and new details about the team that's being assembled to aid him in that fight. "the new york times" breaking the news this afternoon that veteran impeachment lawyer emmet flood has joined the white house to help defend the president in the mueller investigation role until today will depart after a brief transition. flood is a veteran of both the clinton impeachment proceedings and several bush era and legal congressional investigations. we can add to their headline additional reporting on flood. three sources tell me the recruitment of flood to the president's legal team sends a clear signal that the team plans to rely much more heavily on a legal strategy long advocated by current white house counsel don mcgahn, to exert executive privilege more aggressively. two of these sources say flood's finesse at exerting executive privilege was on display in legal work he conducted during the busch iv 3 administration. i am -- bush 43 administration.

he does it in a way that is professional and effective. i am also told there is a unanimous belief among the president's allies the president's best legal strategy at this point in the obstruction of justice investigation is to exert executive privilege and not answer the kinds of questions detailed in "the new york times" this week. one attorney involved in the mueller investigation told me today that the release of the questions to "the new york times" was a, quote, inside job designed to get through to the president. more significant perhaps, two sources tell me that emmet flood is don mcgahn's hand picked successor as white house counsel. one adding that mcgahn views flood as a, quote, wartime consigliary. three describe him as calming and competent figure this west wing badly needs. and one source close to mcgahn says of flood, quote, you don't

want a successor who is going to stab you on the way out the door. don envisions a transition of a couple of months. we should make a bubundantly cl mcgahn describes this recommendation for his own smooth transition, but ultimately all personnel decisions are the president's to make and are never final until they're final. one more development to share before we get to our reporters and experts, rudy giuliani also new-ish to the president's legal team laid out a narrow condition upon which he'd consider an interview for the president with mueller's investigators. rudy giuliani saying to the washington post saying, it would be max two to three hours around a narrow set of questions. this seems to have the potential to put the president on a collision course with the special counsel who as the washington post reported last night isn't opposed to using its subpoena power to get what it needs from president trump. joining us to discuss

today's breaking news from the washington post white house bureau chief phil rucker. also carol len ac who broke the news last night. barbara mcquade and that frank figliuzzi all are my favorites, all of are msnbc analyst contributors and all are on the hook to help us figure out what's going on in that building. phil rucker, let's start with you. emmet flood not a household name, but it seems to me the significance is, one, white house don mcgahn at the center of every flash point known to be under scrutiny by bob mueller, eager to lineup a replacement for himself. >> yeah, i think you nailed it, nicolle. this is a signal that the trump legal strategy is going to become much more aggressive and confrontational with mueller. there is an expectation that there is going to be less sort of cooperation and providing documents and more push back, pushing back against this idea of an interview, pushing back

against the scope of the questions that were outlined earlier this week. and potentially this could end up in courts with litigation and talking to attorneys who are sort of around this whole issue. they say that flood is just the kind of person the president needs to help him navigate a much more combative, much more potentially litigious posture with the special counsel. >> so, barbara mcquade, two former white house officials who work closely with emmet flood, the newest member of the president's legal team who will assume that position inside the white house counsel's office with the portfolio of the president's defense in the mueller probe, that while he is more aggressive in terms of exerting executive privilege, he's not necessarily combative personally, so he is, as one of these sources describe, a wartime concigliary, a tighter

line protecting interactions with his own aides, but also, b, a diplomat inside the mueller probe. can you break down for us what that means in terms of practicality? does executive privilege mean keeping stuff more secret? what does it mean to have a lawyer that has a legal philosophy that is in line with doing just that? >> yeah, i don't know emmet flood, but he has an excellent reputation. people who have worked opposing him in the adversarial system speak very highly of him. i think very good lawyers can have very different philosophies on how they handle things. they can do so professionally and with respect to opposing counsel. but they can assert legal defenses where they have them. and so it is his reputation, and he has that experience representing bill clinton and representing others in the george w. bush administration, of taking a harder line, of asserting executive privilege. you know, in the recent past we have seen this sort of assertion of executive privilege when it came to witnesses where they would decline to answer questions, bug they wouldn't fully assert the privilege.

