world seems to be cbs, abc, nbc is feeding you an ideological line, how does that feel as a former insider, news director? >> both as a former insider, someone who literally grew up in a newsroom. my mother was an anchor in tucson. i grew up knowing about the trust that folks have in the local community. if there's any good that's come out of this, it's the difference that ownership groups can make. folks are looking up which stations in my market are owned by sinclair? am i getting fed this slanted national content. the fact that people are aware and looking for it is a great thing. >> aaron, there are a lot of people talking about boycotting.

one candidate said she won't allow her ads to be bought on sinclair. will that work? >> i don't know. i don't think the upper management at sinclair is in this for the money. i think they're in it for their political bent. if all the advertisers disappeared, i don't know. you'd have to ask david smith that. i want to bring in chuck plunkett. i grew up in denver, colorado. i grew up reading "the denver post." i got the cross word first, sorry to my brother and sister, i grabbed that. the comics, my sister would get those. we read the denver post. it was our regular reading. now you have a rebellion and here's from the op ed

unprecedented written by members of the editorial staff. they will walk out the door. our marching orders are to cut a full 30% by the start of july. consider this editorial as a plea to alden to rethink its newspaper strategy. tell us what brought about that op ed. >> thanks for having me, joy. thanks for reading "the denver pos post." >> yes. >> we've been through a lot of cuts. we've had a newsroom greater -- when i joined back in 2003 more than 300. when alden took the reins in 2010, 250. we've shrunk down to less than 100. after monday we'll be getting into the 60 range.

this is in a metro area of 3 million. we don't see that we are serving the readers anywhere close to what we're supposed to to gain and continue to keep that trust the readers have. >> one of the things it seems the members of the editorial team are calling for is for some other person to come in and buy buy "the denver post" from the hedge fund owners. one of the concerns, chuck, is if you have these billionaire taking over these what were local papers, that their ideology could then become the dominant factor at what are vital news organs to the community. do you have a concern about that? >> that is one thing i can say about alden, it hasn't been

directed at directing news coverage. it's left the newsroom alone. the problem that i see is we're a swing state. we have a very competitive governor's race unprecedented in decades in colorado with a very wide field. we have a divided statehouse. an active city hall. all kinds of things going on in the political role. a paper needs to vet the candidates, claims, looking into the political messaging, seeing whose interests are being served and that's not being done anywhere to the degree it should be. >> aaron, you're in denver as well. i think the concern here is that just on a wide scale, it's one thing for people to choose ideological media online or if you have a conservative to watch fox news to self-select that media. when you're talking about local newspapers and tv stations

becoming ideological organs or becoming non-local, what is the risk in that for american democracy in your view? >> the risk, i think, of not having trusted down the middle unbiased news sources is that it makes a hard to get a sense of where the baseline is. i read everything. i read liberal commentary. but i trust outlets like the denver post to give me straight up what's going on. and the risk of the denver post getting as small as it is when just a few years ago when you had the post and the rocky mountain daily news, you had more than 500 print journalists working in denver, now as chuck said, we're getting down to 60 which means tv and broadcast has to pick up the slack. >> yeah. >> and if that broadcast is now coming from sinclair where we know there's directions towards biased news coverage even in local stations, that's -- that is a threat to our democracy. >> kirk, it's also a threat to

sort of the -- you know, most people who go into -- particularly in local news and who stay in it, the folks that i know, the anchors that i worked with in miami, they really do have a mission in their mind to cover the news without fear or favor and to really make sure that the local issues that are important to that market are heard. that's not what we do here in national cable news. are you worried about the medium at this point if people, very wealthy people even cee lo call tv news as just another vehicle for ideological sort of salesmanship? >> well, joy, you've got a situation here where every newsroom meeting every time you get together in that conference room to discuss what's going to be on the show that evening, that's a form of advocacy journalism. what is the story that's going to make your newscast that night? this is one way that subtly, you may not even notice it watching a show, these stories can be turned to a right leaning commentary. one gentleman who put out a commentary in the orlando paper

recently, orlando weekly, jonathan i believe was his name, he was a reporter and he basically talked a lot about that because it is station wpec in west palm beach. he said they basically couldn't do any lgbt stories and everything -- a lot of the stories, especially the feature stories, had a religious slant to it. one thing missed to all of this, sinclair said it would donate to the nppa $25,000 to the legal advocacy. they were the national press photographer's station of the year, scott livingston who is now their executive vp of news was an amazing photographer, but the bottom line, sinclair pulled that donation because the nppa didn't have much good to say about these news promos coming out of news time, not commercial time. >> indeed. i know a lot of stations used to try to bury them at odd hours. sinclair said, no, no, no, we want them to be airing with your

