tensions are running high. the decision distances the united states from allies who have kept their embassies in tel aviv. >> and more fallout for michael cohen. there's new reporting about consulting services he offered after donald trump won the presidency. >> and growing backlash after a white house aide reportedly mocked senator john mccain. his daughter megan says she was promised a public apology, but so far there's been nothing.

>> good morning, everybody. t it is monday, may 14th. i'm yasmin vossoughian. in just a couple of hours the new u.s. embassy in israel will officially open in jerusalem. wh where do things stand right now? >> well, today's events follow president trump's historic yet highly controversial decision last year to recognize jerusalem as israel's capital and move the u.s. embassy there from tel aviv. obviously israel gained control over east jerusalem in the six-day war back in 1967 although that claim has not been internationally recognized by the united nations and even sbo until the u.s.' decision the handful of nations that followed has been few. it's opening in a preamerican consulate building and not a new facility. at least not yet. the delegation which includes

ivanka trump, jared kushner. john sullivan and others, all arrived in a tense jerusalem yesterday. they were greeted by prime minister benjamin netanyahu. >> 100,000 protests, they are expected to take part in multiple protests today as we've been seeing through the weekend and hamas has called on tens of thousands of people to join in and has indicated they may try to breach israel's border near gaza as israeli defense forces have doubled the amount of troops stationed along that border in anticipation of today's events. it's following several violent clashes which broke out over the weekend including in gaza at the temple mount in jerusalem. talk to me about what you ooefz been seeing there. i know that you arrived late saturday afternoon. what have you been seeing on the ground there so far? >> well, there are three important days and as we were talking about this yesterday, yesterday marked jerusalem day,

a controversial day in its own right. it's the day that israel celebrates as a national holiday when it celebrates what it says is the reuniany occasion of the city of jerusalem east and west but it's measured by a lot of marches through the muslim quarter of the old city. gestures that the palestinians say are provocative and offensive and it's part of three days of concern for the israeli government because as you mentioned and we are going to get a live report from gaza, there are expected to be hundreds of thousands of protesters marching along the border and tomorrow after the embassy opens palestinians commemorate what is known as the catastrophe day. that is the day that the state of israel was founded and hundreds of thousands of palestinians went as refugees into neighboring countries and began the palestinian refugee crisis. so from a perspective of what's on the ground, a very tense atmosphere, but as you mentioned, yesterday the israeli government was all celebrations. it was a festive atmosphere as

they welcomed the high rajing delegation and that too has not been without controversy. one of the pastors that is going to be speaking at the opening ceremony, a controversial figure. he has been known to make some comments that are considered to be anti muslim and other statements. mitt romney criticized the pastor for his views on mormonism and even the event itself has been shrouded in controversy. >> i know that i was on air with you last night and you had some incredible interviews talking with the spokes people from the palestinian side and the israeli side. talk to me about the official response you're hearing from both sides ahead of this opening of the u.s. embassy. >> the israeli government has been clear about this. this is a historic moment. the streets will be lined with american flags. we've seen many of the buses playing off of the trump make

america great slogan. you see buses with the slogan make israel great. so there's definitely a festive atmosphere. a lot of praise toward the american administration. a completely different tone as you can imagine coming out of the palestinian side. in fact, the mission in d.c. said that the decision by the u.s. to move its embassy there was the end of the u.s.'s role in trying to broker a two-state solution. they called the decision pushing israel closer to the line of a full fledged apartide state. >> putting the u.s. in a very different position to say the least when it comes to the israeli palestinian conflict. we'll be following this story all morning. but turning to north korea saying it's going to hold a ceremony for dismantling its nuclear test site later this month on the 23rd through the 25th of may. in a statement run on state media a north korea foreign ministry says all the tunnels in

the testing ground will be destroyed by explosion, and that above ground observation, security and research facilities will also be removed. in addition, north korea says it will invite journalists from the united states, south korea, china, russia and great britain to witness these events. in a tweet president trump sent his thanks to the dprk adding it is a quote, very smart and a very gracious gesture. kim jong un previously announced he would shut down the test site although prior reporting indicates that it at least partially collapsed and is most likely unusable going forward. >> rudy giuliani kept up his rapid pace of comments say. quote as far as we know he's not. he also added that the president's current legal team has never really determined a

