they leaked. and some people even said that they mimic the i had ydioms of other colleagues, so that the leaks will sound like someone else. >> thank you, mike. we'll be reading axios a.m. in just a little bit. to our viewers, you can sign up for the newsletter at axios.com. "morning joe" starts right now. come on, charlie brown, it's a big honor for you. ♪ >> wow, if it's that important, a person should never turn down a big honor. maybe i should do it. besides, she wouldn't try to trick me on traditional holiday. this time i'm going to kick that football clear to the moon!

>> again? >> it keeps happening. >> in this case it's kim jong un moving that football. and president trump, not charlie brown, left swinging in the air. >> so many times before. >> as it has happened, sometimes before. north korea has done a 180. pulling the plug on meetings with the south and threatening to scuttle a planned sit-down with president trump. welcome to "morning joe," it's wednesday, may 16, we have national affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc and executive producer and co-host of showtime's "the circus" jon heilemann. >> it seems a little unfair to compare kim jong un to lucy. >> i didn't really like lucy. >> and heidi przybilla and nbc news national security analyst jeremy bash. i think it's not like they had history to look at, right? how would they know? >> let us hope that something

good comes out of this. but yesterday for anybody that has spent any time how north korea plays the united states and the west yesterday wasn't a surprise at all. we've always been concerned here. that there's been a belief inside the white house, even before they got sworn in, that history was going to start on january 20th, 2017. they were contemptuous of history. contemptuous of being told this is how history is unfolded in the past. they say you guys don't get it. everybody is getting it wrong. but the problem of not knowing history is what, jon heilemann. >> condemned to repeat it. isn't that the phrase? that's santiayana. >> this wavering is not new for north korea it's a return to

form. the united states reached a landmark agreement with 1994, nobel peace prizes were handed out for that. but it collapsed in 2002 after north korea admitted that they had used that agreement to build their clandestine nuclear program. sand enrich uranium. after withdrawing from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty north korea agreed then, okay, we'll take part in the six-party talks with the united states and regional powers. and they promised in 2005, what sounded like they were promising over the past week or two. it's been going so fast, that they promised to abandon nuclear weapons and all existing nuclear programs. but the following year they conducted a nuclear test. it's first nuclear test, 2008, washington dropped north korea from its list of state-sponsored terrorists. why? i don't know. but they agreed to send the north economic aid in turn for

disclosing and disabling nuclear facilities. guess what -- within a year -- after once provocative behavior, north korea said it would permanently pull out of any nuclear disarmament talks and the communist regime. the repressive communist regime restarted its nuclear program. after pressure from the obama administration, a deal was struck in february of 2012. they planned to provide food aid and halt nuclear options at a nuclear reactor. admit inspectors to verify it. and within a month north korea threatened to launch a satellite killing the agreement. so had has been going on and on. as we've been saying since 1994. >> if you would look at history, you would be a little more, what's the word, careful about being bragadocious about the developments. >> you would be humbled about

the possibility of getting a deal. but jon heilemann, donald trump charged into a room, a meeting he wasn't supposed to be at. said let's get this summit together. got the summit together, and let us hope, i'll restate, let us hope that north korea follows through this time for the first time. again the way that they have approached this, as we've said from the beginning makes these sort of dust-up happen. >> there's a reason why when the transition was taking place and president trump and president obama or president-elect trump and president obama were still speaking to each other, president obama said this is the hardest problem you're going to face, it's the most dangerous problem, not just the most dangerous, most threatening problem, but the hardest to solve. that was hard-won wisdom because president obama had seen what had come beforehand and what happened to him.

donald trump appreciated the first part, north korea was the most dangerous and threatening problem. he clearly wants to solve it. he does want to fix this problem. but yet he didn't hear the other part, it's the hardest problem and if you understood the complexity of it and the history, you would know that just swaggering -- >> you've used two words, donald trump has an aversion, he's allergic to complexity, and allergic to history. he doesn't know history he doesn't want to know history. people around him are contemptuous of history. his closest aides, his family members, they believe that they can remake history. they believed they could go into the middle east and just like that, it would be easy to fix. they told me it was going to be easy to fix. they had a plan, you look at the pictures coming out of the middle east, that, here we are a year and a half later, this is

what they were telling me, during the transition, was going to be so easy to fix. because everybody that went before them, were fools and idiots, that they knew how to run a real estate company in new york. they certainly could take care of a 4,000-year crisis. >> that's why you make decisions, like quickly moving the embassy, which leads to some of the pictures we're seeing here. people who have dealt with this problem are talking about north korea. former c.i.a. director john brennan and nbc news senior national security intel analyst responded to the news with this statement quote, this turn of events is unsurprising. since donald trump seems enamored with a fire, aim, ready, policy-making process. not sure when if ever mr. trump will realize he's not the smartest man or even the best negotiator in the world. indeed, far from it. jeremy bash, let me go to you on this, north korea mentioned libya giving up knits its

nuclear program and met a miserable fate. it mentioned directly john bolton. are you surprised at all about what north korea did yesterday? >> well the statement by the first vice minister of north korea was really stunning, willie. it took a direct shot, fired a rhetorical missile directly at john bolton. basically said his involvement in the process is undermining an understanding that they thought they had. which is they were not going to have to give up their nuclear weapons. and i think you know all of the theatrics about the summit and the meeting and the nobel prize discussions aside, substantively, this statement pointed to a very significant possibly unbridgeable difference between the u.s. and north korean sides. basically the north koreans are saying they're not going to engage in unilateral nuclear disarmament and u.s. is saying full denuclearization has to the outcome of the discussions. the president is like the guy at the school auction who always has his hand up.

when ego is involved, he's going to overpay. >> i've been critical from the start, actually going all the way back to 2007, of barack obama's eagerness. to strike a deal with iran. saying what? why meet with the leadsers, no preconditions, hillary clinton rightly criticized him for saying that. republican leaders rightly criticized him for saying that. the conservatives, the conservatives that are still out there, are skeptical of donald trump being so desperate for a meeting with kim jong un, that he would lay no groundwork. this is the sort of thing, that we conservatives have always been skeptical of. going back 40, 50 years. people who support donald trump are writing blogs this morning. talking about trump, what a genius he is for north korea. they weren't even born when we

saw what ronald reagan did at reykjav reykjavik, which individuals hated, the press hated, europe hated. yet we conservatives believe reagan's tough negotiations against michel gorbachev there and the coming years, ended the cold war. that's how we conservatives think. you negotiate like reagan. you negotiate like nixon. you take a tough, tough line and you take a tough line for a very long time. and then you get concessions. here's donald trump, bumbling in. he wasn't even a good deal maker in new york city, that's why he was $9 billion in debt. he bumbles in like we've always accused liberals of bumbling in in negotiations with communists and tyrannical rejeejs. and this sort of bumbling is exactly what conservatives have always been fearful of. we're always skeptical. especially of communists, communist regimes. and yet, donald trump bumbles

in. this is not a surprise to us real conservatives. this, i know nikki haley is going to say what she has to say at the united nations. this is not surprising to nikki haley, she comings out of the tradition where she's not surprised at all. >> i think what trump thinks, to try to filter it through his mind if that's ever possible, i think he would say, i was tough with north korea. what he means by that is he sent some tweets that said, fire and fury, little rocket man. and that to him is taking a tough line. that he paved the way for these negotiations by being tough. tougher than anybody had ever been before. tougher than barack obama with kim jong un. that tells you a lot about how he measures toughness, toughness is sending a provocative tweet. as some histrionic rhetoric.

conservatives like yourself, from the ronald reagan school and the george h.r. bush school, recognize that rhetorical flourishes can be effective sometimes. but that's not the measure of toughness in a negotiation. just yelling at someone. >> he's a day trader. what ronald reagan did over decades towards soviet russia what richard nixon did for decades against the entire communist movement, donald trump compressed literally into a couple of months. and thought he could send out a few nasty tweets. and that would somehow send the same message that ronald reagan's strength against communism and richard nixon's strength against communism, starting with alger hiss, donald trump thought he could supplant that with a few angry tweets and insults. >> i'll never forget in the white house him patting jared on the back saying look at jared,

he's going to bring peace to the middle east and just slapped him on the back. >> i'm sorry you can't get that out of your memory. >> i was just thinking to myself, my god, are you fricking kidding me? it was one of those moments where i was like, what planet am i on? i'm in the white house and he's pointing at his son-in-law who is 35 and has never done it? let's bring in columnist for the "daily beast," gordon chang, author of the book "nuclear showdown: north korea takes on the world." i'd love to get a sense of your concerns, if what we're see something a complete lack of strategic vision, strategic patience and historic significance to the process. and then what china's role in all of this is. >> i think china essentially told kim jong un that they were going to have his back and we saw that with kim's two trips to china in a row. i think xi jinping probably said we're going to help you. if you look back at the last two months, mika, china's sanctions

ens forcement has markedly deteriorated. >> when you say "help" what do you mean? help them back off of these agreements with the united states? the possibility of a summit? >> yes, because for instance, we have seen in the first two weeks of this month, a marked decrease in oil and against and diesel prices in the northern part of north korea. that wouldn't have happened unless china was pumping a lot more oil to the kims. and think that's related to what's going on here. and joe, with regard to your comments on the toughness of negotiating, i think it's something that kim sort of has this reversal right after president trump's zte tweet on sunday, where he just wilted under chinese pressure. you know it's known that the chinese demanded that he give relief to that embattled telecom equipment maker. and what trump did on sunday was said, yes, i'm going to help zte. i think kim jong un saw that and decided -- yeah, if xi jinping

can push around trump, that he could as well. and that would be very good for domestic politics back in pyongyang. >> and once again, willie. we talked about this yesterday with moving the capital, moving the embassy to jerusalem. even if you like me long supported moving the capital of israel to jerusalem, you don't do it unilaterally. you figure out what you can get out of it. not only for the united states, but also for the entire region. how do we, how do we move this region to peace in a way that not only helps the united states, but helps the long-term interests of israel. instead they have their cocktail reception, and get absolutely nothing out of it for the united states of america. because that is what the president of the united states first goal should be. but also for the people of israel. and the same thing as gordon said on donald trump caves.

