ass a free podcast. i'm back tomorrow morning at 11:00 a.m. eastern right here on msnbc. that's our broadcast for tonight and goodnight from msnbc head quarters in new york. happy to have you with us. where do you want to start tonight? the prospect that we're about to shoot more missiles at syria right after the president said he wanted us to have nothing to do with the war in syria anymore? there's rr also the fact that the president literally said today get ready russia. that'ser a quote. get ready, russia. as he was apparently preparing his plans to shoot missiles into syria where russia is the major organized military power on the ground. president says get ready, russia as in you guys ready? ia need anymore time?

this enough notice? get ready, russia. so we can start there tonight. we can start tonight with the x-rated report about alleged secual abuse and violence by missouri's governor. that report released by the missouri state legislature and he believes there's rr no reason for him to step down. we could start with more senior trump officials leaving or the senior white house official who's been brought back and installed on the president's orders at the justice department. we could start with the next new scoop we've got following our report last night on dana boente and jamess comey. there's a lot going on, my fine feathered friends. and also the speaker of the house, third in line to the presidency, resigned today.

oerer at least announced he is leaving. he will not be unarunning for reelection. normal wednesday. these are wednesdays in our life now. the republican party has held the house of representatives since the beginning of 2011. the big tea party wave. that was one of the biggest partisan swings in the house in modern america cancn history. after president obama was eelected in the 2010 midterms and when you win a majority, you of course get to take control of all the committees in the house. you don't just get the leadership of the committee at large, all those previously chaired by democrats had to hand over their gavels to new republican chairs. and when that transition happens, it is a feeding frenzy in washington. it's power play at large.

there's lots of jockeying for thebust jobs. often they're awon by senior members of the house and they are have a lot of chips to cash in with their colleagues but when the republicans took over with that big, big win in 2011. they're going to be sworn in at 2011, the one who managed to snag the best chairmanship of all, best gig in congress, the person who would be responsible for crafting the republicans economic alternative to president obama's proposals. just 40 years old at the time. not one of these old lions of congress who had been raising money for decades. this 40-year-old guy who got that plum not not because he had been around forever and favors to trade but because he was seen as such a quality guy, as such

an up and comer and specifically he had a details, specific plan. he said he had the plan for the republican party eto finally get debts and deficits under control. his reason for living was to cut the debt. it was what he dreamed about, lived for, it was his life's work, it was all he cared about. it was definitely one thing he knew how to do better than anybody else and he had dreamy blue eyes and he looked awesome along side blown up charts and graphs. >> inunited states is heading towards a debt crisis. the own lanly solutions will ar painful for us all. the way we are espond to this challenge will define our generation. let's rr take a look at how woo ecan can do it. our debt as a share of the

economy is already too high. these are pretty conservative efforts. what we're calling the path to prosperity. as you can see we won't come anywhere close to the tipping point and pay off over time. >> reporter: the budget man called for dramatic cuts and changes. >> we put the nation on the path to cut our national debt. >> reporter: congressman paul ryan is go eing big. the republican plan over the next decade would cut government spending by $6 trillion, reduce the federal deficit by 4.4 trillion compared to the president's budget. >> budget chairman congressman paul ryan, champion of urgent deep cuts. a 40-year-old congressional rebel with a cause and john carl spent the day with him. >> he's been given more power

over the federal budget than anybody in congress. paul ryan, the republican with the budget ax. >> 23 million. >> reporter: he's a little like the guy in the movie "dave" who sets out to fix the budget line by line. >> that's another 47 million. so this is good. >> reporter: but in the movie he only has to find $650 million in savings. ryan wants to cut several trillion over the next 10er years. >> how do you find the kind of savings you want to find? >> you literally go through it line by line. direct loans. a new spending on autopilot and it gave the illusion they were cutting spending. >> that's the paul ryan party trick he does with reporters. open to any page. i'll find you wasteful spending on any page. you thought your burping the

