but we're not. and now what's going on in the white house, we're going backwards. you know, we thought we were on a roll with obama, progressive laws being made and women being heard and laws changed, and we were moving forward and we thought we could only go up from there. instead we're going back to the dark ages. so this is not just a victory for us cosby survivors or me personally. this is a victory for all women who have not been able to open their mouths and share their stories and find their voice. this is a wave, a big wave. >> victoria valentino, thank you so much. i can't thank you enough for sharing your story and for your courage as well. that is all -- >> thank you. >> that is "all in" for this evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. good evening, rachel. >> that was a super, super compelling fascinating interview, chris. >> i'm really like -- it's really moving. amazing. >> goosebumps. incredible. thanks. well done. and thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. so has there been enough news

for you today or would you like some more? right now as i speak north korea and south korea are holding a summit on the border between those countries. it's daytime there. daylight right now. because it's tomorrow in terms of the time difference. obviously, this is very, very, very high stakes -- excuse me. historical diplomacy. and it comes on a day when the united states government has confirmed a new secretary of state. former republican congressman and immediate former cia director mike pompeo. mr. pompeo was confirmed today, and then he left immediately for a nato meeting in brussels. the white house today released these photos of mr. pompeo meeting with and shaking hands with the north korean dictator on a secret trip that he took last month. pompeo's confirmation by the senate today and the north and south korea senate that's happening right now as i speak, it comes just weeks before what is apparently still planned to be a meeting between kim jong un, the north korean dictator,

and our own president trump. >> now, president trump did not have his most koocool, calm, an collected day today. so this little preview tonight of the president's own meeting with one of the most notorious and unpredictable nuclear armed dictators in the world, it's not a relaxing feeling to know that our president in his current state of mind is about to sit down with that guy. but it's been an unsettling day of news. it's also been a day with tons of news in it. pompeo confirmed as secretary of state. so he's going to be taking over that critical agency after a year that is considered by everyone on all sides to have been a disaster for the state department under trump's first secretary of state, rex tillerson. today also the president's nomination of the white house doctor to be va secretary, that nomination collapsed and was withdrawn. in the aftermath of that disaster it is not clear what's going to happen to the va, and

honestly, it's not clear whether ronny jackson can keep being the white house doctor anymore. not after what we learned about his tenure there thanks to the scrutiny that came from this failed nomination effort. we will have more on that coming up tonight. and we've got a really good interview on that subject tonight. today we also saw the epa administrator pop his head above ground for the first time in weeks, since he started to become a daily old faithful geyser of astonishing ethics scandals. a new one every day. line up and watch while the new one erupts. scott pruitt spent a long-awaited day at the capitol today getting yelled at by members of congress all day long. there is one matter on which scott pruitt testified today where he appears to just be flat out lying to congress. we will have that story coming up tonight as well with some new reporting you have not heard on that. and of course today a huge moment in american culture and criminal law, with legendary

american comedian and actor bill cosby being convicted in a pennsylvania courtroom on three felony charges. dozens of women, of course, have come forward in the past few years to accuse bill cosby of a remarkable series -- excuse me, a remarkably similar set of allegations. dozens of women have come forward and accused cosby of drugging and assaulting them or drugging and raping them. only one of those claims, by andrea constand in pennsylvania, resulted in criminal charges being brought against mr. cosby. charges were brought against cosby in the constand case in december 2015, just a few days before the statute of limitations would have meant that she couldn't pursue recourse in court either. but those charges were filed within the 12-year statute of limitations in pennsylvania for charges of this nature, and he was convicted on all three, and with today's three felony convictions mr. cosby is facing up to a maximum of 30 years in prison. that said, he and his lawyers

say emphatically that they will appeal. so like i said, totally normal news day, right? even if you don't get to the release of some of the very last government files on the jfk assassination, which also happened today. and even if you don't get to the huge teacher walkouts that happened in two big states today. actually, we will get to those a little bit later on. and then there's the speaker of the house, paul ryan, inexplicably firing the chaplain from congress today. and nobody knows why. in a normal presidency the seemingly inexplicable and thus far totally mysterious firing of the chaplain in congress by the speaker of the house, that would be a week's worth of news, right? tonight in our lives now in this presidency, yeah, you've just got to like put that in the file because hey, we've got a whole bunch of stuff going off like roman candles inside a phone booth right now, we've got other stuff to get to. all this -- i know i have said is this before, but all this to