now what would usually happen is you would quietly work behind the scenes. our state department would talk to their, talk to china. and say okay, listen, we'll do that, but in return we have, i mean this again, this is the sort of, of drudgery, this is the sort of diplomatic process, that every successful deal must go through. but donald trump, he doesn't want to do it. he's a day trader. he tweets that out. he immediately whilst. he makes himself look weak to china, makes himself look weak to north korea. makes himself look weak to iran. that's one of the reasons he doesn't have a state department to speak of. nd we don't have ambassadors because he thinks he can do it all himself. he can't do it all himself unless he wants these zasters to continue befalling him. >> he has a campaign checklist of things he's going to kick in the door in washington and get these things done, whether it's tpp or paris or pulling out of the iran deal or moving the

embassy and getting what he believes is an historic peace deal with north korea. so he doesn't go through those steps because he's different and his presidency is different in his eyes and gordon chang, i would ask you, if you are as someone who has studied north korea, who has studied the peninsula, who has studied china, surprised at all by what kim jong un has done? because apparently the white house was surprised. that this caught them off guard, to me this looks like and joe laid out the pattern and the history, exactly how they behave in these negotiations. >> well i'm embarrassed to say this, willy, but i was surprised. because i thought we were on a much better path. but you know of course the north koreans have a playbook, they did something like this in 2008, followed by withdrawing from the six-party talks in 2009. so yeah we do see those themes. i think things are a little bit different now. from a number of different perspectives. >> because the perception across the political spectrum in

washington, is we've got to do something because north korea can threaten the u.s. homeland and the other thing that's different is because north korea is more different this time because u.s. and u.n. sanctions have crimped the flow of money to kim. he can no longer shower his senior regime elements with gifts so things are the same, but they're also different. but i have to admit, i was taken aback by what i heard yesterday. >> gordon, you said the chinese are cooperating more with the north koreans, so while sanctions may be squeezing them, you've got china who sees north korea as their 51st state, who doesn't want to see the two koreas unified. and so, so they can certainly ease much of their pain, can't they? >> they can and they have within the last two months, when kim jong un went to beijing for the first time, end of march, the chinese allowed north korean media to photograph the gifts that xi jinping, the chinese ruler, gave to kim.

that was $394,000 worth of porcelain and jewelry and silk and that was a u.n.-sanctions violation. because you can't give luxury goods to north koreans, what did the united states do about it? absolutely nothing and what xi jinping was saying to trump, i'm going to violate sanctions and rub your nose in it and we didn't do anything. so we shouldn't be surprised that the chinese are now emboldening the north koreans. >> heidi, let's talk to you about what's going on on the hill. donald trump as gordon said has had his nose rubbed in it. by the chinese. by the north koreans of course. he met with he met with republicans who had been quietly expressing concerns about the horrific things that have been said about john mccain. yesterday, nothing but peace and happiness among the republicans. and none of them spoke up or

spoke out against the things that donald trump has done. >> none of them spoke up and of course, joe, i've been speaking with republicans for the past several weeks, who have been very uncomfortable with the president's rhetoric on north korea. thinking that he was setting himself up for an embarrassment. practically promising that a deal was in the bag. and the concern there was that he was really strengthening kim jong un's negotiating hand. because politically, the president was promising this deal to his base. he had his supporters chanting "nobel prize, nobel prize" as if it was already in the bag. and then you saw comments from the president walking that back at one point saying well, it depends on the deal and i'm prepared to walk or to not come to the table at all. totally disregarding all of the historical data points you mentioned in the past about this very predictable behavior.

that north koreans giving what seems like a concession in this case the release of our hostages and then retreating to erratic behavior. but i think jeremy's point about the nexus here as well of john bolton, is very important. because if you look at the timing of all of this, of what john bolton coming on, the iran deal, being torn apart, right as we're trying to cut a deal, with the north koreans, what message did that send? it sent the message that the deal that we will cut with you has a very high bar. it cannot even adhere to the standards of the iran deal. it's got to be utter and complete capitulation, total denuclearization. and also in a way that is 100% verifiable. >> you know, willie, you remember the game we played during the barack obama, imagine if, like for instance, when barack obama and the justice

department seized phone records of reporters. when they arrested reporters, didn't they arrest, didn't they send some guys to jail? >> rice. >> and when they sent reporters to jail, when they were heavy handed, when they leaked classified information during the 2012 election campaign, that had barack obama looking at maps and pointing to people who he was going to have killed -- you know -- we always said what? imagine if a republican president had done this sort of thing. the media would have gone wild. now let's, let's play the other game. imagine if barack obama had his nose rubbed in it the way that the chinese, as gordon was talking about and the north koreans have rubbed donald trump's nose in it over the past week. and if barack obama were as just

desperate for a deal with the most tyrannical communist regime on the planet. what would conservative media be saying? >> they would be destroying him. just like we said yesterday, what if barack obama had tweeted that china is losing too many jobs, it might have been the end of his presidency. >> it would be impeachment hearings. >> the way he's perceived -- i think we should point out, as gordon did, that this isn't over yet. this is a threat that they're setting, they're setting the conditions for negotiating, and that we hope we can still get somewhere with north korea. but the idea that were you going to come in, write a few angry tweets and say i'm doing this differently than everyone else has done it i don't know the history of bill clinton, george w. bush and barack obama and their attempts to shut down the nuclear program in north korea, like so many things president trump has done. he thinks he's the first one to walk in the door who's going to do something differently. there's a way you have to get things done and perhaps with

some of the people around him, they'll understand that now. he's not dealing in a different way than the previous administrations that failed at this. tried and failed as well. >> this is a warning. and we let us hope for the sake of this country and world peace, that, that a deal is done. but this should serve as a warning to donald trump. that before you tweet, before you shoot your mouth off about north korea, talk to james mattis. >> i wish that would fix things. >> talk to your secretary of state. talk to mike pompeo. gina haspel is going to be the c.i.a., most likely she's going to be confirmed, talk to gina haspel for god's sake. >> stop talking to us. >> before you tweet something out, just talk to those three people alone. those are three people that will guide you very well. and will stop you from embarrassing yourself. and who knows, maybe we could get a peace deal out of this. >> this involves discipline. which is impossible, there's so

much still to get there and it's frightening, actually. "the wall street journal" is shedding new light on why president trump seems so interested in saving chinese jobs. plus, paul manafort says bob mule certificate out of his lane. >> but a federal judge actually disagrees, says bob mule certificate doing just fine. i wonder if all the people who were freaking out over a very limited ruling of the eastern district of virginia are going to be like responding as aggressively today about this federal judge saying -- you know we can go ahead with this. bob mueller is not out of line. we'll get the latest on that case and how rudy giuliani is planning to mark the one-year anniversary of the special counsel investigation -- please go on television. interviews across the board with all the people who want to hear from you. please.

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ing. a federal judge has denied paul manafort's claim that the special counsel's indimt of him exceeded his authority. a judge refused to dismiss charges against paul manafort, president trump's former campaign attorney. and that mueller's case against manful is not overly broad or improper. jackson found manafort's high-level work for trump and ukrainian leaders, made it logical for investigators to probe into manafort's dealings. manafort says he looks forward to prevailing. the judge has yet to rule on manafort's motion for dismissal in the eastern district of virginia. >> john, we talked about this last week, ellis last week made a procedural argument, maybe you

should do what the southern district of new york, what mueller did with the southern district of new york, maybe you just pass this to federal prosecutors. by the way, trumpists, and in their basements all across the fruited plain -- >> and the president of the united stat united states, a trumpist himself. here you have a judge in the d.c. circuit saying this is fine, they can move forward with it. i mean there is no good news for donald trump. there is no good news even if in the eastern district of virginia they say you know what, just procedurally, this may exceed the bounds, why don't you toss it over to the u.s. attorney and they can prosecute manafort here. >> there may be some good news on the horizon at some point for donald trump, who knows but it's a sign of to your point how

unrelentingly troublesome and the news on all the legal fronts has been, that when there's a glimmer of anything, they seize on it. >> on procedure. >> it's a, okay, listen, the cop on that corner can arrest you. or the cop on that corner might arrest you. i think that cop may not be able to, because it's on that side of the street, so maybe, and they seize that as, this is victory. he is overstepped his bounds. why we must dispense of this. special prosecutor even though we embraced it when ken starr was going after bill clinton and said that the president must stand before this special prosecutor. >> like that voice. but it's not just, on procedure, it wasn't even a procedural ruling it was like an interrogatory, the judge was in that case discussing procedure and kind of test-driving an

argument and pressing the attorneys on one side. not even like he was not even a ruling on procedure, it was merely -- >> you don't -- >> back and forth. >> pushing the lawyers to hear what they have to say about his proposal. >> yeah, because a lot of times, it's just a push. why in the world should i want them to make their argument, and then you quietly go, okay, that's what i thought. but you know what? here's a great thing. you said that trump may be looking for good news, they're making good news coming up. >> a celebration. >> there is good news coming up. >> streamers? >> rudy giuliani -- maybe there's going to be a birthday cake in the lobby of trump tower. rudy giuliani -- >> tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of special counsel's appointment by deputy attorney general rod rosen stein and

president trump's attorney, rudy giuliani says they will use the occasion to blast the investigation's very existence. >> please do. >> the only thing that mueller, the only witches of this witch hunt has snarled, willie, are 13 russians, right? donald trump's national security adviser. >> flynn. >> pled guilty. >> his campaign manager, who donald trump told me was absolutely necessary. >> papadopoulos. >> to win the nomination. told me in the summer, got to get him, joe, he's absolutely necessary for me to get the delegates to win the domination. he's been indicted. rick gates who was helped him run the campaign. he's been indicted. and now he's not cooperating. the person that donald trump said was one of his two key foreign policy advisers.

you notice mika is rumbling under. "saturday night live" skit. >> i'm going to go like this now. >> look at the list. nothing has been -- you've got four ex-trump advisers, a lawyer, a digital marketing strategist, 13 russian nationals, three russian companies, five guilty pleas, three trumpists cooperating now with this investigation. and he says nothing has been done in a year. this is one of the most successful prosecutions and guess what, here's the great news, willie. guess what, there's more. >> well, i was going to say you might be hearing from donald trump's personal attorney, michael cohen could join that list if he decides to join in on the fun. jeremy bash, obviously bob mule certificate not listening to the

claims from rudy giuliani and others that this is a witch hunt, he's not going to stop his investigation under pressure from the trump white house. what this is about again is undermining the investigation so when its findings are made public president trump and rudy giuliani and people who support donald trump can say they're illegitimate because of x, y and z. but it's important to put the facts out in front of people and show that bob mueller is doing his work quietly. he's won indictments, plea deals and arrests and he moves forward despite what all the trump white house officials may be saying around him. >> and the mueller investigation has been speedy. very workman-like, very efficient. they've gotten as you noted five criminal convictions of significant players, they have the opportunity to turn witnesses in the investigation against higher-ups and imagine just for a moment, willie, kind of the astounding position we find ourselves in, which is as the preds of the united states, who ostensibly sits atop the entire federal government and is supposed to symbolize truth

telling and symbolize openness and transparency, actually won't even answer the questions of the investigator about his own conduct. because his lawyers are afraid he'll either admit criminality or per perjure himself. >> you know mika, i covered this ground before and this makes me sad. >> we know there's people -- >> the lawyers, rudy giuliani now, there's something about being a lawyer for donald trump, you get close to him and you think he's too stupid to sit across a table from robert mueller iii, a war hero, ofrls and yes he went to st. paul's. >> but donald trump is donald trump. >> and he went to princeton and these thes lawyers are insecure thinking he has a better education than donald trump. donald trump said it before, would be very insulted.

