d women's healthcare, banned military-style assault weapons, banned workplace discrimination, and more. antonio for governor. hey there. good morning, everyone. i'm alex witt here at msnbc world headquarters in new york at the half hour. we begin with a live picture of the white house trying to temper the fallout after an aide reportedly mocked senator mccain but no one offered an apology. >> does the president set the tone? does he bear responsibility for the tone within this white house? >> 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 the staffers who work here? >> i think he has done a great job laying out what the priorities of the administration are. >> so many of us exposed to these comments. are you saying they are lying? >> sarah, general kelly. >> huh. meanwhile, president trump is now down playing the millions of dollars paid to personal lawyer michael cohen by companies including at&t. the president attacking the media in a tweet saying the trump administration anti-trust division has been and is opposed to the at&t purchase of time warner in a currently ongoing trial. meanwhile, sarah huckabee sanders saying the trump administration opposed at&t and time warner merger despite michael cohen's deals with at&t. >> i think that this further proves that the president is not going to be influenced by

special interest. this is actually the definition of draining the swamp, something the president talked about repeatedly during the campaign. >> let's bring in msnbc political analyst zerlina maxwell for sirius xm. joe watkins, former white house aide to george h.w. bush. and rick tyler, former cruz campaign spokesman. my saturday morning family. good day to you guys. rick, let's get to you first. this administration is holding this up as an example of an anti-swamp mentality. can it be sold successfully that way? >> well, not really. michael cohen is donald trump's, by all accounts, his personal lawyer and continues to be his personal lawyer. it is remarkable he would be trying to sell influence to at&t, a drug company. he was on the campaign trail with donald trump. he knew what he said. so all of this is just baloney, very disingenuous.

what was at&t going to pay for? i could tell you in three sentences how to get at&t's merger do. replace everybody on cnn. i'll send the bill. this is not hard stuff to figure out. >> how about, joe, overall, i think it's a mistake for the white house to push this line about michael cohen's dealings? >> i think it's a mistake. at the end of the day, what happened to drain the swamp? we have all of this evidence. i read in the atlantic it talks about all the people profiteering from having had any kind of relationship with president trump. and being paid incredible fees for it. >> how about this, joe? the white house is saying, hey, okay, he was paid a lot of money but it didn't work, right? so they are draining the swamp. that's what their argument is. >> that's a lousy argument. i think it's a terrible argument. it is an argument that doesn't work. americans are smart enough to

know that people like michael cohen, whether it's worked or not, made lots of money by virtue of their relationship with donald trump. it is not a good argument in the white house. >> i want to get to what sam nunberg said. take a listen. >> if they're going to say michael is not a lawyer for donald. he's not to us. like the way the president almost did on the fox and friends interview. that's a big mistake. his knee-jerk reaction is to push people away, treat them like garbage. he should be careful with what he does with michael. >> do you think that is playing into the white house, zerlina? >> yes. since april 9th when they raided cohen's office has been acting pretty unhinged. post april 9th he did that granting fox and friends interview. he has been tweeting a lot of attacks directly going at robert mueller, rod rosenstein and the

justice department. and now you also see him continuing that line by essentially trying to distance himself at the same time attacking the russia investigation. but i also want to say while it is disturbing to see this level of public corruption giving lots of money to influence meddlers like michael cohen trying to influence policy, the other big news in that slush fund is there was russian money in that slush fund. so i think we are paying amount of attention to the at&ts of the worlds, novartises of the world. this is what we have been looking for all year long. that's what bob mueller is tasked of doing. we should not overlooking that and focusing on at&t. russian money in that slush fund. >> you used the word distance and attack in the same sentence.

they are distancing themselves from michael cohen. they are not attacking michael cohen. is that because he's the fixer? he knows where all the bodies are buried. >> the date that hospitalized, the president unprompted attacked bob mueller and the fbi for doing the raid. i think he is very worried. michael cohen is rumor said to have recordings. he has plenty of documentation that would not be good for donald trump. and we often say and take for granted that donald trump's business practices were not on the up and up. but that shouldn't be something that we should be okay with in terms of somebody with that much power. and i think we're learning a little bit more about the underbelly when you have this abruptness at the highest level. >> i'll start with you, rick to rudy guiliani's feud with stormy daniels's lawyer michael avenatti. he wanted to host a debate.