alphabet routine was good. no, no, try opening the budget. boom, i'd kill that. yes, there were party poopers who pointsed oout in that televised interview, that one random thing he pummed out of the budget at random, it's something that saved the u.s. government billions and billions of dollars so cutting it would cost billions of dollars. but still the idea that he had some kind of budget magic, it was so exciting, you just didn't want to ereveal how the trick was done or that it didn't work. you just wanted to believe in the magic. however you felt about paul ryan's actual grasp of actual numbers. by the very next year that plan of his he unveiled was so orthodoxfry republicans and he was seen as a serious policy guy

by the main press that 2012 republicans basically by consensus chose paul rin to run with mitt romney because dreamy blue eyes and youthful fitness look great along side mitt romney. he was the policy guy. >> choosing wisconsin congressman paul ryan as his running mate, mitt romney has instantly remade his presidential campaign. congressman ryan is the republican master of all aspects of federal spending and he comes complete with his own detailed, conservative fiscal plan to remake the role of the federal government from everything to medicare and medicaid. in naming congressman ryan, he has transformed the presidential campaign into an ideological

battle. >> because republicans have picked, they called him the republican master of all aspects of federal spending. there's a conservative activist, an antitax crew sauder. he said at the time they didn't need mitt romney ass a presidential candidate. all they needed was that magic plan from the republican mast of all aspects of federal spending, paul ryan. quote we want to the ryan budget. bick a republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to be president oof the united states. all we want is paul ryan's magic plan. he did not become vice president in that campaign he and mitt romney lost in 2012. but while mitt romney is just trying to make his political comeback now, paul ryan kept rolling and ended up becoming

speaker of the house in 2015. the prevailing view was this meant the republican party would now be led by mr. policy, the most devoted policy wonk in all the land, the man whose reason for living was to reduce deficits and the debt and boy, does he know how to do it. es for once speaker he tarted releasing odd videos made him think he was running for president in 2016 or maybe he just liked videos of himself and the sound of people applauding him. >> how reassuring it would be if we actually fixed the tax code, strengthened our military and paid down our debt. the sinnics will scoff. they'll say it's not possible. >> scoffing sinnics who don't believe we'll pay down our dent. don't you know paul ryan has

been working on this since he was 22. he has the plan. he's go doing all those things. the debt will disappear. thus is who paul ryan is in american politics. but thus is the founding mythology over his 20 years in congress. and at the beginning of last year, his party finally took control of the house and senate. he has a huge majority in the house and can do what he wants and they have enacted some of his policies he's been campaigning for, for 20 years. he's finally seen his fiscal plans come into existence. two days ago we got the mathematical fiscal assessment of the result of those policies. the deficit is going to shoot past $1 trillion by 2020. ass a share of the american

economy, it's going to reach levels not seen since the economic collapse of 2008. the last time deficits were this big were world war ii because we were paying for a world war at the time. it's going to raise $14 trillion. that report, that came out two days ago. then this was this morning. >> today i'm announcing this year will be my last one as a member oof the house. to be clear i am not resigning. i inf plan to serve my full term but i will be leaving this majority in what i believe is a very bright future. i have accomplished much of what i came here to do. >> which part? you may or may not care about the debt and deficit. but getting are rid of the debt and the deficit, that is the

origin story of why paul ryan exists in american politics and why he's third in line to the presidency after the president and vice president, it's rer him. it's why he was put in charge and why they made him speaker of the house. he will get rid of the debt and then what he did with the power that they gave him once he got to enact his magic plan is he's going to add $13 trillion to the debt. and paul ryan apparently looked at that report and thought well, my work here is done. i'm pretty much done what -- again you may or may not care about that as a policy issue, if we're ever going to look at this, this is the time. the beltway myth of paul ryan that we are have been living through these past few years, the beltway myth of paul ryan is

the opposite of what paul ryan did. which should make us examine our myths. whatever you think of congressman ryan, speaker ryan, whether you bought into the myth in the first place, it's inescapably true that he failed at achieving the goals he set for himself day one and that everybody cheered him on as being capable of achieving as a republican party leader. he did the opposite. and now he'ser leaving saying he's pretty much done with what he wanted to do. the second house speaker to quit in the space of three years. john boehnerer stepped down in 2015. his post congress life has seemed pretty awesome. it's been mostly golfing and giving occasional interviews of how pleased he is to not be in congress. occasionally sent out dispatches from the rv.

been a low-profile retirement for the last republican speaker of the house to quit. but then today turned out to be an awkward day to suddenly turn around and say hey, i wonder what john boehner is up to right now? what happened to the last one? tod today ended up being an awkward day. hours before anyone knew paul ryan knew he too was going to be leaving, john boehnerer announced he was joining the board of a marijuana company. former republican speaker of the house chose this morning to come out of the closet as a brand new proponent of legal pot. quote i'm joining the board of acreage holdings because my thinking on cannibis has evolved. we all know him ass a proud cigarettes and red wine guy. this is new. when john boehner shared his evolution, his marijuana

evolution in that tweet before 7:00 a.m. this morning, i'm rr sure he didn't think it was going to be part of every single story in american politics today. but there you are have it. something for paul rin to look forward to. i mean i would pay money to see them high together. but it is no mystery why paul ryan might have wanted to get out of the way of the november elections this year. that tea party wave in the first election after obama was elected president. that was the wave election that made paul ryan budget share. that was very big. some of the people who watch these trends for a living think this could bring a democratic wave even bigger than what we saw in 2010. even if you don't believe that hype, it'sall a already clear i

going to be sort of rough year for republicans. from state legislative seats, even to the u.s. senate, democrats have been doing way better than they've done in 2016 and in many cases election cycles going back many years. hello, alabama. there are have been a number of instances where democrats have still lost in very conservative places. but the percentage swing has nevertheless been huge. just yesterday we thought it had a couple of specials. a democrat won a florida race by a 50-point margin. maybe not surprisingwon but hiln won that district by 25 points. this is a 25-point swing further towards the democrats. a 50-point margin. and there was another special in

iowa. a republican wonn ea state sena seat in a very red district. but by 14 fewer points than trump had in 2016. a 14-point swing even in a race they could still hold on to. these kind of swings are real and we vebeen seeing them for well over a year now and if they persist, even at a fraction of what we'rer seeing now, they will make it very hard for republicans this november, not to mention every republican will be running with donald trump. maybe paul ryan could have been the standard bearer before he quit, but it's going to be donald trump. and that will doubtless help republicanss in some places that love donald trump. it is hard to imagine what amount and manner of scandal may be holding over trump and his administration by the time they're going to the polls and voting in november.

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when everything's connected, it's simple. easy. awesome. so we had booked national political reporter at the washington post tonight as soon as we learned that speaker of the house paul ryan was resigning. bob kosta is one of the best sourced reporters in washington, particularly on capitol hill and republicans and he's often been able to read tea leaves better than anybody else when there are leadership changes happening and schisms afoot in washington. we booked him because of the paul ryan story. and then right before we got on the air a new scoop from mr. costa.

quote bannon pitches white house on plan to crippal mueller probe and protect trump. according to this new report, he says that steve bannon, ousted last summerer, but has remained in touch with some of president trump's circle is pitching a new plan to west wing aids to cripple, the probe. according to mr. costa's reporting, bannon's first proposed step is to fire deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. second step is that the white house should cease its cooperation with mueller. reversing the policy of trump's legal team to allow staff members to sit for interviews. this is unusual. i guess this would be step three or maybe step two. bannon is telling people that president should assert executive privilege in such a

way he should argue that mueller's interviews over the past year, the ones that are have already happened should now be seen as null and void. executive privilege should be exerted immediately and retroactively. also one final step, ty cob, the russia lawyer who works for the white house. quote should be fired immediately." fire rosenstein, try to fullify all of the interviews that exist and fire ty cob toer are. he's also the moderator of washington week. congratulations on the scoop. so let me ask you first about what you've just posted at the washington post. is there any sense bannon is pitching this through you because he believes that's his best hope of getting this acted on or is it your sense this is actively being considered?

>> as a reporter, id'd been hearing he was back in the mix and seemed to be in europe for the last few months after his operation pretty much fizzled and that the president needs to fire the deputy attorney general and been meeting tuesday night with different white house aids privately, having phone conareversationses, conference calls, that sort of thing. >> you say legal experts are dubious the white house could suddenly claim executive privilege on interviews given voluntarily by oofficials and be able to exclude them from an investigation. were you able to sense from mr. bannon or anybody else particular with his plans, why he even thinks this is a viable prospect to suggest? >> it's important to note mr. bannon is not an attorney. but what you're seeing is someone trying play to the

president's frustration with his legal team. before he resigned were urging cooperation. bannon thinks that's the biggest mistake the president could are have made. and he's urging people inside of the white house and close to the president to mount a more aggressive campaign and just stop cooperating in the justice department. >> isn't it strange that bannon oof all people -- one of the ways he made headlines was something about it being one of the worst political decisions in modern history, describing the firing of comey as a terrible decision that might have doomed trump's presidency. and now suggesting the equivalent. firing rosenstein to eliminate the special counsel's investigation. that would be quite an evolution, just by bannon himself. >> he criticized kushner and others for firing comey last

year. now he'ser the one urging political warfare. a president who has a very limited legal team and his outside advisors working his way through. even though bannon's coming back whispering to people inside of the west wing about what to do next. >> let me ask you about the huge news today that speaker ryan is not going to be running for reelection. obviously there had been previous reporting and they said his retirement was coming. do you have any sense of how this decision was to speaker ryan's expectations for democrats having a good midterm election and potentially taking back the house this november? >> when you're losing seats in southwestern pennsylvania and alabama, that pretty much tells you along with polls what to

expect along the horizon. but the deeper reason is whoser rr going to be their champion on the tax cut? ryan was going to sell it. and without their leader in ryan, whoser rr really there to bring together the traditional republican party e? the republican party's so broken. the suffering party, harkening back to ronald regan and jack kemp can. but those deficits were the motivating factor, supposedly, for the tea party movement. but a decade later what lingers on? not deficit, it's grievance politics. fury with the establishment. >> national political are reporter at the washington post, moderator of washington week and proving himself to be a scoop machine. much appreciated. i will say in terms of whose are rr going to replace paul ryan. a lot of discussion about that in washington. when boehner steps down,

everybody thought that the guy who would step in the shoes would be kevin mccarthy. it once again looks like that but something happened when boehner left and the republicans decided they weren't going to go with mccarthy. they skipped him and put ryan in there instead. he's set to be the next in line. nobody's really told the story of how come can mccarthy didn't get it next time around. we'll see if that plays again now that he'ser got a second chance at it. this car is literally my baby.

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last night we broke some significant new news on the mueller investigation, the russia investigation involving the justice department and the fbi. tonight next part two of that scoop.

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♪ come to my window ♪ ohh ♪ crawl inside ♪ wait by the light of the moon ♪ applebee's to go. order online and get $10 off $30. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. ookay. so last night we broke a little bit of news about the russia investigation, justice department and the fbi. two documents. fist is we got hand written notes from dana boente and those hand written notes appear to corroborate, even down to the exact phrases what fbi director, james comey told congress about his interactions with president trump before the president fired comey last may. he told congress, for example that president trump had asked him to quote thrift cloud of the russia investigation. boente's notes appear to show

comey describing that to boente in exactly the same way in order to make sure there would be a record of what the president had said and done. comey telling the president he wanted to lift the cloud and telling boente the same thing. the president said he wanted to lift the cloud. come aall soetold congress that the president had said this was interfering with his ability to run the count cannery. comey also told congress that the president wasn't personally being investigated by the fbi. comey appears to have erecounted that same presidential request the same way to dana boente. comey also told congress that he, jamess comey had asked the attorney general to make sure the president never again spoke to him alone one on one about

matters. he disclosed that same description to dana been ta and from the notes almost the exact word for word phrases. the reason that's important is because the president is potentially in legal jeopardy for firing james comey if that firing was an effort to obstruct justice. how do they determine if it was an effort to obstruct justice? they look at why it was done. and so all these prefiring conversations and interactions between james comey and the president, they may end up being part of any legal case against the president, if they show what the president wanted from comey, what might have motivated him. that's why comey testified in detail under oath to congress last year. honestly that's also why there's so much anticipation about

comey's book coming out last week. what happened before the president fired him is really important to the question of whether the president might be criminally charged or otherwise liable for obstruction of justice in this instance. and the president of course disputes comey's accounts. he has repeatedly denounced james comey as a liarer. directly denied comey's descriptions of his interactions with the president. comey's defense against that is that well, there might not have been tape erecordings of his interactions but he has basically the next best thing. he has copious notes taken at the time by himself and other seenerier law enforcement officials immediately following the meetings with the president. who incidentally are trained to take detailed notes for just this kind of reason, for evidence.

so these hand-written notes from dana boente, this is the first time we, the public, have ever seen those contemporaneous notes and they do appear to back up james comey sometimes word for word. the other big piece of news was that we obtained this letterer in which dana boente explains to the justice department that he's been asked to sit for an interview with the prosecutors. and he's not just any other witness. as u.s. attorney of the eastern district of virginia, he personally signed off on subpoenas and otherwise led the grand jury investigations into trump's campaign chair paul manafort. when he was acting deputy attorney general, he over saw the whole russia investigation. when -- boente personally

approved some of the charges against manafort. it's not just a run oof the mill turn in the investigation, he's not a normal witness. but we were able to report that boente has been asked by muellerer to come in and do an interview. well then today matt, at the washington post was able to push this forward because he confirmed that not only has mueller asked dana boente to testify, it has in fact taken place that he was able to separately confirm the authenticity of the hand written notes we reported on. and he was able to confirm that these hand written notes have been handed over to the mueller investigation. now i mention last night that in addition to those couple of pieces of news we were able to get to last night, we emight have more to report in coming days. hello, it's coming days and

heres ar are rr something new w can reeport tonight. can can we put it up? do we have it there? and we've only done a couple of little are redakzs here. we've redakted mostly eemail addresses from people here because we don't need to be public. from scott schools, the top official at the justice department. may 26, 2017. and it's to a long and interesting list of the department of justice. we'll come back to that in just a second. the subject line says preservation notice and the letter from scott schools to his colleagues that doj says all as in dear all we identify any requests related to the removal of former fbi directorer comey and are russian activities to

interfere with the 2016 election. the documents include but not limited to both in draft and final form all emails, text messages, electronic and/or hard copy, corspauchrespondcorrespon agreements, audit records, notes, memoranda, diary and calorie -- calendar entries are, visitor logs, meeting room reservations, meeting agendas, badge records, entry or exit to any building or facility, video surveillance of public and nonpublic areas and access logs including of classified information. also smoke signals if you are have any of those, any removed tattoos you'd like to submit for analys analysis. also your children's report cards dating back to birth and

their sawn grams. they're going to need it all. preservation notice. "to the extent any of you or your staff have relevant documents, please identify and preserve so we can identify whether and how to provide them to the requesters." the are requesters, we can surmise are probably robert mueller and his prosecutors because that's nine days after mueller was named as special counsel. that means less than a week 1/2 after taking over the russia investigation, mueller and his staff demanded all of this stuff from all of the people at the justice department. jody hunt is on the distribution list. that time chief of staff. flores, the main spokesperson both then and now. sam ramer. at the time head oof the office of legislative affairs and in

charge of managing the relationship between the justice department and congress. he's since gone on i believe to work in the white house counsel's office. another one of the people comey reportedly briefed on his interactions with the president. he ended up leaving the bureau earlier this year. pushed out in january. james kroul we believe is somebody in the deputy attorney general's office and on the list dana boente. whose copy of the memo this appears to be. boente apparently was included on this list both in the cucan pasty of the u.s. attorney for the eastern district of virginia and running the justice department at the time. and i think actually this is dana boente's marginalia saying bringing his notes in to scott before this memo went out. so this document has never

previously been reported. all of this stuff, all of these top people at the justice department are supposed to find and preserve and hand over to mueller. all of this stuff has to do not just with the russia investigation but they're being directed they're supposed to turn over all the stuff about what was then a brand spanking new investigation. into the president firing fbi director james comey. this memo went out on may 26th. comey was only fired a couple weeks before that. telling them to hand over all the stuff about russia and about the firing of comey. this is nine days after mueller was named special counsel and this is previously unreported. this shows the scale of the request for documents and communication even within the justice department for people who may have ended up being witnesses to a potential crime that took place within the administration. when the president fired his fbi

director for reasons that remain in dispute. gives you a sense of the massive amount of stuff that mueller and his team are hunting through in this investigation. not incidentally, this previously unreported retention notice, this also shows you the massive amount of stuff that will need to be preserves and protected somehow as evidence. if in fact the president ends up coming for the special counsel's office. -looks great, honey. -right?