they really do believe, they really do believe that donald trump is so stupid -- >> his lawyers here, are saying this. >> personal friends, too. >> and rudy giuliani now has its like they get inside this bubble and they get infected and they start thinking that donald trump is too stupid to sit across the table from robert mueller iii. that he somehow -- that he doesn't have the class or he doesn't have the intelligence. >> or the time, because he watches so much tv. why would he do it in. >> i just want to know, does he really -- does giuliani really think that donald trump's education is so deficient that he can't -- i think he can. >> he must, joe. >> listen, this guy has been doing this for 50 years. >> fordham is a good school. >> fordham is a great school. >> a good school. i don't know why giuliani thinks fordham is such a lousy school. >> i think he graduated his last year. i think he went to penn graduated on the same day that 40 americans were killed in

vietnam. but, but fordham is a great school and i don't know what school he went to in queens. but -- i think there's elitism among donald trump's attorneys, among giuliani, among all these people. think donald trump is too stupid to stand -- man to man, toe to toe, eye to eye with robert mueller. and if i'm donald trump, if i get attorneys working for me and they think that just because a guy went to st. paul's and princeton, that he's better than me, you know what i'm doing to those lawyers -- i'm firing them. i am. can you imagine how insulting that is? >> i give them one more chance and say go on tv today, rudy, and fix this. >> it's just insulting. this is not right. >> jeremy, thank you. coming up, our next guest is furious that it seems president trump is more interested in saving jobs in china than in his district in ohio. >> his attorneys think he's too

stupid to just talk to robert mueller. can you believe that? >> they can fix that. >> not tim ryan's attorneys. >> rudy can go on tv today and fix it. >> they get close to him and suddenly they become elitists and they think he's too stupid because -- the president knows he's his own best advocate. i believe we'll sit down with bob mueller. >> congressman tim ryan joins us next on "morning joe." in these turbulent times, do you focus on today's headwinds? or plan for tomorrow? at kpmg, we believe success requires both. with our broad range of services and industry expertise, kpmg can help you anticipate tomorrow

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everyone thinks he's stupid and he doesn't like to be told he's stupid. >> what are you talking about? >> just talking to willie. >> no, it's about the president. >> new details on why president trump has been so adamant on overturning sanctions against the chinese telecom giant that spies on the united states of america and undermines national security. >> the u.s. and china are nearing a deal to give china zte relief from the crippling sanctions by the u.s. and in exchange china would remove

limits agricultural tariffs. the agreement would help explain president trump's tweets sunday in which he announced that he was working with chinese president xi jinping to get zte back into business and the company, the company announced earlier this month its main business operations had creaeas due to sanctions by the u.s. government. the "journal" adds that the president's tweet took many in his inner circle by surprise. adding it wasn't preceded by enter-agency discussions on the policy. >> and the line that surprised a lot of people. a lot of people have voted for donald trump was, he was very upset about jobs being lost in china. he said too many jobs lost in china. >> the way he's doing things is -- >> very surprising. >> it could be -- >> democratic congressman tim ryan of ohio. good morning congressman. >> thanks for waking up early,

being on "morning joe." >> i'm going to say a phrase you respond, first thing that comes to your mind, too many jobs lost in china. go. >> donald trump. >> why is he saying that? >> you know, it's hard to tell with this administration it just, it's fly by the seat of your pants, my biggest concern with this particular issue and what's been happening since he got in. china is our number one competitor. and we have absolutely no strategy on how we're going to deal with it. china has a ten-year plan, a 30-year plan, a 50-year plan, a 100-year plan and the trump administration is caught in a a 24 news cycle with no strategy for how the united states can compete against them. >> congressman, this tweet is just so bizarre, too many jobs lost in china. this from a president who campaigned on china is raping us. not my words, his words.

but done without any interagency process. catching his closest advisers, off-guard and coming just a few days after this branding deal apparently was cut in indonesia with the chinese government, funneling potentially $500 million into this project that will directly benefit trump. do you see a connection? does congress have any plans to look into whether there is a connection? >> i think it's awfully suspicious and it's happening time and time again, where president trump is trying to represent or posing to represent the interests of the united states but there's always some kind of business dealings going on, whether it's his son-in-law in the white house. cutting deals in the next day he gets big loans. or what we're talking about here, but it shows the scope of what china is trying to do. their one belt, one road initiative. where they're trying to move

into europe. it trying to extend their influence in the region and president trump is profiting off of this. and then, he violates the advice of all of the national security people, he's talking about creating jobs in china. and as i said in one of my tweets, you know we've lost 2700 auto worker jobs just outside of youngstown, ohio, since he's been in office and we can't get any attention, there's no industrial policy in the united states, no talk of helping the middle class and here's the other piece when you're talking about china. the tax cut bill which will end up being $2.3 trillion, a lot of money we are borrowing from china. they're loaning us money. we're paying interest on it and china is making all of vest investments all around the world to become the great economic power in the world and the next five to ten years. because of the bad decisions we're making here in the united states. so the tax cut was bad for a lot of reasons, but the other reason

is, the interest we're paying on the money we borrowed is going in the pockets of the chinese government. >> want to follow up on the reports that the chinese government has loaned half a billion dollars to a theme park in missouri tied to president trump's business in a statement mnc land, told the president's inauguration, told the "associated press" that the trump organization has no relationship with the theme park, that the chinese company is building. mnc said news reports that the chinese government backed $500 million loan for the project had been signed, were false. however, the trump 0s, which the white house director's reporters questioned toward has declined to comment. it will include a trump-branded hotel, residences and golf course, another china layer to the story, congressman. back to yourport point about the gm lordstown plant, which has lost 3,000 jobs in the last year and a half. about the time that president trump has been in office, hasn't

received a tweet from the president. but the people who voted in your district, even democrats who voted for donald trump on the promise that he would make america great again and bring those auto jobs back and keep those in your district, even democrats who voted for donald trump on the promise that he would make america great again and bring those auto jobs back and keep those assembly plants open and thriving, how are they feeling now 16 months into the trump presidency? do they feel in any way like he's forgotten them or are they happy with what he's done so far? >> i think the shine is coming off the apple. i think there's a couple issues he talks about rhetorically that they connect with. but the reality on the ground is much different. there's been no structural change. there's been no attention given to those states, those great lake states that he campaigned in and made all the promises. he's gone back on just about everything he said. and i will tell you that i've talked to several union leaders who have told me that a lot of

their rank and file people are upset that they voted the way they did. >> congressman, let me ask you, though, have the tax cuts helped the people in your district? you seen jobs returning to your district because of the tax cuts? >> no. >> not at all? >> no. we haven't seen any real huge economic growth or any real economic growth. i mean, the issue for our people now are wages. it's those people caught between poverty and the middle class. 66% of americans are making less than $40,000 a year. a lot of those people are in my congressional district. and trump's plan on all of these issues including the tax cuts went primarily to the top 5 or 10% of the people in the country. look, we needed tax reform, but we need bigger tax cuts for middle class and less for people in the top brackets where they've been accumulating all the wealth. >> right. >> this trickle down economics we've tried three separate times.

it's not working. and it's time that we get back on track, that we got to reinvest back into the country, reinvest back into our people. we do have to streamline government and tighten things up. government does waste money and we have a responsibility to fix that. but this is about building the country. we are competing, as i said before, joe, 1.3 or 4 billion people in china. we only have 330 million people in the united states. we have got to have everybody on the field playing for us. that means investment in research, education, health care, public health, these -- and the new industries that are growing, trump's talking about coal jobs. we're down 30,000 coal jobs in the last 10 years, but wind and solar and additive manufacturing are growing at 25 or 30% a year. we need to invest in those jobs and bring those jobs to places like youngstown. >> like we've said, we have the chinese looking forward to 2050 and article official intelligence, we're looking back to 1950 and 1850 on coal mining

jobs and other things that, again, let's do what we can to help those that are hurting right now. >> right. >> but we need to have an economy that's looking forward. >> congressman, tim ryan, thank you very much. thanks for being on this morning. still to come on she show, axios got a firsthand look at the trump campaign's plan to get the president re-elected in 2020.

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we have a very packed 7:00 a.m. hour coming up in three minutes. >> just three minutes? >> yeah. >> more on north korea's threat to cancel kim jong-un's planned summit with president trump next month. plus, new reporting on how the president wants to crack down on white house leaks. >> don't they have people from the minority report walking around there now? >> and once in a while you need to apologize for saying something sick. and the author of the bloomberg report that trump plans to mark the one-year anniversary of the mueller investigation by blasting the probe. shannon petty piece joins us with her new reporting on rudy

giuliani. >> there's a smart guy on the left. >> rudy giuliani does not think that -- >> "morning joe" is coming right back. what? directv gives you more for your thing. your... quitting cable and never looking back thing. directv is rated #1 in customer satisfaction over cable. switch to directv and now get a $100 reward card. more for your thing. that's our thing. call 1.800 directv. we're on a mission to show drip coffee drinkers, it's time to wake up to keurig. wakey! wakey! rise and shine! oh my gosh! how are you? well watch this. i pop that in there. press brew. that's it. so rich. i love it. that's why you should be a keurig man! full-bodied. are you sure you're describing the coffee and not me? full-bodied. my digestive system used to make me feel sluggish. but those days are over. now, i take metamucil every day. it naturally traps and removes

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i want to see. my visitors should be the ones i'm 85 years old in a job where. i have to wear a giant hot dog suit. what? where's that coming from? i don't know. i started my 401k early, i diversified... i'm not a big spender. sounds like you're doing a lot. but i still feel like i'm not gonna have enough for retirement. like there's something else i should be doing. with the right conversation, you might find you're doing okay. so, no hot dog suit? not unless you want to. no. schedule a complimentary goal planning session today with td ameritrade®. you know what they say, fool me once, strike one. but fool me twice, strike three. [ laughter ]. >> well done, alex. that's a good one. >> do you still watch that? >> my daughter has watched every episode, every single one like

multiple times. is that okay? >> six or seven times. >> more than okay. magnificent. >> she's fantastic. >> i was starting to wonder like what was all about until my daughter. >> your daughter started doing it. >> she's like five -- she has seen "the office" five -- like every episode five times. >> that seen is one way of describing -- >> i'm sorry, willie. >> i was in a hotel in nashville two weeks ago. woke up hungover, no kids. there was a marathon on, we watched about four in a row. it's just so good. he is so good. so good. >> he is incredible. >> and ricky gervais in the original. excellent. >> that scene is one way of -- >> go ahead. >> one way of describing north korea yet again, throwing a major curve ball at the american government when it comes to its promised reforms. welcome back to "morning joe." it's wednesday, may 16th, still with us we have national affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc

executive producer, co-host of showtimes the circus john heilemann. heidi przybyla. let's get to it. north korea is threatening to pull out of a planned meeting with president trump and has cancelled today's high level talks with south korea over the annual joint military exercises between the south and the united states. kim jong-un had recently said that he is okay with the exercises, complete 180 from decades of north korea policy. pyongyang appears to now have reverted to that stance calling the drills a, quote, rude and wicked provocation. and a rehearsal for invasion. in a statement, carried on state media, the north's vice foreign affairs minister says that if the u.s., quote, only push us to corner and force us to give up our nuclear unilaterally, pyongyang will reconsider participating in the upcoming