precise day when cohen stepped away. the president referred to cohen as one of my personal attorneys after the raid on cohen's offices on april the 9th and tweeted attorney client privilege is dead on april the 10th. the white house has side stepped questions on cohen's status as well. and the wall street journal reports that cohen bragged about his relationship with the president. a source said cohen told lawyers at the firm he could call the boss any time. cohen's business deals giuliani said the president said to him quote, i had no idea. he certainly never lobbied me. >> so new reporting from the wall street journal showing an aggressive approach from cohen to profit off of his relationship with donald trump. in addition to at&t and other companies cohen reportedly offered consulting services to

ford and to uber which both rejected his overtures. bob mueller's team has reached out to ford requesting information on cohen's outreach and has interviewed the head of foreign affairs. the journal reports that uber cited new york taxi business as a copen tshl conflict of interest and that he then modified his pitch to no avail reminding the company that he has quote -- or he was quote, the president's lawyer. cohen's overall pitch was blunt, telling prospective clients that they should fire whomever was advising them and saying quote, i have the best relationship with the president on the outside and you need to hire me. meanwhile, at&t says the executive who oversaw cohen's contract with the telecom giant has in fact retired although the wall street journal reports that he was forced out according to people familiar with the matter. friday the company's ceo sent a memo to staff saying that hiring

cohen as a political consultant was a quote, big mistake. and the fallout is continuing after white house communications aid kelly sadler mocked senator john mccain's diagnosis during an internal meeting last thursday. axios reporting that after the leak of the callous remark a visibly upset and furious sarah huckabay sanders scolded the white house communications team on friday calling the leaks, quote, disgusting. at one point in the meeting, one saying that she stood with sadler. a source said. her point was that when one staff member is publicly targeted by other members of the staff she thinks that's inappropriate and the team should support staffers subject to leaks. >> mccain said she asked sadler to publicly apologize and sadler

agreed to do so but that apology has not happened yet. >> gabby, happy monday to you. good to talk to you this morning. >> happy monday. >> et wilet's talk about the mi cohen cloud, shall we say? it's continuing to grow and grow and grow. as the weeks progress. what do you make sort of on the growing focus of his -- of his consulting work and how we're learning more about this and the companies that he's sort of tried to lobby for more government -- for more work. and what impact do you think this is having on the mueller investigation so far? >> well, i mean, it's not unusual for somebody this close to a sitting u.s. president to be pitching himself in order to give advice to various fortune 100 companies and bigger corporations, but what is unusual about this situation is how many companies michael cohen approached in the days and months after president trump won his election victory. i mean, he was out there basically shopping himself

around to you know, dozens and dozens of companies all of whom are now at risk of being contacted by the special counsel's team to figure out whether or not they added him to their payroll and if they did, you know, what conversations took place, what kind of work he was actually doing for them, whether he should have in fact, been registered as a lobbyist. these are all the questions that are surrounding this and it is a huge deal for the special counsel and one that could drag this probe out even longer. >> we know he was not in fact registered as a lobbyist which is interesting to say the least considering all the lobbying that he was in fact doing or trying to do anyway. let's talk about the move of the u.s. embassy from tel aviv to jerusalem. i was just talking to ayman who's been in jerusalem for the last couple of days. causing a lot of tension over in the middle east to say the least. how do you think though, that this could impact domestic politics? >> well, i think the biggest issue now is for jared kushner

who's been working to try and broker middle east peace deal for several monos now. that seems like it's almost in the can because of this move. domestically this is something that obviously really helps the president's base. he's -- this is something that reverses decades of american foreign policy. it may have the possibilities of escalating tensions even further in the region especially between iran and israel, but here it's certainly a move that will invigorate the president's supporters and something they'll be keeping a close eye on today. >> and it's very much about his base decisions that he's making lately. i'm going to talk to you again at the bottom of the hour. thank you, gabby. >> much more on today's embassy move. april's military is bracing for violence in gaza and the west bank. we'll get a live report once again. plus, john kelly seems to take a page out of president trump's play book. what the chief of staff has to say about the white house press

corps. those stories and of course a check on your weather when we come back.

