good monday morning. it's april 23rd. welcome to "morning joe." we have a lot to get to. president trump insists his lawyer won't flip on him while taking a simultaneous shot at hillary clinton and "the new york times" in the very same tweet. it's just one of many messages he posted online over the weekend on north korea, the special counsel, james comey, mr. magoo and even silverster stallone. meanwhile, his wife melania paid respects to the late barbara bush. also, mitt romney joined several other republicans in holding back an endorsement for president for 2020 and joe has a new column on why trump's re-election bid is far from certain. along us this morning, we have national affairs analyst, executive producer and co-host of the circus on showtime, john heilemann. msnbc contributor mike barnicle.

political writer for the new york times, nick confessorry and the president of the counsel on foreign relations and author of the book "a world in disarray" richard haass also with us. pulitzer prize winning historian jon meacham. meachum delivered one of the yueulogies at barbara bush's funeral on saturday. >> so many people this weekend talking about barbara bush and really agreeing with john's assessment that she really has been for such a long time as america's first lady. america said good-bye to barbara bush, jon meacham, this weekend. you were there and delivered a beautiful, beautiful word in her memory. talk to us about the event. talk to us about the extraordinary man barbara bush

lived with so many years. and just talk about the woman he remembered. >> i was thinking this morning, this is the first week that george h.w. bush has opened his life without barbara bush since 1981. he was a rock all day saturday. it was so interesting is it was a family funeral that happened to intersect with the american family. and the life of the nation. and it felt very much like that inside st. martin's church in houston. as you know when you're around these presidents and these public servants, all the stuff we talk about all the time falls away and you're reminded of the essential humanity of these

people, these families, who, yes, they ask for the job, yes, they seek our votes, yes, they seek ultimate power and the world's longest experiment and republicanism, but they're also families. and they're people who instinctively reach out respectfully and affectionately. and we overuse the phrase the end of an era, but every once in a while cliche is true because it's true and this was one. >> it really was. mika, there were wonderful moments throughout the weekend that we got to see from the outside. and the picture of the presidents and the first ladies certainly there seemed to be something reassuring in that. you had a group of people that i know most of us have been critical of from time to time

throughout our adult lives, but never once looking at that picture did we ever question whether everything they were doing, even if we disagreed with it, they were doing because they believed it was in the best interest of this country, the best interest in protecting our homeland, the best interest in preserving the constitution of the united states. that is obviously something that many of us do have concerns with, with what's going on in this white house. but it was maybe end of an era as far as george h.w. bush and barbara bush and the world that they occupied in connecticut and texas and washington, d.c. but that picture it seems it really does speak a thousands words that what we're going through is not the norm. and i expect that we will be

seeing -- well, let's just say in coming years we'll find presidents that i think most americans will be able to unify behind. >> yeah. and the picture is reassuring but kind of hard to go from that picture to this but we will. after ten months of the president hounding foreign investigation and even jail for james comey, the justice department is looking into classification issues surrounding the memos of the former fbi director. at least two of the memos that comey gave to a friend outside of the government contained information that officials now consider classified. of those two memos, comey himself redacted elements of one that he knew to be classified to protect secrets. he handed the documents over to his friend who shared the contents with a reporter. although they were not classified at the time he shared them, parts were later declared confidential, which has prompted the doj and inspector general to

review the matter. president trump continued on twitter this weekend, if you can believe it, even during the funeral, james comey's memos are classified. i did not declassify them. they belong to our government. therefor, he broke the law. but comey had the legal authority to determine what bureau information was classified and what wasn't. and there are no laws prohibiting conversations he had with trump in an unclassified manner. also in his weekend tweets, the president used the comey memos as the basis to question the validity of the special counsel's investigation. late friday night he tweeted james comey illegally leaked classified documents to the press in order to generate a special counsel, therefore the special counsel was established based on an illegal act. really does everybody know what that means? and later -- >> you know, i just enough.

really seriously, we're not going to start the show with three of his e-mails that once again john heilemann are so factually challenged that make up facts out of whole cloth and basically play into -- he's been very deliberate. he's tried -- donald trump has tried to undermine the rule of law. he has trashed the fbi and the men and women who protect our country everyday. he has trashed the justice departme department. he has pressured the justice department to go after a list of people including hillary clinton which is so outrageous, which is such a banana republic move, which is something you expect from latin america in the 1970s. that we're actually seeing it happen. we're hearing people talk about the investigation of mccabe for

crimes and comey for crimes and for materials that weren't even classified when he wrote them. help us understand exactly what's going on here, john. >> well, one would like to think, joe, that this is a chief political stunt. it's certainly that in part in what the president is trying to do at a time when he need to have enthusiasm among his base and where his base is partly because of actions of his own, partly because of actions of his party are enraged at the people you just mentioned. they're now enraged with hillary clinton and jim comey and much of the law enforcement bureaucracy, much of the law enforcement institution in the country at the federal level he is trying to feed them red meat. nothing will come of this, he's on twitter and they get all worked up and that's great. your comment about banana republic is apt in the sense it's one thing to say some of these things from a debate stage

or on a twitter feed. it's another thing to have them being said by a person who controls those institutions. although the justice department, the fbi are by tradition independent from the white house, they are still the people who work there, they are still under the control formerly of the white house. so when the president talks about jailing his political components, talks about mobilizing the law enforcement institutions at his disposal against those people in that way, it's profoundly troubling. i don't think there's anybody at this point that thinks it's beyond donald trump to actually not just have this be rhetorical but to try to actually do what he's promising in these tweets. >> it's exactly what he's trying. >> it's incredibly troubling and it is just -- some of the most chilling things that trump does is when he talks this way and threatens action in this area. >> nick, jump in. >> the problem is that the president's theater has a tendency to become a real theater and people take actions

as a result. you see what john is saying, the president will say something illegal and all of a sudden there's folks on the hill who want to do an investigation. it's important that the president have a consistent standard about classified information and we know from last summer that he himself disclosed classified information that was then traced back to our allies in israel. he is not himself that careful with this information. here he is raising all these things about the comey memos, which by the way show our classification system is completely messed up. that this kind of retroactive classification just kind of nuts, joe. >> it is nuts. we have a guy that actually gave classified information to the russians and then talked about investigations inside the oval office to the russians. he's actually trying to even come close to criticizing james

comey. it's outrageous. let's talk about some positive news, mike barnacle. if we define positive by people who care about the rule of law. it's an awfully low standard we have to look for good news this way in the trump administration. but i was heartened that jeff sessions warned the white house that if rod rosenstein was fired that he would leave at once. >> yes. the attorney general to don mcgahn, the white house counsel, you fire rod rosin rosenstein that i might walk as well. the larger picture, joe, i think is what you began with. it is indeed a picture. that picture of eight people three bushes, two clintons, two obamas and melania trump. and it's a reminder of who we

used to be as a government and as people who participated in politics, from citizens on up to candidates. we ought to frame that picture in our minds that that's the america that we had. >> yep. >> that's the america that we can get back. and that's the america that the president of the united states denigrated saturday during a funeral service with his tweets, many of which were outright lies. >> let's be honest, he does it everything. he does it everything, but it was especially insulting to the united states of america on saturday. take a look at this swipe on sessions. gop lawmakers asking sessions to investigate comey and hillary clinton. fox news, good luck with that request. you know, it's just painful actually in some ways and especially on saturday as the world said good-bye to barbara bush. >> yeah, it really was. the president contradicting himself in that tweet because

he's accusing a newspaper of spreading lies about problems between he and jeff sessions and then he attacks jeff sessions soon after that. you know, i want to say for maybe some donald trump supporters that are watching and looking at the pictures of the bushes and the clintons and the obamas and saying wait a second. they were terrible leaders. donald trump is going to set things straight. he would never be like any of them. donald trump was a big supporter of the clintons. a big supporter of big clinton. a big supporter of hillary clinton. donald trump did not become the donald trump that people who voted for him would have liked until 2011, 2012. he was a huge democrat. and then he discovered birtherism and decided he was going to use race and resentment

to try to become the republican party's nominee. so, again this is -- i've seen this before. it's interesting. i had to give a debate this weekend, mika. so i was trying to go back to see what i had said throw the years because it was newt and i that were going back and forth with each other. and actually i should say this to jon meacham, john except for how you helped me in my 2013 book, i noticed that the book i wrote in 2004 and 2009 and 2013 were identical. they were basically saying the same thing. republicans should be small government conservatives. they should be conservative idealogically and they should be

moderate temperamentally. you have donald trump, though, who is neither and just as i caught hell around the clock when i wrote that first book when george h. bush was president, i said, hey, trust me. this too shall pass. it's just like donald trump. we look at that picture and we think we will never get back to that again, but so too shall donald trump pass. and when he does, the republican party is going to have a hell of a time explaining what they did in the four to eight years while he was there. >> yeah. i find more and more that talking about the republican party and the president are two entirely separate conversations. they're still stockholm syndrome. the republican lawmakers still fear this base out there. i remember being in a southern state not tennessee right after

the republican primary in 2016 and asking the governor of that state what surprised him the most about trump's big win. and he said, you know, when you run for statewide office in a state like arkansas, you know every precinct. and there are these tiny precincts where there were only 20 voters for 20 years that were getting 700, 800 people coming out of the woodwork to vote for trump. and so it was just a new -- a whole new phenomenon. two quick things, one on writing more books and as someone who does it, there's a reason that harper lee is harper lee. she had one thing to say and said it. >> right. >> the rest of us are just hopelessly trying to say the same thing again and again. there's a reason to kill a mocking bird is to kill a mocking bird. secondly, on the president's essential opportunityism.

you're right about the new york democrat years. also remember there's a line in george herbert walker bush's diary when he was running for president in 1988 when lee at water and donald trump apparently cooked up an overture to president bush -- vice president bush to put donald trump on the ticket in 1988. and bush's inem itable reaction in the diary was strange, unbelievable. and it still is. >> it really is. and of course -- >> mika, that -- grow from strange and unbelievable to george w. bush's response to donald trump's inaugural address, that was some weird blank. not much changed through the years. >> unbelievable. meachum, don't you have a book coming out in two weeks. funny you should say all that.