talks. that official also names president trump's national security adviser john bolton by name, saying his libya strategy is a, quote, awfully sinister move to impose the dprk to the same fate as libya and iraq. he also added that his nation does not, quote, hide our feeling of repugnance towards him. fantastic. let's bring in chief international security and diplomacy analyst for nbc news and msnbc, now the dean of the fletcher school of law and diplomacy at tuft's university, retired four-star navy admiral james staphee tis. >> anybody following negotiations with north korea should not be surprised by what happened yesterday. >> still disturbing. >> it's happening today. this has happened to bill clinton, jimmy carter, on behalf of bill clinton, george w. bush,

barack obama and now it's happened to donald trump. what happened? why did it happen? what warning is it for us moving forward hopefully negotiating at some point a deal? >> yeah. joe, i think, you know, donald trump, kim jong-un getting together to negotiate what could go wrong? this is hardly henry kissinger negotiating the opening of china. so it's the personalities will be part of the problem. number two would be john bolton over the weekend saying, well, i think what we have in mind is the libya model. so if you're kim jong-un, you remember that gadhafi dies in a drainpipe shot by his people after giving up his nukes and strike three is, no. and strike three to get back to strike one, two and three, strike three is when we say to them, we demand total

denuclearization immediately, the chilling effect on the negotiation is profound. as i have said before, joe, the chances of kim jong-un completely giving up those nukes immediately is roughly the same as the same chances of the mexicans paying for the wall. it's not going to happen. so we have to go into the negotiation with a more flexible stance. we can probably still land this thing and i would hope that the summit occurs obviously, but it's going to require a delicacy of touch and serious negotiations after the photo op summit that i still think will ultimately happen. >> all right. willie? >> let's bring in nbc news hans nickels. good morning. >> yeah. >> the pentagon it appears by all reports we've heard was actually caught off guard by this statement from north korea saying that not only have they broken off talks with south korea but perhaps the negotiation and the meeting on june 12th with president trump might be in peril, too. it's a very detailed statement.

it talks about libya. it talks about john bolton and all the problems -- >> if you're just talking to me. i was going to tell you what it was like here at the pentagon when this broke. it's fashionable to say that you're shocked but not surprised. here they genuinely seemed surprised about this event and this statement. they went into muscle memory. what you saw here at the pentagon is them reverting back to an old statement and that is saying, look, here is what we're doing with these drills. this is simply about interoperability and they kept stressing these were defensive in nature these drills. i have to say here in general the line from the pentagon has been that the economic sanctions are working. that these economic sanctions are the ones that are really pushing and forcing kim jong-un to the negotiating table. if kim jong-un is walking away from the negotiating table, they're going to have to reconsider their idea here the economic sanctions are working. they are biting. i think that's the general view here at the pentagon. we'll also try to get myself

hooked back up. no followups, as i said, i just dropped out. thanks, guys. >> i will take your order. we'll get your audio pachd tche. >> good decision making on hans part. >> hans, if you don't respond, it's going to be a sign of guilt. hans, were you or were you not -- >> stop. >> poor hans. we'll get his audio fixed. >> that's just wrong, joe. >> admiral, let me go back to you. when i was in south korea for the olympics a few months ago and there was all this theater from the north, the high level delegation coming to the olympics, the band came in and played. it looked like they were thawing relations. yes, the clapping and all that at the hockey games. there were many, many south koreans who said don't be seduced by the theater. we have watched this before. he's doing this for the world. he's putting on a show. was president trump seduced by the theater? again, as we said earlier, this

is not the end of something. we still hope there's some deal that could be reached here, but do you think the president and the white house were seduced by the theater? >> oh, absolutely. and it's hard not to be. let's face it. no nation can clap better than north korea. they're wonderful at putting on these spectacular shows. i think this whole thing has the feel of a patent can village. at the end of the day, the old expressi expression, things will get worse before they'll get better. at the time of the olympics i thought things will get better and then they'll get worse again. i want to hit the point, we can still land this thing if we are taking relatively nuanced, reasonable approach to the negotiation. and that would include getting better intelligence right now, talking more to the south koreans. we spent so much time yelling at the north koreans. we have to spend more time listening to the south korean as your example illustrates. back to the pentagon and hans, ask him what the pentagon is

doing in preparation. they will be moving readiness up and being prepared because hope is not a strategy. we tugt have a hopeful strategy but we ought to recognize the wheels could still come off this thing. we ought to press on diplomacy as best we can. we ought to be prepared for alternatives. >> admiral james staphee tis thank you very much. now to this disturbing story, the white house continues its push to crack down on leaks. the daily beast siting two sources who have spoken with the president in recent days. reports that he wants at least one prominent leaker to be identified, and quote, dealt with, to make an example. here is the white house deputy press secretary yesterday. >> there are obviously some things we're looking at to do internally here. you know, general kelly put a clamp down on a lot of these leaks early on when he got here. it appears as though some of those things are back, but we're moving to erat indicate those

because it's just unacceptable. >> john kelly banned personal devices from the west wing in january, everyone but the president. cnn siting unnamed white house sources reports that staffers are expected to place their nongovernment-issued cell phones in lockers installed at west wing entrances. and that sweeps have been carried out with men going from room to room collecting unauthorized devices. yesterday the president tweeted, can you believe with all of the made up unsourced stories i get from the fake news media together with the $10 million russian witch hunt there is no collusion. i now have my best poll numbers in a year. much of the media may be corrupt, but the people truly get it. >> but wait a second, he talks about all of these stories that the media writes, john heilemann the majority of them are written -- many people working in the west wing deserve bylines

and have for a year and a half because everybody around donald trump is leaking about donald trump. >> and donald trump is leaking about donald trump. i mane, it's -- >> what about what he said about maggie haberman. maggie haberman, never talked to her before. >> never met her. hardly know her. every president i've covered going back to the late 1980s have had relationships with reporters. they've called outside the normal channels of communications. they make phone calls to people, sometimes drop stuff out there. there's no way to monitor the totality of trump's communications with reporters, but certainly we just read at the beginning of the week you start with hannity who he is talking to apparently doing pillow talk with apparently every night and think about the people in the conservative ecosystem who he talks to constantly. mainstream ones he denies he would ever cozy up to but we also know he has a whole array of reporters at places like the failing new york times and the

new york posts who he likes to talk with frequency, too. it's the most -- >> washington post he likes to call. >> there's a staggering level of comical hip ok rasy and transparency to these claims. who knew. >> there was something about this mccain leak that struck a nerve, though. kelly sadler saying he's dying any way. there were reports that sarah sanders had a communications team meeting where she was sort of quaking in anger and on the verge of angry tears because of this disloyalty shown toward the president. >> then everyone in the meeting leaked it. >> then the followup stories about how the leak happened was prepared and offered by people who leaked the stories. >> her being angry about the leak. >> all these people hired by donald trump and donald trump's white house. >> how can you be upset? >> sean spicer would have meetings about leaks, as we

talked about before. and while he was in the middle of meetings, people would be texting their sources at newspapers. there is no doubt that this is the leakiest white house in modern american history. >> there were stories in the last couple days about the art of the trump leak where the leakers, heidi, were telling reporters, i think jonathan swann at axios had one where they disguised the way they talked. they knew how to phrase when they're talking to a reporters to make it sound like somebody else. there's apparently an art to this in the white house. >> an art that's been perfected. look, i talked to a white house official about this last night, guys. i don't know what more they can do given that if the reporting is accurate many staffers are already being subjected to their phones being cob fnfiscated, sweeps. at the end of the day, they still get to go back on to the

personal devices and they're leaking. that said, the official that i talked to said that they believe that a lot of the worst leakers who were closest to the president, the president's inner circle, have been cleared out. but that there is only so much that they can do given that there is a vast bureaucracy within the white house of potential leakers or people who are sitting in on these meetings. and that in this case this leak with kelly sadler they believe this was personal, that this was done to hurt her personally by somebody within the white house who maybe who has a vendetta, but it does say something about the culture, guys, that today right now what we're focussed on is what the white house is focussed on which is the leak and not the apology. that the real anger within the white house right now remains over this leak and not over just making an apology over something

that everybody agrees was offensive and inappropriate. >> apparently john heilemann even the person that made this statement wants to apologize. >> yes. >> called meghan mccain to apologize. >> i can't hear the programming anymore. i have something in my ear. >> let me tell you something, we are light years ahead with the chinese in technology, this is mystery science theater 3,000. we are that far ahead of everybody else. what happened to that show? did you ever see that show? >> i miss that show. >> did you see that? >> constantly. >> i loved it almost as much as the office. >> it was remarkable. any way, i'm not sure where i got off on that nobody else can hear. >> everybody in the world wants to apoll jieogizeapologize. >> only one person who doesn't want an apology, that's the president of the united states

and the president recognizes i assume if you apologize for this, someone will point out that the president started the whole thing. >> and the president should not be surprised the communications team, the communications team should not be upset and tearful. good god,s th s thigod, this iso stop an apple stop rotting. it's ridiculous conversation. >> all of this came out during the week saying donald trump should apologize. the white house should apologize. >> of course. >> yesterday they're in front of donald trump and not a single republican pressed donald trump asking him to apologize so their colleague. let me say that again. to apologize to their colleague who is dying of cancer right now. and there was not a single republican senator that stood up for the other senators, that stood up for the institution of

the united states senate that stood up for basic human decency and said, mr. president, somebody that works for you said something awful about one of our colleagues, a man who gave his all to this country in war and in peace. a man who couldn't put his arms above his shoulders because he was beaten so badly by the communists in north vietnam. who would have let him go because his father was a powerful admiral but he refused to leave until his band of brothers left with him. mr. president, you should apologize for your staff member saying that you were responsible, the buck stops with you. not one senator. not one republican senator had the nerve, had the guts, had the decency to stand up defend their senate colleague yesterday.

>> i think lindsey did, not to his face. >> not to the president's face. that was the time to do it. don't tell reporters. stand up and tell the president to his face that's out of line. your staff member, you need to let your staff member apologize and you need to apologize. it didn't happen. still ahead on "morning joe," two new angles in the bob mueller investigation. bloomberg's shannon petty piece is along with us along with axios's mike allen. what better time to plug our amazing "morning joe" newsletter straight from the devil. information on how to subscribe son our website or if you don't like reading, like the president, check out our pod cast. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. growing up, we were german. we danced in a german dance group. i wore lederhosen. when i first got on ancestry i was really surprised that i wasn't finding all of these germans in my tree. i decided to have my dna tested through ancestry dna.