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xfinity. the future of awesome. if you're not prepared to recognize the jerusalem is the capital of israel and that's where the american embassy should be, then you're operating on a completely different wave length. i think recognizing reality always enhances the chances for peace. >> all right. welcome back, everybody. that was national security advisor john bolton talking about the israel embassy move. i want to go back to our colleague who's standing by for us in jerusalem. on the one hand there's the israeli side of things and what they believe and obviously now what the americans believe just hearing from john bolton there and then there is the palestinian side and of course what is happening in gaza which is really ground zero for everything and really what hamas is advising the palestinians to do going forward, talk to me about what you've been hearing from the ground there with regards to gaza specifically.

>> yeah, well, you know, as you mentioned, the situation in gaza is very dire for the past six weeks. we have had sit-in protests but it's compounded by the humanitarian crisis. we actually want to now cross over to gaza, bring in our correspondent who is reporting there. we know the situation today has been violent. we know the protests continue. what can you tell us about what is unfolding today there in the context of what we are seeing in terms of the protests and the sit-in marches? >> well, we're now right at the border between the gaza strip and israel. we're seeing quite a lot of almost festival like atmosphere. women and children coming here waving flags, i don't know if you can hear some of that music in the background that's playing, but this has been a

couple of, you know, a very violent situation unfolding and we saw just about half an hour ago what looked like hundreds, perhaps thousands of protesters running parallel to the razor wire border area and it looked like they were running south to what seemed to be at least a small and temporary breach in that line and that's the goal of the protesters here. this border -- >> yeah, it's really -- >> this has been a decade long blockade. >> we know that the israeli military is watching that situation closely. they eve doubled the number of soldiers and forces on the border over the last 48 hours. >> i quickly want to ask, i think for those people that don't know, important to clarify from you, if you could sort of just bring some clarity to the situation with regards to the

current support from the palestinians for hamas at this current time. how are people feeling about the hamas leadership in gaza right now? >> well, you know, there oo's two parts to that. there's been obviously growing disappointment over the past several years. palestinians have been divided between the rival political factions. not really a lot of official polling but certainly the popularity has waned because of the way they've governed the gaza strip. i spent a lot of time there. they make a distinction between how hamas runs the gaza strip and how hamas operates as a resistance movement toward israeli occupation. >> and there's a separation how it's being governed by hamas. ? >> the pa has international relations. people can travel freely. the economic conditions in the west bank, very different than the situation in gaza.

so there is a political divide, but also a very different divide among palestinians between the quality of their lives. >> all right. we'll have much more from jerusalem and from ayman in the coming hour. thanks. >> still ahaeead, the celtics sm roll the cavs routing king james and the company in game one while on the ice the capitals remain firmly in the driver's seat. details next in sports. that was pretty good. at some point, we are going to be able to beat als. because life is amazing. so i am hoping for a cure. i want this, to uh, to be a reality. um, yeah.

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welcome back. time now for sports starting with the nhl playoffs. to tampa where the lightning hoped to even their series with the caps. but the caps scored their first goal 28 seconds into the game. the lightning would score two during separate power plays but the capitals would go to score five unanswered. his tenth goal of the playoffs. the capitals finish the game with a 6-2 win and now control the series 2-0. to the nba playoffs and the cavaliers and celtics competing for the second year in a row. the celtics making a statement in game one racking up a 21-point lead in the first quarter and going ahead by half-time before defeating cleveland 103-83 in a blowout. brown scored a game high 23 points for boston. marcus morris played a big role in suppressing the impact of

lebron james who's held to a post season low 15 points with 7 turnovers. game two is tomorrow night in boston and the cavs listen out for revenge for sure. all right. to baseball, the yankees hosting the a's but they wouldn't need to rally this time like in their previous outing thanks in part to 4-4 including a home run. his tenth on the season and three rbis, the yankees win that one 6-2. the red sox are in step with their rivals after designated j.t. martinez contributed three rbis and from this nice play in the field this catch from betts in the bottom of the fourth, the red sox are tied for first in the al east with the yankeesi shaking up to be a good riflry. and pink caps, gloves, socks and even bats in honor of a very special person in all of our lives, our moms. teams across the league