giuliani refused to because he said i refuse to pimping for money. i don't get involved with pimps. >> how do you hire a lawyer and he goes on national television defending his client with half the facts. it is really a clown show. it is sickening to watch. rudy guiliani could have retired a legend. instead, he's really debased himself. from a communication standpoint, and that's what this is, a pr campaign, it has nothing to do with what's going on with judges and lawyers in a courtroom. >> rick, is there anything to instilling chaos in all of the conversation? just putting more chaos out there and letting giuliani be a vessel for that? >> i mean, that would require

that i would have to buy into a grand conspiracy theory, that we will create so much smoke and clouds. everybody will be confused. granted, people are often confus confused. i don't see how it's a successful pr strategy. if you want a successful pr strategy, you lay out facts that people can understand and repeat. michael avenatti has been doing that. he claims he has a lot more. he's just been rolling it out. he has been playing this sort of reality tv show game better than donald trump has. he's beating him at his own game. >> i want to play for you what anthony scaramucci said about this. here it is. >> stormy daniels or stephanie clifford and michael avenatti are on the hunt to take down donald j. trump. they want to put a hurt on him. they have a process in place where they're trying to do that. the president by and large has done a good job of isolating

this whole story away from any bad outcomes for the president. and i think the mayor, despite all the hullabaloo, he hat gotten information out there and developing a strategy to protect the president. >> what do you think of that? >> that is the opposite of true. the russia investigation, we've reached convergence of the stormy daniels story and the russia investigation this week. and giuliani's strategy to create chaos or confusion is not working. and it's not working in the short-term or the long term. and it really doesn't matter in the long term. because the legal process is going to play out. and mueller is going to do his job. they are going to do their jobs. we will find out eventually all the things that donald trump and michael cohen and associates are trying to hide. in addition, michael avenatti has been very savvy here. lawyers who use the public domain to litigate their cases

often are criticized for doing that. but i think it is a very effective strategy particularly in this case when you can't get a lot of information from bob mueller's team because they are rightfully keeping everything confidential. when you see him go on tv and baiting the white house to make a lot of misstep, i think that's a smart strategy. they are not trying to take out donald trump. she is trying to get out of an nda. michael cohen, up until recently, filed an arbitration case in qaa ska to keep her quiet, and has been essentially threatening her and putting pressure on her to keep her quiet. she wants to tell her story without the threat of having to pay donald trump millions of dollars. that's what's happening. >> all right, guys. what's happening also you will come back in a little bit and we will talk about that wildly inappropriate comment from the would you say aide about senator

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from brighthouse financial- established by metlife. a any comment on immigration. this part of kelly's interview with npr. >> they are also not people that would easily assimilate into the united states. they're overwhelmingly rural people. in the countries they come from, fourth, fifth, six grade educations are a norm. they are coming here for a reason. and i sympathize with the reason. but the laws are the laws. >> he and about 20 other republicans are taking steps to force a debate and subsequent vote on a series of immigration bills including both daka and border security. this is a discharge petition. something paul ryan doesn't really want to proceed with. talk about what you're doing and

why. >> we want to discharge petitions to legislation can come to the floor. it would go to the senate of the united states. we need six or seven or eight more republicans. and to have all the democrats join us. >> is it the queen of the hill. it would have to haved majority. >> you would have a unanimous voice behind you and get the necessary votes from republicans? >> i certainly hope we would have unanimity on the other side. we need some more republicans. we are working to that end. >> this could happen before june 25 is my understanding.

why is that? >> it can only happen, as i understand it, the second and fourth mondays of the month. and that is apparently the next time when we will be in session on monday. >> okay. are you getting pressure from the white house? i mean, you're part of the party that's in the white house. are they pushing back on you saying you're not in lock step with the administration. >> to what answer? because when the president said he's not going to continue with daca and he will put others on tps, he is doing that, is that because he wants all of these people out by a certain time or because he wants them to funnel

through a legal process that allows them to remain in this country as citizens potentially downed road? >> i hope it is the latter. and i fear a legal process. this is a responsibility of the legislative branch of government, alex. we should amend the laws. we should give a right to daca recipients the ability to have citizenship over time. they came here as infants or as toddlers or as children. and i think we should move forward. >> 20 years building their life. you mentioned infants and toddlers. there is a lot of concern by people that are coming to their borders that part of the calculus from the trump administration through dhs and customs is to separate parents from their children that they will be told this is likely to happen to you as a deterrence