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>> any yankee fan could gloat about the red sox this morning. >> presumably to talk about fordham. >> yes. he talked about that and donald trump. no, he was talking about north korea. he just said that the expectations were bizarrely high. >> yeah. >> and instead of seen as a spoilers with a summit that was doomed, the expectations were so high they didn't want to be seen as a spoiler so they're starting to walk away. >> like everything else he does. >> we'll see. the denuclearization aspect of this is something that every foreign policy expert has pushed back on now for months. they're not going to denuclearize as we said here and as they noted in their statement. we actually got gadhafi to abandon his wmd program and we killed him. >> one other thing about this, you remember trump when he talked about it one of the press conferences in the last couple weeks talking about the north korean negotiations if this

isn't going well, we're going to go, if this isn't going well, we'll just walk. which kind of tough talk bluster. you feel on some level like the north koreans are like, you know, okay. we can walk, too. we can walk first. you're already laying the table down or setting the predicate for walking. why not let them know we can do that, too. >> joining us now from capitol hill, white house correspondent for bloomberg news, shannon petty piece and cofounder of axios mike allen. you write in your new piece for bloomberg news, quote, president donald trump and his legal team are planning to use the one-year anniversary of this week of robert mueller's appointment to ratchet up pressure on the special counsel to close his investigation. trump and his lawyers are trying to set up the milestone on thursday as a turning point in their campaign to end mueller's probe into russian election meddling and obstruction of justice. rudy giuliani's trump's personal lawyer said tuesday in an interview.

while he isn't threatening specific actions, giuliani said, they haven't ruled out additional steps if mueller doesn't heed their calls. so, rudy is going to be out front on this, shannon. >> yes. and make no mistake that they are ramping up their attacks on this investigation. they are going to say it has been a year where as the evidence, where is the collusion? it's time to wrap this up. they are not threatening any action yet. the whole firing mueller, rosenstein issue does not appear to be on the table at the moment, but the president's patience is up. webd see the attack starting to increasing in march right around the time when the president's legal team was given that list of questions and mueller floated the idea of a subpoena. and it's only going to be growing from there. and it's all part of a broad public strategy campaign to discredit this investigation so whatever is found there will be

a large chunk of the population that either doesn't believe it or has a shadow of doubt a question in their mind about the validity of it. >> the problem with that is that you even have donald trump supporters, mike allen, that have told pollsters that while they support donald trump, while they're skeptical of robert mueller, poll results find that washington post reporting they do not want robert mueller fired because it would look like the president was covering up a crime. >> no, that's right. we see again and again in polling across the parties, people want the system to work. they would take the firing of the system not working also if trump supporters are smart they will know as you've been saying on this show for months that this is -- would be the worst possibility. intriguing part of shannon's report, rudy was road testing a new argument. shannon's piece, rudy argues

that mueller doesn't need the interview. we turned over 1.2 million pages of e-mails. we turned over all this information. your questions make us think that you don't have the facts. if you have the facts, robert mueller, why do you need to ask us questions? that's totally new. >> yeah. mike allen axios has new reporting looking at the pro-trump media machine. tell us what axios is describing as the dissemination of trumpian rhetoric. >> this is real switch from what we have seen in the past. joe, mika, you remember under president clinton right wing talk radio surged. under trump, the conservative media is expanding across digital, cable. we've seen on the show what sinclair is doing, continuing even after all that controversy with their must-run commercials, with their must-run editorials and news segments.

and so as trump looks ahead to 2020, like he has an even bigger microphone that his pay walls go up in one of our establishment media organizations, conservatives, the choir even more likely to be pushed in to a place where they're going to hear talking points and hear the president's message including the fake news mantra reverberate. >> shannon, obviously the president is getting a lot of help from the media pushing back against the mueller probe. when you talk to rudy giuliani for this report, he talks about we have a plan b and a plan c if this doesn't work, this being the one-year anniversary of him now going out and saying the mueller probe is unfounded and it should stop. the vice president of the united states came out last week and said it's time to wrap up the mueller probe. what are these plan b and plan c? do they actually think that this effort on the one-year anniversary might somehow stop bob mueller from doing his work? >> i don't know if they are i

guess naive enough to think that bob mueller is going to say, oh, you feel time is up. all right. let's wrap this thing up. >> yeah. >> but giuliani has made the argument to me in the past that bob mueller is a sob ordinate to the president in his view. the president is the chief executive officer of the united states and mueller is part of the executive branch, so that sort of thinking is out there right now. now, a lot of people who know bob mueller would say that his only boss is the american people in the u.s. constitution and he's going to do what he does as a law enforcement professional and investigate. but certainly a step they could take would be defunding his office. we've talked about many times about if jeff sessions was removed as attorney general and new attorney general was put in place who was not refused, that attorney general could if not fire bob mueller, which to mike's point, you know, would be politically damaging potentially. could box him in, could clip his wings a little bit. now would bob mueller allow that to happen is a question.

so then you get into this tit for tat fight. but i think this interview is going to be the next big pressure point to watch. that could become a real battle. we don't really see the president's legal team backing down at this point. >> it's so interesting that rudy giuliani now says that robert mueller is subordinate to the president of the united states when bill clinton was president, he said just the opposite. he said that if the special counsel subpoenas the president of the united states, then he has no choice but to go and -- >> those are rudy's words. >> those are rudy's words back then saying the president has to go and be interviewed by the special counsel. so it's -- that's interesting. also very interesting rudy tomorrow like mike pence last week is going to channel richard nixon. one year of watergate is enough. >> oh my god. okay. do they not -- all right.

let's just not stop them. shannon pettypiece, mike allen, thank you both for your reporting this morning. >> thank you, guys. coming up, gina haspel is poised to take other as the director of cia. how she might lead america's spies worldwide. "morning joe" is coming right back.

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>> gina haspel, president trump's pick to head the cia now has enough votes to be confirmed. haspel was able to secure the votes after she let a letter to mark warner, the top democrat on the senate intel committee condemning the cia's interrogation program in which detainees were tortured after the september 11th attacks. she had previously refused to condemn the program. haspel, wrote quote with the benefit of hindsight, the enhanced interrogation program is not one the cia should have undertaken. after receiving the letter, warner announced yesterday afternoon he would support

haspel's confirmation. soon after, two other democrats, senators heidi hide camp and bill nelson also announced they would support has pel. the senate intelligence committee is expected to vote on haspel's confirmation today and a full senate vote is expected at the end of the week. john heilemann? >> you know, this was going to be closer than it needed to be from the white house's perspective from gina haspel's perspective. democrats want to vote for her and people in this case want to get back to some bipartisan support for these national security positions. i think they needed to hear from her if she said this in her hearing the other day the letter would not have been necessary. i think they realized that it was probably a mistake for her not just to come out and say this in the hearing but they were trying to see if they could push her through without her having to make the admission and go on the record, but they got there eventually. this is what the democrats needed. they needed this much to say okay -- >> we'll do it. up next, gaza just suffered

its deadliest day in years, but our next guest has been digging even deeper, embedding himself in the west bank for his new project, a muslim among the settlers. his findings are next on "morning joe." what? directv gives you more for your thing. your... quitting cable and never looking back thing. directv is rated #1 in customer satisfaction over cable.

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it's a challenge, big challenge to us as medical staff to deal with the huge number of these injured people. and now our room is full. surgical room is full. we haven't any free beds. >> nbc's matt bradley on the ground in gaza as medical staff struggle to care for the wounded. yesterday funerals were held after at least 60 palestinians were killed by israeli defense forces along the gaza border sparked by the opening of the new u.s. embassy in jerusalem. a strange sense of calm fell over gaza after hamas called for

a more smaller scaled general strike. however, the group is saying it's still considering military action. before the latest upheaval this week, our next guest traveled to the middle east in an attempt to understand both sides of the israeli/palestinian conflict. take a look. >> we're in the palestinian side of hebron. they're not supposed to be here, but they kind of do what they want. >> we're going up to the roof. we've been warned not to stay there too long or go to the left. >> ten feet?

>> do you think jews have a right to live in this land? where will the israelis go? >> that is a scene from the documentary for the atlantic magazine entitled "a muslim among the settlers." joining us now an author, journalist and contributing op ed writer for the new york times. also with us new york times opinion writer and editor barry weiss. good to have you both. given what we're seeing today in response to the embassy in jerusalem, among other things, tell us about the goal of your project and what insight that you have, especially given the unrest that we are seeing. >> yeah. so the goal of the project was for me to talk to settlers in the west bank. we're talking about 385,000 jewish citizens of israel in occupied territory.

to see what motivates them, why are they there and how do they see themselves as what many people say in the united states, john kerry, international community, even fellow jews here and over there as a major impediment to any stability or peace plan. we also have 300,000 settlers in east jerusalem as well which is considered occupied territory according to international law and the international community. and you go there and you see not a monolithic group. you see a diversity of settlers. many are there because they say this is our land. we're here. we want to a religious community. others say we can't afford the real estate in jerusalem. others say it's a good drive to tel aviv. what you also see is a type of zel tri among some and redemption of the land is necessary for the glory of the jewish people and they need everything from the east to the west, from river to the sea. what i saw there is that the redemption of the land in my opinion is coming at the expense of the palestinian people.

i would say the shattering of the palestinian people, but also i would say is coming at the expense of the future of israel as a democracy. >> you put this so well in the piece. you say in part this -- ever since the creation of the modern state of israel, jerusalem's daily weather forecast could be described as sunny with a slight chance of an apocalypse. it's a real estate dispute, yes, but seeded with a profound religious complexity that casts a shadow across the middle east and all the way to america where many jewish and muslim communities circle each other with apprehension and mistrust. the palestinians and the jews are heavily burdened with these kinds of people. i was always assumed that hamas and the settlers needed each other to justify their respective existences. lovers dancing a waltz, pouring gasoline as the world burned around them. >> waj, we have watched in vivid

violent troubling pictures, as you left that region and talking to palestinians and the settlers, did you come back any more hopeful that there could be some version of peace, not perfect peace, but some version of the two living together without scenes like this? >> i left sad. i left very sad. you have to have hope. there's a great saying of the profit mohammed today is the first day of ramadan for many people, you see the day of judgment coming around the corner, you mention the apocalypse sign, plant the seed. jewish tradition, plant a tree. we have to have hope, you can't give up. at the same time, you have to realize that the settlement project regardless of the people and their intentions behind why they moved there is eating away at any potential peace plan. for example, for the viewers at home who have no idea about what's happening, imagine swiss cheese. the holes in the swiss cheese are the settlements in the west bank. so if you're palestinian, you're like, listen, i would love to have a two-state solution, but if you are now expanding

settlements to the point there's 385,000 people in the west bank, how will there be peace? the u.s. embassy move to jerusalem, site of the future palestinian capital, what you're telling me is there is no two-state solution. >> one of the things i found so admirable about your piece which i found quite powerful having spent a lot of time there and know a lot of settlers myself is the honesty of the palestinian voices that you included in the piece. these are people for whom tel aviv is a settlement, too. they're not just talking about a fret or all of the different places that you visit in the piece. they're talking about tel aviv. that's so powerful. jews should go back to where they came from. where the jews going back to? syria? to iraq? i mean, that's the sort of the tragic reality we have to deal with which is that, yes, settlers which are an exception in israeli society have a maximalist idea of what the state of israel should look

like, but almost every palestinian you quoted in your piece has that idea as well. i mean, that is what was so tragic to me about what was going on in gaza yesterday. what is the march called? the great march of return. return to where? where are these people thinking they're going back to? they're being fed a lie by hamas. the idea that they're going back to their homes. and the more we can sort of get to a shared reality that, of course, they're going to be two states for two people and the more that hamas lies to its people and sends them on a suicidal mission to the border, dying for photo op is what happened earlier this week, that's the reality. that's tragic. i want to share one quick -- >> that's one aspect of the reality. i think, listen, there's a power differential. you're trying to make an equivalence where there is know kwif lens. the people who died were human beings. 61 people.