celebrated mother's day with tributes and used the day to raise awareness for breast cancer and als research and speaking of mother's day, oh, baby, you had a really, really funny tweet yesterday and a big announcement for those of you who don't know, we have a new addition coming to the morning joe first look family. >> yeah, we certainly do. yeah, so my growing girth on camera is not just because of the overwhelming amount of pizza i've been eating but i do have a baby due in august so we're super excited for that and i sort of reiterated to my son yesterday that mommy had a baby in his belly and he said i have a baby in my belly and i'm like no, no, that doesn't really work and then he punched me in the face so i think things are looking up. >> we're very excited for you. >> thanks, i'm excited for you. oh, baby. still ahead, president trump challenges congress to get more work done this summer and we continue to follow the latest

out of jerusalem ahead of today's u.s. embassy opening. we'll be joined by my colleague once again for that. we'll be right back, everybody. you fine tune the proposal, change the water jug so no one else has to, get home for dinner and feed the cat. you did a million things for your family today but speaking to pnc to help handle all your investments was a very important million and one. pnc. make today the day. ♪ ♪ adapt supply chains based on trends, tweets and storms. and make adjustments on the fly. ♪ ♪

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welcome back, everybody. i i'm yasmin vossoughian. it is the bottom of the hour. let's start with the morning's top stories. we are just hours away from the official opening on the new u.s. embassy in israel. it follows president trump's historic let highly con t controversial decision to

recognize jerusalem as israel's capital and move the u.s. embassy there from tel aviv. >> it's not an actual new facility, at least not yet. the american delegation which includes ivanka trump and jared kushner and also steve mnuchin. it also includes john sullivan and others. they arrived in a tense jerusalem yesterday. they were greeted by prime minister benjamin netanyahu. >> and protesters are expected to take part in protests and hamas has called on tens of thousands of people to join in and has end katsed they may try to breach the border. they've doubled the amount of troops stationed along that border. it's following several violent clashes which broke out over the weekend including in gaza and at the temple mount in jerusalem.

you've been there the last couple of days. talk to me about what you've been seeing and what can expect in the sort of day ahead. >> yeah, well, you know, a couple hours from now that very important ceremony is expected to attend. it's going to have a very high level of representation in the israeli government. everyone from the president including the prime minister on down to senior members of the parliament and the cabinet its has the american delegation as well. but in addition to that, what you you saw is a festive atmosphere from the israeli side. we've seen american flags line the the streets of jerusalem. we've seen trucks as well as banners that say trump make israel great. a play off of his make america great again slogan and you've also seen slogans and banners saying friend is a friend of zion so it gives you a spence of that perspective. but a very different notion on

the other side. palestinians saying it is the end of a two-state solution and that america can no longer be trusted to bring an end to this conflict. >> there was a time where we thought maybe the president or the vice president would also be attending the opening of this embassy considering it was such a controversial move and president trump really hanging his hat on this mover to say the least and a lot of people saying this is very much about his base. are we hearing about why the president or the vice president decided not to attend the opening? >> we haven't heard any official reasons. maybe our white house unit has, but you know, the situation given what the president has been talking about over the past couple of days and even the vice president, mike pence who had a trip scheduled and had cancelled that to really focus on the upcoming north korea summit give you a sense of what the u.s. is focused on. this has been a very busy week for the trump administration. they had the release of the

three north car renos and the announce at of the summit so perhaps logistically it didn't work but you now have the american administration represented by the president's daughter as well as his son-in-law and members of the cabinet as well as mes of both political parties. >> all right. we're going to be following this story, but i want to get to some other news now. president trump is calling on senators and congressmen to forego their august recess and stay in the nation's capital. the president wants congress to approve his nominations and pass another funding bill before a deadline toward the end of september to avoid a third government shutdown this year. this comes of course after a senate republican sent a letter to mitch mcconnell last week in which they advocated for the cancellation of the august recess. >> and in a recent interview with npr white house chief of staff john kelly criticizes the white house press corps. he compares it to the pentagon