say if you feel overwhelmed by the news in america right now, it's okay. it's not you. the news is overwhelming right now, and it continues to be. but it is worth paying attention, not only because you're a good citizen but also because this overwhelming amount of news is also fascinating right now. i mean, among all of the other things that happened today, today the president appears to have personally blown up the main point of his legal defense in the case that he and his advisers are even more worried about than the robert mueller inquiry. "the new york times" has reported over the last couple of weeks that the president and his advisers have concluded that the federal criminal investigation into michael cohen poses a greater threat than even the investigation into russia's interference in the 2016 election by the special counsel robert mueller. and that may be, that the president and his advisers are even more worried about the michael cohen case, that the president himself believes that the michael cohen case puts the

president in the most imminent legal jeopardy that he is facing right now. but even with all of that concern, even with all of the focus and worry and maybe even panic about that case, today the president blew it up. the president himself took on his own legal defense in that case and just cut it off at the knees. this time last night we were reporting that rudy giuliani, who is now acting as one of the president's lawyers on the russia matter, this time last night we reported that he had just gone and had his first meeting yesterday with robert mueller and with robert mueller's prosecutors in the special counsel's office. now, the president hired rudy giuliani to represent him on the russia matter one week ago tonight. on that same day that we found out he just hired rude ry, we also learned that president trump had hired two more lawyers as well. martin and jane raskin, a husband and wife team who practice together in florida. because their hiring was announced at the same time as mr. giuliani's hiring, it was

assumed that they too were hired to represent the president on the russia investigation, on the mueller investigation. i mean, that was a little bit weird when rudy giuliani went on to say that evening that he was planning on ending the mueller investigation in two weeks. right? if that's your plan, why would you also need to hire two whole new lawyers to start working on that case on that same day if it's just about to wrap up. it was a little weird. well, now today we can explain the weirdness there. today we have learned that the new legal firepower the president brought on board alongside rudy giuliani, they are not apparently there to work on the mueller case. they're there to work on the cohen case. specifically the president brought on these new lawyers to try to stop the president from being legally exposed in the cohen case. "washington post" ran a profile of these two new lawyers for the president today, and it says in part, "among their early assignments is to try to use

attorney-client protections to keep investigators from scouring trump's communications with his personal lawyer michael cohen, who is under federal scrutiny." so one, the president's new lawyers are working on the cohen case. they weren't just hired for mueller, which is what we had previously thought. that's supporting evidence for what the "new york times" has been reporting about how clear and present the president feels the danger is from the michael cohen case. he's hiring new lawyers and putting them on that. but the other part of this is that we've also now got overwhelming evidence of what the president's defense is in that case, how exactly the president's lawyers think they can best protect him in that case. and you've seen it from the very beginning. from the very beginning the president himself seemed to understand it vuft just implicitly. his initial response to the fbi raid on michael cohen's home and office on april 9th was this --

"attorney-client privilege is dead." that was his response to michael cohen getting raided. right? and this is frankly the big idea of how to protect the presidential in the cohen case. prosecutors should not have been able to seize, they should not be able to look at, they should not be able to build any sort of case based on anything they got from michael cohen because michael cohen is a lawyer, michael cohen is a diligent attorney who has confidential communications all the time with his many clients and therefore all his documents and communications are or ought to be off limits to prosecutors and the fbi, god bless attorney-client privilege. that's been the defense. several problems with that strategy emerged fairly quickly. first, prosecutors were quickly able to pry out of michael cohen an admission from him that actually he has only three clients. he does not have a gazillion clients. he has three. one of them, he says, is a host on the fox news channel, who quickly made a public declaration that actually michael cohen never really did