traffic and weather together, in the 5:00, 6:00 newscasts. scary world. it's goods to have you three here to warn folks that this is happening. thank you so much for your time this morning. >> thank you, joy. coming up, a police-involved shooting in brooklyn that deserves some national attention. that's next. ♪ ♪

from only the thickest, juiciest heinz tomatoes. no one grows ketchup like heinz™. and it's also a story mail aabout people and while we make more e-commerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country, we never forget... that your business is our business the united states postal service. priority: you

i just want to get clear, sahim was not a homeless young man and he was not a violent young man and i just want to say i want justice for sahim. >> the mother of saheed vassell made that empassioned plea. the brooklyn man, the father of a teenage son was shot ten times, shot at ten times by new york police officers who claim he pointed an object they believed to be a gun in his direction. that object turned out not to being a gun. instead, of it a metal pipe. they say their son dealt with mental health issues. the shooting has sparked outrage. they say he was a familiar face and that many knew he was mentally ill. the shooting raises a lot of depressingly familiar questions about the police use of force and how officers are trained to deal with people with mental illness. joining me is harry siegel,

columnist for the "new york daily news" and phillip gov. i was following this story, harry, i follow what you write and you wrote about the experience of being at the hospital and seeing not a shooting victim being, you know, tended to but police. >> well, a different hospital. so they took this man after they shot him to the nearest hospital which is king's county. >> yes. >> which is where he was pronounced dead. the meantime, the officers who needed to be checked for any injuries they may have incurred after shooting and killing him in a ten second encounter in which they may or may not have said we're the police went to a different hospital, a precinct where no one knew they were. i happened to be in that e.r. and there as they were talking about this and heard a commander assure a hospital worker, don't worry, the press doesn't know we're here. no one does. so this is how the police are sorting this out afterward.

and in the meantime the trickling out of information in response to the bad press and to the community outrage so it's here's a video, people are still upset. here's another video. let's leak his criminal record. we still haven't seen the actual encounter with the police in ten seconds. they're very selectively turning over cards to try to explain and excuse. in the meantime, we don't know the names, for instance, of the officers who were involved. >> absolutely. this is a pattern. this just happened to have happened in my neighborhood. the story will be the same. thought he had a gun, feared for my life, shot him. end of story. they've leaked out transcripts of the 911 calls, not the audio, interestingly enough, but also surveillance video that they sabol sters the fact that this person was threatening people. you see a young man who is obviously in the midst of some

mental health issues. he's pointing this metal pipe. he's known in this neighborhood. you see how people are reacting. you can't tell how they're reacting. we don't know. as somebody who studies policing and the way it should be done, what should police do if somebody is frightening people, what should they have done? >> well, it's hard to second guess without all of the information. >> yeah. >> for sure when you're approaching someone that you think is armed, you want to approach at a distance. we saw this in response to the tamir rice system. it doesn't make sense to roll right up on top of them if you think they're armed. in addition, if you have folks who know the community, you can do better than what strangers who are looking at this random clips of video could do. i want to make sure we get this is an individual tragedy, but there are elements of this that are absolutely nationwide. crown heights is a neighborhood

experiencing some gentrification. some people don't know that he has mental health issues. all the local community officers do. folks who know about him say he started suffering mental health concerns when one of his friends was shot and killed by law enforcement. there was a settlement for that shooting. this is a tragic circle that is much broader than what you're able to tell. the facts of the individual case are never the only facts that matter when black folks get shot and killed this way. >> this is a bit long about the fact of who the officers were who were there. i'm going to ask them about it. they say they do designate officers to certain neighborhoods. it divides precincts into four or five areas. the same officers work in the same neighborhoods on the same shifts increasing their familiarity with local residents and local problems. in vassll's case, they weren't those people.

