>> that's all for this edition of "dateline extra." i'm craig melvyn. thank you for watching. good morning, i'm tamara brown in new york. it's 7:00 in the east, 4:00 out west. here's what's happening. investigating cohen, new reports of another big company michael cohen approached with his services that as piqued the interest of robert mueller. the latest this morning in a fight between iran and israel. can it all be traced back to president trump nixing the iran deal. the west wing cloud, chief of staff john kelly on the toll the russia investigation is taking. >> well, yeah, you know, there may not be a cloud, but certainly the president is somewhat embarrassed, frankly. >> but is the probe really an embarrassment for the president? that's next on isn't the msnbc

live. we begin with a live picture at the white house continuing to downplay the millions of dollars paid to president trump's personal lawyer michael cohen. president trump attacking the media in a tweet late last night saying the trump administration has been opposed to the purchase of time warner in a currently ongoing trial. meanwhile, the wall street journal says special counsel robert mueller has requested documents from ford motor company after learning michael cohen reached out to the auto giant to provide consulting services. the people familiar said the overture happened in january 2015. he touted his proximity to the -- the white house tampering the fallout after an aide reportedly mocked senator john mccain in a meeting this week. here's what sarah sanders told my colleague christian welker when pressed on whether the comment is a reflection on

president trump's behavior. >> does the president set the tone, bear the responsibility for the tone? >> the president, as i mentioned just a moment ago, supports all americans. >> does he bear responsibility for the tone set here at the white house, and all of the staffers who work here, frankly. >> certainly does, and i think he has done a good job of laying out what the priorities of the administration are. kristen, i'm going to keep moving. sorry, go ahead. >> sarah, general kelly -- >> let's bring in the political reporter covering midterms for nbc news. great to have you both here this morning. >> thanks for having me. allie, start with you, why hasn't the white house done more to condemn the comments? >> usually if you're wrong on a story like this, they will tell you you are. i haven't seen them come out and

say it's not what she said. they're allowing the comments stand. if they don't try to walk them back it will go away. this is one of those situations that most everyone in washington agrees, john mccain really commands a lot of respect both for his service and the job he's done as a senator. i think you're going to have a hard time finding anyone who's not going to roundly condemn these comments, what's stunning for me is how comfortable we've grown with a white house that is willing to speak ill of someone like john mccain. the president is obviously someone who has his own history with these comments against mccain. even after, for example, the health care vote that mccain torpedoed last year, trump has repeatedly brought him up on the campaign trail. crowds routinely boo him. trump and pence came out, and he didn't bring up john mccain at all, not even to say as most in a traditional white house would he's someone who we should respect. that didn't happen. i think this white house is once

again doing the untraditional thing and not walking back these comments at all. >> and kevin, why keep the story alive with that kind of reaction and by refusing to apologize? >> well, i think it's interesting what allie just said about the campaign the other night. it's unusual to not have a public statement thanking senator mccain as well as all the military men and women for their service, in particular senator mccain. two points, first and foremost, yesterday at the white house chief of staff general kelly telling reporters after public remarks from the president that he does not think that there will be any resignations internally as of now with regards to the report of the comments that were made about senator mccain. but the second point that i would raise is that what exactly we're talking about here, and that is a confirmation for gina haspel to lead the cia. senator mccain does not support that. every vote matters in the

senate. i would anticipate gina haspel still gets confirmed, particularly when senator joe mansion, a centrist democrat from west virginia, saying they're supporting her. that all is sort of the backdrop for this political issue, to put it mildly. >> we have another political issue. allie, we're learning more about that tense interrogation, left someone on the verge of resigning. he raised his voice saying nielsen needed to close down the border. we need to shut it down, we are closed. allie, who is leaking these stories? >> i'm not even sure at this point it's worth trying to track down who is leaking them because really you're seeing a consistent stream of top administration officials feeling frustrated when the president

turns his ire on them. i can think back to the campaign, aides were routinely berated when things weren't going trump's way. i think that that's something that has carried over from his time in business, from his time on the campaign and now to his time in the white house. for people who haven't been blindly loyal to him, that's something that could make you frustrated as you go about your day today. a lot of these officials are beginning to realize that. when you have someone like kirstjen nielsen who was recruited to this white house by john kelly, she's not there because she loves the president as so many aides from the campaign would have said. she's here to do her job. when he's berating her in front of a group of people, i can only imagine how that feels. it's not the first story of someone being upset about the president's treatment of them in a disrespectful way. >> payments to michael cohen, your reaction to the white house argument the payments essentially show that pay for play didn't work? >> well, what's interesting here

is that this is something that really fits in with how washington and the swamp has really readjusted and recalibrated in the trump era. we should note that at&t has since announced within the last 48 hours that they have fired the official who was working on that payment. they said that it was not the right decision to have made. we're now hearing that ford motor company is also facing scrutiny for the type of contact that michael cohen, a close confidant of president trump, a fixer as he's described himself, as he's reached out to companies. i think what's interesting here is it just shows the heightened awareness that president trump's inner circle, in the white house and out of the white house, have in terms of their dealings with fortune 20 companies as well as other companies. i think that that scrutiny in this political climate is really impacting the business community as well.