any legal work for him at all. "michael cohen has never represented me in any matter. i never retained him, received an invoice, or paid legal fees." okay. so not a lot of legal production that's going to turn up in a raid of michael cohen's files in that case. that's client one. client two, rnc official elliott broidy, who says michael cohen briefly represented him recently on just one discrete matter. michael cohen arranged a payoff to a woman who says she got pregnant during an affair with elliott broidy. broidy says he engaged michael cohen on that matter specifically to arrange a payment to that woman. as compensation? part of an agreement to not go to the press or something? just a goodwill payment? thanks for the affair? it's not totally clear what the payment was for. but even though the public revelations around that deal were a little odd, when it comes to the feds raiding michael cohen's home and office looking

for documents related to this ongoing federal criminal investigation into michael cohen, well, it seems like the rnc deputy finance chairman paying his mistress deal, it seems that was a specific enough deal, a specific enough legal matter that it would be pretty easy to wall that off. right? it's not like you're going to mistake a lot of other legal work for that. that's a pretty specific thing. doesn't seem like it would be that hard to find things related to that matter, isolate them, and make sure they don't get mixed up with other things the prosecutors were looking for. that seems like a discrete matter in both senses of the word discrete. walling that off won be rocket science. but then there's the third and final client michael cohen says he has. and that of course is president trump. so the sum total of michael cohen's potentially confidential communications with clients are with mr. hannity from fox news, who says he's had no actual legal representation from mr. cohen, so don't worry about him.

then there's mr. broidy, who says cohen repped him on one single matter related to paying a lady. that can probably be walled off. but then there's trump. which means really the whole strategy in this case against these federal prosecutors and the fbi going after cohen, what cohen's lawyers have been pursuing in court, what the president has actually hired multiple new lawyers to pursue in court, their whole case for protecting michael cohen and for protecting the president in the michael cohen case, the whole kit and caboodle of their argument is that michael cohen is safe from prosecution and even investigation, his papers, his documents, his hard drive, his phones, they really can't be scrutinized at all by the fbi because of his volume nous confidential privileged legal communications between himself as an attorney and his one substantive remaining client. because he does such a massive amount of legal work for president trump he and trump

should be safe in this case. that's their defense. that's their case. here was mr. trump today. >> but isn't your -- isn't his business your attorney, mr. president? >> just so you understand, i have many attorneys. i have attorneys -- sadly, i have so many attorneys you wouldn't even believe it. >> how much of -- mr. president, how much of your legal work was handled by michael cohen? >> well, as a percentage of my overall legal work a tiny, tiny little fraction. >> a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little fraction. nothing really. this far away, you can't even see it. the president has hired lawyers, and michael cohen has hired lawyers to protect the president and protect michael cohen in this federal case by claiming that federal prosecutors are trying to seize documents related to michael cohen's confidential attorney-client communications with the president. and since prosecutors and the fbi can't have access to those, case closed, they've got

nothing. that's their defense. the president today apparently got up, ate his wheaties, had his caffeinated beverage of choice or ten, and called up his favorite tv show, and he destroyed that case. that his lawyers have been painstakingly making on his behalf. >> michael is in business. he's really a businessman. a fairly big business as i understand it. i don't know his business. but this doesn't have to do with me. michael is a businessman. he's got a business. he also practices law. i would say probably the big thing is his business. and they're looking to something having to do with his business. i have nothing to do with his business. he's got businesses. and from what i understand they're looking at his businesses. and i hope he's in great shape. but he's got businesses. and his lawyers probably told him to do that. but i'm not involved and i'm not -- and i've been told i'm not involved. that came out of the newspaper. i've been told i'm not involved. >> mr. president, we want to get

to kanye west. he tweeted that he loves you -- >> fox news are like so, should we pull the rip cord here? break glass in case of emergency? yes, mr. president, let's talk about a celebrity who loves you. amazing segue in that moment. yeah, we got it is, sir. okay, yeah. okay. somebody hit the kanye west button. well, what the fox hosts were sitting through there before emergency break glass was the president explaining that yeah, the michael cohen raid, that has nothing to do with michael cohen's work as a lawyer. certainly not his work as a lawyer for the president. this has nothing to do with the president and certainly not anything legal related to -- the whole trump and cohen legal defense in this case thus far is the exact opposite of that. that they can't raid him, they can't look at that stuff because it's all trump-cohen confidential attorney-client legal communications and those are sacrosanct.