in some instances, congressional committees allowed them to get away with that. it seems that emmet flood is going to be inclined to continue that line and push it where necessary, even risking perhaps litigation and fighting those battles as opposed to trying to resolve them more amicably. >> frank, what do you make of this idea that the president's lawyers are so exasperated, but the president's conduct -- it's on full display today on his twitter feed -- they believe it was an inside job. to show the president just how probing the topics are from bob mueller's investigators, about his own state of mind, about his own conduct around the firing of jim comey, around what took so long to fire mike flynn after sally yates warned them that he might be compromised by the russians. what does an investigator or prosecutor make of that fact pattern? >> well, look, if you're an attorney and you have to communicate and convince your client of something by leaking to the media in order to

influence him, then you've got a real problem here. and this goes directly toward how long we can expect emmet flood to tolerate this situation. you know, nicolle, you used the phrase calm and competent to describe flood. he's also qualified and experienced. qualified and experienced, calm and competent, they don't hang around very long in the white house. so, i think emmet flood is wondering what he got himself into, but he is definitely calm, competent, qualified and experienced and i think we're going to see some interesting legal battles that could protract this much longer than the president actually wanted this to go. >> and, care lennock, you had the bombshell of the news cycle. legality let me read a bill blittle bit it. you write about how bob mueller, when the conversations were ongoing between the president's legal team and the special counsel, bob mueller responded he had another option if trump declined the interview. he could issue a subpoena for the president to appear before a

gla grand jury according to four people. he mentioned a subpoena to trump's legal team, spurred a sharp retort from john dowd, then president's lawyer. this isn't a game, two people said of his comments. you are screwing with the work of the president of the united states. >> indeed. i mean, it was a pretty tense meeting this march 5th sit-down between bob mueller and john dowd and jay sekulow. this was like, are you going to do the interview or not, guys? are you going to subpoena us or not, bob? and really, i think this set the stage for what we are seeing now, which is there has to be a decision about how the president is going to proceed. we have interviewed several of his close advisors today, and they have said this is a big signal. cobb's departure means no more to the guy who said let's cooperate. the gloves are going to come off. i agree very much with frank.

emmet flood may not realize what he's gotten into. i don't imagine he's going to be necessarily combative, but i do believe that he's a qualified, experienced lawyer. will he be able to roll with the fairly inconsistent strategies of his client who changes his mind a lot about how, how he should comport himself in this case. >> and, phil rucker, let me ask you to pick up on that. "the new york times" breaking the story today that emmet flood has joined the president's legal team. they had some information in there about how one of the conditions for flood joining was that the president's at one time personal attorney marques witnesses, i guess he was his attorney in the russia investigation, would not be involved. i also heard from two sources that -- one of the conditions for flood going on and taking this role was that ty cobb would not be involved. we saw that news of his

departure today. what about this idea flood wanting to eliminate the competing power centers around the legal strategy, that has imperiled the president's own defense, not to say his own tweets. >> it's understandable flood would want to get rid of all of these extra characters who have been a part of the president's legal team. but as you know, these people don't just go away. the president -- it's a hobby for him to get on the phone and talk to all his fired and ousted advisors. he does it all the time. he's always talking to cory lewandowski even though john kelly is the chief of staff at the white house, so i don't think he's going to stop talking to ty cobb, i don't think he's never going to talk to mark kasowitz again. the challenge for flood and giuliani, the president's personal attorney in this matter and jay sekulow is going to be to navigate all of that and to also compete with the advice that the president is getting

from fox news. he watches fox and friends and sees joe digenova or alan dershowitz or other lawyers on tv giving him advice through the screen and he reacts to that. so it's going to be a real challenge for the actual lawyers on staff. >> barbara, speak to that. how does a lawyer go in there? what does the starting line look like when your client is receiving information from his own twitter feed, from tv lawyers on fox news, when the conditions are met by don mcgahn, the white house counsel who i understand recruited emmet flood into the team, emmet flood met with the president back in early march. it was unclear exactly what would happen, but the president angrily tweeted out a rebuke of "the new york times" report of the times saying i'm very happy with my lawyer. so, the president doesn't make changes in terms of the people who advise him smoothly. he doesn't make them in a clean manner. as an attorney, does that hobble