i would just say anecdotally that when you have top ceos gathering at the white house of the top auto industry this week as well, they are walking such a fine political tight rope in and out of the white house at 1600 pennsylvania avenue because of this heightened climate we're in. >> it will be interesting to see what comes from that. john kelly is walking back comments he said the mueller investigation is having on president trump. he said president trump was embarrassed but he later told reporters the president is, quote, distracted. does this signal another breakdown or did he merely misspeak? >> i wouldn't ever describe trump as embarrassed by something. i'm not sure that that's something i've seen hymn really experience. when it comes to the mueller probe, distraction is probably the right word to use. it's hung over everything this administration has tried to do from day one really. the conversation about russia continuing on, i can understand why the white house is now beginning to say, well, the mueller investigation should

wrap up. of course, vice president pence told andrea mitchell that this week. you're seeing the drum beat build a bit from that side of pennsylvania avenue, from the white house side. i will say that kelly has gotten out over his skis now a few times in terms of talking about immigration and now talking about the mueller probe. we've heard stories repeatedly over the course of the past few weeks and even months that their relationship has grown strained and really, i think that kelly is coming up on that point where if you track campaign managers from the campaign days they really didn't last, you know, six to eight months was the normal time period. chief of staff is now that new role that you have to watch and kind of think about how long can someone stay as the president's top handler, so to speak, without -- until that relationship becomes so stressed and so strained that they have to eventually part ways. we have, of course, been hearing the bubblings of that story, back this year, myself and some of my fellow colleagues at the white house were reporting trump

was feeling people out on possible replacements. those stories bubble up from time to time. it's one you have to watch, especially as kelly does more interviews to raise eyebrows and get people talking about him in the spotlight and the way he competes with president trump, and that's never a good look in trump's orbit. >> so much more to talk about. stay with us, please. sweetening the deal to get north korea to denuclearize, what the secretary of state says is now on the table. up next. it was my very first car accident.

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you are. >> reporter: well, thanks, dara, just yesterday, tensions were really reaching a tipping point. that's when israeli troops shot and killed a palestinian on the israeli/gaza border. that caps off six weeks of protests. they're protesting against the right of return, want to be able to return to israel. they're demonstrating against donald trump's decision on monday. to move the embassy from tel-aviv to jerusalem. they're expecting hundreds of thousands of protestors to come out here on monday and the day after that for catastrophe day. they're protesting against the 70th anniversary of the founding of israel. there's expectations the

demonstrators will be walking towards that border fence. you can barely see, it's being guarded by israeli snipers. they're using live ammunition. during the last six weeks of protests they have shot and killed almost 50 palestinian demonstrators and injured thousands more. it's a very tense situation and coming at a very tense time for israel. just this past week, the israelis exchanged missile fire with the iranians in syria. this is an unprecedented escalation of tension between those two juggernauts. ic expect those to persist even as there's an upswell of anger throughout the entire arab and muslim world. >> thank you for that. joining me now is christoph christopher dickie. is this escalation a direct result of president trump killing the iran deal?

>> well, i think it's all kind of related. i mean, the things that matt was talking about, the moving the embassy, all of that is certainly a huge element as far as the palestinians are concerned. that's created an uptick in tension in the region. but in terms of iran and attacking iran, or iranian troops and units in syria, i think yes, absolutely. i think that netanyahu has a license to kill from trump. before, under obama, there were -- there was a lot of tension, a lot of effort to reign in netanyahu. and now there's no effort to reign in netanyahu. he's basically being told if you want to go after iran in syria, feel free to do it. >> christopher, you said you feel like there's a green light here. are israel and iran heading for war? >> well, some people say they already are at war. that's probably an exaggeration.