that's their whole defense. the president just blew it up. i also feel like i would be remiss if i did not show you just one other little piece of this. this is from the very end of this interview this morning. i don't know. you may watch that show regularly. where the president did thisn't view this morning. but just in case you don't, i feel like you should not miss, just as a citizen -- as a citizen you should know how much the president really lost it by the end of this interview today. so much so that the hosts of this show on fox news felt like they needed to cut him off and stop him from saying what he was saying. they did like -- at the end of the interview it basically ended with an intervention. >> you take $700,000 from somebody supporting hillary clinton, he takes $700,000 for his wife's campaign -- by the way, didn't even spend that money. kept some of it because under that lawyer she took seven -- she took 700,000 from a group

headed by terry mcauliffe, who was under investigation by mccabe and the fbi, and that investigation disappeared. he took $700,000. and you look at the corruption at the top of the fbi, it's a disgrace. and our justice department, which i try and stay away from but at some point i won't. >> okay. >> our justice department should be looking at that kind of stuff, not the nonsense of collusion with russia. there is no collusion with me and russia. >> all right. >> and everyone knows it. >> we could talk to you all day but it looks like you have a million things to do. but i hope you can join us again, mr. president. >> thank you so much for -- >> okay, yeah, you know, i -- our justice department which i try and stay away from but at some point i won't. and then the hosts start going, okay, okay, mm-hmm. uh-huh. my favorite part is where the one host says wow, sir, we'd love to talk to you all day. and then the president goes yeah, you could.

that would be okay. we could talk all day. and then fox cuts him off. while he is screaming. literally yelling into the phone that he's going to do something to the justice department. fox cuts him off. we understand you're very busy, mr. president. he's like no, no, i'm good. so this was a weird day. the president was too weird and unhinged for "fox & friends" and they cut him off. the president blew up the legal case that his lawyers have been pleading on his behalf alongside lawyers for michael cohen. and i don't just mean that what the president said about that legal case today was off message and it sounded bad when he said it. i mean less than two hours after the president shredded his own legal case in this tv interview claiming that michael cohen does almost no legal work for him at all, federal prosecutors on the cohen case actually subhmitted new court filing in that case quoting the president directly off of "fox & friends." "as the court is aware after originally stating the government seized thousands if not millions of pages of

privileged documents, michael cohen subsequently identified three current clients. of those three clients one sean hannity has since said that michael cohen has never represented me in any matter, i never retained him, received an invoice or paid legal fees. another client president trump reportedly said on cable television this morning that cohen performs a tiny, tiny little fraction of his overall legal work." >> as a percentage of my overall legal work, a tiny, tiny little fraction. >> he says that this morning on television, and it ends up in this court filing within two hours. president trump said on cable television this morning that cohen performs a steiny, tiny little fraction of his overall legal work. these statements, the filing continues, "these statements by two of cohen's three identified clients suggest that the seized materials are unlikely to contain voluminous privileged documents." that's how you know you botched the interview. that's how you know when you

said the wrong thing about your legal case in a public forum. it's a hint, right? that you might have misjudged that. if you're involved in a legal matter and you say something publicly and then two hours later the prosecutors in your legal matter have written it into the case against you, that's how you knew you didn't do a good interview. so the president temperamentally lost it in public today, and we should know that as a country because he's the president. even before he goes to meet with the dictator in north korea to talk about nuclear matters, we should know that that's how he was today. the president did blow up his own legal defense today. but here's one last thing that happened today in this same case. prosecutors in the cohen case dropped their opposition to having a special master review documents in the cohen raid to see if the seized documents really are attorney-client confidential communications. so the judge has now apointed a special master. prosecutors had been against

that before, but they dropped their objections today. so there is a special master. them dropping their objections makes it seem to me like prosecutors in this case are coming to a conclusion that this whole attorney-client privilege defense is not going to be much of a problem for the case they're building on michael cohen. that's how it seems to me. are they right? hold that thought. e. i'm also on a lot of medications that dry my mouth. i just drank tons of water all the time. it was never enough. i wasn't sure i was going to be able to continue singing. i saw my dentist. he suggested biotene. it feels refreshing. my mouth felt more lubricated. i use biotene rinse twice a day and then i use the spray throughout the day. it actually saved my career in a way. biotene really did make a difference. [heartbeat] my mom washes the dishes... ...before she puts them in the dishwasher. so what does the dishwasher do? new cascade platinum lets your dishwasher be the dish washer. three cleaning agents dissolve, lift and rinse away food the first time.