they're not propaganda. what was said from the white house is one of the more shameful comments we've heard. we all saw what was happening. in gaza you have 2 open air prid in the most densely populated area on earth. even though ariel sharon disengaged. israel commands the airspace, the blockade. you're seeing people in a humanitarian crisis. and they have said it will be unlivable in a few years. what do you expect 2 million people to occupy a territory to do? overwere whhelming overwhelmingly. the disproportionate response. >> who is keeping palestinians

liberated. i spoke all day working with an extremely poor young woman. she wanted to write a piece about why is she doesn't support the protest. and why being a woman in gaza is occupied. being twice-occupied by a terrorist organization that lynches people in the streets. she had to pull that piece because she showed to family members and friends and said, if you run this piece, you'll be treated as a traitor to the people. we need to talk about the life under hamas. >> there have not been elections since 2006, right? ask them about the palestinian authority, both hate them. ask them about hamas, they hate them. to make hamas the boogie man of all, and to punish them for hamas is a sin of facts. but also -- >> but they're biased --

>> hold a second, what is the solution motori imoving forward? whether hamas is the boogie man or not. by the way, they continue to refuse to recognize the presence of israel. they did send people to the border yesterday, to die. but what americans don't understand, and you actually touched on it, the fact that the palestinian authority hates hamas. hamas hates the palestinian authority. and actually, the palestinian authority has defunded gaza. >> they're cutting off the electricity. >> and they're kiti cutting off it's palestinians cutting off -- first of all, i don't know if the united states can do anything now. but what should israel do to stop this squabble, deadly squabble, between the palestinian authority and hamas?

>> israel, i think has a moral responsibility. if israel wants to be a moral beacon for the world where jews return to the promised land. a beacon to not only the middle east but the highest standard for everyone else, what you have to do is end the occupation. there's been an occupation ongoing people are suffering. 2 million people in gaza. 3 million in west bank. what you saw in the headline, the first clip, if you go in, it's the heart, the darkness of occupation. >> let's say there's a president that wants to be even-handed. >> that would be nice. >> who do you talk to? do you talk to the palestinian authority that hates hamas? or do you talk to hamas who won't even recognize israel's right to existence and believe they should be driven in the sea 70 years later. who should the united states speak to. >> they should speak to israel first and foremost, with a special relationship.

and you should listen to the palestinian people. >> which faction? >> i know, but listen to the people. the march, call it what you will, what happened since march 30th, it's the will of the people. yes, hamas -- >> i'm not try to be difficult, but i'm trying to give you -- >> you say talk to the people, we can't have 2 million palestinians come to the white house. do you talk to the palestinian authority? do you dare talk -- you can't talk to hamas, because they're talking about -- >> you can talk -- >> they're talking about the destruction of israel. >> you want a bold move? diplomacy, i believe in diplomacy. the obama administration had the audacity to talk to iran. i believe the iran deal was a positive move. it just blew up. and i think most people now are saying, ooh, that was a mistake. donald trump was talking to north korea, last week, all of a sudden, north korea walked away from it. if you can talk to kim jong-un

and hamas at the very least -- rime not defending hamas, but you can talk to them, you can talk to the palestinian authority. >> all right. let's go to the next step. how can you talk to hamas if the palestinian authority doesn't even talk to hamas? how do you pressure the palestinian authority to start sending money back to gaza? >> joe -- >> like, this has to be -- i understand -- by the way, i will say, i have always been accused of being far too pro-israel. mika's father -- b >> bah bah bah -- >> he called me superficial because of my views on the middle east. listen, i understand ultimately there is no peace process without hamas in the middle of it that's why ariel walked away. doesn't hamas have the responsibility to the take everything on the table,

including the recognition of israel. >> why would they put that on the table? they exist for genocidal purposes -- >> because at the end of the day, the islamist extremists -- hamas, at the end of the day is a secular organization interested in power. at the end of the day, we can deal with hamas, far more than we can deal with al qaeda or isis there. >> apac would be very happy with the last four minutes. >> come on. >> let's talk about human rights. let's talk about international law. >> wait, you don't even understand what you just said about -- >> human rights -- >> we're talking about a solution. >> you have an occupation, joe. you have an occupation that is suffocating people. israel is an ally, israel is a democracy. what i saw from my article, going to the west bank, if you redeem the land, if you take it from the sea to the river --

>> is that 1967 borders? >> people recognize the nation state of israel. if you take the occupied territories, if you keep building settlements there is no two-state solution. palestinians can be suffocated -- >> but with the palestinians you have that article in tel aviv -- >> occupying and then you have the palestinians. >> you haven't talked in a couple minutes, go -- >> the idea that i'm a shell for apac -- >> come on -- >> no, that's a cheap point. i resents that. >> do me a favor, talk to me. >> sorry. >> he didn't interrupt. you didn't interrupt him. >> let me talk to you. >> sure. >> if we're not dealing with hamas, when we're talking to kim jong-un, if we're not dealing with hamas, when any leader of the palestinian authority understands if they make a deal

separate from hamas, layer arafat's fear in 2000 they'll be assassinated how can there ultimately be a peace? >> right now in the west bank, building up society, and people and organizations and they exist. i'm going back to the west bank to meet with some of these people in october that can build a civil society so that when israel does pull up out of those settlements which i believe it should, i am deeply against the occupation, then hamas will not take over. we need to prevent a situation that's happening in the west bank. >> how many isratsraelis are involved -- >> i don't know. bust israelis would trade land for peace in a second. the idea that these people think that land is more important than blood is really upsetting. >> and that goes on both sides. >> we need to continue this. this is a powerful conversation. >> you can guys come back for like three hours? >> yes. >> i think we can solve the

conflict on "morning joe." >> and a documentary at theatlantic.com. thank you for the work. still ahead, north korea threatens to cancel its summit with president trump over the demands to develop the nuclear program. "morning joe" it coming right back. the clock is ticking on irreversible joint damage. ongoing pain and stiffness are signs of joint erosion. humira can help stop the clock. prescribed for 15 years, humira targets and blocks a source of inflammation that contributes to joint pain and irreversible damage. 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,

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>> in this case, it's kim jong-un holding that football and president trump, not charlie brown loves swinging in the air. >> many times before. >> as it has happened so many times before. north korea has done a 180, now pulling the plug on meetings with the south and threatening to scuttle the planned sitdown with president trump. welcome to "morning joe." we have with us for nbc news news and msnbc executive director john heilemann. >> comparing kim jong-un to lucy -- >> i really liked lucy. >> and former chief of staff jeremy bash. and i just think it's not like they had history to look at, right? >> well, the thing is -- >> how would they know? >> let us know if something comes out of this. but for yesterday, anybody that

has spent any time understanding how north korea plays the united states and the west, yesterday was not a surprise at all. >> no. >> we've always been concerned here that there's been a belief, inside the white house, even before they got sworn in, that history was going to start on january 20th, 2017. they were contemptuous of this. contemptuous of being told this is how history has unfolded in the past. and say, you guys don't get it, everybody's gotten it wrong. but the problem with not knowing history is what, john heilemann? >> i think it's condemned to repeat. >> santiana i believe. >> this waivering is not new for north korea, it's a return to form. united states reached a landmark agreement, supposedly in north korea, in 1994. nobel peace prizes were handed

out for that. but it collapsed in 2002, that far north korea admitted they had actually used that agreement to build that clandestine nuclear program and enrich uranium. and after withdrawing from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, north korea agreed then, okay, we'll take back in the talks. and they promised what sounded like they were promising in the past week or so. it's been going so fast but they promised to ban all nuclear weapons and all nuclear nuclear programs. the following year, it conducted a nuclear test. its first nuclear test. in 2008, washington dropped north korea from its list of state-sponsored terrorists. why? i have no idea why. but they agreed to send economic aid in exchange for disabling nuclear facilities. guess what --

>> football. >> in a year, after provocative behavior, north korea said it would pull out of any nuclear tox and the repressive regime started its nuclear program. and after the obama administration, a deal was struck in 2012, a plan to provide food, aid and halt operations and its nuclear reactor. but within a month, north korea threatened to launch a satellite killing the agreement, so, mika, this has just been going on and on, as we've been saying, since 1994. >> well, and if you would look at history, you would be a little more -- what's the word -- careful about being braggadocio about the developments. >> and you'd also be humble about the possibility of getting a deal. but, john heilemann, donald

trump charged into a room, a meeting he wasn't even supposed to be at. said let's get the summit together. got the summit together and let us hope, i'll restate, let us hope that north korea follows through this time for the first time. but again, the way they have approached it, we've said from the beginning makes these sort of dustups happen. >> yeah. i mean, there's a reason why when the transition was taking place and president trump and president obama, or president-elect trump and president obama were still speaking to each other. president obama said this is the hardest problem you're going to face. not just the most threatening problem, but the hardest one you'll solve. that was hard wisdom because president obama had seen what had happened to him. and i think donald trump appreciated the first part that north korea was the most danger option and threatening problem. >> right.

>> and he clearly wants to try to solve it. he does want to fix this problem, and yet, he didn't hear the other part which is the hardest problem and if you understood the complexity of it and the history, you would have known just the swagger -- >> those for words. you just used two words. willie, i mean this, donald trump has an aversion, he's allergic to complexity, he's allergic to history. he doesn't know history, he doesn't want to know history. people around him are contemptuous of history. his closest aides, his family members, they believe that they can remake history. they believe they can go into the middle east and just like that, it would be easy to fix. they told me it was easy to fix. >> look at this. >> you look at the pictures that are coming out of the middle east. here we are a year and a half later. this is what they were telling me during the transition was going to be so easy to fix.

because everybody that went before them were fools and idiots, that they knew how to run a real estate company in new york. they certainly could take care of a 4,000-year crisis. >> that's why you quickly move the embassy. meanwhile, people dealing with this problem are talking about the problem. former cia director john brennan responded to the news with this statement, quote, this turn of events is unsurprising since donald trump seems enamored with a fire-aim-ready policymaking. not sure when if ever mr. trump will realize that he is not the smartest man or even the best negotiator in the world. indeed, far from it. jeremy bash, let me go to you on this. north korea also mentioned libya giving up its nuclear program and said it met a miserable fate. it referenced directly john bolton.