press corps calling them vastly different adding that now it's quote, personal and vicious. he goes on to share an anecdote telling npr quote, i did my first off the record, but after about six weeks on the job one of the reporters said to me, look, you are our worst nightmare. this place was a clown show before you showed up. we didn't think this president would last a year or 18 months. the leaks all but went away, so sorry, but you got to go. >> all right. so john kelly's also facting criticism over fact comments that he made about immigration. >> the vast majority of the people that move illegally into the united states is not bad people. they're not criminals. they're not ms-13. but they're not also people that would asim plasimilate into thed

states. they're coming here for a reason and i sympathize with the reason, but the laws are the laws. >> so according to npr's transcript he goes on to say quote, a big name of the game is deterrence. the chief of staff also defended the administration's new zero tolerance policy that would separate immigrant parents from children saying quote, the children will be taken care of, put into foster care or whatever, but the big point is they elected to come illegally into the u.s. and this is a tech ne neek that no one hopes that will be used for very long. joining me now, gabby, good to see you. let's talk about this john kelly debacle now and this wide ranging interview which is pretty rare for john kelly to say the least with npr. what do you think were the most surprising takeaways and his missteps to be quite honest. >> the immigration comments attracted a lot of attention. him saying that he fears most

immigrants coming into this country illegally are not able to assimilate because they lack certain levels of education. this is obviously been a pillar of this administration's immigration policy dating back to the blue print that they aufred for legal and illegal immigration reform where they talked about wanting to bring in immigrants who are english speaking who have reached certain technical skills or have at least a bachelor's degree level of education. i think those comments were surprising nonetheless. the other surprising thing, the russia investigation. >> that was pretty surprising mpl let's talk here about president trump sort of pushing congress to skip the august recess and stay to pass a number of bills and nominations and make sure that we don't have a government shutdown once again. do you think we could actually see congress give in to trump's

demands? this will be an august that a lot of members of congress look forward to. >> we've been here before. last year around this same time we were talking about making congress stay in washington to deal with the obamacare repeal and replace effort and that obviously didn't happen. and so you know, i think that this is something that conservatives in, you know, on capitol hill are going to be pushing congressional leaders to do. obviously the president is pressuring them to stay ahead of this big budget deadline in late september but ultimately the august recess is something that a lot of lawmakers cherish. it's a time to meet with their constituents and especially in a midterm election it's probably one they're going to want. >> thank you. all right. still ahead, we're going to go back overseas for the latest on the relocation of the u.s. embassy there. plus, bill karins will have a check on that forecast when we come back. you've tried moisturizer after moisturizer

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president trump is making history. we are deeply grateful and our people will be eternally grateful for his bold decision to recognize jerusalem as israel's capital and to move the embassy there tomorrow. >> all right. so that was benjamin netanyahu yesterday and joining us now live from london, nbc news international correspondent cal perry. so while president trump's decision to officially recognize jerusalem as the capital was bold, one not recognized by several of america's european allies. >> yeah, listen, more than two thirds of the u.n. general assembly voting against any american recognition including the united kingdom, france and germany. add to that something we saw from a saudi prince saying that america is pushing aside rule of law and justice and respect of international agreements for the sake of political calculations, but let me ask you two questions

and keep it quick, the first one is for me, why the ceremony at all? it seems like it's almost an intentional alienation of all these protesters that we're seeing. >> yeah, when you look at who's attending from the representatives and the speakers that are going to be at that ceremony it's not a lot of diversity in reflecting israel's di v diversity or the america diversity. you don't have any representatives of other faiths represented there so you get a sense really that this is an allegiance that is emerging between the american administration and this right wing government here in israel between evangelicals and the hard core settler movement. so very controversial with some of the pastors that are going to be speaking today as well. >> and we go way back, you've done things in gaza that i don't know any other reporter has

done. where does this sort of rank when you look at these pictures of people rushing towards the fence line, we've talked a lot about the first and second. does this rate up there from what you've sort of seen? >> yeah, i mean, this is something we've never seen before in gaza. when you think of who's organizing this, this has a grass roots element to it. it started on social media. political factions are not encouraged to lead it. we know from our own reporting on the ground there that the factions flags, the palestinian factions flags are not being flown there and the large scale aspect of this, 150,000 palestinians expected to try to get to that border it's posed a new security challenge that i think has caught them a little bit by surprise. a lot of criticism how the israelis are responding to this with live ammunition and even some journal u.s.s being caught up and killed in these attacks. >> yeah, listen, i appreciate it. be safe and matt bradley, be