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"wall street journal" has just posted a new long report on president trump's personal attorney michael cohen. the journal is reporting tonight that mr. cohen was disgruntled during the presidential campaign because when steve bannon was named trump campaign ceo, when he got that campaign manager job on the trump campaign mr. cohen had thought that he was going to be named campaign manager. then cording to the "journal" after trump won the presidency mr. cohen was reportedly disgruntled and upset again because he told people at the time he had expected that he would be named white house chief of staff. neither of those things happened, obviously. michael cohen stayed in new york city when trump became president and moved to washington. the "journal" reports tonight that in a phone call this past

november mr. cohen reportedly sort of pleaded his case with the president in emotional terms. "boss, i miss you so much." "i wish i was down there with you. it's really hard for me to be here." and that was before we know federal investigators started their criminal investigation into mr. cohen. and that is sort of a sad sack tale of somebody being left behind when somebody they thought they were close to moves on up. but aside from the interpersonal stuff there, that may have a whole new urgency to it if that person who feels disgruntled and abandoned is now being pressured by federal prosecutors to flip against a guy who he's apparently convinced he has been wronged by. joining us now is barbara mcquade, former u.s. attorney for the eastern district of michigan. br bra, it barbara, thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me on such a news-filled day. >> everything all at once all the time. i watched the president's remarks in this remarkable cable

news interview that he did today, and obviously the president's emotional state was one of the takeaways that you couldn't avoid. but the president made really specific remarks about what seems to me to be the central case that he and michael cohen have been making to try to fend off this federal investigation in new york. he seemed to undercut that claim by saying mr. cohen doesn't do much legal work for him and he doesn't believe anything cohen is being investigated for touches on his legal practice as an attorney. is it your sense looking at that that that does actually sort of undercut what cohen and trump have been doing to try to defend themselves in that case? >> absolutely. 100%. this is the precise reason that lawyers advise their clients not to talk when they're under investigation. this is the kind of clip that law professors will use to train law students about why you advise clients not to talk about their own case because they might inadvertently undermine something their lawyer is trying to do as a matter of legal strategy, and i think president trump did that today. >> did it surprise you when

prosecutors in the southern district turned around the president's remarks so quickly? i mean, the president made these remarks this morning at breakfast time. by lunchtime they were incorporated into a federal filing by prosecutors from the southern district, citing the president, quoting the president directly as a way of undermining his lawyers' case. is that the sort of thing that only happens in a case this high-profile involving the president or are prosecutors generally that nimble? >> it's impressive. they're clearly on the ball, but i think they're probably paying attention to president trump's public remarks, his tweets, his statements in interviews, because he has had the propensity to sort of undermine his own positions or say things without thinking them through carefully. i don't know where they got it but i'm impressed they were able to put it in. and it absolutely undermined his position in this case because i think it helped them to show that the universe of that which is privileged is likely to be pretty small. >> in court today in new york these prosecutors for the southern district, they withdrew

their previous objection to the idea of appointing a third party, a special master, to go through all the documents that were seized in the raid to find any items that might legitimately be protected by attorney-client privilege. prosecutors had previously not wanted there to be a special master to do that. they said it could be handled within the prosecutor's office. it struck me today when they dropped that objection and the judge went ahead and appointed the special master, it struck me as a civilian without a law degree that maybe the prosecutors aren't that worried about this issue anymore, maybe they think that this may be the pillar of the defense here but they've sort of gotten around it and they don't have much to worry about. >> yeah, if you think about what has changed since their initial pleading is michael cohen has been required to submit to the court his actual client list. you know, at the outset who knew how many clients he had. maybe it was hundreds. and we've learned it's only three. and that one of those is sean hannity who says he doesn't have any matters he's ever been represented on. this mr. broidy, who had one