what did you read into the activity. are you surprised at all what north korea did yesterday? >> well, the statement from the first vice minister of north korea was stunning really. fired a rhetorical missile directly at john bolton. basically said his involvement in this process is undermining sort of an understanding they thought they had which is they were not going to have to give up their nuclear weapons. i think all of the theatrics about the summit and the meeting and the nobel prize discussions aside, substantively, this statement points to very significant possibly unbridgeable differences between the u.s. and north korea. the north koreans saying we're not going disengage. and the reaction i had, willie is that the president sort like that guy at the school auction who always has his hand up. you know when ego is involved he's going to overpay. >> yeah. >> i've been critical from the

start, actually going all the way back to 2007 of barack obama's eager toness to strike deal with iran. i'll meet with the leaders. hillary clinton rightly criticized him for saying, republicans rightly criticized him for saying that. conservatives, the conservatives that are still out there are skeptical of donald trump being so desperate for a meeting with kim jong-un that he would lay no groundwork. this is the sort of thing that we conservatives have always been skeptical of, going back 40, 50 years. people who support donald trump are writing blogs this morning. talking about trump. and what a genius he is for north korea. they weren't even born when we saw what ronald reagan did at

reykjavik. which the press hated, liberals hated, europe hated. and yet, we conservatives believe reagan's tough negotiations against mikhail gorbach gorbachev, and yet you negotiated. you negotiate and take a tough line for a long time and then you get concessions. here's donald trump bumbling in, he wasn't even a good dealmaker in new york city. that's why he was $9 billion in debt, right? he bumbles in, like we've always accused liberals of bumbling in in negotiations with communists and tiyrannical regimes. and this sort of bumbling is what we're fearful of, we're always skeptical, especially of communist regimes. and yet donald trump bumbles in. this is not a surprise to us real conservatives.

i know nikki haley is going to have to say what she has to say at the united nations. but this is not surprising to nikki haley. she comes out of the tradition of ronald reagan as do i and so many other people that are not surprised by this at all. >> right. and i think what trump thinks, just to try to filter through his mind to the extent that's ever possible, i think he would say, well, i was tough with north korea. answer wh and what he means by that is, he sent some tweets that said fire and fury, little rocket man. that for him is taking a tough line. he paved the way for negotiations by being tough. tougher than anybody before. tougher than barack obama with kim jong-un. that tells you how he measures toughness. toughness for him is sending a provocative feet, some hist tee

on histrionic rhetoric. and also recognizing flourishes like that can be effective sometimes but that's not negotiation just yelling at someone. >> he's a day trader. >> right. >> what ronald reagan did over decades sorts soviet russia. what richard nixon did for decades against the entire communist movement, donald trump cress compressed literally into a few months and thought he could send out a few nasty tweets and that would somehow send the same message that ronald reagan's streak against communist and richard nixon alsoing with e elger. >> i'm never forget him in the white house patting jared on the back and saying he's going to

involve peace in the middle east and slapping him on the back. and like that would do it. i thought my god, are you freaking kidding me. it was like one of those things, what planet am i on? the white house. coming up on "morning joe," more in how china plays in all of this, and whether president trump has significantly strengthened beijing's hand. we'll get that straight ahead. but first, bill karins. >> the slow morning commute in the northeast after yesterday's severe weather. let me show you the image, the lightning didn't cause too many problems yesterday but this was amazing in philadelphia, skyscrapers get hit, i've never seen three get hit at the same time. that image from channel 10 there in philadelphia. we did have five fatalities in three different states because of those storms. those storms are over with now. we're left with that boundary,

though, that is creating all of the clouds and rain, not just today, but possibly the next four days. here's the setup, a pesky low in north florida. pumping moisture up the coast. and additional moisture up the coast and because of that stalled front, very likely rain for the next coming of days from the carolinas to the nation's capital. a slight risk of slight flooding. hearings the rainfall forecast. the red is 3 inches, the pink is as much as 4 inches of rain in the middle atlantic region. the rest of the country is looking okay with record warm conditions. and if you have airport travel plans up and down the eastern seaboard from now until saturday, there is the potential for rain and some delays. thankfully, no significant rain like yesterday in new york city. more "morning joe" when we come back. ust want you close, ♪

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welcome back to "morning joe." we've been talking about north korea's abrupt decision to pull out from high-level talking with the south. let's bring in columnist for the daily beast gordon chang. he's author of the book "nuclear showdown north korea takes on the world." i'd love to get a sense of your concerns if what we're seeing is a complete lack of strategic vision, strategic patience and historic significance to the process, and then what china's role in all of this is? >> i think china essentially told kim jong-un that they were going to have his back. and we saw that with kim's two trips to china a row. i think xi jinping said we're going to help you. and if you look at the two last months, mika, chinese --

>> when you say help, help them back off the agreements with the united states, the possibility of a summit? >> yes, because, you know, for instance, we have seen in the first two weeks of this month, a marked decrease in oil and gas and diesel prices in the northern part of north korea. that wouldn't have happened until china was pumping a lot more oil to the kims. and i think that's related to what's going on here. and, joe, with regard to your comments on the toughness of negotiating, i think it's significant that kim sort of had this reversal after president trump's zte tweet on sunday where he wilted under pressure. it's noted that the chinese gave that to embattled chamber and president trump said yes, i'm

going to help. >> and once again, will, we talked about moving the capital, moving the embassy to jerusalem, even if you're like me long support moving the capital of israel to jerusalem, you don't do it unilateral. >> right. >> you figure out what you can get out of it, not only for the united states, but also for the entire region. how do we -- how do we move this region to peace in a way that not only helps the united states, but helps the long-term interests of israel? and instead, they just have their cocktail reception. and get absolutely nothing outside of it for the united states of america. because that is what the president of the united states first goal should be. but also the people of israel. and here, the same thing, as gordon said, donald trump caves. now, what would usually happen, you would quietly work behind the scenes, our state

department, we talk to china, and say, okay, listen, we'll do that but in return -- >> right. >> -- and again, this is the sort of drudgery. this is the sort of diplomatic process that every successful deal must go through it. but donald trump he doesn't want to do it, he's a day tradeser. he tweets that out and makes himself look weak to iran. and that's one of those things he doesn't have a state department to speak of and we don't have ambassadors, because he thinks he can do it himself. >> remember, he has a campaign checklist of things that he's going to kick in the door in washington and get these things done, whether it's tpp or paris or moving out of the embassy or getting what he believes is a historic peace deal with north

korea. he doesn't go through those steps because his presidency is different in his eye. and gordon chang, i would ask you, as somebody who has studied the peninsula, who has study china surprised at all with what kim jong-un did. because apparently the white house was surprised, this caught them off guard. to me, this looks like and joe laid out the pattern and history exactly how they behaved in these negotiations? >> well, i'm embarrassed to say this, willie, but yeah, i was surprised because i thought we were on a much better path. of course, the north koreans have a playbook, they did something like this in 2008, followed by withdrawing from the six-party talks in 2009 so, yeah, we do see those things. the perception in washington, and it's across the political spectrum that we've got to do something because north korea can actually threaten the u.s. homeland. and the other thing that's different is that north korea is more needy this time because

u.n. and u.s. sanctions have really crimped the flow of money to kim. and that has really caused problem internally, because he can no longer shower his regime elements with gifts. things are the same but also different but i have to admit i was taken aback by what i heard yesterday. coming up on "morning joe" -- >> one year of watergate is enough. >> to paraphrase richard nixon, rudy giuliani said one year of russia is enough. how he turned presidential lawyer is planning robert mueller on the special anniversary of the special counsel.

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tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of special counsel robert mueller's appointment by deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. and president trump's attorney rudy giuliani says they will use the occasion to blast the investigate's very existence. oh, please do. >> listen, they really should do, because the only thing -- the only witches in this witch hunt that mueller has, willie are 13 russians, right? >> right.

>> flynn, the national campaign chairman. and the campaign manager who president trump told me was absolutely necessary to win the nomination. >> yeah. >> told me back in the summer, got to get him, joe, because he's absolutely necessary for me to get the delegates to win the nomination. he's been indicted. >> yes. rick gates. >> you got rick gates who helped him run the campaign. >> very helpful. >> he's been indicted. and now he's cooperating. you have the person that donald trump said was one of his two key foreign policy advisers -- >> you notice mika is just like rumbling underneath like "saturday night live." >> i am. i'm the background singer. >> she would like that skit. >> no, she is me. i'm going to go like this now. >> but, anyway, look at this list. >> okay. >> hold on, hold on. right there. hey, hey, nothing has been done. you've got four ex-trump advisers. a lawyer, a digital marketing

strategic, 13 russian nationals, three russian companies, five guilty pleas, three trumpists cooperating with this investigation and he says nothing's been done in a year. this is one of the most successful prosecutions. guess what, here's the great news, willie, as they say on tv, guess what, there's more. >> yes. >> i was going to say, you might be hearing from donald trump's personal attorney sometime some, michael cohen could join that list. jeremy bash, obviously, bob mueller is not listening to the claims from rudy giuliani and others that this is a witch hunt and not going to stop his investigation and pressure from the trump white house. what is again, undermining the investigations so when the findings are made public, president trump and rudy giuliani and people who support donald trump can say their illegitimate because of x, y and z. it's negotiate put the facts out

in front of people to show that bob mueller has been doing his work quietly, with plea deals and arrests. and he moves forward despite what the trump officials may be saying around him. >> yeah, the mueller investigation has been very speedy, workmanlike. they've gotten five criminal convictions of significant players. they have the opportunity to turn the witnesses in the investigation against higher ups. imagine for a moment, willie, the astounding position we find ourselves in, the president of the united states, it's supposed t to symbolize truth telling and openness, and won't actually answer the questions about his own conduct because his lawyers are afraid he'll admit criminality or perjure himself. and here we are, the president is refusing to answer questions.

and i think rudy giuliani has joined with the other lawyers saying, mr. president, don't do this. take it to the supreme court. >> jeremy, thank you. coming up, from college campuses to censorship in literature. katie couric is standing by. she joins the table straight ahead on "morning joe." you totanobody's hurt, new car. but there will still be pain. it comes when your insurance company says they'll only pay three-quarters of what it takes to replace it.