you from the starting gate? >> yeah, it could be very challenging. it is not surprising that emmet flood asked that others be removed so that it was clear he was the one calling the shots. you don't want to advise the president and give him one strategy and then find out he's talking to someone else and adopting and following a different strategy, because it can disrupt many things that you've planned out over a course of time. i think that if i were emmet flood, as part of the terms of engagement, i would want to sit down with don mcgahn and/or president trump and say, here's what i'm comfortable with. here's what i want to do when it comes to legal advice, i want to call the shots, i want you to listen to me and i want you to follow a strategy because as part of a long-term strategy, what we do today could affect what happens months from now. i would also advise president trump, go ahead and tweet about other things, but don't tweet about this because you might make some statement on twitter that is used against you down the road. and so whether president trump can comply with that advice remains to be seen. >> so, frank, i read two sources

telling me this is also significant because this is don mcgahn's exit strategy. but don mcgahn isn't just any white house counsel. he's also a witness in the mueller probe who has met at least two times, perhaps more with mueller's investigators and he's offered testimony on these four events that we know of. the sessions recusal. the flynn firing. the comey firing. and the attempt to fire mueller. we know from the questions published this week that all of those events are very much of interest to special counsel robe robert mueller. what does it say, not just your top white house attorney, someone who is part of the investigation is trying to get packed up out of the west wing? >> i'm tired and i need to spend more time with my family. we could be looking at, i'm kind of jammed up here. i was actually calling the shots on what could be answered or not answered before congressional committees by key witnesses, like bannon, like lewandowski.

i was weighing in on so-called executive privilege and concerns there. i'm a witness. i may even be a subject. maybe i shouldn't be in the position i'm in. so, we could be looking at a graceful strategic exit as opposed to simply i want to go quietly to the beach. >> carol, let me ask you to pick that up and speak to the potential significance of the president's white house counsel departing and replacing himself with emmet flood in the middle of what feels like a very intense period in the mueller probe over potential presidential interview. >> two thoughts about that, nicolle. boy, are there a lot of people who have potential conflicts and very important roles. i mean, you could even argue -- i mean honestly, rod rosenstein is a witness at one point in this case and he's supervising it. so, that's complicating. and mcgahn is in really an enviable position.

he has witness of a lot of things that could thwart or block a criminal probe. that's the first thing. the second thing is i feel like the mcgahn may leave any time soon story line is one we have heard a million times. it's almost like the h.r. mcmaster may leave any time soon. i think we report that had out and prepared for it so many times and when it finally happened we were all like, right. that's coming for sure. but it has been a long time in coming in the sense that he's hinted to many, many people around him that that's what he wanted to do. >> frank figliuzzi, i saw you noddi nodding and i want to give you a chance to jump in. carol inspired a thought or reaction in you. >> i think the forecasting of people's departures is something we're getting very, very accustomed to. often there is far more behind it, like an inability to get along with the president or perhaps i'm jammed up or a fact witness. i think that's what we're looking at with mcgahn.

i think he will transition out probably sooner rather than later, but i can tell you emmet flood is going to have his hands full just prepping for the executive privilege fight, let alone transitioning to become white house counsel. so, this will be an interesting amount of legal work on his plate here. >> legal boogying is what all you professionals are trying to say but you can't say it because you're professionals. caroline, thacongratulations fo your big coop. we'll show you the president's threats to get even more involved. the president's doctor had a ghost writer, the president himself. the report raises troubling questions about what we don't know about the commander in chief's health history. i thoughy moderate to severe crohn's disease. then i realized something was missing... me.

my symptoms were keeping me from being there. so, i talked to my doctor and learned humira is for people who still have symptoms of crohn's disease after trying other medications. and the majority of people on humira saw significant symptom relief and many achieved remission in as little as 4 weeks. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you've had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. be there for you, and them. ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible.