discrete matter apparently, and president trump who now says it's a tiny, tiny fraction of his legal work. the u.s. attorney's manual does say that lawyers should consider a special master when going through this kind of process of searching an attorney's office. and i can't imagine -- the only reason i would imagine that the lawyers at the front didn't favor that option is they feared that it might delay things and take too long. and now that they know that the universe of privileged material is likely very small, that might be a reason to say you know, what we don't mind that there's a special master here, and in fact, it might help blunt the criticism from the other side that there is something unfair that was done here. >> right. exactly. so if there's not much to get through here, this can't be much of a delay. and if they were going to complain about this process, well, it's hard for them to complain about it since this is the way they asked to do it in the first place, this is what they asked for, we've given it to them, we're not too worried. it seems like a confident stroke from these prosecutors. but we shall see. barbara mcquade, former u.s.

aowner in michigan, really appreciate your time tonight, barb. thank you. >> thanks, rachel. >> lots, lots, lots of ground to cover tonight. lots more news. stay with us. what's the hesitation? eh, it just feels too complicated, you know? well sure, at first, but jj can help you with that. jj, will you break it down for this gentleman? hey, ian. you know, at td ameritrade, we can walk you through your options trades step by step until you're comfortable. i could be up for that. that's taking options trading from wall st. to main st. hey guys, wanna play some pool? eh, i'm not really a pool guy. what's the hesitation? it's just complicated. step-by-step options trading support from td ameritrade

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inspector general investigations and gao investigations and ethics investigations and white house budget office investigations. and white house counsel investigations. news outlets had to publish infographics and pictorial guides to help organize all the different scandals and allegation that's pruitt is facing into an understandable set of groups so you could follow along while members of congress yelled at him. but if you really want to boil it down and you want to know why pruitt is in so much trouble, don't try to grab aum of them all at once. just take one of these. pick one of these off the vine or pull one of these cans off the bumper. and watch how it has played out. let's just take the magic phone booth for a second. in september the "washington post" reported on a $43,000 phone booth that scott pruitt bought for his office with your taxpayer dollars, and that seemed weird. but the epa was happy to explain why this thing cost so much and why scott pruitt needed it so badly. the epa told reporters at the time, "federal agencies need to have one of these so that

security communications not subject to hacking from the outside can be held. it's called a sensitive compartmented information facility, scif." end quote. that was from the epa in september. you can sort of hear the scolding. it's not a soundproof booth because he's a weird guy who just randomly wants a soundproof booth. it's an official thing. he needs. it's his scif. and you don't know that because you don't need one. but he does. that's what the epa said in september to justify spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on this thing. 2 1/2 months later, december, they told us the same story again, but this time we heard it straight from the boss. >> press accounts said that you installed a $25,000 soundproof booth in your office at epa headquarters. is that true? >> it's a secure phone line. >> okay. so it's a scif, what we call a sensitive compartmental information facility. is that right?

>> they are -- yes. >> okay. so it's a scif? yes. scott pruitt saying very clearly, as clear as his fs had been a few months before, that this thing in his office which was originally thought to cost $25,000 turned out to be more like $43,000, that was his scif. now, scif is a real thing. it's a super secure space where government officials can talk about highly sensitive classified material without having to worry that anyone is surveilling them while they do it. they're technically specific things. they have to have a certain kind of lock on the door, special studs bolting the whole thing together. you have to keep a list of everybody who's allowed inside the scif. that list needs to be kept in a specific way, in a specific place. the how to build a scif manual gets up to 200 pages long. that's what you built, scott pruitt, in your office? yes, scott pruitt was very clear when he told congress that's what he had. >> so it's a scif, what we call a sensitive compartmental information facility, is that right? >> there are -- yes.