>> there's a reason there's only one harper lee and i'm not it. >> oh, boy, that's a tease. that's a real promo. still ahead on "morning joe," north korea promises new overtures on its nuclear program, but plenty of people in washington are warning we've seen this show before. and the question is, is kim jong-un playing a con game with president trump? richard haass will talk about that. but first we're going to bill karins with a check on the forecast. bill? >> it was a beautiful weekend, wasn't it, mika? we finally had a really nice one in the northeast throughout the northern plains where they melted all the 20 inches of snow they had from the week before. unfortunately there was a storm this weekend. louisiana was one of the areas hard hit. this is a sonic drive-through. this is a tornado with 100 mile-per-hour winds. watch that car. thankfully no injuries. no one was reported hurt in that tornado. that was breakfast time saturday morning. that storm still lingering

in the south, heavy rain for georgia, south carolina. we'll give you coastal areas. riff surf, two to three inches of rain. horrible beach weather today. let's time this. this will be a slow-moving storm. charlotte, you get into the rain today. d.c. a dry monday. raleigh has a dry monday. go into tuesday morning, rain and raleigh arriving in richmond. as i mentioned, the great weather continues from the great lakes through the northeast. enjoy lunch outdoors today. 64 in new york and 71 in washington, d.c. we'll continue to watch this nice weather pattern throughout much of this week. happy to report no more snow and no more tornadoes this week. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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there are new developments surrounding north korea and suggestions the leader there is taking the american president for a ride. last week state media announced that kim jong-un was halting his nuclear and long-range missile testing programs and setting down a nuclear testing ground. trump responded on twitter writing, quote, this is very good news for north korea and the world. big progress. look forward to our summit. he followed up that by adding this -- progress being made for all. but not sure everyone is so sure about that. "the new york times" writes that kim, quote, seized the diplomatic high ground by making symbolic but modest conciliatory gestures. believing kim is simply posturing and has no real intention of denuclearization. former white house press secretary adds, quote, call me a cynic, based on history, one,

they'll suspend today and begin tomorrow. two, they'll have alternative ways, sites to carry out their missions or three, they will lie tomorrow or lie tomorrow. this is how nk behaves. this is my gut. i was so worried when this first started happening, joe. i didn't want to be the wet blanket on the set, but it's a little harder than it looks, isn't it? >> well, that's your job, isn't it? >> yeah, right. >> yeah. walked into that. >> i'm just joking, dear. richard haass, we certainly the talk of donald trump blowing it at the negotiation table is actually a bit more comforting than where we were three or four months ago worried about 500,000 people dying on the korean peninsula. that said, while we do want piece with north korea, talk about your feelings over the

past weekend or so hearing donald trump speak as if he's already managed to get kim jong-un on the deck of the uss missouri in tokyo bay to basically sign the surrender documents. >> everybody needs to take a deep breath here. trump is being criticized for having given away the store. he's not given away the store. shockingly enough i'm closer to the president there than i am to your colleague chuck todd. what matters in a negotiation is not where you begin it's where you end up. and then you read the front page story in today's "wall street journal" says the administration is leaning against any sanctions relief unless the north koreans fully dismantle their nuclear program. well, that's not going to happen. so, i still think the big questions, joe, are how do we define denuclearization. what do we demand. and what if anything are we

prepared to do for half loads. if we try to make this an all or nothing summit, they have to do everything and we have to be able to verify it, my fear is that we will have nothing. then we're back to that fundamental question of a north korea that has unlimited missiles and nuclear weapons or we have to contemplate war. so again, i don't think the president has given away the store. the administration is still deciding on what to demand and what to give for it. it's too soon for everybody to be staking out such stark positions. >> mike barnacle wants to ask you a question next, richard. he can do that so long as you don't talk about the red sox bats or the lack thereof the past two days. and mike, it's so funny when the red sox were 17-2 i said to jack, i said it's a lot like life, jack. you're never as good as they say

you are. you're never as bad as they say you are. that's why there are 162 games. but i've taken sort of a strange pleasure watching with jack saying it's baseball, man. sometimes you can get up to the plate and hit everything and sometimes, you know, you're swinging an invisible bat. mike, with north korea i know donald trump doesn't know this because he doesn't know history, but we've all seen over the past 25 years north korea play one president after another. north korea play the best and the brightest of the american diplomatic core. going back to 1994, jimmy carter did noble work trying to get this sort of deal. he won the nobel peace prize and then it ended up that the bill clinton deal actually just provided them cover. george h. bush, the same thing happened there where they were

shocked and stumbled upon the fact that north korea was still developing nuclear weapons. i mean, what is different now, mike? why would anybody think that a deal could be struck with north korea that they would hold on to? >> that i don't know, joe. that's above my pay grade. that's why i'm going to ask richard haass to fill us in on a couple things. you're right. you're absolutely right. despite the angst a lot of people formerly in the government and diplomatic core have about donald trump and as president and his behavior as president they pose the question, the dilemma really over the weekend talking about china. china being the most pivotal player in what is about to take place. where is china with regard to north korea around the united states and japan, of course. but what is china's role here. >> joe, i think the answer is don't trust but verify with north korea. that ought to be our approach.

we have to be aware of the past. we have to be skeptical. we have to test them in everything we do needs to be limited or reversible until we're confident they have done irreversibly what we want. china also has a set of terrible choices. they want to put pressure on north korea. they supported the tougher sanctions but don't want to put so much pressure on north korea they bring it down. they don't want a united peninsula with seoul its capitol. they have that concern. they don't want nuclear weapons staying there and proliferating in the region. they're strategic nightmare they wake up in a japan or south korea or thinking of becoming nuclear powers. china wants to see this resolve and keep chinese influence. hence the visit of kim jong-un to beijing two weeks ago now. that didn't just happen. it shows china's ability to continue to put pressure.

we wouldn't be where we are without china, but i still think china has big strategic decisions to make which is how much pressure to put on north korea for the outcome they want. >> so jon meacham, tale of two deals. we have obviously north korea brewing. the president pushing forward into that and the iran deal falling apart. french president in the united states today talk about that. >> well, it's the perils of all these deals. president trump made -- candidate trump made a very significant attack on president obama saying that the iran deal was, i guess, one of the worst deals ever made. there were a lot of those. >> right. >> along the way. one of the things we will not have a problem with in writing the history of the trump era or superlatives. so the -- to my mind, what's happening with iran and what's

happening with north korea leads to a question i want to ask president haus which is to what extent is the classic foreign poll se rational actor theory in play here. and i'm not asking this to be clever. >> right. >> if you look at the stability of the decision making, how rational are the decision makers. one of the reasons you were there in august 1990, one of the reasons you all responded the way you did with the invasion of kuwait is saddam did not seem rational to go into kuwait. he overreached. he overreached when he invaded iran. if you could just give us a three capital tour quickly of teheran and north korea and then

washington. >> just briefly on august 1990 i actually think saddam was quite rational in invading kuwait. the assess that termed out to be wrong is how the world would react, he could be forgiven if you will. what's harder now is you have the personalization of policymaking and a deinstitutionalization of policymaking whether it's trump in this country, a putin in russia, a xi jinping in china. each one of these leaders in some way has detached himself from his own bureaucracy, from if you will the deep state in their respective capitals. and north korea has always been that way. the personalization, decision making. kennedy had the exec excom. right now foreign policy is being made by a collection of

leaders who i think is unharnessed or unconnected to their respective bureaucracies in governments as any time in modern history. this is a real throw back to the age of kings. and i find it -- >> yeah. >> the optimist in people say well, they won't be constrained by history and bureaucracy, but that to me is the scary part of this. they won't be constrained by history and bureaucracy and by and large bureaucracies play it safe. when you have people making truly consequential decisions who have accumulated a concentrated degree of authority in their hands that ought to give people pause. >> joe? >> yeah. we actually survived some of the most frightening moments of the cold war because of constrained bureaucracies. speaking of the cold war, john heilemann, seems to me if you look back and saw what the unite did from 1947 harry truman and 1951 when the soviet union fell.

one of the reasons the united states succeeded was there was a thread that ran from truman all the way through bush 41 and there was a consistency in the deals that we made and the policies that we pursued between republican and democratic administrations alike. but as we talk about the iran deal and the north korean deal, let's just look what's happened over the past decade. we struck a deal with gadhafi to get his wmds. we got him to agree to discontinue the program and disarm the program and went in and killed him. we struck a deal with the iranians in a deal that there was great debate in this country. a bill i disagreed with vehemently but we made that deal. donald trump said during the campaign when you make a deal you have to keep a deal and do the best you do with that deal.

why would north korea or any country make a deal involving disarmament when one guy who made a deal with us back in 2002, 2003 is dead and the other country we made a deal with we're now going to tear up the deal a couple years later. >> i don't know, joe, why you would do that and especially when you're talking -- >> it's really more of a rhetorical question, but go ahead. >> as most of the questions. >> what is truth? >> sort of what i thought but i didn't want there to be dead air. i think one of the questions here is the president -- this week this is the kind of thing i want to talk to both you guys about actually. this week with macron coming tomorrow, there's a state dinner. the first state dinner of trump administration. you have merkel coming on friday. you have these other issues in play, north ekra, iran, et

cetera. and the big change in terms of donald trump's foreign policy apparatus with mcmaster gone, tillerson gone, pompeo maybe likely to be confirmed this week, but who knows, right? big time of churn. i'm curious what you and richard both, the president obviously personalizes foreign policy. now this donald trump is -- obama didn't have enough relationships -- trump sees everything through the transactional and the personal. given that's true and given where we are, what is donald trump's view of his foreign policy, of america's place in the world? where are we on that front today? >> well, it is all personal. it is -- he sees it as a

transaction. i've said it from spending a lot of time talking with both donald trump and others close to him during the transition. this is a man and this is a white house who believe, they act as if and have always believed whether it's middle east peace, russia, china or north korea that history did not start until january 20th, 2017. and richard haass, they have learned in the middle east that there is a lot to unwind when you go in and try to strike negotiations in the middle east. i will say, though, whether you look at north korea. whether you look at china where the president is challenging china for their continuing to steal intellectual property from us or maybe the bluster of north korea if something comes out of this, it could work. it seems to me that there are elements of this president's

disruptive foreign policy that could be channelled for good use, going beyond, as you said, the bureaucracies that many would say, oh, no, you can't do that mr. president. there are sometimes when that could be effective. it seems to me every step donald trump takes forward we take three or four back because of insulting tweets or attacks against institutions or attacks against allies that are just absolutely necessary for the united states to function as an international power. >> yeah. the disruptiveness works better with adversaries and he put on the agenda china's unfair trade practices. i think that's a bit of progress. i think he has through pressing on sanctions with north korea brought us to that point. the question is, though, then whether the president can translate having people on their off balance into something that's lasting. that's when he's got to pivot. he's got to be willing to

compromise and work with friends and ally. that's what he hasn't shown himself able to do. in iran, the iranian foreign minister, joe. the iran issue is coming to a head with macron, merkel and the foreign minister. that's a perfect example. he may want to push iran, but he has to keep our allies in line or we'll be isolated not iran and we'll end up with two nuclear crises which is two too many. still ahead on "morning joe" -- >> i want to say really quickly mika, putting a bow on what john heilemann said, one of the great dangers and you can go back to fdr or continue it through present day, one of the great dangers is a president personalizing foreign policy and believing that personal charm can make a difference in negotiations. kissinger writes about this extensively. anyone who does that is doomed to fail.

unfortunately that is central to donald trump's foreign policy. he thinks he can make a great deal with his charm and it always fails for every president. still ahead in races across the country, more and more republican candidates are parodying president trump prove to voters they are cut from the same cloth. is that a good tactic heading into the mid-terms? jeremy peters joins us with his latest reporting on that coming up on "morning joe." ♪ jeff and susan are heading into retirement. and market volatility isn't top of mind. that's because they have a shield annuity from brighthouse financial, which allows them to take advantage

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all right. in the spirit of men who talk a lot, jon meacham is now going to put a bow, a literary bow on the bow on the conversation that joe just put a bow on. so go ahead. meachum, go. >> you can never overwrap things. here is what i think, and we can chew on this forever. and mika, i promised i'm not going to mention chester arthur. so calm down. >> i love chester. >> here we go. i think there's a good argument to be made -- and i submit this to everybody and then i'm going to go home -- that domestic

policy in the country has really been shaped over the last three quarters of the a century, essentially by a conversation and exchange of interests between a world view represented by fdr and one represented by ronald reagan. it was a difference of degree, not of kind. even through the 80s and 90s. and we are still responding in many ways to -- until 2016 -- we were responding to that dichotomy they set up, that how much public spending, how much public -- how much private and public involvement. it was all tied up in that tension. in foreign policy and richard can check me -- grade my exam on this, particularly on issues of containment, we were dealing with a world represented first by truman and containment. eisenhower and containment with exception of korea, but they would encourage him to do it.

but then we got to the '70s and you had nixon versus reagan again. you had detente versus we're going to win this. these are the big, broad parameters of foreign policy. where we are now it seems to me is an incoherent phase where we just don't know if the president has any role to play in that conversation because frankly he doesn't know enough to know what to say from minute to minute. >> that's the word. >> i think that's the destabilizer. >> incoherent. now richard is putting a bow on it. >> we've played the game between the 40 yard lines from truman through obama. and now we're playing the game from an end zone. this is qualitatively different. >> jon meacham, thank you so much. and you did a beautiful john on saturday. >> bravo. >> i know it was easy because it came from the heart. it was so beautiful. >> thank you. still to come on "morning joe" -- utah republicans make

mitt romney work a little harder for their nomination to the u.s. senate. meanwhile, romney making donald trump work harder for his possible re-election endorsement. we'll explain ahead on "morning joe." the emotions that bring us together shouldn't drive us apart. but when you experience sudden, frequent, uncontrollable episodes of laughing or crying that are exaggerated or simply don't match how you feel, it can often lead to feeling misunderstood

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>> i'm marsha blackburn, i'm a hard core card carrying tennessee conservative, i'm politically incorrect and proud of it. >> i'm todd rokita and i'll proudly stand with our president and mike pence to drain the swamp. >> we don't need to investigate our president, we need to arrest hillary. republican don blankenship stands with president trump. >> they want hillary. republican candidates for the u.s. senate tying themselves to president trump. joining us now, "new york times" reporter jeremy peters. jeremy, you're writing about these candidates' efforts and how they are and are not working out. tell us about it. >> that arrest hillary one gets me every time.

you think about the way that donald trump has thoroughly rewritten the political rules of engagement, mika, and this is one of the more striking examples. politicians used to think that trump had his own set of rules. the laws of political gravity did not apply to him and that they would be penalized if they tried to act like him. that's no longer the case and in the most glaring example there that you just played, you have somebody like don blankenship who stands a really decent chance of becoming the republican nominee for senate in west virginia actually saying shut down these investigations into donald trump and arrest hillary clinton. so it's one of the ways that the tone of politics, the civility has been degraded under trump. it's no longer good enough to wear his hats or say america first or build the wall. in some cases, these politicians actually want to be donald trump. they say things like "i was trump before trump was trump" which is what chris mcdaniel in

mississippi is saying. so there's this race to define yourself not just as trump-like but the originator of his style of politics. >> jeremy, so i'm reading your article a few minutes after we had a couple of segments about the bush funeral and the photo of the bushes together and i'm thinking about the unwilling passing of the torch from the bush family to trump politics and it seems to me reading your story that the republican party of the bushes is done. it's gone. and what i see in your story is that it is donald trump's party and it's going to be for the foreseeable future. so talk about why that works for them. >> well, it works because when they're no longer running on ideas, they're running on attitude and right now donald trump doesn't have a coherent ideology for candidates to unite around other than being tough on immigration. his trade policy still splits the republican party so there's

just a lot of disagreement over exactly which of his ideas should carry the day. what do they do? what works best for trump, and that's to be outrageous. >> but mike barnicle, how long will the age of trump, how long will the party of trump last? . let's look where we are right now. you've got a democratic governor in virginia that won easily. you've got an alabama senator in the state of alabama for the first time in a quarter century. we showed a picture of marsha blackburn in tennessee. you've got a democrat who is ahead in the polls in tennessee. you've got in the state of mississippi polls showing this race tight as well. all of this combative insulting language that might make donald trump feel good and all of these advertisements -- joe manchin seeing somebody with a sign that

says "lock her up" for hillary, joe manchin is thinking "go ahead, be the todd aiken of 2018, i don't care." this comes with a price for these republicans. >> jeremy, the point that joe just raised, it seems to many observers that trumpism in its purest form as it evolves seems to be relying less on ideology than it does veering towards personal destruction of the opponent. is that accurate? is that assessment accurate? >> that's what has so many people in both parties worried because they see this catching on in the democratic party as well. there are some prominent democrats who have argued the way to beat trump and the republicans in 2018, 2020, is to get down to his level. this whole notion 60 when they go low we go high doesn't apply in politics anymore a lot of people have come to believe.

now, i don't know this is an enduring shift in politics, i think joe is exactly right. at the end of the day, people need something more to grasp on to than just anger and insults so i don't know. i just don't know. >> jeremy peters, thank you very much. coming up, we'll dig into three legal issues on the president's radar this weekend. only three this time. he tweeted about the dnc lawsuit against his campaign, the russia probe and the criminal investigation into his fixer michael cohen. we'll talk to a former federal prosecutor from the manhattan office investigating cohen. plus, the developer who claims facebook and cambridge analytica are scapegoating him in that massive data scandal. "morning joe" is coming right back.

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i'm gonna regret that. with new car replacement, if your brand new car gets totaled, liberty mutual will pay the entire value plus depreciation. liberty stands with you. liberty mutual insurance. i thought it would be easier. i thought it was more of a -- i'm a details-oriented person, i think you would say that. but i do miss my old life. this -- i like to work, so that's not a problem, but this is actually more work. and while i have very little privacy in my old life because, you know, i've been famous for a long time, i really -- this is much less privacy than i've ever seen before. >> oh, is it? that was president trump -- >> mika, he's talking about more work. he golfs like every other day. >> he does a lot of golfing. >> he's always golfing. >> he used to make fun of obama for golfing. >> oh, he just torched him non-stop.

>> he used to say "i would never leave the white house. if i was in the white house, i would in every leave." remember when he would say that? >> i would be working so hard. how can he golf that much. donald trump golfs all the time. they give him executive time. >> well, that's special time for him to be alone and watch tv. >> yeah, he doesn't have to start working until 11:00, he can finish until around 2:00 or 3:00. so if he's doing more work now than he did in private business, you do kind of understand why he had trouble financially for a while. >> that makes sense, the bankruptcy thing, yeah. so that was president trump nearly one year ago. this morning there are more republicans keeping their powder dry for 2020 and withholding their endorsement for the president. joe writes about that in his latest column in the "washington post" entitled "it's becoming clear that trump won't run."

and we'll get to that in just a moment. with us we have john heilemann, political reporter for the "new york times" and msnbc political analyst nick confessore, president of the council on foreign relations, richard haass, and joining the conversation, senior writer at politico and co-author of "the play book" jake sherman is with us. also with us, former assistant united states attorney in the southern district of new york, mimi rocca, she's a distinguished fellow in criminal justice at pace school of law. very good to have you on the show. joe, there are three questions we're looking at this morning, including whether or not cohen would flip. who wouldn't flip if your entire life is on the line. >> i liked the anecdote where one of his lawyers said if 100 is complete loyalty towards you, mr. president, michael cohen is a one when it comes to flipping.

i don't know if that's quite the case. but the man has no reason to remain loyal to somebody who has put him in the same position that others have been put in before. you know, john heilemann, michael cohen knows where this story ends. all he has to do is look at the four or five people that are already cooperating with mueller's investigation and the disinformation campaign from donald trump is no match for facts, no match for investigators, but it does seem that the southern district of new york investigation is what is seen as an existential threat inside the white house and it is why many staff members are basically trying to figure out which is the first family member that's going to be going to jail. >> michael cohen not only knows where this is headed, he knows

in the a great degree of detail because he knows what he's done in service to donald trump. he's been -- we said a million times now he proudly calls himself the president's fixer but what that's meant in the course of his service to donald trump is he's served as a global business development adviser. he's run around the four corners of the planet trying to get donald trump's name on to big buildings and in the process of doing that, as we know even in a civilized place like new york city, that's a business in which there's a lot of short cuts and there's some dirty deals that get done and things that are right at the edge of legality and illegality. even in the best circumstances there's often organized crime attached to that, often tricky financial transactions. when you're talking about other places, moscow for one but many other countries where donald trump has tried to do business or has done business things get

shadier so michael cohen knows exactly what he's done. he knows exactly where he's crossed the line or come close to crossing the line and my guess is that what's been fascinating over the course of this last week is just the fact that no one even bothers to go on television who knows michael cohen, who knows donald trump, who knows the nature of his business, no one goes on television and says "michael cohen is not innocent of any crimes, that man has never done anything wrong." it's baked into the cake among people who know that there's improprieties and illegalities here. so, look, we've all read these stories about the way trump treated cohen, we know what cohen is facing potentially. i just think that the likelihood he's going to somehow take the bullet for donald trump, as he put it previously when he was speaking in metaphor, now that it's not metaphor, i think it's extraordinarily low. >> what's so extraordinary, mika, is you have the president of the united states saying, hey, i know michael cohen's not

going to flip. the president has admitted that there is information that he has that he can "flip" to robert mueller. >> so if we take him at his word and we take michael cohen at his word, mimi, and all he's talked about is his loyalty to trump, we haven't heard anything else from him have we? you know how the southern district works. what would be the reasons he wouldn't flip? are there any? >> sure, in my experience, first of all, people who say they're not going to flip at this stage of the game it's too early to tell. they change their mind quite often and i'm talking about people who have every incentive not to cooperate like organized crime members, members of violent gangs so when the pull is very strong as it must be here for michael cohen and must be a very pull strong pull to donald trump they still cooperate quite often.

but look if he doesn't cooperate it's going to be probably out of loyalty because -- and/or because he decides to take the case to trial which is his right to do. i think what's sportimportant i couple things. it's too early to tell. he hasn't seen the strength of the case against him which my impression is it's going to be strong or they would haven't gotten that search warrant. and the second thing that's important to know is that if he does cooperate, i think he's going to be a very valuable cooperator because people who are that -- those are the people you do need too cooperate are the people on the inside. >> well, he would possibly be, nick, the most valuable cooperator if you think about it. he's got everything. >> he's the fixer and the fixer fixes problems so he knows where the problems are. >> oh, lord. >> but watch the kabuki theater. over the last week, we've seen

the president's allies, his former lawyer insult cohen in public, right? saying he's a snitch, he'll turn over. it's the politics version of kicking your dog. what they're trying to do is establish that he is the submissive one in the relationship while also discrediting him as somebody who might flip. he's going to turn over -- he's afraid of being raped in prison. we saw that strange quote from trump's former lawyer. it's a psychological exercise of power that trump is employing against his own guy. >> so who would want to live in that extremely pathetic position? i'm not sure so i think the potential to flip might be there, who knows? jake sherman, trump continues to try to undermine the mueller investigation as well. is he making headway? he keeps tweeting and it seems some of his tweets might be over the top, off, maybe untrue.

>> i think republicans are starting to believe they can use this investigation politically to their benefit in this midterm election. they will try to paint mueller as part of this conspiracy and out-of-control government. i think the most important thing to note is on capitol hill we've seen the harding of stance from republican leadership, from mitch mcconnell and paul ryan who have said in almost no uncertain terms from my experience an uncanny sense of resolve that they will not put a bill on the floor to protect mueller because they know for some -- in some way that it's not necessary. they won't say how they know. mitch mcconnell and paul ryan are pretty firm in that and i've been covering this for a decade and i've never seen two leaders as firm in their resolve on anything. you want to give yourself wiggle room because politics is unpredictable. this president is unpredictable

but they are steely in their commitment to not do anything to protect mueller. >> and why is that, john heilemann? why the fear on mitch mcconnell's part and paul ryan's part to not protect robert mueller when even the majority of republicans believe in america that robert mueller should be able to finish his investigation into whether the russians interfered in the 2016 election. >> i don't know, joe. it's another kind of extension of the ongoing mystery of why it is that mitch mcconnell and paul ryan are constantly cow bed by donald trump and seem to be afraid of him and seem to have a theory of the case that if they extend him these courtesies and give him this deference that he will repay them in kind yet he's not done that in any consistent way so i find it fascinating -- to jake's point i find it

fascinating that even with mitch mcconnell staying he won't allow such a bill to come to the senate floor, you still have chuck grassley at the senate judiciary committee saying he's going to report that bill out of his committee. so there's a little bit -- the fascinating thing for senate judiciary committee chairman to be not directly taking on the majority leader but to be showing that there's some substantial daylight in wanting to at least convey from grassley's point of view that there are a bunch of republicans on that crucial committee who are in favor of passing such a law. at least to send a message to trump. jake, is that how you read that? is that kabuki theater, too, or is there conflict between grassley and mcconnell on this? >> i think it's member management from a certain point of view on -- from grassley's angle. i think he has a lot of members who are clamoring for a bill to protect mueller. now, i sat down with paul ryan right after he announced his retirement and we talked broadly about his relationship with the

president and what he said he's learned about dealing with the president is he would rather discuss differences and strategy privately rather than publicly. obviously paul ryan has had his series of very public disputes with the president so he's signaling that, yi, he's talking about this stuff behind the scenes. he has some sort of -- both of them have some sort of assurance from the president and the white house that they will not fire mueller but won't really say why. but it hasn't boiled to the level where ryan and mcconnell have to do something to satisfy a huge clutch of remembers on capitol hill and until that point they have some leeway. >> richard haass, we were going to talk about the dnc lawsuit as well but listening to jake and john talk about what was happening in the judiciary committee reminded me what's been going on in another committee involving the nomination of pompeo. it looks like he's not going to have a majority of members supporting him. it would be the first time in a very long time a secretary of

state nominee did not. i wonder what you think about mike pompeo and whether his background -- whether what he did at the cia warrants a no vote from the committee. >> i actually think well of him. i think he will be confirmed ultimately. he has several prerequisites, joe, he knows about foreign policy given his west point background, his military background and what he learned at the cia. he's experienced in government from his time on the hill and at the cia and he has that essential ingredient, we were talking about the bushes, that jim baker had with george bush. he has a personal relationship with donald trump unlike his predecessor tillerson. so i think he brings considerable strengths into the job. i'm not saying i agree with every position he's taken in the past. i don't. on the other hand, where you stand depends on where you sit and i think it's wrong to rule

out the possibility he's going to evolve in some areas and i thought it was interesting and is at the hearing in front of the committee his first two points were about what? strengthening the foreign service and strengs ththening t state department and that's his way of saying there's going to be a new sheriff in town, i won't make the same mistakes as rex tillerson. he'll be tested on iran, north korea, any number of issues, he'll be tested quickly but all things being equal, we should want someone who will be secretary of state, who understand the importance of his department and who has the relationship with his president where he can make the case for diplomacy. so i think it's a good rationale. >> i think it's a good rationale, too, i don't understand the problems he's having. a lot of people are going to be against anybody donald trump puts up but he's talking about building out the state department and may have the relationship with donald trump to do that. let's move from state to the cia. you have somebody that has been -- has a tremendous head

wind that he's facing because of the program after 9/11. at the same time you have somebody beloved throughout the agency at the cia, somebody who will not be seen as a political dupe of donald trump, somebody that understands the institution, somebody who was supported and not only by former republican cia directors but also democratic cia directors, john brennan, john kerry, go down the list. is it really a wise move for democrats and editorial writers to hope that somebody who won't politicize the cia also get a no vote in the senate? >> what it's going to do is dredge up all the things you were alluding to. the real question is whether she could establish the kind of relationship with the president, with the daily briefing, to

essentially make sure this individual who doesn't read but who needs to be exposed to the briefings will be exposed to the briefings. i think mike pompeo is probably in stronger position given his political connections than she is. i think she's a slightly odd choice just because she has all this controversy fair or unfair. i don't know about the details with the baggage, the linkage with the interrogation programs and she doesn't have a political base so i think her situation is quite fraught. >> so mimi and then jake sherman on the politics of this but we haven't talked about the donc lawsuit against the trump campaign. is it a grave threat to the presidency? explain what the issues are here. >> i have a different perspective on this probably than most. as a former prosecutor when i saw that i said, oh, no, please don't. not now. >> why? >> because prosecutors, especially prosecutors like

mueller who has kept things rightfully so so close to the vest this could erode that. you want to be -- especially if you're a good prosecutor and investigator you want to control the flow of information. you don't want one witness knowing what another witness has to say so i have to say i'm not saying it shouldn't happen and there may be political reasons to happen now but from the timing from the point of view of mueller i don't think is good. >> i couldn't agree more. jake sherman, explain the politics behind this. it seems like the democrats can't seem to hit a home run on any level. that's just my opinion. i've been criticized for it before but it feels like the timing is off here. >> you wouldn't find much criticism with elected democratic officials who feel like their party is focused on russia almost maniacally to the detriment of every other issue that matter to americans. >> as trump is focused on hillary, they are making the

same mistake on russia. >> yeah. but i will say republicans across the country have a strategy that with a president whose approval ratings are in the 30s or 40s depending on where you look, they need to localize races and focus on things like delays at v.a. hospitals and local issues that could bring people to the ballot box in a year that should be incredibly strong for democrats. democrats tell me privately when they go home they hear about russia from activists and some people who are politically active in their districts but 90% of the things they hear have nothing to do with election integrity and possible foreign interference in the election. so it's -- the politics of this are tricky because you have elected officials who are really concerned about overreach in a year that should be historically good for democrats and i will add one ancillary point here,

republicans' drama with paul ryan leaving the speakership and the president kind of masks drama on the democratic side of the aisle. this weekend you had jim clyburn, the number three house democrat, has been in democratic leadership for a long time, very respected in congress, say that if democrats don't take the majority, nancy pelosi, himself and steny hoyer need to go, need to leave the leadership. this is an extraordinary break in the democratic leadership which is stuck together from 2010 when they got wiped out in the election until now almost a decade later. so this is an extraordinary moment for democratic members of congress, especially in the house of representatives. you're seeing a generational shift, or the beginning of what could be a generational shift in the middle of an election season. >> jake sherman, thank you so much, mimi rocca, thank you as as well. still ahead on "morning joe," when president trump and his french counterpart met in paris, they shook hands for a

very, very long time. we're going to preview -- >> 29 seconds to be exact. >> it's a long handshake. hold on, hold on, i'm holding on. yup, going to keep shaking. >> just let go, come on, come on. >> hold on, don't let go. don't let go of me. >> he's got them both there. >> please hold my hand. don't leave. plus, in just a few minutes, he's at the heart of the facebook privacy scandal. >> that would freak me out. >> especially someone as germ phobic. we'll talk to sign t sithe scieo mined the data on behalf of cambridge analytica. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. your sorry not sorry thing. your out with the old in with the new, onto bigger and better thing. get the live tv you love.

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trump. mark mckinnon sat down with former u.s. deputy attorney general sally yates in a conversation about mueller's russia investigation. "morning joe" has this exclusive bonus clip from the interview that was not included in the new episode. take a look. >> do you have some specific thoughts about what's happened to the role between the justice department and the white house currently? >> it's gotten away where there's almost daily assault from the president to the department of justice. how many times has rereached in, whether it was trying to get james comey to drop the investigation of michael flynn or constantly assaulting the department of justice with criticisms, all sort of other things that just undermine the public's confidence in their own criminal justice system, in their own department of justice. that's not how it's supposed to work. for the fbi to be able to do its work, it really has to rely upon people trusting and having confidence in the phish agents th -- fbi agents that come

knocking on their door to ask questions. god forbid we have another national incident here. we need for the people of this country to be able to trust the bureau. now, no organization is infallible, but trying to paint with a broad brush and declare the department of justice and the fbi corrupt is just beyond irresponsible. >> so john heilemann, when you talk to people like sally yates, people who have been on the inside, people who know more than us you do realize the gravity of what is happening with this president and how we could be one foreign policy event from things getting pretty damn serious. >> and sally yates is someone who was the first casualty of the trump administration. she was in offices of the acting attorney general for ten days. she refused to defend trump's travel ban which many courts have ruled this unconstitutional at this point and trump fired her at that point and we haven't seen her that much in the last

year so it was great to have her on the show and she's an impressive woman. it goes back to someone we were talking about at the top of the show which is this notion from the beginning when trump came in, his attitude towards the judiciary and towards law enforcement was just different than the kind of respectful arms-length distance a lot of other presidents traditionally have. >> it was corrupt. >> that was certainly a view. but it was a real wakeup call for a lot of people that here was the acting attorney general saying -- having a rendering of her judgment and him saying "okay, you're done, off with her head" basically and it gives you a sense of where they have gone and where they could go. >> where they are going. coming up, our next guest spent ten years covering hillary clinton and says the former democratic nominee once told her campaign manager, quote, they were never going to let me be

president. we'll ask who "they" are. plus the man who knows all about the cambridge analytica scandal, alexandr kogan developed the app that mined the info in the first place. he joins us next. we'll be right back. they appear out of nowhere. my secret visitors. hallucinations and delusions. the unknown parts of living with parkinson's. what plots they unfold, but only in my mind.

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>> if a developer who people gave their information to, in this case alexandr kogan, then goes and in violation of his agreement with us sells the data to cambridge analytica, that's a big issue. people have a right to be very upset. i'm upset that that happened. >> that was facebook ceo mark zuckerberg pointing the finger at where he believes the blame lies when it comes to apps that surreptitiously gained access to personal data mined from nearly 87 million facebook users and the developer who is singling out on this is cage university researcher doctor alexandr kogan who joins us now. al sand a al sa al al

we'll start there. what do you think of this? >> it's pr spin but it's that. i think folks need to understand that this was business as usual as far as facebook developers went. i'm a facebook friendly. i have a long relationship with them. so when i did this project, we didn't think we were doing anything wrong. we didn't think facebook was going to be upset. and i was doing it for money. there are companies collecting vastly more data that don't care about their relationship with facebook and facebook has no accounting for that data whatsoever. so trying to say alex is an outlier is stunning until you realize it's pr spin. >> nick has the response but explain what you did so people get the background here. >> so when we say "facebook app" we're talking about the facebook log-in button that you see everywhere and we recruited about 200,000 people to do a

survey where they were paid and they filled out the survey about the their personality then click it had log in button and then facebook sent us their data. >> so to pull back, there are thousand or tens of thousands of people who built apps to pull data off of facebook, correct? >> yeah, absolutely. >> so it's a very common practice. facebook said you had a brief consulting contract with them, that they weren't aware of your work and that you had broken their terms of service but in fact if a user was looking at the agreement you had with facebook users, it discloses that you planned or had the option of using the information they gave you for commercial purposes, correct? >> absolutely. facebook saying they had a brief consulting contract completely avoids the fact that i also was working closely with them for years and years on research.

i started with them in 2013. when i built the app in the first place it was to collaborate with their researchers on paper so the -- i was very much a friendly for them and as far as the terms of service, that's exactly like you said. we said we could transfer and sell the data and that policy was on the facebook platform for a year and a half. nothing was ever said. and if you look at facebook apps right now many of them have language that say we can transfer and sell your data. i'm talking about the biggest companies in the world and facebook does nothing to police this so for them to say this is their policy and feel upset is duplicitous in my mind. >> so to your knowledge, did facebook ever look at your contract be their users, ever inspect your app or audit or take any direct interest in looking at what you're doing with the data to decide if they were okay with it? >> so the -- the honest answer is i have no idea. all i do is go only the platform they've created and put in my

name and terms of service and they say in their policy that, hey, we can monitor this, we can make sure that everything is compliant and they clearly don't or if they are doing it they don't care and they aren't reaching out to correct anything because this was up there for a year and a half, not a word. like i said, it felt very much like business as usual. there's tens of thousands of apps that are doing this. from our perspective, we're doing something normal. >> joe? >> so alexandr, we saw zuckerberg testify before congress. he said you were an outlier. he said that you violated their policies and he was shocked and stunned by your behavior. was mark zuckerberg lying to congress when he said that? >> i think lying is a strong word, he's working out what his

staff has prepared, i assume. but look they've had many instances well before me where they had to deal with data being used in many different ways they didn't expect so the fact that they were unaware that companies were collecting this data and using it for a variety of purposes outside of facebook feels incredibly inaccurate and not reflective of their experience. what's more, i think, try to argue that the issue here is that i sold the data to cambridge analytica completely misses the point on their part. if cambridge analytica had gathered this data themselves -- people are still upset and they missed that entirely. >> so lying is a strong word. how about his testimony was not consistent with the truth. was that an accurate way to describe his testimony? >> my personal feeling would be yes. that is a correct way to describe it. >> okay. very good.

mike barnicle. >> so the two companies at the center of the scandal issued the following statements. "in october of 2015, kogan had a brief consulting contract with facebook. at no point during these two years was facebook aware of kogan's activities with cambridge analytica. it was not until december of 2015 that we first learned kogan had broken facebook's terms of service by selling to cambridge analytica facebook information collected via an app he built. claij -- cambridge analytica said this. "dr. cogan made contractual commitments to cambridge analytica that gsr was responsible for compliance with data protection legislation and we took these assurances in good faith. cambridge analytica's research showed that the personality types licensed by gsr kogan underperformed to more traditional ways of grouping people by demographics.

mike barnicle? >> alex, a few minutes ago you were talking about a group to put together that you gathered the data from and that this group was paid were they told what the data was going to be used for? >> i would say no. we were told in the terms of service that it could be used for a variety of purposes but we didn't get into specifics because legitimately there were a lot of these cases that we're thinking about. one was cambridge analytica, it's pretty standard practice to keep these things open-ended so you allow yourself for a variety of use cases. >> what does that mean, do you think, in the cosmic sense for the issue of privacy in this world? people no longer care about it as long as they're getting paid? >> privacy is the real conversation here. we've seen a lot of sideshows with this story of people providing misinformation but if you cut through all of that and get into the facts i think the

conversation that is important about privacy. fundamentally i think what silicon valley was doing and still believes is everybody knows as far as the general public but nobody cares and the folks that do care -- and there's few of them -- will read the terms of service and decide and the other few folks that care will go in the settings and find the drivesy tool sprivacy them. but i think that's wrong. we see folks do care about how their data is used even if they weren't doing those things. there's a big responsibility for tech companies to do something about it but it's difficult when you've built your business models fundamentally on the idea that we're going to grab as much data he can and use it for whatever purpose because that's the way we sell ads so they have a big challenge ahead of themselves. >> dr. alexandr kogan, thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> i want to bring in into this conversation political columnist and host of the podcast "with

friends like these" anna marie cox. what's your take on this? i still think that once facebook actually tells the people that their investigation was harvested that will be a challenge and that there's some things that have to happen before they can do that. >> i think dr. kogan hit the nail on the head where he said the real conversation is the larger conversation about privacy and whether or not the norms that silicon valley has been expecting to be true are really true. do people -- are people just basically okay with giving away their information? do they realize that's what they're doing? do they realize all of these industries are built on harvesting data, not built on you connecting, not built on community, this idea that facebook is a community is kind of literally laughable to me and that it turns out people when they see the ends to which this data has been put are uneasy with it but that doesn't mean we may have to change the model for these apps. we just traded away like everything there is to know

about ourselves for farmville and i think people are starting to realize that wasn't a good trade. >> but farmville is compelling. >> are you willing to pay for farm sfl farmville? that's the next question. one argument libertarians make is the way to solve this is make sure the people who have given that data away get some cut of what cambridge analytica is getting. >> gosh. >> stay with us. a lot more ahead. up next, a firsthand account of the moment hillary clinton learned that she would not succeed barack obama as president. we're back in just a moment.

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you know what's not awesome? gig-speed internet. when only certain people can get it. let's fix that. let's give this guy gig- really? and these kids, and these guys, him, ah. oh hello. that lady, these houses! yes, yes and yes. and don't forget about them. uh huh, sure. still yes! xfinity delivers gig speed to more homes than anyone. now you can get it, too. welcome to the party. joircning us now, writer at large for the "new york times," amy chozik, her new memoir entitled "chasing hillary, ten years, two presidential campaigns and one intact glass ceiling" is on sale tomorrow. congratulations. >> thank you. >> great book. >> thank you. >> joe, you have to first question.

>> amy, i think this is a remarkable book. you're honest about your self-doubts and insecurities as a writer and covering this extraordinary campaign and you'll catch flak because of that but i think it will help other reporters in the future as they go through the same thing you've gone through. but the part of the book that i found pretty surprising, pretty shocking was you talked about how hillary got in your head but how the "guys" on the campaign got into your face. in fact, were pretty abusive to you, saying some sexist things and constantly demeaning you as a woman. and i'm just curious if you were struck by the irony of covering this woman who's trying to make history as a woman who at the same time had men working for her that were abusive to female

reporters. >> yeah, you know, i think they were equal opportunity in their abuse. my predecessor on the hillary beat was a man and they got in his head, too, but yes certainly some of the things they said to me would be perceived as sexist and it was ironic because hillary clinton would give an inspiring speech about standing up to men and women and little girls and i would sometimes apply her advice to dealing with her own handlers and so there was an irony there. look, in this book -- and thank you for the kind words about it -- i really wanted to be honest about what it was like to cover the first woman with a shot at the presidency and in many ways it was historic, we had more women in the press corps than we've ever had. we saw a female candidate on that debate stage like we've never seen before. but in many ways, it was the same old boys club of covering a campaign and there's been going around why didn't i report the sexual harassment earlier? honestly, i just thought it was the usual cost of reporting while female. i told friends and colleagues that it bothered me, that it was gross but, like, it wasn't

something that stood out as so egregious to me. that's just what women in a lot of fields, women who cover politics, who are in politics are used to, frankly. >> they constantly would -- you write about them saying that you were worthless, that you didn't matter, that they weren't going to talk to you, and then they would talk to your male colleagues. but there was one, i'm not going to get the specific quote because there are kids watching the show, but there was one sexual reference that was made, a quote from a thank you for smoking 2005 movie from one of hillary's top male aides that would have -- would have probably gotten him at least reprimanded if not fired in any fortune 500 company. >> yes. i think i described that quotas grossly gynecological. but that one in particular, that one disturbed me but frankly