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as special counsel robert mueller backs the president and his constantly shifting legal team in a corner, trump is lashing out, axios reports the president is on a war path, a source close to i am him saying, he's going to start swipging and knocking people's heads off. this morning we got a view of what that will be like. it's what's interpreted as the most pointed attack yet on deputy attorney general rod rosenstein who is overseeing the probe. the meltdown started with this. there was no collusion. it is a hoax, and there is no obstruction of justice. that is a set up and trap. trump went on 0 quote his favorite tv attorney joe de genre about the list of

questions mueller plans to ask trump in an interview made public yesterday in "the new york times." quote, the questions are an intrusion into the president's article 2 powers under the constitution to fire any executive branch employee. then this final tweet. a rigged system. they, presumably rosenstein and his own justice department, don't want to turn over documents to congress. what are they afraid of? why so much redacting? why such unequal justice? at some point i will have no choice but to use the powers granted to the presidency and get involved. joining me at the table associated press white house reporter jonathan lemire and political reporter nick, the gang is all still here. phil, barbara and frank. let me start with you. it sounds like you ripped off hannity's monologue. >> the president and fox news continues. that's where he first previewed this. the interview in fox and friends last week, he's not going to be involved now, but that could change. again he sees to be going --

>> how could he not be involved? he literally threatens them every day. he didn't have kristen sze wray's back. he's involved now. >> at this point, other than -- >> that we know of. >> i think he's suggesting involve means firing some of people. it's not that far away, a few blocks. he could fire some people. this is all of a piece. the hires today also suggests the idea of a more aggressive tack. he sees people around him encouraging him to do this for a while, to hit back. they think this probe is an existential threat to his white house. and he is -- ty cobb was the one who encouraged him time after time, play nice, we'll cooperate, we'll get a fair deal. it seems like he's finally rid of that and wants to start hitting. >> i think the other development is everyone around him believes he's extremely vulnerable in the obstruction of justice investigation. two people said to me today that in the president's own mind he has three different answers to the same question at any given time. that he can't give factual answers to his own press

secretary to go out there from the podium and give to the media because in his own mind he can't keep his own different stories straight. >> it's funny he says it's a set up and a trap. if you can't keep your answers straight with a counsel, it is a trap and you will get in trouble. >> a trap of your own making. >> exactly. the questions we saw from our school last night on the table for him which were probably leaked by the president's own team or someone close to him. >> that's what a source told me, it was an inside job to scare the president. >> i'm guessing. it is obvious they are trying to force conditions to create a confrontation. what the president always does, if he's attacked he attacks harder. second, he tries to create the condition and the raegs -- rationale for the thing he wants to do anyway. i have no choice to act. i'm going to account. over and over he does that. >> let's watch what rosenstein said yesterday. this was one of the sharn ep es

attacks on rosenstein and it came on the he's of thels of th. >> there are people making threats privately and publicly against me for quite sometime. they need to understand the department of justice is not going to be stoextorted. >> barbara mcquade, is the president trying to distort the department of justice? >> i was really pleased to see rod rosenstein stand up and speak strongly about these efforts to interfere. congress asked for documents related to the hillary clinton e-mail investigation and documents related to the fisa trump/russia investigation. that is interference. by threatening to impeach rod rosenstein unless he complies with this request is what he's referring to about being extorted. and you know, the president using the term department of justice in quotation remarks is so damaging, so undermines public trust in the department. and so i was very pleased to see

rod rosenstein stand strong. it has never been appropriate for congress to ask for documents in pending investigations. it interferes with the investigation so i was very please today see rod rosenstein stand up to that. for decades the department of justice has declined those requests. i was glad to see rod rosenstein decline here even though there is a threat underway to impeach him. >> here's another reason, frank figliuzzi, the president might be mad. here's our own rachel maddow last night. >> something that jump out to me is what it took for mueller to raise the issue of subpoenaing the president. that means that rod rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who is in charge and who oversees this investigation was on board and would have had to authorize the use of a subpoena against the president of the united states. prosecutors never threaten to take an action that they can't take. so for this to even come up in this kind of a tense setting,