>> ye-- -- yes. we looked at what scott pruitt had bought for his office, and watt epa said publicly about this thing he bought for the office. then we looked at the guidelines for what counts as a scif, and we started wondering, is this $43,000 contraption he put in his office really a scif as scott pruitt said it was and how they justified this as a purchase? i'll tell you. we started asking the epa about it. and over a series of days we got non-answers. we got -- they wouldn't tell us. they wouldn't answer whether or not this followed the guidelines to be a scif, whether it had been certified as a scif. but a few days after we started asking and we couldn't get answers from them, after we brought this to their attention we noticed that the epa and scott pruitt did start talking about this thing differently than they used to. they wouldn't talk to us about it, but they started talking about it differently to other people. they told bloomberg news on friday that "administrator pruitt simply requested a secure

phone line but never asked for a soundproof booth nor did he knowled have knowledge of its purchase." whatever it is he built for $43,000, all he wanted was a new phone. and when scott pruitt went to congress today it turns out he changed his mind entirely about this thing he built. >> administrator pruitt, when you were in front of this committee in december, we discussed the installation of a soundproof privacy booth in the administrator's office, or the scif, at a cost of over $40,000. at that time you told me that your view was the expenditure -- was that the expenditure was appropriate despite the fact there were two other scifs at the epa. is that correct? >> this is actually not a scif. >> oh. now it's not a scif. it is one thing to be profligate and wasteful with taxpayer money. it's one thing to have weird priorities about spending taxpayer funds on really expensive things for yourself

you that don't seem to really need. but? this case it really seems that epa administrator scott pruitt spent a ton of taxpayer money on something that was kind of fake, that wasn't real. that they made up. they said it was a scif and it never was. it was never certified as that. that's why they said they needed it. that isn't what they built. for that kind of lie you can get in real trouble, and not just pestered by cable tv producers. ( ♪ ) face the world as a face to be reckoned with. only botox® cosmetic is fda approved

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my doctor recommended i switch to miralax.on, stimulant laxatives make your body go by forcefully stimulating the nerves in your colon. miralax is different. it works with the water in your body to hydrate and soften. unblocking your system naturally. miralax. white house cleared something up today shortly before 9:00 a.m. press secretary sarah huckabee sanders wrote to reporters, "admiral jackson is a doctor in the united states navy assigned to the white house and he is here at work today." thank you for clearing that up. and only minutes after admiral ronny jackson withdrew as the nominee to run the va. the explosion of dr. jackson's nomination to run the va comes with a whole bunch of fallout. part of it is what happens to his current job. because of the scrutiny he received as a cabinet nominee, we've now learned a whole bunch

of new stuff about ronny jackson's time as the white house physician and his time in the white house medical unit. unprofessional behavior he is said by his colleagues to have exhibited on the job is laid out in the 2012 i.g. report. also a list of jaw-dropping allegations against him from 23 current and former colleagues in that office including accusations of repeated drunkenness on the job. ronny jackson's tenure at the white house medical unit is turning out to be a whole new scandal that we didn't know about before. before he got this nomination. and it blew up. we don't know yet how this new scandal will play out. we don't know if the pentagon will now do its own investigation into what exactly has been going on with these active duty military personnel in the white house physician's office. so that's part of the fallout. does he stay as the president's doctor? a second bit of fallout here is that this now makes two dozen, 24 senate confirmable nominees including cabinet nominees the president has put forward who have failed as nominations. this is either a vetting problem

or we're starting to see the results of what happens when you try to run a federal government without any vetting process at all. it's either bad vetting or no vetting. but then there's also this. the implosion of jackson's nomination was not just some generic nomination to run some generic government agency. the nomination that he was up for is something that is absolutely unique in u.s. government and is in a really, really, really big load of hurt right now, in part because of the way this blew up. and this story's next. having hir was enlightening. ♪ you don't like my lasagna? no, it's good. -hmm. -oh. huh. [ both laugh ] here, blow. blow on it. you see it, right? is there a draft in here? i'm telling you, it's so easy to get home insurance on progressive.com. progressive can't save you from becoming your parents. but we can save you money when you bundle home and auto.