safe out there. >> all right. thanks for that. i want to turn now to bill karins with a check on your weather. >> sorry about your mother's day forecast there. >> that's okay. >> it was ugly. >> i had to come anchor for a couple of hours so it makes the day a little bit better when it's raining outside that you have to come in and work. >> that was your gift from me. nice rainy sunday. so florida's been rainy too. what's interesting about this is that a hurricane center is now tracking this and they're saying there's a 30% chance this could become a tropical depression or possibly a tropical storm. but even if it does so, the winds are not going to be strong enough to do any damage or anything like that. it's just a huge rain threat over florida. this is the five-day development zone. if it does develop it would be in the next two days because this would move inland over the 48 hours from now. just a reminder that hurricane season is not that far away. they've had drought conditions so not a lot of flooding but

some could get up to five inches. 2 to 3 inches in miami. orlando 1 to 2 inches of rain and same around gainesville and jacksonville. the summer like heat record highs, everyone very warm. in around that we call it the ring of fire. it's so hot and humid and the air is pumping around it when it hits the cooler air to the north we get severe thunderstorms and that's why today we have 33 million people at risk of severe thunderstorms and that's why there's this rainbow arc around this high pressure and dome. so from oklahoma to chicago, to toledo, to columbus, back down here to areas around washington, d.c. and richmond we could see strong thunderstorms with strong gusty winds. tornado threats very low today but keep in mind you're traveling throughout this region especially later on this evening. >> president trump does an about face on trade with china vowing to take action to save one of

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simple. easy. awesome. xfinity. the future of awesome. welcome back. president trump says he's working with china to ease sanctions on a major chinese telecom country in a bid to keep jobs in that company. he tweeted xi and i are working on a way to give zte a way to

get back into business fast. commerce department has been instructed to get it done. the president's intervention comes less than a month after zte was hit with an order from u.s. companies from selling components to the chinese business over accusations it shipped goods to north korea and iran in violation of u.s. sanctions. the company had said that the ban cuts off access to u.s. suppliers of essential components of microchips and even threatening its existence. it marks a sharp shift in a tone after long accusing china of stealing u.s. jobs. some believe the administration hoped to use this in trade negotiations. u.s. officials are expected to meet with xi's top economic advisor to discuss issues there. >> and asian markets closed higher as shares in hong kong serged. we're joined live from london. garn, good morning. what more can you tell us about

this? >> the u.s. president olive branch to the chinese telecom company is seen as a sign of improving relations. talks. it's been suspended since the problems with u.s. authorities. you saw reaction elsewhere. meantime, here in europe, shares in ericson and noyia have dropped in trading today as a result of the turn of events. meantime in other news, activists and investors have foiled a deal between japan's fuji holdings and u.s. photo copy xerox. they have objected to the pricing of the transaction saying it undervalues xerox and claim there are a number of investors waiting in the wings including apollo. but keep in mind that fuji

holdings and xerox have a number of closely-linked businesses. it might be difficult for another buyer to step into the arena. watch this closely. >> thanks so much. coming up, everybody, axios's jim and have high has a look at this morning's one big thing. coming up on "morning joe," much more on the u.s. moving the embassy to jerusalem. the potential fallout from that decision as president trump breaks with decades of u.s. policy on the matter. plus, more on the new details on president trump's former personal lawyer michael cohen and his efforts to seemingly profit off of that relationship as his current lawyer rudy giuliani continues to create new messes for his boss. "morning joe" just moments away. ! oh my gosh! how are you? well watch this. i pop that in there. press brew. that's it. look how much coffee's in here? fresh coffee. so rich. i love it. that's why you should be a keurig man! full-bodied.