the issue would have been fully vetted inside the department and that tells me that mueller and rosenstein would have had this conversation in advance of this march meeting. >> frank. >> she's right on the money. bob mueller is someone i worked for. he's not going to throw the word subpoena into the table without having cleared it with rosenstein. this means the white house views rosenstein as a direct threat. this battle over documents and pending investigation documents, they're try to tee up yet another issue for the president to hit in terms of blaming rosenstein, not complying, poor performance. we're going to see continued teeing up of issues to get rosenstein or mueller out. >> phil rucker, it's a lie. rosenstein appointed someone for the purpose of document production, for the trump stooges in congress who are

throwing every fake -- uranium one week. adds long as he schedules infrastructure week, they schedule faux week. now it's redacted memo week. the people running the fbi who ask for redactions are men appointed by donald trump. so i'm not sure who is zooming here. what is the explanation that people give in their rare candid moments about the president green lighting attacks on his own appointees at the justice department, by his surrogate in congress? >> nicolle, you are just right what you said there. what is going on, frank was alluding to this, too, mark meadows, the congressman from north carolina, jim jordan, congressman from ohio, they're trying to build a case to fire rosenstein. they're trying to make these requests they know rosenstein isn't going to honor. when he doesn't honor them, that is a data point in a bill of

particulars that the president can use to fire rosenstein if and when he chooses to get to that point. remember the congressman doing this mark meadows talks to the president almost daily. they're very close allies. there is no doubt in my mind they discuss these matt zperz other matters. they are trying to do the president's billing, white house's billing here and trying to create a perception rosenstein is not cooperating, not doing his job at the department of justice. >> can i put you on the spot, 23 phil rucker? a lot of these guys in right wing d.o.j. circles, why are these who are ill informed, i've seen them on television, they're shut down by right wing nuts like jeff sessions. why are they doing the president's bidding and they do not have the facts and they do not have evidence on their side? >> it's a great question and i don't know the answer to it, but i know their intensely loyal,

meadows in particular, intensely loyal to president trump. sees value in having loyalty to that relationship, and access to the president and is willing to go out there and do his bidding. >> do you have an answer? >> i don't entire l.ly. i want to follow-up on something. he's muddying the water when it comes to rosenstein building a case to have him fired. the president's first tweet you put on the screen, he talks about how north korea, that's news, nafta, that's news. not the witch hunt. that's a congressional talking point. more and more republicans are saying, look, this is a distraction going on too long. this needs to wrap up. the sense from the white house and outside allies, putting forth that idea, this is going on too long, it's a distraction. >> do you think it's a personal political survival -- >> we played nice to this point, but this needs to wrap up. if it duds presideoesn't wrap u

own accord, the president will wrap it up himself. >> thank you for spending time with us. we're grateful. the panel weighs in on another shake up in the president's legal team and the twitter tantrum. don't go anywhere. work to do. so he took aleve this morning. if he'd taken tylenol, he'd be stopping for more pills right now. only aleve has the strength to stop tough pain for up to 12 hours with just one pill. tylenol can't do that. aleve. all day strong. all day long. the brand more doctors recommend for minor arthritis pain. handcrafted layers of clean food you can give your kids. tomatoes. even the picky ones. panera. food as it should be. now delivered.

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we're back and joining us at the table, joining us at the table jonathan cape heart and senior writer for vanity fair, both msnbc contributors. you're on the cohen beat. i googled you and see what there is to know. how is he doing? >> i think that this has been a tough week after the fox and friends interview last week. he's been spending ten plus hours a day with his lawyers. the government has started to return some of the items that they seized from his office and his hotel and so he and his lawyers have been spending ten plus hours a day going through all this. when the president said that and when the national inquirer ran