they said two officers from the strategic response group and three officers from the nypd anticrime unit. last bit, they're a team that responds to things such as shootings and bank robberies and they handle crowd control while anti-crime officers frequently deal with gun violence. three plain clothed officers and one uniformed officer shot at vassell. they have not released the name of the officers. they didn't send the guys who know the neighborhood, they sent the crime guys into a residential neighborhood and they shoot him. >> 41 shots and having gun cops show up in a neighborhood they don't know. that's one of the original sins of our policing. the thing is, when you have a gun call you do have more aggressive officers who are supposed to be responding to that. the question is, how well trained they are and how serious. you don't jump out, within ten

seconds, we haven't seen the video, start doing that. it's understandable that you end up with different officers there at different points. in this circumstance where the only potential threat is to them, they say he took a shooting stance, you have, again, within 10 seconds and it's not clear they even say as much as police or nine shots fired. >> walking around. >> the actual incident. could hit a bystander, child,

could hit somebody shopping who doesn't know what's going on. the only people who fired a gun in that neighborhood are the police because all he had was a pipe. so their fear was he might shoot someone so they shoot people? this doesn't even sound like good public safety. >> well, the argument of course is self-defense. again, without seeing the actual video of the incident it's very difficult to see what the officers saw. again, we know that there's a tactic issue. where if you're getting up on somebody you lose the option to de-escalate. something harry said, they should have edp training. >> tell me what edp training is. >> emotionally disturbed training. critical incident training is the same thing. there is no way that any police department in the country can train officers to be mental health workers at the same time that they are training them to be safe with weapons, at the same time they are training them to be social workers, child protective services and the rest. we ask our police to do too much. when you ask them to do too much and they're afraid and they have

the option to do coercive force, you see that more often than you need to. you have someone who knows how to de-escalate and deal with mental health. if we had not divested so much public goods from our mental health infrastructure then we wouldn't have the kinds of situations that we have here, in seattle and countless other cases where mental health is dealt with with incarceration or execution. >> the reality to know, you and i know these officers will get off. >> well, one of the officers is still with the nypd. there's no chance that they're going to face anything other than small departmental penalties practically speaking. >> it's depressing and it's not ending. harry and phillip, thank you for being here. up next, america's educators are rising up. stay with us. - i love my grandma.

- anncr: as you grow older, your brain naturally begins to change which may cause trouble with recall. - learning from him is great... when i can keep up! - anncr: thankfully, prevagen helps your brain and improves memory. - dad's got all the answers. - anncr: prevagen is now the number-one-selling brain health supplement in drug stores nationwide. - she outsmarts me every single time. - checkmate! you wanna play again? - anncr: prevagen. healthier brain. better life. a trip back to the dthe doctor's office, mean just for a shot. but why go back there, when you can stay home, with neulasta onpro? strong chemo can put you at risk of serious infection, which could lead to hospitalizations. in a key study, neulasta reduced the risk of infection from 17% to 1%,

a 94% decrease. applied the day of chemo, neulasta onpro is designed to deliver neulasta the next day, so you can stay home. neulasta is for certain cancer patients receiving strong chemotherapy. do not take neulasta if you're allergic to neulasta or neupogen (filgrastim). ruptured spleen, sometimes fatal as well as serious lung problems, allergic reactions, kidney injuries, and capillary leak syndrome have occurred. report abdominal or shoulder tip pain, trouble breathing or allergic reactions to your doctor right away. in patients with sickle cell disorders, serious, sometimes fatal crises can occur. the most common side effect is bone and muscle ache. so why go back there? if you'd rather be home, ask your doctor about neulasta onpro. whoamike and jen doyle?than i thought. yeah. time for medicare, huh. i have no idea how we're going to get through this. follow me. choosing a plan can be super-complicated. but it doesn't have to be. unitedhealthcare can guide you through the confusion,

with helpful people, tools and plans. including the only plans with the aarp name. well that wasn't so bad at all. that's how we like it. aarp medicare plans, from unitedhealthcare. hey, i'm curious about your social security alerts. oh! we'll alert you if we find your social security number on any one of thousands of risky sites, so you'll be in the know. ewww! being in the know is very good. don't shake! ahhh! sign up online for free. discover social security alerts.

we want to update you on this morning's breaking news about the apparent chemical weapons attack in syria. at least 40 people were killed according to aide workers. the u.s. state department is urging an immediate response from the international community if it's concerned. in the middle east a palestinian journalist was shot and killed saturday while covering protests at the israeli

border in gaza. he was reportedly shot in the stomach by israeli troops. he was wearing a flak vest with the word press clearly written across his chest. at least eight other palestinians were killed and five other journalists were injured by live fire from israeli troops. i'm on the move all day long. and sometimes, i don't eat the way i should. so, i drink boost. boost high protein nutritional drink has 15 grams of protein to help maintain muscle and 26 essential vitamins and minerals, including calcium and vitamin d. look for savings on boost in your sunday paper.