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♪ white house press secretary sarah sanders said that the administration was not surprised by north korea's decision to abruptly pull out of talks with south korea and threaten next month's summit with president trump. she also responded to whether the white house is pushing the, quote, libya model for north korea denuclearization. take a listen. >> this is something that we fully expected. the president is very used and ready for tough negotiations. and if they want to meet, we'll

be ready. and if they don't, that's okay, too. we know that this is kind of, i guess, a standard function that can often happen. and, you know, we're not surprised by it. this is the president trump mott model. he's going to run this the way he sees fit. he's 100% confident and we all know that he's the best negotiator. >> as you're all aware, he's the best negotiator. we're all aware, you know. i wouldn't have said that -- i wouldn't have said that -- i mean, look, what do you do in this situation other than to make the best of it but i wouldn't say it was obvious that they were fully expecting this. >> i wouldn't be surprised, willie, that you would have a huff and if you have -- >> we may be back to little rocket man again. >> and we just heard this is

that the white house had no idea this was coming in. again, they're trying to frame this the best they can, having to make a headlong dive to the pool. >> let's bring in katie cure spike the conversation. moving on. the final part of her six-part documentary series on national geographic entitled "america inside out with katie couric." take a look. >> an authorized change since i graduated from college almost 40 years. there's new vocabulary. safe space. mike grcro aggression. >> i will ask you a series of statements, the statements will have you move forward or

backward if something applies to you. please take one step forward if your parents told you you can be anything you want to be. take one step back in your ancestors were forced to come to the united states. you routinely see people that are unemployed. and you see people who won't think twice calling the police when trouble happens. i want you to open your eyes. and i want you to think about how you're feeling right now. >> guilty. >> guilty. >> and lucky. >> exactly, katie couric, incredible series. back up, i want to talk about this specific episode. but tell us exactly the focus of the series as a whole. you've traveled across the country to take a look at what's going on. >> yeah. well, i spent eight months just really trying to understand these super divisive issues and these situations that i think honestly get such a cursory look in this new cycle that's so fast and furious, for example, when i

was in charlottesville looking at confederate statues and memoirs. i was there in the middle of that horrific white supremacy rally. and then it disappeared from the news after a day or so. so, i felt like there aren't many places that you can really roll up your sleeves and dig deep and get people's perspective and context on these thorny issues. so i embarked on this. the history that we commemorate, the history that we collected and ignored. and i interviewed brian stevenson. i talked about gender inequality. and i know some reporters have gone to the middle of country to talk to people in rural and rust belt communities. but i don't think they've done much to truly understand the struggles that some of these

individuals are dealing with. my last one was is on how college campuses and my whole perspective on things, cultural appropriation versus cultural appreciation and fashion. how we look at mofvies and how e have a modern lens on things in the past and what that means. they're very heady and complex topics. but i really tried to just untangle and unpack, as they say, to give people more information so they can make informed opinions instead of knee jerk reactions. >> it's true, we move so fast, especially with the administration and the president tweeting every time. >> well, he takes all the oxygen out of everything. we're really undergoing seismic shifts demographically, with the population, geographically with people fleeing small towns and smaller cities. and obviously, technology is

really affecting our workplace and how we relate to each other. and i feel like we're not talking about these things enough. because we're talking about donald trump 24/7. >> i was listening to you talking about safe spaces and some of the new vocabulary of the college campus. i hesitate because i start to sound fogeyish when we talk about these things. i think every generation -- >> all turn into paul wynn from "bye bye birdie" what's the matter with kids today, right? >> i think we've had this conversation. i know it's a conversation i have constantly with my friends who have their kids now in college. which is this college culture now does seem fragile in some way that i don't remember my college. the safe spaces and the desire to protect from unpopular

opinions and people feeling all of the structures that have been built to kind of coddle, it feels like for kids to keep them from hearing controversial opinions rather than having robust articles. >> it really grew out of like christine lagarde being unfit to give a speech. >> or condi rice. >> did you find that? >> you almost feel like when administrators are that sensitive -- >> are being held hostage. >> they're being held hostage. i think there are two very distinct points of view. certainly people like adam carolla who was disinvited or felt he was disinvited from a speech. i think that's a definite point of view that's an extension of coddling of helicopter parenting but i also think it's not as black and white. all of these issues, they're not as simple as we want them to be. i think there's also a school of thought that as schools become increasingly diverse and have a much more varied population that

there needs to be a place where some of these students can feel more comfortable. and i think, you know, i hope you realize the irony of us even discovering this as five white people and discussing white privilege. you know. and i think that there's a different philosophy at northwestern, for example, marty shapiro feels you have to be comfortable to engage in uncomfortable learning. there should be a place where you can talk about things and not be judged and not be criticized and be able to, as a young person, i think, formulate your point of view. but of course, robert zimmer at the university of chicago. the dean wrote a letter to incoming students a couple years ago saying we do not have tigger warnings. we do not advocate safe spaces. everyone is entitled to speak here. i think there are two different points ever view. and i think both of them actually have merit and not to skirt the issue. but i think the way they're sometimes portrayed in the media

is to stimulate outrage. >> so, you mentioned adam carolla and here he is. >> you think this is a continuation of a parenting style. >> yes. >> that has left kids a little too fragile? >> well, because, i think college campuses have sort of turned into a business. and these people that pay 50 grand a year in tuition, those are kind of your clients. and if you start saying, hey, quiet, sit down, you're the chute or the faculty, i don't think they want to advocate their constituency. >> i think katie, that's the problem. it seems like there's a heckler's group. >> by the way, condi rice not a part of the white privilege movement with her background. >> right, right. >> and christine lagarde.

>> and everything else that she can bring to that. and i think the administration capitulates to the heckler and says, we don't want any trouble. >> there's something called no platform. james comey spoke. and the students were chanting comey is my homey. it was about social justice and the fbi's position on various issues. you know, i think like anything, it can go too far. but i also think there is an increased sensitivity on the part of students for marginalized populations. it's actually a really positive development. that certain things are not okay. but, i think, again it's when the pendulum swings too much. like micro aggression, you might make a joke about somebody who is jewish in the past. and they had to just put up with it. and now people are saying, wait, are you insinuating i'm cheap because i'm jewish? like marty shapiro talked to me

about his own personal experiences with microaggressions. i think it's a way of being more thoughtful. i think political thoughtfulness has been recognized by the other side to kind of impede social progress. >> as you say, katie, it's important to remember in a media culture that wants to get the extremes screaming at each other. >> that profits on outrage. >> right, that profits on outrage. i remember charles murray going up saying they're doing it wrong. charles murray is saying i'm going to back to harvard where i graduated and i'm escorted by police. he was the first to say it afterwards, oh, my gosh, harvard did it right. the students are so respectful. we saw that when betsy devos went up there. the students were respectful,

they had a tough dialogue. but that administration got it right. >> well, i think if you shut people down and to close them off and to not have a forum where you actually engage in a spirited and robust debate, i think everybody loses. >> spirit or robust can co-exist with respectful. the final episode of "america inside out with katie couric" airs tonight on national geographic. it is worth watching the entire series. katie couric, thank you so much. >> thank you. keep talking about it. that's our hash tag, keep talking. >> i love it. that's what we do here. >> talking and talking and talking. >> never stop talking. some feel we need to be protected from the steve bannons of the world. is there a remedy for that? our next guest says there is, and that's straight ahead. plus, the latest fallout from michael cohen's consulting gigs with top companies. "morning joe" is coming right back.

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the senior lawyer for novartis which cosigned at agreement to pay $1.2 million to the firm owned by president trump's personal attorney michael cohen, that attorney is leaving the company novartis entered into the agreement in 2017 saying cohen promised insights into how the administration would work. in a statement, novartis said, quote, it was an error, adding he takes personal responsibility

to bring the public debate to this matter on end. >> with us now from boston co co- editor, and author of book. we had him on last week but the discussion was cut short because of breaking political news. >> chance are, it will happen again. >> robert, i want to get to the book, and get to the big question of whether democracy can survive global capitalism. but what grabbed me when i was listening to you on wnyc, talking about the book of your understanding why it failed add qui adequately to donald trump why is that? >> i think going back to bill clinton, democrats found it

either fashionable or expedient to get into bed with wall street. and get into bed with a globalization that takes livelihoods away from the working people. so when the crunch came in 2008 with the footbainancial collaps. people who really felt that their livelihoods were being taken away looked for someone to champion them. this comes to a head in 2016. they found trump of all people, a billionaire, real estate developer, as a more credible champion. and i think this segues very nicely off of the conversation you had with katie couric. because if you try to tell working class people, white working class people in western pennsylvania or ohio or wisconsin or michigan to check your privilege, when these people's factories have gone overseas or shut down, and any of living standards are a fraction of what they used to

be, the reaction is, are you kidding. so, what people like stephen bannon have done, is they very successfully pitted white working class people who have taken on the chin against black working class people and middle class people who are taking it on the chin, have them blame each other, instead of understanding that wall street is making often too much of the pie. and if democrats are ever going to recoup, you need a politics that takes the slogan "make america great again" back from donald trump in a way that helps regular people. because if you go back to the '60s, an era when the economy was booming that was an era when white people of goodwill and black people could get together and acknowledge that there needed to be racial progress -- >> and by the way, you've talked in the past about, it was easier for lyndon johnson in 1964 and 1965, to push the boundaries, as it had to do with voting rights.

>> right. >> and as it had to do with equal rights with his landmark legislation there because the economy was doing so well. that white americans were like, okay, okay, this is a little outside of our comfort zone. >> right. >> but we're going to go along with the ride. well, and also, the democratic party stood for the economy doing well for everybody. the memory of roosevelt was still impacntact. and now that feels like light years away. it's a question of what you have done for me lately. and if all you've done lately is things that can be disparaged as political correctness, a guy like trump can come along. people give up on democracy themselves. they would rather take their chances with a quasidictator who panders to their culture differences. >> it's willie geist. you make a statement in the book that this didn't happen right away. but in 2016, when donald trump

arrived on the scene, he just capitalized on something whose seeds had been planted generations ago. when did it start and how did it get to 2016? >> well, i think you can really go back to the collapse of the postwar social contract which really happens in the 1970s. we have a very bad decade starting with opec oil prices which circles through the economy. and then interest rates through the roof. is that opens the door to reagan and fracturing of britain. so you get the dismantling of a whole series of policies that made sure that prosperity was distributed in a way that ordinary people benefited, even as black people were gaining rights and opportunities. that they should have gained under lincoln. and then once -- once reagan is in the driver's seat, a lot of the whole new deal is dismantled. and clinton comes along and he decides he wants to meet the republicans halfway.

he appoints rober s robert reubs treasury secretary. reuben is probably summon more single-handedly for what is happening to the economy, because all of the deregulation starts understand rubin. and then obama appoints a bunch of proteges starting with larry summers. you wonder why the democrats have lost credibility with working people. you know, white working class people voted for obama in higher numbers than hillary clinton. so, you can't just blame this on race. >> robert, thank you so much. >> thanks for being on. >> great to have you on. we hope you'll come back soon. >> i hope so. >> final thought, john heilemann? >> i'm looking forward to seeing how donald trump, what he has to

say today about north korea. that will be an interesting thing. also looking forward very much to the question of how they decide to celebrate the win-year anniversary of the mueller investigation as previewed by rudy giuliani. >> i'm thinking rudy needs to get in front of those cameras and do what he does. >> and defends donald trump's wisdom and education. >> yes. >> this is a moment many presidents have disappointed by, whether clinton, obama, george w. bush with north korea. kim jong-un has always erratic and throw you off your game. now, what do you do to get to the finish line? >> i would look to the example of ronald reagan at reykjavik, he was cast tftstigated by memb. and gorbachev went back to the

soviet union. and understood that the soviet union would not survive san arms race and something called sdi which, of course, democrats mocked. it brought him back to the table. and the rest as they say is shift tor history. and walk away from the table. >> but you've got to see it. that does it for us this morning, stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> thank you, mika. i'm stephanie ruhle with breaking news this morning. the senate judiciary committee about to release transcript s related to that controversial june 2016 trump tower meeting between campaign individuals between donald trump jr. and a russian lawyer. and a very dramatic shift, north korea cancels high-level talks with south. and threatens to back out of next month's historic summit with the united states. the state department forging ahead. >> absolutely. we will continue to go ahead and