that thing on its cover, it doesn't engender a good feeling for someone. >> so, michael cohen, donald trump's long-time lawyer and fixer, has his homes and his offices raided. i understand from your reporting that they weren't just his cell phones that were taken. they were his wife's cell phones, his kids' cell phones. i imagine they were mad about that. so he's dealing with things that a human being deals with when a bolder rolls through their life. he sees donald trump go on fox and friends, tiny, weany work for me, not my lawyer. was he pissed? >> from my reporting this is what happened. he wasn't watching live. michael avenatti was on morning joe and that's what he was watching. >> we're happy to have you, mr. cohen. >> the regency fire alarm went

off where he was staying. he was shocked, he was stunned. he was due in court at noon that day. not only was this probably personally wounding, but this was wounding to his legal strategy. and because he had been spending so much time with his lawyers going over this, it was just a moment of total befuddlement for him. >> we started with the president's white house lawyer trying to replace himself with emmet flood. he's going into the white house to take the lead on the russia investigation and we learned from two sources that he may ultimately replace don mcgahn. the president goes through lawyers faster than he goes through wives. >> what am i supposed to do with that? >> it shows the chaos -- >> no one wants to stay on the job representing him legally. >> no one wants to stay on the job, and he doesn't want them to stay on the job. he loves them the moment he likes the idea, the moment they walk through the door. and then within about a week or two is when we start hearing the

leaks about how the president doesn't like this person any more and the president said something -- >> bad job on tv. >> you don't look good, you're not sounding good. there is chaos in the building that's sitting there behind you. there is chaos in the white house and there's always been chaos in the white house. and at the top of your show you laid out through your reporting what mcgahn, if i remember your reporting right, what mcgahn is hoping will be accomplished through all of these things. but once the president hears that he's just going to be like a real housewife and like up end the table, just for the shock of it. >> well, there is some truth to that. when the president first saw your paper reported that emmet flood was at the oval office meeting with him, i heard at the time you could get anyone at the oval office meeting with the president saying this guy is interested in defending him on tv, can he have 30 minutes of your time. the president made a big display, no, no, i love my lawyers. what he's saying is true, the addiction is to the upheaval. >> i don't know if it's that

exactly. he enjoys change. more than that, i think he blames other people for where he's at. he never actually holds responsibility for himself, for his tweets, for the problems he creates for himself. and instead he goes after his staff, his lawyers, his people, he throws them out and the truth is this is all a quandary of his own making. it all stems from the president's own decisions, his actions, and strangely enough, his tweets. it is still shocking to me, after this year and a half, it is still shocking to me how much trouble he gets in on substantive grounds for things he says on twitter. and it's very possible that -- it's very possible to me that, you know, if we look back, we'll say twitter gave rise to donald trump and twitter brought down donald trump. >> let me press you on that. the tweet that jonathan referenced from this morning's twitter tantrum, i think we can put it back up. if you look at the questions that your colleague, mike schmidt published this week, what did you know? what did you mean by this?

i mean, i can see added to the list, what did you mean when you tweeted at some point, i will have no choice but to use the powers granted to the presidency and get involved. i mean, if bob mueller wants to know what you, mr. president, meant when you said, i'd like you to see to it to let mr. flynn go. i would imagine the same thread would want to be understood what he meant by getting more involved. >> it is a quite loud led presidency. he said it out loud. he said it months and months ago to lester holt. i fired him because of the russia investigation. he did all this because he didn't want the heat from the russia investigation and then he bragged to the russians the heat was off. it's plain as day, in a strange way the investigation has to catch up to the facts that were already on the ground when it started. >> we don't know that it has n't. i constantly get admonished by former intelligence community figures, former law enforcement figures who say, it is not an

iceberg. you don't know how much of it is above ground. it is an underground civilization. you don't know what you don't know. bob mueller's investigation is made up of men and women who occupy two flores of a federal building in washington, d.c. you don't know what they already know, so we don't know exactly where the investigation is. but if they want to know questions about the president's state of mind, about his intent, if we have -- i think there are six sources today that told us that no one around the president wants him to answer any of those obstruction of justice questions reported by your colleagues this week. we already -- as you said, it's already abundantly clear to at least some of the president's lawyers that he's likely obstructed justice. >> i think that first of all you are right about the mueller probe. that list of questions, that is not the extent of it, we don't believe. there are certainly going to be other things the mueller team are investigating we don't know about. there are a number of times white house officials and a number of times the trump legal team himself have tried to get