for that. >> i don't favor citizenship for them coming legally. but i don't favor citizenship. i favor citizenship for young people who have made their lives here. i don't favor separating families. i think we can have a distinction between the two. >> okay. let's get to the mueller investigation with you here. you have cosponsored the bill to protect special counsel mueller as well as future special counsels. i want to play for you mike pence. here it is. >> it's been about a year since this investigation began. our administration provided over a million documents. we fully cooperated. in the interest of the country, it is time to wrap it up. and i would very respectfulliy n encourage special counsel and the team to bring their work to completion. >> do you think the investigation has gone on too

long, and are you comfortable with the vice president or anyone else trying to put a time frame on robert mueller's investigation? >> i don't think there should be a time frame. i certainly favor the investigation and that is why i am a cosponsor of legislation to protect the special prosecutor and let me say that i will become the principle republican sponsor of that. congressman dent is leaving the congress. this week i will ask to become the principle republican sponsor in the house. >> why does bob mueller need protection? are trump loyalists intimidating him? >> the president has said he's not going to fire mr. mueller. and i think we should make sure that is not the case. and i think the president is well advised not to become involved in that. and i want to protect not only this person mr. mueller the special prosecutor but also those in the future. >> leonard lance, thank you for

joining me from across the river in new jersey. >> happy mother's day. >> thank you. i appreciate that. coming up next, the so-called joke that left many people cringing. the question of the tone inside

does he bear responsibility for the tone set here at the white house and for all the staffers. >> he certainly does, he has done a good job of laying out what the priorities of the administration are. and what they are doing is helping impact americans all across the country. >> the white house press secretary pushing back on reports that an aide joked about senator john mccain's opposition to the c.i.a. director nominee by saying he doesn't matter because he's dying, anyway. this is the "new york times" reports president trump went on a new tirade against the homeland security secretary which nearly led to her resignation. my panel is back with me, rick,

how do you characterize the tone the president is setting for the administration. >> kristen welker has it exactly right. the tone comes from the top down and the fact that a comment like that was left to stand. and they can't correct it, because donald trump has said, arguably worse about john mccain. with kelly sadler could do is to go out on her own and apologize. if she loses her job over that apology. it would be for apologizing, then so be it. but at least you leave with some sort of semblance and dignity intact. >> joe, begin your experience in the bush white house, i'm curious, a scenario like this how unusual is it, in closed-door white house meetings, we know they happen in other administrations and we don't hear about them? >> there really is almost no such thing as a closed-door meeting. even at closed doors there are ears listening and people are going to report it to somebody what was said during the course

of the meeting. so you have to be careful what you say, choose your words very carefully. and there's never any excuse for talking that way about somebody. in a perfect world we're supposed to treat somebody the way we want to be treated. when you make a mistake and say a joke like that in poor taste, you ought to apologize. at the very least, kelly ought to apologize for what she said and the white house ought not to whitewash what she said. >> zerlena, i want to ask you about new reflections on the clinton 2016 race, here's what she said this week while in australia. >> there is still a very large proportion of the population that is uneasy with women in positions of leadership. there is this fear, there is this -- anger, even rage about women seeking power, women exercising power. and people fall back on these attacks, like you're a witch, or

you should go to prison. you know it's not a majority. thank goodness. it's not. but it's a very vocal minority. at least in my country. >> i'm sure you can expect critics who are going to interpret that as an excuse for losing the election. what's your perspective? >> well she's absolutely right. i think that you know, a lot of the data we got back during the campaign, showed this to be true. so there were many situations where there was a wife saying well, my husband doesn't like hillary clinton, so i don't like hillary clinton. or women were essentially articulating internalized misogyny in terms of saying well i don't like hillary clinton because she's not warm. when you don't require that in male candidates and male leadership. and when women are seeking positions of power, we often tie together that ambition with likeability in a athat we don't do with men. so with hillary clinton. she ran in many ways, in the same model of male candidates,

jen palmieri writes about this in her book, "dear madam president." she talks a lot about how hillary clinton had to mimic the characteristics of male candidates, because there was no model for women running for president. so hillary clinton is right to say we have a problem with ambitious women. if that wasn't true we would have had plenty of women who were president and leading this country and we do not. we also see it in the private sector, we would see many more fortune 500 companies have women ceos. >> it is a slow climb up that ladder, that's for sure. hey, thanks for getting through the blast of campaign-style music that came through, zerlena. >> yeah, i just kept going. >> see you next week. in the next hour the outrage after the arrest at a waffle house, a teenager wearing a tuxedo for prom is choked and slammed to the ground.

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