what we're going to see, i think, is a series of flare-ups in which you will have more and more forceful measures taken by netanyahu and by the israeli defense forces. they basically do not want, cannot stand the idea of iranian military on their borders or close to their borders. that's just not going to be tolerated. it was bad enough with hezbollah in south lebanon. but to have iranian forces, the revolutionary guard corps or its proxies in proximity to the israeli border, that is absolutely unsustainable from netanyahu's point of view. >> iran's supreme leader appeared in a photo with a copy of "fire and fury," a book highly critical of president trump. what message is he sending? >> that trump is a lunatic, and

that if you want to have rational policy the message is essentially to europe. if you want to have rational policy you need to work with us, not against us. trump has taken a deal that was a solid deal and thrown it out the window with the apparent fantasy that he can make a bigger deal, a better deal, a surer deal, a safer deal. because, after all, he's all about the art of the deal. essentially, by holding up "fire and fury," the iranians are making the point he is an irrational player, not a rational one, and as a result nobody should trust him. >> let's talk about the deal. is president trump using a bombastic strategy with iran in the same way he did with north korea? can he be confident that it worked on north korea? >> well, you know, i think if you go back in the history of american contacts with north korean leaders, back to jimmy carter in 1994 or back to the director of national intelligence, james clapper,

back in 2014, the message was always the same, essentially, by the north koreans. they want a peace treaty. they want an opening to the rest of the world. but they want it on their terms. what we see now is that trump is giving them the first thing that they wanted, his presence, a meeting, a high-level summit meeting between the leader of this hermit kingdom, kim jong-un, and the leader of the united states, the greatest nation in the world. that's a huge concession to the north koreans. maybe, if they can get a treaty that will end the american military presence in south korea and that will assure the dynasty of the kim family forever, they will actually denuclearize, in which case the world would be a safer place. but human rights would go completely out the window. and we don't in fact, what the the real long-term effects of that would be. >> mike pompeo says the u.s.

will help build north korea's economy if it agrees to give up nuclear weapons. what do you make of this offer? >> well, i think it's part of that picture where north korea -- what kim jong-un wants to offer his people is peace and prosperity. if he gets a treaty, he can claim that that is peace, or he can claim his nuclear deterrence gives him peace. but the prosperity doesn't come with it. that's what he's trying to achieve. what pompeo is saying we'll help get you the prosperity. >> christopher, thank you for joining us. next, what about jared, the president's son-in-law, and his role in getting the u.s. embassy moved to jerusalem. why he won't be in the spotlight for monday's opening. legendary jockey víctor espinoza is insatiable when it comes to competing. ♪ ♪ so is his horse. ♪ ♪ when it comes to snacking.

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the white house rounding out the week with renewed uncertainty over whether gina haspel will be confirmed as cia

director. >> i don't think she was forthcoming in her answers. she was very careful, almost lawyerly, although she kept saying she's not a lawyer. but you had to sort of pry the information out of her. we had a closed session for three hours after that meeting, and the answers weren't anymore forthcoming. in fact, i got very frustrated and felt that in some ways they were worse than we had in the public hearing. >> let's bring back -- we don't know yet, the momentum according to the sources i've spoken with on capitol hill, as well as the intelligence community this week, dara, is that she did what she needed to do, and is moving forward and ahead on this. there's support she got from a democrat senator joe mansion. he's up for reelection. this is something she's been criticized on torture. i talked to folks who said what

about when mr. brennan, when democrats supported him, also someone involved in the interrogation techniques process after 9/11. according to the sources i'm talking with, they feel she has that momentum on her side. >>allie, rand paul voiced his opposition. he said her inability to answer the questions about her actual role in these interrogations is a problem. is the white house hoping they can per said rand paul at the last minute? >> they've done it before. there is definitely that hope. i think that joe mansion is a critical person to mention here, politics totally on display. he is going to want to go home and make the case to west virginians. kevin's right. rand paul gets to the heart of an important issue, repeatedly gina haspel was asked her personal view on torture and didn't give it. she said she wouldn't restart the program at cia now. there was really no personal, i

believe that this is wrong. i think that's the answer that a lot of senators who might have been on the fence were looking at, especially rand paul. >> before i let you go, let's talk about jared kushner, heading to jerusalem monday. he will be on the ground as an attendee of the delegation, and not as a leader. kevin, you first, what are the dynamics at play? >> i'm going to leave the policy intrigue aside. it's a monumental shift in u.s. policy to have the opening of the embassy happen. it comes at a time in the same week president trump has withdrawn from the iran nuclear disarmament deal. it comes at a time when we're a few weeks away with the meeting with kim jong-un on june 12th in singapore. >> real quick, 15 seconds, what do you make of this? >> i will pick up the internal politics. it shows the state department is inserting a lot more influence than rex tillerson. world leaders know he's speaking

on behalf of the president in a way tillerson could not convince them. >> great to have you here. that will do it for me, i'm dara brown. thanks for watching. at the top of the hour, it's hugh huett. but first j.j. ramberg. 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. what's in your wallet?

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