him to stop tweeting. we're not asking you to give up twitter entirely. but can you at the very least not tweet about the probe? not tweet about mueller, not tweet about rosenstein. for a while he did listen. as sort of scatter shot and undisciplined he was on twitter about every other subject, he rarely went after those men particularly by name. that's changed. that's changed -- >> it changed in march. it changed around the same time -- >> it is a great indication about the pressure that building now feels about this probe, one that's only grown since the cohen raid a few weeks ago. >> to your iceberg analogy, i wonder if -- mueller knows everything. i've gotten to the point where he's omniscient. he knows everything. whether the president talks to him or not, if the president goes in and talks to him, at this point it might be a courtesy because mueller might have the evidentiary proof of what the president has done, and so that's what i'm looking forward to.

all these machineations that are happening now are really fascinating but i cannot wait to actually find out what mueller knows. and i hope he is able to produce some kind of report or issue something so that we all can read it and absorb it. >> i don't want to bust your bubble, but someone who worked with him very closely for the 13 years that he served as fbi director said he wouldn't tell his dying mother what he planned to do so i don't think we'll know what mueller is going to do until he does it. up next, donald trump's long-time doctor admits what should have been obvious from the start.

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individual ever elected to the presidency. what he said was the truth. he explains. >> i will also tell you the letter that showed up in the times about his health, he wrote it himself. you know that. >> yeah. >> he wrote it himself. and me, from where i come from, the end of it was just black humor. it wasn't meant to be a serious comment. i guess people don't have that sense of humor, but i have that sense of humor. >> that's a good thing. dr. born stein's letter was not the only evaluation of president trump's health. just a few months ago dr. ronny jackson stood in front of the press core painting quite a rosy picture of the president's health. we compared the two reports and there were some striking similarities. born stein called trump's test results, quote, astonishingly excellent. a word jackson liked to use as well.

>> in summary, the president's overall health is excellent. >> born stein said trump's strength and stamina are extraordinary. now, here's how jackson characterized the president's endurance. >> i'll tell you, out of everybody there, the president had more stamina and more energy than just about everybody there. >> as almost to rival born stein's statement that trump will be, quote, the healthiest president. >> he might live to be 200 years old. >> so, what's going on? >> what i think is interesting here is you see the president really clinging to people who have been incredibly publicly loyal to him. >> that's bornstein's excuse. what's ronny's? >> that is one way to get in good with the president. we've seen he was nominated to the top position. didn't exactly workout for him well. in the short term it served him really well. part of the reason you've seen

such turnover in the white house is because he hasn't felt like people are loyal to him. >> they say he's 300 pounds, they call him 150. let me ask you about the human carnage of donald trump. you cover a man who is the poster boy of human wreckage trump leaves in his path. as you mention dr. ronny jackson, he was a person in good standing as far as i understood as a white house physician. meets donald trump, gives that bizarre performance with alarmingly similar words used by dr. bornstein who says that the president dictated the letter. we don't know if the president dictated dr. jackson's performance, but there's certainly a lot of words that were used in both. michael cohen, dr. bornstein who in an interview with nbc said he felt raped. ronny jackson, i don't know what he's going to do, he's out as white house doctor, everyone who comes in contact with the president ends up tarnished or

worse. >> as soon as you broke it my first thought was michael cohen. there is basically a basket of people who have either worked with the white house or been involved with the trump's lives for years ended up completely chucked out the basket and thrown under the bus. this is what happens. a long-time trump associate who hasn't worked for the president in many years once told me that as soon as donald trump feels like you are no longer useful to him, he will get rid of it and will feel nothing about it and i think that that is what we're seeing over and over and over again. >> and the problem for the president is that now just about everyone who has worked for him is a witness in the mueller probe. >> yeah, he is -- these bills for lawyers and his staffers have to be up to the millions of dollars by now. if you go into the white house now, you are almost walking into a guaranteed bill for six figures for a lawyer, which is a horrifying thing to contemplate. telling the doctors statements, stamina, that's the tell. he is the only person i've ever heard, this president, who describes people like race