what you said earlier was what got in my head, was that no one takes you seriously and some of the drum beat of just like you're not a serious reporter and no one takes you seriously. could you please connect me to one of your other, i.e., male colleague for this story. who's the lead reporter on this, we'd like to talk to him. >> in jim comey's new book, the former fbi director writes this about the coverage of the clinton e-mail investigation. quote, under intense pressure from the clinton presidential campaign, "the new york times" walked back a story published on july 23rd, 2015, reporting that the justice department was considering opening a criminal investigation into clinton's handling of her e-mails. as a result of the clinton team's tenacious pushback, "the times" appended two separate corrections to its original article, first claiming that mrs. clinton herself was not the focus of any investigation and then a day later changing the description of the inspector general's transmission to the fbi from criminal referral to

security referral. though "the times" may have thought those clarifications necessary, their original story was much closer to the mark. amy, you didn't write the article, but what can you tell us about, and i think we can relate here, the pressure on your newspaper that comey describes here, and did you ever get any? >> that was one of the most tense periods of the campaign. and in fairness, i think jennifer palmieri said she didn't know about the criminal investigation at the time. but i was on the campaign trail and just remember the tension between "the times" and the clinton camp which i write in my book goes back to the '90s, goes back to whitewater, was at a high point when that article was published. i remember hillary doing a press conference and she purposely took a question from me, which didn't always happen, because she wanted to show that she could rise above this tension. but it was incredibly tense and there was a lot of pressure at the time. our public editor came out very

strongly against the reporting that turned out to be vindicated and accurate. >> congratulations, first of all. >> very exciting. >> i'm excited to read the book. i read the excerpt. i have some familiarity with this topic. >> you do. >> and i'm most fascinated because you've been talking about gender a little bit. one of the things that i have found covering these people, this campaign in particular, is the really striking difference between how men in the campaign evaluated her chances versus the women in the campaign. it seemed to me throughout that many of the women were always -- always thought that she was more likely to lose than the men who seemed to be seeing things through a conventional political prism and she seemed to share that doubt about whether she would win. i want you to talk about, a, the difference and, b, what explains that difference. >> it's been something i've been thinking about with comey's book. he said there was a wide assumption that she would win. i was like by who?

i remember covering obama in 2008 and i think universally everybody thought are we really going to elect a black president? well, the polls a lot of people said obviously she's going to win. a lot of women who were with her day in and day out didn't feel like that bubbling up excitement. until the end i didn't feel like it was a winning campaign. >> women and people of color are a lot more sensitive to the way america is racist. what i think is really interesting about the quote is actually it's about a journalist in the movie. it is actually the confluence of a sexual insult describing you as being someone who is willing to trade favors, let's say. i mean that's the true impact of being a female on that campaign. >> what i think is interesting is -- i want to know about the resilience to that, though.

being there were an unprecedented amount of women on this campaign, were you able to support each other in the face of that kind of abuse? >> yeah, there was incredible solidarity amongst the women. i think the traveling press does have a sense of solidarity. frankly hillary has a lot of female friends and a lot of female aides that we were close to. some of the men were great too. a lot of the things in the book started in the precampaign period when she left the state department and she had just a ti tiny cadre of protectors and they were unhappy someone assigned someone to the hillary beat southeasterly early. >> it's virtually impossible during daily coverage of a campaign to assess your own accuracy and own responsibility, but in retrospect, and this book is amazingly refreshing in terms of self-assessment, what do you think you missed? >> it's a really good point.

i was frustrated and there's an example in the book where i spent a year to convince a feminist, i wanted to recreate this road trip that showed a different side of hillary. the campaign did not want me to do it. finally the story posts and three hours later comey sends his letter to congress. so i think it was the perfect encapsulation of trying to get other stories of hillary to break through amid the storm of e-mails and all of the other stories was really, really hard. i think i could have done that better. i could have timed them differently. but it was very dito gfficult tt those to break through. >> well, the book is "chasing hillary." amy chozick, thank you so much. still ahead, the president tries to use jim comey's memos to discredit the russia

investigation. meanwhile, jeff sessions warns the president against firing the deputy attorney general. plus, nbc's heidi przybyla joins us with her new reporting on the new national security advisor, john bolton. "morning joe" is back in a moment. ess. your plaques are always there at the worst times. constantly interrupting you with itching, burning and stinging. being this uncomfortable is unacceptable. i'm ready. tremfya® works differently for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. with tremfya®, you can get clearer and stay clearer. in fact, most patients who saw 90% clearer skin at 28 weeks... stayed clearer through 48 weeks. tremfya® works better than humira® at providing clearer skin and more patients were symptom free with tremfya®. tremfya® may lower your ability to fight infections, and may increase your risk of infections. before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. tell your doctor if you have an infection or have symptoms such as fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough.

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taking a simultaneous shot at hillary clinton and "the new york times" in the very same tweet. it's just one of many messages he posted online over the weekend on north korea, the special counsel, james comey, mr. magoo and even sylvester st stallone. mitt romney joined several other republicans in holding back an endorsement for president for 2020. joe's got a new column on why trump's re-election bid is far from certain. with us this morning along with joe and me we have national affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc and executive producer and co-host of "the circus" on showtime, john heilemann. msnbc contributor mike barnicle. political writer for "the new york times" and msnbc political analyst nick confessore, and the president of the council on foreign relations and author of the book "a world in disarray,"

richard haass. also with us pulitzer prize-winning historian john meacham. he delivered one of the eulogies at barbara bush's funeral on saturday. joe, we'll begin there. >> and what a great job you did. >> we certainly will -- so many people this weekend talking about barbara bush and really agreeing with john's assessment that she really has been for such a long time viewed as america's first lady. america said good-bye to barbara bush, john meacham, this weekend. you were there and delivered beautiful, beautiful words in her memory. talk to us about the event, the extraordinary -- talk to us about the extraordinary man that barbara bush lived with for so many years and talk about the woman you remembered. >> well, i was thinking this morning, this is the first monday morning, the first week

of george h.w. bush's life that he's opened without barbara bush since 1941. without her very much in his life. and he was a rock all day saturday. what was so interesting to me actually is it was a family funeral that happened to intersect with the american family and the life of the nation, and it felt very much like that inside st. martin's church in houston. as you know when you're around these presidents and these public servants, everything -- all the stuff we talk about all the time falls away. and you're reminded of the essentially humanity of these people, these families who, yes, they ask for the job, yes, they seek our votes, yes, they seek ultimate power in the world's

longest experiment in republicanism, but they're also families, and they're people who instinctively reach out respectfully and affectionately and we overuse the phrase "the end of an era" but every once in a while a cliche is true because it's true. this was one. >> it really was. mika, there were wonderful moments throughout the weekend that we got to see from the outside. and the picture of the presidents and the first ladies certainly, there seemed to be something reassuring in that. you had a group of people that i know that most of us have been critical of from time to time throughout our adult lives, but never once looking at that picture did we ever question whether everything they were doing, even if we disagreed with

it, they were doing because they believed it was in the best interests of this country, the best interest in protecting our homeland, the best interest in preserving the constitution of the united states. and that is right now obviously something that many of us do have concerns with, with what's going on in this white house. but it was maybe the end of an era as far as george h.w. bush and barbara bush and the world that they occupied in connecticut and texas and washington, d.c. but that picture it seems to me, it really does speak a thousand words, that what we're going through is not the norm. i suspect that we will be seeing -- well, let's just say in the coming years, we'll find presidents that i think most americans will be able to unify

behind. >> yeah. and the picture is reassuring, but kind of hard to go from that picture to this, but we will. after ten months of the president hounding forei an investigation and even jail for james comey, the justice department is looking into classification issues surrounding the memos of the former fbi director. at least two of the memos that comey gave to a friend outside of the government contain information that officials now consider classified. of those two memos, comey himself redacted elements of one that he knew to be classified to protect secrets. he handed the documents over to his friend who shared the contents with a reporter. although they were not classified at the time he shared them, parts were later declared confidential, which has prompted the doj inspector general to review the matter. president trump continued on twitter this weekend, if you can believe it even during the funeral, james comey's memos are classified.

i did not declassify them. they belong to our government. therefore, he broke the law. but comey had the legal authority to determine what bureau information was classified and what wasn't and there are no laws prohibiting comey from sharing conversations he had with trump in an unclassified manner. also in his weekend tweets the president used the comey memos as the basis to question the validity of the special counsel's investigation. late friday night he tweeted james comey illegally leaked classified documents to the press in order to generate a special counsel. therefore, the special counsel was established based on an illegal act. really, does everybody know what that means? and later -- >> you know, i just -- just enough. really seriously, we're not going to start with three of his e-mails that once again, john heilemann, are so factually challenged that make up the facts out of whole cloth and

basically play into -- i mean he's been very deliberate. he's tried -- donald trump has tried to undermine the rule of law. he has trashed the fbi and the men and the women who protect our country every day. he has trashed the justice department. he has pressured the justice department to go after a list of people, including hillary clinton, which is so outrageous, which is such a banana republic move, which is something that you would expect from latin america in the 1970s, that we're actually seeing it happen. we're hearing people talking about the possibility of investigating mccabe for crimes. and now he's talking about investigating comey for crimes. for materials that weren't even classified when he wrote them. help us understand exactly what's going on here, john. >> well, one would like to

think, joe, that this is a cheap political stunt. i mean it's certainly that in part, and that what the president is trying to do is at a time when he needs to have enthusiasm among his base and where his base has partly because of actions of his own and partly because of actions of his party are enraged at the people you just mentioned. they have always been enraged at hillary clinton, they are now enraged with jim comey and much of the law enforcement bureaucracy, much of the law enforcement institution in the country at the federal level, that he's just trying to feed them red meat. nothing is going to come of this. he's on twitter, they get all worked up and that's great. unfortunately, as we've seen and your comment about banana republics is apt in the sense that it's one thing to say some of these things from a debate stage or on a twitter feed. it's another thing to have them being said by a person who controls those institutions. and although the justice department, the fbi, are by

tradition independent from the white house, they are still the people who work there, they are still under the control formally of the white house. and so when the president talks about jail, his political components talks about mobilizing the law enforcement institutions at his disposal against those people in that way, it's profoundly troubling and i don't think there's anybody at this point that thinks that it's beyond donald trump to not just have this be rhetorical but to try to do exactly what he's promising in these tweets. but it's incredibly troubling and it is some of the most chilling things that trump does is when he talks in this way and threatens action in this area. >> nick, jump in. >> the problem is that the president's theater has a tendency to become a real theater. people take actions as a result. the president will say something that's illegal and all of a sudden there's folks on the hill that want to do an investigation. i do think it's important that the president have a consistent

standard in his own white house about classified information. we know last summer that he in fact in a meeting with russian officials himself disclosed classified information that was then traced back to our allies in israel. so he is not himself that careful with this information and here he is raising all these things about the comey memos, which by the way show our classification system is completely messed up, that this kind of retroactive classification, it's just kind of nuts, joe. >> it is nuts. and we have a guy that actually gave classified information to the russians, and then talked about investigations inside the oval office to the russians. he's actually trying to even come close to criticizing james comey. it's outrageous. let's talk about some actually positive news, mike barnicle. if we now define positive by people who actually do care about the rule of law. it's an awfully low standard

that we have to look for good news this way in the trump administration. but i was heartened that jeff sessions warned the white house that if rod rosenstein was fired, that he would leave as once. >> yes. the attorney general to don mcgahn, the white house counsel, you fire rod rosenstein and i might walk as well. you know, there's been so much all right that we've discussed this morning, including the absurd classification process that the federal government implies. but the larger picture, joe, i think is what you began with. it is indeed a picture of eight people. three bushes, two clintons, two obamas and melania trump. and it's a reminder of who we used to be as a government and as people who participated in politics, from citizens on up to candidates. and we ought to frame that picture in our minds, that

that's the america that we had. that's the america that we can get back. and that's the america that the president of the united states denigrated saturday during a funeral service with his tweets, many of which were outright lies. >> well, let's be honest, he does it every day. he does it every day, but it was especially insulting to the united states of america on saturday. take a look at this swipe, joe, on sessions. gop lawmakers asking sessions to investigate comey and hillary clinton. fox news. good luck with that request. it's just -- it's just painful actually in some ways and especially on saturday as the world said good-bye to barbara bush. and still ahead, something else the president was tweeting about, north korea. the regime claims it's serious about nuclear negotiations, and president trump likes what he hears. but officials worldwide are warning that it sounds a little too good to be true, and it probably is.

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now you can get it, too. welcome to the party. there are new developments surrounding north korea and suggestions the leader there is taking the american president for a ride. last week state media announced that kim jong-un was halting his nuclear and long-range missile testing programs in addition to shutting down a nuclear testing ground. trump responded on twitter writing, quote, this is very good news for north korea and the world. big progress. look forward to our summit. he followed up that by adding this. progress being made for all. but not sure everyone is so sure about that. "the new york times" writes that kim has seized the diplomatic high ground by making symbolic but modest conciliatory gestures, leaving some american, japanese and chinese officials unsettled and believing kim is

simply posturing and has no real intention of denuclearization. former white house press secretary ari fleischer adds, call me a cynic, but based on history, one, they'll suspend today and begin tomorrow. two, they have alternative ways/sites to carry out their mission and, three, they're lying now or will lie tomorrow. this is how nk behaves. i was so worried when this first started happening, joe, and i didn't want to be the wet blanket on the set, but it's a little harder than it looks, isn't it? >> well, that's your job, isn't it? >> right. >> i'm just joking, dear. but richard haass, we certainly -- the talk of donald trump blowing at the negotiation table is actually a bit more comforting than where we were three or four months ago worried

about 500,000 people dying on the korean peninsula. that said, while we do want peace with north korea, talk about your feelings over the past weekend or so hearing donald trump speak as if he's already managed to get kim jong-un on the deck of the uss missouri in tokyo bay to basically sign the surrender documents. >> everybody needs to take a deep breath here. trump is being criticized for having given away the store. he's not given away the store, so shockingly enough i'm probably closer to the president there than i am to your colleague, chuck todd. what matters in a negotiation is not where you begin, it's where you end up. and then you read the front page story in today's "wall street journal" which basically says the administration is leaning against any sanctions relief unless the north koreans fully dismantle their nuclear program.

well, that's not going to happen. so i still think the big questions, joe, are how do we define denuclearization, what do we demand, and what, if anything, are we prepared to do for halve loavf loaves. if we try to make it so they have to do everything and they have to verify it, my fear is we have nothing. then we have north korea that has unlimited missiles and nuclear weapons or we have to contemplate war. so again, i don't think the president has given away the store. i think the administration is still deciding on what to demand and, again, what to give for it. this is a negotiation that's being set up. so i actually think it's just too soon for everybody to be staking out such stark positions. >> despite the angst that a lot of people formerly in government, formerly in the diplomatic corps have about donald trump about president and his behavior about president,

richard, they pose the question, the dilemma really over the weekend talking to several of them about china. china being actually the most pivotal player in what is about to take place. where is china with regard to north korea and the united states and japan, of course, but what is china's role here? >> sure, i think the answer is don't trust but verify with north korea. i think that ought to be our approach. we've got to be aware of the past, we've got to be skeptical, but that shouldn't immobilize us. we've got to test them, and anything we do needs to be limited or reversible until we're confident that they have done what it is we want. china is caught the way we are. they also have a set of terrible choices. they want to put pressure on north korea, they have supported the tougher sanctions, but they don't want to put so much pressure on north korea that they bring it down. they don't want to destabilize the peninsula. they don't want a united peninsula with seoul as its capital, so they have that concern. they don't want to see nuclear weapons staying there and

proliferating in the region. their nightmare is they wake up one day and japan or south korea or vietnam are thinking of becoming nuclear powers. drain the swamp and build the wall, the campaign themes of two years ago are resurfacing with republicans. jeremy peters has new reporting on which republicans are parroting the president for the upcoming midterms and why. "morning joe" is coming right back. it took guts to start my business. but as it grew bigger and bigger, it took a whole lot more. that's why i switched to the spark cash card from capital one. with it, i earn unlimited 2% cash back on everything i buy. everything.

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upper respiratory tract infection and headache. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take and if you're pregnant or planning to be. ♪ otezla. show more of you. we need to help more tocalifornians get ahead.d, that's why antonio villaraigosa brought both parties together to balance the state budget with record investments in public schools... and new career training programs. as mayor of la, he brought police and residents together to get illegal guns off the streets - and keep kids out of gangs, and on the right path. that's antonio villaraigosa. a governor for all of california.

i'm marsha blackburn. i'm a hard core, card carrying tennessee conservative. i'm politically incorrect and proud of i'm todd rokita and i'll proudly stand with our president and mike pence to drain the swamp. >> we don't need to investigate our president, we need to raeft hillary clinton. republican don blankenship stands with president trump. >> republican candidates for the u.s. senate tying themselves to president trump. joining us now, "new york times" reporter jeremy peters. jeremy, you're writing about these candidates' efforts and how they are and are not working out. tell us about it. >> that arrest hillary one just gets me every time. think about the way that donald trump has thoroughly rewritten

the political rules of engagement, mika, and this is one of the more striking examples. politicians used to think that trump had his own set of rules. the laws of political gravity did not apply to him and they would be penalized if they tried to act like him. that's no longer the case. in the most glaring example that you just played, you have somebody like don blankenship who stands a really decent chance of becoming the republican nominee for senate in west virginia actually saying shut down these investigations into donald trump and arrest hillary clinton. so it's just one of the ways that the tone of politics, the civility has been degraded under trump. you know, it's no longer good enough to wear his hats or say "america first" or "build the wall." in some cases these politicians actually want to be donald trump. they say things like i was trump before trump was trump, which is what chris mcdaniel in mississippi is saying. so there's really this race to

define yourself not just as trump-like, but the originator of his style of politics. >> hey, jeremy, i'm reading your article a few minutes after we had a couple of segments about the bush funeral and the photo of the bushes together and thinking about the unwilling passing of the torch from the bush family to trump politics. it seems to me reading your story that the republican party of the bushes is done. it's gone. what i see in your story is that it is donald trump's party and it's going to be for the foreseeable future. so talk about why that works for them. >> well, it works because when they're no longer running on ideas, they're running on attitude. and right now donald trump doesn't really have a coherent ideology for candidates to unite around other than being tough on immigration. his trade policy still splits the republican party, so there's just a lot of, i think, disagreement over exactly which of his ideas should carry the

day. so what do they do? they do what works best for trump, and that's to be outrageous. >> yeah, but you know, mike barnicle, how long will the age of trump, how long will the party of trump last? let's look where we are right now. you've got a democratic governor in virginia that won easily, you've got an alabama senator in the state of alabama for the first time in a quarter century. we showed a picture of marsha blackburn in tennessee. you've got a democrat who is ahead in the polls in tennessee. you've got in the state of mississippi, polls showing that race tight as well. all of this combative, insulting language that might make donald trump feel good and all of these advertisements -- joe manchin sees somebody with a sign that says lock her up for hillary,

joe manchin is sitting there thinking go ahead, go ahead be the todd aiken, i don't care. this all comes at a price for republicans. >> jeremy, that point that joe just raised, it seems to many observers that trumpism in its purest form as it evolves seems to be dealing less with ideology than personal destruction of the opponent. is that accurate? >> that's exactly right. that's what has so many people in both parties worried because they see this catching on in the democratic party as well. there are some prominent democrats who have argued that the only way to beat trump and the republicans in 2018 and 2020 is to get down to his level. this whole notion of when they go low, we go high just doesn't apply in politics anymore a lot of people have come to believe. i don't know that this is an enduring shift in politics. i think joe is exactly right. at the end of the day people

need something more to grasp onto than just anger and insults. so i don't know. i just don't know. coming up on "morning joe" nbc news has brand new reporting on john bolton's prewhite house work, namely chairing a nonprofit that promoted anti-muslim news, which was amplified by russia. heidi przybyla joins us with that straight ahead on "morning joe." billions of bacteria,

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official, dr. evelyn farkas. she's a senior fellow at the atlantic council and an msnbc national security analyst. great to have you both. heidi, let's start with that new report of yours. tell us more. >> yes, mika. we have exclusive new details about this nonprofit, the gatestone institute, that john bold bolton chaired. that is not only was some of the information they put out patently false, they had false headlines, but some of it was also amplified by russian troll factory. nbc news has an exclusive database of deleted russian troll accounts. we cross-referenced that and found that at least in a few cases, this russian troll factory, which can be linked back to the russian government state efforts to influence the u.s. election was amplifying some of gatestone's work. now, it's important to note that john bolton himself didn't author any of these pieces. and when i reached out to the president of the gatestone

institute, nina rosenwald, she said they had no idea this was going on with the russian troll factories. but it does show that at least the russians saw common purpose with this group, with this gatestone institute, with promoting and fanning anti-muslim news in order to affect elections. >> wow. >> our database also was only of tweets that affected the u.s. elections. of course a database of tweets that affected the european elections might have more information in it as well. >> so any response from the white house or from bolton himself? >> we did reach out to the white house a couple of different times, including right before the story was going to run. i was assured that bolton was aware of the story, but they said that they don't comment on outside nonprofits. of course i was in touch also with the president of this group, who sent through numerous articles which required translation. they were in french and german. and in a number of those cases

we just, mika, didn't find that many of them matched the headlines that they were putting out. for instance, we got one that said there were no-go zones in france and warring muslims. i had that translated and there was no reference in there to, quote unquote, warring muslims. there was a few different themes that came out in this reporting. one was, for instance, about mosques displacing churches in britain. and again, we clicked into that headline and we actually tracked down an expert on religious institutions in britain. guess what, we found that actually the number of churches has been growing because of mass migration from places like romania and poland. >> john heilemann. >> evelyn farkas. >> yes, sir. >> i'm interested in this story but also a broader thing. so bolton is here. >> yes. >> we've had for a year and a bit a tension between

traditionally -- typically characterized as the globalist in the administration versus the nationalist populists. now tillerson and mcmaster is gone and bolton is on his way in. do they line up in those categories? clearly tillerson and mcmaster were globalists. john bolton, again as reflected in this story and otherwise from what we know about him, how does he fit into that are yrubric an does he fit into what we think are trump's foreign policy instincts? >> i would say, first of all rchgs he he's more of a globalist but more of a unilateralist which h.r. mcmaster was more multi lateralist. bolton would say take care of the problem. he likes to talk about military use of force, so that's the

issue with him. that's where he's a little different from the others, right? he essentially advocates for preemptive moves using military force, usually in the context of nonproliferation and that's the issue set that he's most well known for because that's where he was a senior leader both in the state department and obviously down at the u.n. working those issues. >> and same question to joe, how does john bolton fit into this equation? >> well, you know, mika, he actually -- john bolton lined up next to donald trump actually reflects what donald trump was saying during the campaign. trump played isolationist on the campaign but at the same time he was talking about how we would go out and wipe out isis, not put up with nonsense from across the globe. there was an inconsistency in his campaign rhetoric that is matched here. there also were some interesting cross currents that actually surprisingly enough people who have been concerned with john bolton's views in the past may actually find cold comfort in

the fact that he has been consistently a skeptic on russia. his view on vladimir putin, his view on russia and american-russian relations could not be further away from where donald trump has been since he started campaigning. also you look at what's happening in syria. a lot of foreign policy advocates that believe that the united states actually does have a role in the world believe we need to stay engaged, continue to have that light footprint over there that could make a big difference in stopping iran, russia, syria, erdogan from dominating that region and allowing isis to rebuild. i've got to believe that if john bolton believes anything that he said over the course of his public life, he will also provide restraint there when you have donald trump wanting to just, as he said, i want to get out, which is about as reckless of a move as the united states could make right now. >> so, evelyn, same question

just flip it to mike pompeo because the senate foreign relations committee is set to vote on him today. >> yeah. >> on his nomination. how does he fit into all of this? >> i think he's similar to bolton. he's less experienced, obviously, and probably less -- well, he's got to be less savvy bureaucratically, again, because number one he has less experience. number two, bolton is known to be very savvy bureaucratically. but pompeo is also kind of a hard-line hawk when he's talked about north korea. he's intimated even that the solution would be regime change, which is interesting considering he's the one american official who's met with kim jong-un. he also when he talks about iran is very skeptical of the deal, the nuclear deal. so i think he -- he's similar to bolton in that they're unilateralists. the use of force seems to appeal to pompeo as well, although i'm less clear on that because he doesn't have the track record yet. >> joe, wrap it up. >> and pompeo actually may not have as much experience

bureaucratically, but he is the trump whisperer. he has figured out how to deal with donald trump while also testifying before congress saying that russia tried to interfere in our 2016 elections. in the age of trump, that ain't nothing. >> better for him than nikki haley, i guess. evelyn farkas, thank you very much. heidi, we'll read your new reporting for john bolton on nbcnews.com. thank you very much. up next, facebook has been criticized for being sloppy with people's data, but there's a much larger company with a lot more of your data. don't believe it? google it. we're back in a moment. jungle g. and a baseball diamond... ...a mythical castle... and a grand banquet hall. this is not just a yard. it's where memories are made. the john deere x350 select series with the exclusive one-touch mulchcontrol system. nothing runs like a deere® save 200 dollars on the x350 select series tractors

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welcome back. it's time now for business before the bell with cnbc's dominic chu. dom, wells fargo set to face shareholders at its annual meeting tomorrow just days after the bank was hit with a $1 billion fine from the federal government. how much outrage is the bank's leadership expected to face over this? >> it could face a lot of it. when you're accused of lending abuses against your customers, they may have a lot to say and some of those customers may be sher shareholders. those wells fargo have lost and

investors and traders are pinning on the idea that the bulk of the bank's problems may be behind it. there is a lot of skepticism. but we'll hear a lot more about whether or not those shareholders have that outreach tomorrow. the meeting is in des moines, iowa, at the marriott downtown so something to watch. we're also watching what's happening with technology. i was listening to that interview that you had with aleksandr kogan, cambridge analytica and the data scandal so we know how much customer privacy is in the news. if you think facebook knows a lot about you, you don't want to know how much google knows. the company harvests all that user data and perhaps not a surprise to anyone out there who's kind of researched products on the web, you see those banner ads next to those things that you looked for. they know so much about you. it speaks more to this idea of the reliance people have on internet and how companies develop business models to track just kind of the data that you

have. one other thing to watch if you think data tracking is intrusive, it's nothing compared to hidden cameras. police are investigating a hidden camera found in a starbucks bathroom outside of atlanta, dpgeorgia. a woman found the camera taped under a baby changing station and notified the manager who notified starbucks corporate. of course it comes after all that bad press about the incident in philadelphia, so certainly something to watch, joe, mika, back over to you. >> dominic chu, thank you very much. up next from capitol hill to right here on the set, actor seth rogen is lending his voice to a very personal cause. he explains, next on "morning joe." anna and mark are heading into retirement... and a little nervous. but not so much about what market volatility may do to their retirement savings. that's because they have a shield annuity from brighthouse financial, which allows them to take advantage of growth opportunities in up markets,

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included every single element of this show to show up in every single category of the netflix algorithm with one exception. to tie up all the loose ends, i'd like to introduce david chang everybody. really, that's it? that's all i'm here for? >> sure is, yes. >> i'd be happy to literally cook a meal for everyone here tonight. who here would like that? >> they're placating you. just go, man. it's cool. thank you, good to see you. >> that was a clip from seth rogen's hilarity for charity, a new comedy special now streaming on netflix. seth and his wife lauren founded hilarity for charity in 2012 to raise funding and awareness for alwazheimer's disease. with the help of netflix, they've taken their annual event worldwide. we recently spoke with seth and

lauren about the net flexion special and their cause. >> let's start first, lauren, about your personal connection to disease that has affected so many people around the world, your grandmother, all the way through your family up to your mom. >> yes, my mom's parent, my grandmother and my grandfather, had alzheimer's and dementia and my mom was diagnosed when she was 55 years old. which of course sent us into a tailspin of just devastation and really just sort of no hope at all. then a few years into it, we decided to take action and get our friends together, throw a comedy show and started raising money and awareness for alzheimer's. six years later, here we are. >> seth, you've testified before congress a few years ago. why is this such an intractable problem, this disease has so frustrated doctors and scientists and congress and everybody else. what is it about this and are we making progress toward it? >> there's been so many movement it seems like. i think the stigma is a thing.

people just don't talk about it that much. it's something people have a lot of shame about. there's not alzheimer's survivors. so at this point there's not a lot of inspirational stories you can be telling about it which i think hurts but i think overall, the government just isn't funding it enough. that is the only thing i think that's going to cause like the type of massive change that needs to occur in moving towards actually curing the disease which people think is possible one day. >> joe, jump in. >> you know, lauren, for over a decade now, my mouther's been struggling with dementia. i saw her yesterday on my birthday and, you know, she'll always ask questions like, did i have a happy life? did we have a happy life? what was george -- my dad -- like? talk about how frustrating and how sad it is to watch somebody that you love who's the center

of your life slowly slip away and why this is worth a fight for all americans to get engaged in. >> you know, dementia is not the normal aging process for the brain. it is not normal for someone to lose their memory and to have the issues that -- a disease like alzheimer's creates. my mom, calling her name, mom, mom, and she didn't look and i said adele and she looked. and i thought, i don't know if she remembers she's a mom. that was really devastating of course that was seven eight years ago at this point. >> you mentioned the stigma associated with alzheimer's. i don't know what it says about our culture that people think that there's a stigma attached to alzheimer's apart from the sadness of it, watching someone you know and love slowly disappear day by day. i don't know what that says

about us. >> it says that people are very uncomfortable with sadness, a, i think people have a hard time processing it and expressing it. i think that aging in this culture especially is not viewed as helpfully in other cultures in many ways and the care taking i think is one of the things we've seen firsthand is the most taxing. >> lauren, seth just mentioned caretakers, also loved ones. the process of understanding and coping with dementia as it sets in can often be confusing. i remember in my family feel like you have to correct everything that is said and that is exactly not what helps. it actually leads to more frustration and pain. >> you know, i think that watching your loved one change is such an extraordinarily painful process. and -- >> you don't want to believe it so you're like, no, mom, don't

you remember? >> we were in denial. she was in denial. early on in the disease, she was aware of what was going on. so if we corrected her, that was really hard because it meant she was progressing. it's important to be sensitive and to -- acceptance is difficult in any disease and sort of accepting these changes are happening and thinking what can i do is hard but it's something you have to work hard at. >> to both of you who worked so hard to fight and testify and raise money and used your celebrity to such great effect, how about this morning, seth, a reason for hope, for families with somebody with alzheimer's? what do you look at and say, hey, maybe there's something on the horizon or this is going to get better? >> i mean, a lot of doctors think it's curable. and that they are taking -- there's, again, incremental steps that seem to be happening that suggest even more that's the case. but for the immediate now, if you find yourself in a position

where you're taking care of someone with alzheimer's and you don't have the means or resources to live your life the way you want, we offer grants to people through our charity and if you also want to donate money to our charity to help provide funds for other people, you can do that. we found in the immediate circumstances for a lot of people, just some help is massively additive to their lives. >> and sharing your story. keeping a secret, keeping it all inside is really difficult and doesn't help anyone. >> seth rogenrogen's hilarity f charity is streaming now on netflix. our thanks to both seth and lauren rogwyeuren rogen for tha.

stephanie ruhle right now. >> thanks, mika, thanks, joe. good morning, everyone. a massive manhunt under way. police searching for a gunman who opened fire at a waffle house, leaving four people dead. the hero who stopped the blood shed speaking out this morning. >> i'm all right, just a little sore, but i'd rather be sore than severely shot. >> despite weeks of denial, a new report reveals that scott pruitt met with the lobbyist linked to his chief d.c. condo deal. >> his job is to protect the environment and he has walked away 100% from that. >> that of course is michael bloomberg. and user beware. the man at the center of facebook's massive data harvest, well, he's talking, slamming the social media giant for not even caring about privacy until it was way too late. >> nearly every user has been