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>> jonathan swan had this terrific item over the weekend about why this white house leaks. one of the reasons this hit is always so much fun and cable has so much to work with trump is there's more leaking in one week of the trump white house than you might see in a year of a presidency. and so swan had the clever idea to call up some of the most p prolific leakers. so many said it was about score settling. making sure they're killing ideas or tamping down people who might be on the rise because they don't like the ideas or don't like those people. i think part of that tone is set at the top of the trump white house. the other thing is they do worry sometimes about ideas that are making it up to the boss that might get out. so there's a lot of leaking that's done to try to terminate those ideas before they become a reality. that's one of the defining qualities of this presidency because you have this lens into a white house that's very unusual. if you look back at previous presidencies, rarely did this

many people tell you in realtime what's actually happening, especially the ugly stuff. usually they're spinning what a great leader there is and how everyone gets along. this white house a lot of transparency for good and bad. >> there's also a lot of people inside the white house that are looking internally to see who these leakers are down, trying to tamp that down. what are those leakers doing to cover those tracks to make sure they're not identified? >> you make sure you have a good relationship with the reporter you're dealing with and not leaking something that you would be the person knowing it. funny thing over the weekend, there was this meeting on friday, sarah sanders, press secretary, has a meeting. says i know somebody is going to leak this and then goes on to condemn people for leaking that comment that press aide made about john mccain. within hours it's leaked. it was on axios. a full description of what happened in that meeting that she asked not to have leaked knew would be leaked. it's leaked by a group of people

that included several leakers. i think it's just a microcosm of what happens at a lot of these meetings. it's not just the dmun indications team. you're seeing this happen with meetings in the situation room, meetings with donald trump. by the way, trump himself talks to so many people on the phone at night that a lot of leaking gets done that way. so i think one of the things that we're going to look back on 10, 20 years from now is that you really do have on thes of viz ability into the wild days of trump white house you haven't seen in previous presidencies. >> does the management style of the white house have anything to do with this extreme level of leaking that we've been seeing? >> absolutely. anybody who is a manager or has a manager, the tone is always set at the top. he doesn't care if you leak. obviously he's wildly improvisational and loves media himself and likes the game of media even when he condemns it frequently on twitter. so, yes, all habits good and bad flow down. i think one of the habits that's

flowed down is there is a lot of leaking and a lot of chaos inside this white house, which by the way, this isn't just a media thing. it has consequences. it makes it a lot harder to get big things done. a president who is trying to do an iran deal and get the koreans to get rid of their nuclear arsenal and trying to clamp down on china and trying to avoid or perhaps provoek a trade war with china. these are big things when you have these daily distractions with a white house that's stretched pretty thin, it's problematic. that's one of the frustrations you hear from republicans is that they're like, listen, we have all republican rule. we should be jamming through tons of legislation, lots of big things done and they can't get it done because of this. >> i also know you're looking at lessons for future politicians on how to be the better version of president trump. what is the sort of trump way offer to these future candidates? >> a couple ones, but the big one would be that donald trump has shown us and i think shown future politicians that people

are way more malleable than we thought. he flipped the republican party on deficits. he has flipped the republican party on globalization and trade. he has flipped the republican party even on its views of russia. he's flipped the republican party big chunk of it on its views of fbi. and so what he has shown is that the rules we thought party stands for one thing, other party stands for another might not be true. the power of the presidency might be more powerful than we thought because he's been able to switch the republican views on core topics. >> he's certainly broke an lot of rules and norms. thanks for joining us. we'll be reading axios am in just a little bit. you can sign up for the newsletter at axios.com. that does it for us on this monday morning. "morning joe," everybody, starts right now. this morning, the united

states will open its new embassy in jerusalem, a move praised by israel and condemned by palestinians. we'll have live coverage from the scene and full analysis at the table. meanwhile, rudy giuliani, he's on the news again, walking back his own comments that appeared to suggest that president trump intervened in the justice department's decision to block a megamerger on wall street. we'll have the latest on that. and, also where the michael cohen case stands today. good morning, everyone. welcome to "morning joe." it's monday, may 14th. with us we have the president of the council on foreign relations and author of the book "a world in disarray" richard haase. >> nick confessorry, former aide to the george w. bush white house and state department now msnbc political analyst, elise jordan. >> and pulitzer p