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if you think it seems weird that president of the united states would address anned averse aerial country on twitterer warning get ready the missiles are coming, you are not alone. after the president actually did say that online today, even people inside the white house and allied governments who might work with the u.s. were reportedly confused. siting multiple american and western officials. cnn reported that tweet from the president quote caught most of trump's aids off guard. it also came before an agreement had been reached between key u.s. allies. james mattis saying quote we are still assessing the intelligence, ourselves and our allies. the president decided to warn russia to quote get ready

because military strikes are coming in syria. the president reportedly warning to get ready. there is evidence they're are getting ready. the new york times reporting quote with american strike intentions so clearly forecast by mr. trump, the syrian government has moved key aircraft to a russian base in syria and taking pains to secure russia cysystems and they may he moved battle ships out of tarts. quote get ready russia. thanks for the warning. joining me is military reeporter. thank you are for your time tonight. >> thank you. >> so it's been almost exactly one year since the last u.s. missile strike against syria ordered by the president. are are you expecting they're going to do something similar again? >> i think we'll see something

broader. i should start by saying there is a decision making meeting that hasn't quite happened yet. but there are options on the table for president trump and they include two that are are what i call broader than what we saw last april. that was more of a pin peck strike that the u.s. knew where the chemical weapon strike came from and was trying to do it again. if thus strike was by the syrian regime, which all indications are that it was, then that strike last april dud not stop it. soeit looks like this will be broader. will it actually target iranian or russian military there in the count country? it seems more like laeeit would be multiple targets the u.s. will strike. but president trump, he's really boxed himself in a corner with

his tweet by saying that missiles are coming, smart missiles are coming. so there has to be some sort of a response now. >> and some respans that includes that weaponry. courtney, looking back at that strike a year ago and the way you're describing it, does the pentagon, does the white house feel what they did a year ago as eeffective? i know they see it as a polling success domestically for the president but what do they feel their own lesson was? >> operationally on the ground, it damaged some aircraft but it popped up the runway and several days later there were aircraft taking off. so while it didn't actually stop, it seems assad, from using what may be another nerve agent, what people forget is from last april until today there have

been potentially dozens. there are reports of the assad regime using chlorine gas, weaponized chlorine gas against his own people numerous times from them till now. so it does not stop that. what it did was send a message and stopped any attacks in the immediate aftermath of the strike last april and it didn't draw the united states deeper into this largerer civil war. there was a what are of concern about at the time. this was meant to send a message. it did but it didn't deter. i think now what u.s. military planners are talking about that moilth deter assad from continuing to attack his people with these chemical agents. another thing people forget is while it may actually stop him from doing anything with chemicals, he's continuing to attack his people with barrel bombs, blow up civilians and

kill them every single day. no indication that any of that is going to stop anytime soon, april. >> and the president's response to that continuation of the war has been to say he wants the united states to be disentangled even furtherer than we have been. national security and military reporter, thanks for giving us the latest. nice to see you. >> thanks. you too. >> underscoring that a decision hasn't actually been made. we're anticipating the white house will likely do something, if in making good on the president's statements. but that meeting hasn't happened yet.

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lease the 2018 es 350 for $399/month for 36 months. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. one thing to give you a heads up about for tomorrow morning, the confirmation hearing is going to happen tomorrow morning for mike pompeo, president trump's controversial cia chief who he has tapped to take over for his controversial secretary of state rex tillerson who he fired. the pompeo confirmation hearing should actually be -- maybe -- i'm not going to say fireworks. i'm going to say it might be slightly heated. you may want to put that on your docket tomorrow morning. we'll see you tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell" good evening lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. it seems in trump world they never go away. i listened to your discussion of the new steve bannon tragedy about how trump world should deal with the special prosecutor. it is just amazing that he's back. >>