copdso to breathe better,athe. including calcium and vitamin d. i go with anoro. ♪go your own way copd tries to say, "go this way." i say, "i'll go my own way" with anoro. ♪go your own way once-daily anoro contains two medicines called bronchodilators, that work together to significantly improve lung function all day and all night. anoro is not for asthma . it contains a type of medicine that increases risk of death in people with asthma. the risk is unknown in copd. anoro won't replace rescue inhalers for sudden symptoms and should not be used more than once a day. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition, high blood pressure, glaucoma, prostate, bladder, or urinary problems.

these may worsen with anoro. call your doctor if you have worsened breathing, chest pain, mouth or tongue swelling, problems urinating, vision changes, or eye pain while taking anoro. ask your doctor about anoro. ♪go your own way get your first prescription free at anoro.com. make it happen. >> make it happen.

>> we won't leave. we won't leave. >> thousands of oklahoma school teachers are expected to continue their walkout for a sixth day tomorrow to protest cuts for school funding and low cuts to salaries. mary fallon signed a bill to increase teacher's salaries by $6,000, to many it wasn't enough. oklahoma teachers are among the lowest paid in the country. it's not just about needing a bigger salary increase, they're demanding more government funding to improve conditions inside the classroom. joining me to discuss is bishop william barber, cindy rolfton, a teacher participating and state senator anastasia pittman. i want to start with you, cindy. oklahoma teachers salaries average about $42,000. the median income in the united

states is $57,000. and there's a chart that shows where oklahoma falls in terms of all teacher pay, and it falls at the bottom. if we could just put that chart up. it's pretty spectacular. this is e-4. it basically shows that oklahoma elementary school salaries are last in the country. secondary school sal rigs which is the green on the right-hand side, last in the country. what is it that sparked this particular walkout, cindy? >> this walkout was sparked basically because we have put up with cuts to our -- all of our funding in oklahoma for the past eight years. we have funded our own classrooms, honestly. we have no textbooks anymore. we haven't had new textbooks in probably about ten years because they allowed them to -- when we had the 2008 recession they

allowed them to open up our textbook funds to pay salaries and they haven't ever made our textbook fund just for textbooks again. so teachers not only are -- in oklahoma are making the lowest salary in the country, we're also spending a lot of our own money supplying our own classrooms with curriculum, with ipads that we need for technology. we're bringing our own in because we don't have the availability. our wi-fi access, internet access is really sketchy depending on what school district you're in. >> yeah. >> and pretty much we -- we just know that the policies that have been in place that have cut, cut, cut taxes and allowed corporations to kind of get a heads up in oklahoma in businesses hasn't worked. it's really caused us to be the last and the resources we have are abysmal.

>> state senator pittman, to that very point. a first grader, cbs did a story about a first grader who discovered that her quote, unquote, new textbook had been used by blake shelton, in 1982. 41-year-old blake shelton used it in 1982. here's one oklahoma teacher talking about having to go to a food pantry because her salary is so low. take a listen. >> it's kind of like having a teenage kid. >> when i drove into park, i drove past my own students at the after school program on the playground. they waved smiling at me. i thought, i'm so embarrassed. i'm so embarrassed. i should not have to do this. i have two degrees. i have student loans, bachelor degrees, 14 years experience. i should not have to come ask for food. >> one more thing, the response of the oklahoma governor mary fallon to that, that kind of tearful plea to not have to pass

your students on the way to the food pantry, being humiliated as a teacher, degreed teacher, this is the governor's response to the teacher's outcry. >> teachers want more but it's kind of like having a teenage kid that wants a better car. >> your response, senator pittman? >> yes, thank you for having me. i appreciate the opportunity to speak out. yes, the governor of oklahoma has said it very clear and cloudily, sent a message to all of our constituents by saying businesses don't want to come here and in order for us to promote business in oklahoma, we must have an educated work force. and so it's unfortunate that our governor doesn't respect the profession of education. so i encourage the teacher walkout. this is the sixth day we've had this happen. we've lost over $180 million over the last ten years. it's time for us to stand up, walk out, speak up for children.

we need wrap around services, we need general revenue, general operation funds for education and it's now time to do it. and it's well overdue. we've passed a revenue measure that would support our teacher pay raise but now it's time to fund it and it's not just our teachers, it's our support personnel, it's our classroom sizes that we're looking at. we have textbooks that are not up to date, that don't even have our latest elected officials in it and our national 44th president. >> right. you know, bishop barber, it's not oklahoma only. west virginia is the first one to get people's attention. the way they argue on the other side of it is mitch carmichael, the president of the state senate in west virginia, he said the deal to raise 250e67er pay in west virginia would probably lead to painful cuts in other parts of the state budget. another said that medicaid would

also be among the areas cut. mr. carmichael told reporters the scale was not absolutely determined because lawmakers are still securing the budget for places to cut. the kaz ser family foundation nodes that 29% of the population is on medicaid. highest in the country. >> there is the problem. the wages you have refused to pay your workers are crying out against you. what we're seeing is what you have when you have this extreme commitment to funding tax cuts to the wealthy. what you end up doing is trickling down defunding of education. you trickle down low wages and you end up having a group of people that rob the bank and say there's no money in the bank to deal with the issue. this is right. this reminds me of moral monday. it needs to continue. the same states that have engaged in these kinds of tax cuts that have hurt teachers, hurt working people are also states that have high levels of

voter suppression. i would caution to you, don't operate in a silo. >> yes. >> understand that voter suppression allows people to get elected. the second thing is, be careful of how they will cut deals because like in west virginia, on the one hand they gave the raise but then they cut medicaid which hurts poor children and poor white women. they cut snap and said that what we're going to do now is require even disabled people to have to work. so what we have to do in this moral moment is fuse our efforts. don't allow them to make us operate in silos, recognize this is a moral issue and come together the challenges. we can break the back of this because we are exposing them what really happens when you buy the lie of tax cuts, which is really tax welfare to the wealthy. >> right. >> and trickle down problems to the poor and working poor. >> what you're saying they may

get cold because the population didn't cut them. we have to pay for it by making the just above poor get more so the very poor get nothing? >> right. then you pit two groups against each other. >> right. >> which is deeply immoral. it's what the bible calls in isaiah 15, the bands of wickedness. we are required to lose those bands. in this moment we have to understand the same people that are using racialized voter suppression to get power, they use that power that hurts all people especially the poor, the working poor. when we understand that, the intersection between race, poverty, wages and come together, that's when we can break the back of this. >> have you heard proposals to cut medicaid as a result of these requests for teacher pay increases very briefly? >> we've had proposals to cut medicaid prior to this. we've cut everything for the last ten years and it hasn't worked. >> yeah. >> we've been sold -- we've given away $250 million in tax

credits but we are not funding. we are 28% in funding education. >> i'm sorry we're out of time. thank you all for being here. thank you so much to all of you. coming up at the top of the hour, the latest on donald trump's response to the apparent chemical weapons attack in syria. up next on "am joy." we came with big appetites. with expedia, you could book a flight, hotel, car, and activity all in one place. ♪ ♪ ♪ applebee's to go. order online and get $10 off $30.

now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. order online and get $10 off $30. at planters, we put fresh roawhich has its drawbacks.an, guys, know anything about this missing inventory? wasn't me! the cheeks don't lie, chet... irresistibly planters. i look like most people. but on the inside, i feel chronic, widespread pain. fibromyalgia may be invisible to others, but my pain is real. fibromyalgia is thought to be caused by overactive nerves. lyrica is believed to calm these nerves. i'm glad my doctor prescribed lyrica. for some, lyrica delivers effective relief for moderate to even severe fibromyalgia pain. and improves function. lyrica may cause serious allergic reactions, suicidal thoughts or actions. tell your doctor right away if you have these, new or worse depression, unusual changes in mood or behavior, swelling, trouble breathing, rash, hives, blisters, muscle pain with fever, tired feeling, or blurry vision. common side effects: dizziness, sleepiness,

weight gain, swelling of hands, legs and feet. don't drink alcohol while taking lyrica. don't drive or use machinery until you know how lyrica affects you. those who've had a drug or alcohol problem may be more likely to misuse lyrica. with less pain, i can do more with my family. talk to your doctor today. see if lyrica can help.

i have no idea how we're going to get through this. follow me. unitedhealthcare has the people and tools to help guide you through the confusion. well that wasn't so bad at all. that's how we like it. unitedhealthcare. hi dad. no. edon't try to get up. hi, i'm julie, a right at home caregiver. and if i'd been caring for tom's dad, i would have noticed some dizziness that could lead to balance issues. that's because i'm trained to report any changes in behavior, no matter how small, so tom could have peace of mind. we'll be right there. we have to go. hey, tom. you should try right at home. they're great for us. the right care. right at home.

brother, you did some things that dr. j., michael jordan, kobe, myself, we couldn't do. i tried to do it, i just couldn't hang that long in the air. god bless you and congratulations to you from the whole laker organization. >> before magic, kareem, shaq and kobe, there was lakers legend elgin baylor who had the trademark hanging jump shop and ability to play above the rim. baylor find finally got his due on friday when he became the fifth laker to be immortalized outside staples center in los angeles. they unveiled a 16 foot tall bronze statue. on friday i spoke with baylor on the lakers court about his

all-star career. and his new memoir aptly titled "hang time, my life in baseball" which comes out this week. take a listen. >> it's quite a book. in the early part of it you talk about riding on a plane with jerry west. you're both on the way to d.c. he says to you, you need a statue. you should have a statue. >> you say, i don't need that. over the course of that you say, no, it wouldn't be bad at all. you are a very humble man. you're not somebody who's prone to bragging but if you could put into words, what does it mean to you to have this city, to have this arena honor you with a statue of your own? >> just wonderful, you know? really, it's a surprise to me. i didn't know people felt that way. but i thought it was the enjoyment of playing the basketball game. this is part of my life. you know, i'm very tankful.

>> you wrote about growing up in washington d.c. it's a harrowing tale in the 40s and 50s and different with the segregation, and humiliation. talk a little bit about what growing up in that environment, how did that shape you as a pers person. >> it was difficult because being in a ser gaar gated city. there was a playground around the corner, they had swings and basketball court and everything else and you weren't allowed to do this and me thinking it, i thought that was just supposed to be that way. you know, then certain things happened along the way that changed my thinking. it shouldn't be this way. i should have a privilege and do things. ever.

>> what did it mean to return to d.c. you write about not returning often. what did it mean to return with an african american in the white house. >> i met him and talked to him spending time and he's got a sense of humor. i would joke about his golf and how bad he was and stuff. it was nice to come back and see om of t some of the guys i grew up with, a lot of them passed away. thank god i'm still here. >> i first met you and your lovely wife eileen at the stat c -- statute unveiling for bill russell. tell me about that relationship. >> when we met in college, russell was going to university of san francisco and seattle university. we became good friends bill and i and he would invite me over to his house to dinner and when he

was in town, he made sure he got in touch with me and the funniest thing, the time we play professionally against one another, half court to meet out there and he would ignore me. he wouldn't pay attention, turn his head and i'm thinking what? and then after the game, he's in the dressing room knocking on the door, where we going to eat? really, he was that type of guy that friends we were since. >> one of the things that come through in the book is how much it was central to your life as a person, when you couldn't play it tormented you. what did basketball mean to you? >> peace of mind, i can relax when i play ball. even though it's a game and before the game i always relax. i don't get excited or anything like that.

out there playing basketball and about this world then. deal with it when it's over. it's theory for me. i play and once it's over, then hey, everything is good. >> well, you are a legend in the game. obviously very much beloved to the people here in l.a. i love that you remind people in the book that the lakers originally from minneapolis because that's where the lakes are. >> yeah, yeah, very few people know that. >> you tell a lot of great stories in the book. thank you for your time. >> you're welcome. thank you. i want to thank the lovely eloque elgin and eileen for having me and my husband out there. that was an amazing ceremony and hair and makeup girls. i want to mention a quick note about our team here at "a.m. joy."

we'll soon by trace -- t tracyelaa. we have another producer we're embarrassing now. the camera will stay on her. she's one of the best writers i've ever worked with, a genius, really a brilliant young woman who i would literally cling to like a dolly and never let her go were she not going to work with a team of my good friend rachel maddow. that's the only way that i would let tracy leave. she'll be working on "the rachel maddow show." we're so proud of you. we love you. we miss you. take our calls because we're still going to be bothering you, gi girl. we love you. more "a.m. joy" after the break.

that is our show today, our last tracy tillman show. alex witt has the same beef with rachel maddow. >> i have the same beef with rachel. she took emma from me, what is up? >> we love rachel but when we do the hand offs with her, we don't literally hand off our people. >> it will be great. emma is loving her life there. >> we love the maddow show. >> our beef is love beef.

>> thanks so much. high noon here. we have breaking news in syria where the state department is monitoring reports of a chemical attack that may have killed dozens. >> these are horrible photos. >> the question now will president trump take action? boots on the ground. reaction from the u.s. mexico border as hundreds of national guard are deployed and is john kelly coming undone? reports of the chief of staff blowing up, threatening to quit, meanwhile, why the president doubled down on his support of the epa chief and what he says is behind pruit's expensive spending. it's here on msnbc live. we begin with breaking news coverage of a