horses. the white house has stamina. i have stamina. bush has no stamina. it's weird like this kind of obsession with stamina is telling. i don't know. >> i have a different theory about that. [ laughter ] >> it could be both. both could be true at the same time. but, you know, earlier i wrote down two words. no loyalty when talking about michael cohen. and that's what this is about. the president has no loyalty to anyone. the loyalty is a one-way street. and it only goes to donald trump. it does not go back, especially when, you know, people are expecting a self-centered narcissist to have their back. michael cohen thought donald trump was going to have his back in all of this? that was yet one of many, many mistakes he's made. >> i just think if you're the guy that cleans up after the porn star stuff, it's a reasonable expectation. an eyebrow raising night from mike pence. wait till you hear he's calling

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with citi's help we built a wonderful maternity ward and we were able to purchase an mri machine. we've made it possible for the people who live here to lead healthier lives and that's invaluable. ♪ i just found out when he was walking through the door that we were also going to be joined today by another favorite. a great friend this president a. tireless champion of strong borders and the rule of law who spent a lifetime in law enforcement, sheriff joe arpaio. i'm honored to have you here. >> tireless champion of the law.

let that sink in. keep in mind if not for a presidential pardon, sheriff joe might be in jail today having been convicted of criminally disobeying a court order to stop a system of racial profiling called crime suppression sweeps were officers were arresting immigrants solely on the suspicion that they were in the country illegally. keep in mind that mike pence was so offended by football players silently protesting during the national anthem that he tweet, i left the colts game today because potus and i will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers or our national anthem. but arpaio, two thumbs-up. >> he walked out on the presidential request, if these players kneel please leave. >> they asked me to call in to talk about the hurricane.

and then they pardoned arpaio. i said my phone broke out, i thought you said he pardoned arpaio. >> he didn't call him broad shoulders. this is the party of trump. trump loves arpaio, hard line immigration stances. mike pence is going to get out there and say the same things. >> what's the deal with mike pence? >> i don't know. he should know better. he is someone who is a politician. he was governor. he served in congress. he is the vice president of the united states. easy supposed to at least politically be the grown up. yet the man from the party of law and order just revealed it to be a sham, a complete and total sham. it's shameful. why republicans on the hill remain silent in the face of this is beyond me. at this point, i expect complete silence from the republican-controlled congress on anything that this white house does, good, but especially

bad. >> emily? >> i think this is what mike pence has done. usually he has actually been more silent on the more controversial thing. but he knows he is going out there trying to fund raise. he is perhaps out there more than donald trump is when campaigning and helping others campaign for 2018. and so this is red meat to the trump base. >> arpaio? >> yes, to our table the difference between the nfl protests and arpaio is huge. but this plays very well to the base of supporters they are trying to atact in 2018. >> it plays well to the sense that the rule of law no longer means anything to the republican party. >> arpaio is a convict, a confirmed liar. failed to uphold the constitution. >> a racist. >> a racist. but he serves the interests of trumpism and pursues their political interests. in the same way that the freedom caucus threatening to impeach rosenstein are threatening the system so is arpaio.

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we never have enough time. my thanks to you. that does it for our hour. i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. hi chuck. >> i am mourning the mustache today. that is to me the biggest loss in all of this, ty cobb's mustache. >> will america survive? >> do you think america will survive. >> i hope so. >> i don't know. we are going to need to get rolie fingers. >> he can grow one in its replacement. >> it's one of the greatest mustaches of all time. if it's wednesday a new legal team, and a new legal tactic for president trump. tonight, subpoena talk and shakeups. is the president's political end game getting lost in the legal shuffle? >> i wouldn't suggest that i'm the sole voice of, you know, cooperation in the white house. plus, the minority