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the reason the va secretary position was vacant in the the position was vacant in the first place for the ronny jackson nomination is because president trump and the white house pushed out david shulkins last month. yes, there were concerns about his traveling and spending. but see exhibit a to see that it takes more than scandal around spending. david shulkin has been clear as to why he thinks he was pushed out. he thinks it wasn't because of ethics concerns. he thinks it's people in the administration and people outside the administration who want to privateize the va. it's one of the things that

sulkin's predecessor warned about happening. when he was v.a. secret he warned about it over and over again. >> hard to believe, but some have argued v.a. can best serve veterans by shutting down health care altogether. they argue that closing vha is the bold change that families want, need, and deserve. i suppose that serves some parties pretty well, but it's not transformational. it's more along the lines of dereliction. it doesn't serve veterans well and doesn't sit with me. >> that was then v.a. secretary bob mcdonald in july of 2016. right at the height of the 2016 campaign. after trump won the election and came time to pick a cabinet, mr. trump put off his announcement

of a v.a. secretary for a long time. during that time all these veterans groups lined up to ask trump to please keep bob mcdonald on. they thought he was doing a good job, they had his trust. but trump didn't listen. then trump went on to fire shul kin. shulkin said he was fired because of his resistance to privatize the v.a.. and then the ronny jackson nomination. now what happens? for this part of our government's responsibility to take care of our veterans particularly in light of what seems to be very serious pressure to make the v.a. go away? what happens next to the v.a.?

mr. secretary thank you for being here. >> great to be with you, rachel. >> would you take this job back if they offered it to you. >> i would have to talk to the president. being secret of the v.a. was the biggest privilege of my life, biggest honor of my life. i would have to talk to the president and make sure he and i agreed on what the vision was moving forward before i would agree to do it. >> you warned about the pressures toward privatization, which would essentially abolish the v.a. health care system. and dave shulkin said a i didn't resign, and b i think i was pushed out because of the privatization. how does that strike you? >> there is a faction that would would like to privatize the v.a.. i've had people come up to me

that said care was inadequate and we need to privatize it. usually what i say to them is number one are you a veteran? i never met a veteran that wants to privatize the v.a.. number two, do you have a stake in this? usually there is some kind of stake. privatizing the v.a. is a bad idea. not only for the veterans because they get great care for the v.a. but also for the american people and american medicine. many innovations that have occurred in american medicine have come from the va. things like the first pacemaker, like take an aspirin a day. things like brain gate where we put a sensor in your brain and it can move your prosthetic arm. advances in prosthetics.

also the v.a. trains 70% of the doctors. who's going to do that training and research? in addition to the doctors who do the research and training also provide care to veterans, the veterans as a result get great care. so privatizing the v.a. is not a good idea. and as i said the majority of veterans and veteran groups don't want it. >> there's pressure on that subject that's animating the va right now. >> there is. >> because of the size, the importance of the work because of the unusual fact there is bipartisan support for the v.a. and v.a. policy making tends to be of a bipartisan nature, which is a freak of nature in washington right now, because so much things are different, there's debate about what's the right kind of experience for a person to have to run an agency, that big, that important, that

complicated. you had a business background, you're a veteran, what did the v.a. tell you about the best way to get prepared to do something that hard? >> i think president obama had it right. he chose me, historically, a republican, to be part of his democratic administration but he knew i ran a fortune 25 company around the world, lived around the world, worked in many cultures. but he knew i was a veteran, a west point graduate, an infantry officer and ranger. if the v.a. was a fortune 500 country, it would be number 9 in this count. i auditioned for 29 years before i became ceo of the proctor and gamble company. to think you can put a new ceo in every four years and think you can drive success, our

veterans deserve better. >> robert mcdonald was secretary of veterans affairs who had remarkable support from veterans groups when the administration decided not to keep him on. i hope you're one of the people they're talking about. >> i'll answer the phone. >> and then tell me what they say. >> i will. >> he won't. stay with us. 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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together. this is phoenix arizona, tens of thousands of schoolteachers marked in phoenix, they marched to the state capital building to protest the fact that arizona spends way below the national average on the schools. nbc shot this time lapsed footage to give a sense of the scale of the two mile long march. in tuson they gathered along a stretch of road, the best way was to catch that was in a car. colorado teachers have done it too. this follows walk outs in west virginia, kentucky. in only nine weeks now this has happened in five different states. you do the math. and if you can, thank a teacher. that does it for us tonight now it's time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell" good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel.