hi everyone, it's 4:00 in new york. the expression used to go like this. when america sneezes, the world catches a cold. which made us wonder what exactly does the world catch when the american president is so incoherent in his cancelation of a planned summit with north korea that even our closest allies are left out of the loop and scrambling to keep up with trump's shifting pronouncements? one senior white house official telling me today that the decision to pull out of the summit was kept close hold explaining, we had to be sure we had the exact decision before we could notify everyone so it didn't leak. the source added, it's not like

donald trump hadn't foreshadowed the possibility. fair enough, but it's unclear exactly what the president was trying to foreshadow in these remarks this morning. >> is the summit still on? >> we're going to see what happens. we're talking to them now. it was a very nice statement they put out. we'll see what happens. [ inaudible question ] >> we'll see what happens. it could even be the 12th. we're talking to them now. they very much want to do, we'd like to do it, we'll see what happens. [ inaudible question ] >> i don't know anything about it. [ inaudible question ] >> john, everybody plays games, you know that. you know that better than anybody. >> new reporting in "the washington post" suggests that any decision on north korea was

born more out of trump's concern for his own ego than carefully considered foreign policy. "the president told advisers he was concern ed kim was maneuvering to back out of the summit and make americans look like desperate suitors so trump called it off first." tony sha awards who coauthored "the art of the deal" with donald trump said the president scorched the summit to save his ego. trump has a morbid fear of being humiliated and shamed. this is showing who's the biggest and the strongest so he's exquisitely sensitive to the possibility he would end up looking weak and small. there's nothing more unacceptable to donald trump than that." in reality, the stakes are much higher than a potential personal embarrassment for the president. ax i don't writing, the united states was closer to war with north korea last summer than is widely known. sources close to the white house tell us. and now that same dangerous uncertainty is back. let's get right to our reporters and guests.

nbc's keir simmons joins from us st. petersburg where he is covering a topic at the world economic forum. from the white house, associated press reporter jill colvin. at the table, brett stevens, "new york times" op-ed columnist. mike murphy, republican strategist who's advised bush, mccain, and romney, the good old days. heather mcgee, now president of the advocacy group dimos action, all msnbc contributors. what is the latest from the white house? i had heard that some of the backlash about how our closest allies didn't know and members of congress who are inclined to support this president on foreign policy were left out of the loop, that the reason for that was that they needed it to be final, they didn't want to it leak. what are you hearing today about where things stand? >> that's definitely becoming an increasing concern from this white house is they're trying to tamp down on it. the message that we're really hearing today and that my colleagues have been reporting out today is really that the

president doesn't see this as the end of the road. the president doesn't see the summit as now being something that's never going to happen. there they're still holding out hope, suggesting that the june 12th date is possibly still on, even though logistically that seems like an impossibility. but really painting this as just another step in the president's negotiation with the north koreans to try to gain an upper hand here. >> jill, i want to ask you about that. we played that sound at the top. the president said, quote, it could be the 12th. are logistical steps still being taken for that summit to happen? obviously large advance crews have probably already been there, they'd have to go back. that is work ongoing or has that all been halted? >> at this point, there's supposed to be a group of advance staffers and other folks including the deputy chief of staff, joe hagan, supposed to be going there next week. it's unclear at the moment

whether that trip is still planned. they haven't been clear about whether that's going to happen or not. senior administration official we'ving reporters yesterday described the number of days between now and june 12th as i think 10 minutes. it's a very short period of time. there are very intense, strategic negotiations that need to go on, not just from the logistical side where you need to figure out exactly who's going to be aware of the security situation here, very concerning for both sides. also there's so much work that needs to go on in terms of exactly what the deal is going to be, what are they going to agree to? hagan and his team were in singapore last week and the fact is that the north koreans stood them up. that was supposed to be a time when they sat down and they worked out a lot of those issues. in those conversations aren't taking place, if the u.s. and north korea aren't having those discussions, it's very hard to imagine june 12th is right around the corner. >> keir simmons, we've been talking about the logistics because that's where this story has taken us to all the things that broke down in the normal

sort of consultation process and informing allies and people who can cover your back when something like this falls apart. let's get right to what you cover, the substance. you watch this president from overseas, and if you look at just the recent foreign policy events, pulling out of the iran deal, this backing out of the summit with north korea, pulling out of the paris climate accord, what does the picture of america under president trump start to look like? >> i have to tell you, i just this afternoon witnessed a pretty damning demonstration of the world under president trump. because just visually, you had president putin, the leader of russia, here in russia of all places, the leader of japan, the leader of france, the deputy premier of china, and the leader of the imf, all on the stage together at one thing. i was there as news filtered

through that president trump announced the north korean summit was back on. none of those leaders, none of them, appeared to know that that was going to be a possibility. not two of america's closest allies, the leader of japan, the leader of france. the deputy premier of china seemed to be the one who was least surprised. china, least surprised by it. as you'd expect, they were all pretty much unified in saying that they hoped the summit did go ahead. because frankly any sane person would want to try and see moves toward peace in north korea. but nicole, on so many other subjects as you mentioned, what we saw was them being unified in criticism without naming president trump on iran on climate change, on trade, again and again there was this criticism. even from president putin, who as we know is reluctant always to criticize president trump in public. and he didn't directly criticize him. but joined this criticism. for example, suggesting that the rules of the world are being

ripped up unfairly. president putin suggesting that. it's amazing that's president trump's fault. >> we have conversations every day about the ob lit race of norms in this country, whether it's at the justice department or the fbi or the intelligence community. but we don't talk enough about what you see, and that's the ob lit race of norms in terms of our diplomatic relations with allies and adversaries. what you're reporting makes it sound like even russia finds this administration's conduct unsettling in terms of just knowing where each side stands. >> yeah, i mean, what i saw today was the leader of russia, president putin, and one of the leaders of china, together calling for trade rules around the world to be followed. for normal trade practices, if you like, around the world. and one of the worrying things about that is that you're hearing from two people who don't -- i think if you like, you could call russia a quaus

sigh-democracy, china clearly not a democracy, so there's that concern. president trump, for example, just to give you an example, he was asked about ma-17, the plane shot down over ukraine. we've had reports the last 24 hours that it was according to independent inquiry a russian missile responsible for that. and president putin flatly denied it. it's a lie, honestly. and that is the person who at the same time is uniting world leaders, who is picturing himself, presenting himself as standing up for the world in a way the world should be run. and that gives you a sense of the deficit. i just would say one thing. we don't know how things are going to play out in north korea. the trump strategy may well work. i don't think even those leaders on that stage know the answer to that, hence their kind of diplomatic hopes expressed that there will be progress there. but on many, many other issues, the world seems to be moving forward without america. >> i've got two follow-ups for

you, keir. one, you use another thing we've been talking about all week, that president putin was sort of putting something out there based on a lie. we've spent the week talking about a conspiracy theory that the president of this country has about the fbi's conduct based on a lie, that there was some mole planted in his campaign. i want you to pick up on the idea that these two operate in the same ways. i want to read you -- a two-fer, i know you can handle it even though it's late there. it's being reported here critics said trump's hasty jump into a poorly thought out summit process left the united states in a weakened position and trump's personal dalliance with kim elevated the stature of a brutal authoritarian regime on the global stage. i want you to land there and let us know that's the impression that world leaders have, that the united states either wittingly or unwittingly elevated kim jong-un to places he's never been before? >> thanks for throwing me that

one, yeah. >> you can have it. >> look. you know, i really think on north korea that we've just got to keep in mind, this is a conversation you and i have been having over many months, particularly toward the end of last year, we have to remember how very dangerous it appeared to be getting, how dangerous a conflict in north korea is. you had president putin effectively siding with kim jong-un at this conference here today, suggesting that kim jong-un had done everything needed. and again, as i mentioned, seeming to criticize president trump, which is unusual. so there's a strange -- there are strange bedfellow forth you, president putin and president trump, both trying to move forward with north korea and perhaps a little bit side with the north korean leader in recent months. however, i do think that it's worth -- what you saw with all of these leaders, and remember, they're from very different countries.

you had the leader of japan, one of the leaders of china on the same stage, you saw them all saying, we do want to try to see diplomacy work on north korea, and we know the reason for that it's because the alternative is terrifying. so i think in that sense, i guess, we need to give president trump a little bit of generosity in terms of how we assess how this is being tackled, being played. we don't know how this is going to end. >> brett stevens, pick up on that threat. we've got keir's reporting from abroad, jill's excellent reporting from the white house about how this all sort of became consumed with some of the chaos and confusion around process. take us back to the substance. do you think the president is sufficiently steeped in the substance of what the in the region's national security interest, this countries's national security interest, to pull this off? >> no. when i grew up, i grew up in a

bipolar world. in middle age i live in a bipolar presidency. with north korea you might say we're talking about two bipolar situations. in the case of north korea they run hot and they run cold, but i will say at least in north korea, they do it for strategic reasons. there's a method to north korea's madness of escalating a situation and then extracting concessions. in the case of the president, it seems to be driven entirely by temperament and by vanity and ego. and that's what's so particularly dangerous going back to your original question. it strikes me that instead of a sort of cooley rationale sister of what united states could offer north korea versus what's the most that they could possibly concede, what we had was a president who suddenly was watching fox news and hearing the word that he could be offered a nobel peace prize,

succumbing to that temptation, and then suddenly being faced with the opposite possibility of being humiliated and unmanned, if you will, by kim jong-un. so we're not really dealing with an analysis of the situation, we're dealing with a question of what is the outcome likeliest to flatter donald trump's vanity at any particular moment in time? >> i guess what we're seeing now, heather, is this conflation of self with state. i mean, where is the united states' interest in any of these conversations? you don't hear it from any of his surrogates, you hear about donald trump's interests. and what was telegraphed by the president what leaked out almost immediately, was this idea that he saw this as an opportunity to win a nobel peace prize that he was telling friends and allies that republicans could run on the denuclearization of the korean peninsula and hold the house and the senate on that victory. he made the stakes so abundantly clear to kim jong-un that they were do or die for him that it seems like he gave up all of

america's leverage out of the gate. >> that's exactly right. his program of america first has meant america alone. and most important already, it hasn't returned any dividends to the country. whether it's getting tough on china and then backing out, whether it's obviously the fact that we are now sacrificing not just a potential to transform our economy in a great way but also the well-being of the next generation by pulling out on climate change. on issue after issue, he has not been able to say that america first, other than being a psychic boost to say, we are still the best in the world, actually is going to redound in any benefits to the american people. i think the fear of this man being anywhere near the white house in 2016 was exactly this. that someone's ego would be close to putting millions of lives at stake. and thankfully this last crazy week starting with john bolton saying something that he never should have, then oddly mike

pence, who's supposed to be sort of the serious statesman in the room, doubling down on that on fox news, thankfully hasn't immediately created any loss of life. but i think a lot of americans are scared. they don't trust him to have his finger anywhere near the button. >> you didn't make dissimilar points to the ones just made by heather during the campaign about sort of the fundamental lack of fitness for this aspect of the job, the commander in chief profile. >> yeah. it is a hard, complicated job. and figuring out north korea is particularly hard and complicated. because you have big powers that want different things. the north koreans are actually the easiest part of the equation. because they just want to survive. the regime wants to survive. to do that, they want economic relief. i met with a high-level north korean defector last week. it was interesting. his point of view was, this is a con job, kim in his politics has to show some creeping progress toward their eternal strategy, which is misbehave, then are paid off to stop misbehaving. the problem is, because i don't think donald trump thinks

anybody knows anything more about anything than he does, he won't take any expert advice. instead, as brett says, he's reacting emotionally. he's guy wants to dominate any situation. the truth is, from my point of view, kim could write the new edition of "art of the deal." because just having an american president agree to a bilateral summit without giving up anything? we've had 30 years of bipartisan foreign policy to try to inch him along, six-party talks, everything else. he already won. and then he got us to back off on a military exercise that had been normalized. now a couple of adjectives thrown around in public diplomacy and we're throwing a fit. so i do think that the breakup letter that will have historians laughing for 30 years, he's dying for a summit. he wants the photo op. he wants the politics. eventually i think he'll get one. because for domestic reasons north koreans want one to inch toward economic relief. >> jill, i think what the white house might say in response is they did secure the release of three americans who were

detained in north korea. but at this moment, is that an accurate assessment of the accomplishments in their dealings with north korea? >> i mean, that is something that they accomplished here. and i think that they deserve credit. that is something that happened. aul also yesterday, the north koreans did shut down that nuclear facility. they had journalists there. broke their promise of having any type of independent experts there to verify that their full capabilities had been destroed. there have been moments of progress there and this story is definitely not done yet. >> jill colvin, keir simmons, so grateful for your reporting. we're happy to have it. when we come back, donald trump's spy fantasy. it's only real in his head. but that didn't stop the white house from ordering the department of justice to brief congress on some of the nation's most sensitive secrets and the identity of a confidential informant. we'll do a damage assessment. also ahead, harvey weinstein in handcuffs, in court, and facing criminal charges on two counts of rape and a criminal

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it's a drone! i know. find your phone easily with the xfinity voice remote. one more way comcast is working to fit into your life, not the other way around. this week we all got a chance to track the life cycle of a conspiracy theory. it started with donald trump making one up about fbi spies implanted in his campaign. it exploded to the point where the justice department had to brief lawmakers about what actually happened. and finally today, after those classified meetings where the only public statements we've

heard have shot down the original allegation, the conspiracy theory seems to have been largely debunked for everyone but donald trump and his allies. and instead of backing off in the face of cold hard facts, donald trump has expanded upon his original tall tale. count the number of times he says the word spy in this morning's tweets. quote, the democrats are now alluding to the concept that having an informant placed in an opposing party's campaign is different than having a spy. as illegal as that may be. what about an informant who was paid a fortune and sets up way earlier than the russia hoax? can anyone even imagine having spies placed in a competing campaign by the people and party in absolute power? i'm not reading any more of this. you know what, brett stevens, this is -- and even by reading it, these are bold-faced lies and as his audacity and sort of fantasies expand, i just wonder what role you think the truth plays in any of this for them.

>> you know, speaking about north korea just a minute ago, i said what is really at work is a kind of neurosis. here i will say what is at work is a strategy. because donald trump is setting out to basically throw enough mud at the investigation to cast a kind of -- mixing metaphors -- a cloud, sorry, a cloud in people's minds over, well, you know, there is something, there is something wrong with the investigation. this was started on false pretenses. there is a kind of deep state loathing for the president, the mueller investigation should never have begun, and anything that it turns up will therefore be, will therefore be colored by questions about its origins. and what's so particularly frightening is the president seems completely incurious about the possibility that russia was making attempts to infiltrate his campaign in exactly the same way that they had infiltrated campaigns in other countries where certain politicians

espoused pro-russian views. you know, when the former director of national intelligence james clapper said on tv somewhere, he said the president should have -- a candidate should have welcomed the possibility that the fbi was keeping tabs on this. >> how about as president? shouldn't he still? joyce vance is joining the conversation, former u.s. attorney, msnbc contributor. i read this in the morning between the president's tweets and my coffee. i start the day at 11:00 on a scale of one to ten. shouldn't the -- even now, i feel like he could wake up tomorrow and say, you know what, i want to get to the bottom of what russia did because i want to protect this country. why is that never the advice he's given? why is that never anything that -- do you think he will ever say, i want to protect america from russia interfering in our democracy? >> i think that used to be the mystery about his behavior, why he didn't -- why he had no curiosity about russia's efforts to infiltrate his campaign. but now it's really the linchpin

piece of evidence where, you know, a year and a half in and at this point the fact that the president has shown no interest at getting to the bottom of russian efforts to influence his campaign, russian efforts to have an impact on the american vote, really speaks for itself. >> but, joyce, i guess what i'm asking is are we participating in something that we're going to look back and deeply regret? because the tweets started, you know, i'm innocent of collusion and people around him said he could barely collude with this press office. then they went to, well, a president can't obstruct justice because they're allowed to fire whoever they want. now the lies are almost like things out of fairy tales. there is a made-up spy implanted, which i think of teeth and other things when i think of the word implanted, into his campaign. the people who are being investigated were suspicious enough that a fisa court, you know better than me, the highest threshold for proof said they are troubling, let's keep an eye on them. where are we heading by

continuing to cover what is almost beyond lies, fairy tales, fantasies, perversions of his own original story? >> he is remarkably good at spin. where we are in this country is he has us so thoroughly down in the weeds that we can't see the trees, let alone the forest. we can't see this concept that the president is saying, in essence, that the fbi should not investigate when there is good intelligence that says that the russians are trying to influence outcomes in our country. and you're right, it's a dangerous path for us to go down. and it's not a political issue. this is the sort of moment where we need to all step back and put aside our personal political believes and think about our country, not our party. think about truth as opposed to lies. you know, if there had been any truth to this so-called spygate story, then yesterday after there is this series of meetings that involved d.o.j. briefings, we would have seen republicans emerge and say, aha, the

president was on to something. but we saw absolute crickets after those meetings and that should tell us that the president here is yet again lying about what's going on. that's the danger. >> he's lying. and joyce is right, mike. they would have shown up on sean hannity. they would have been booked in packs of three, shoulder to shoulder shots from the capital saying, aha, we got it, the smoking gun. >> very troubling. >> there is nothing. >> no, there was nothing. the whole thing was a card trick and a bad one. the problem is -- the reason the president won't defend the national interest or the idea the russians were undermining our democracy is he thinks his interest is the national interest. he is that i believe self-obsessed. if it's good for him, it's good for america. if it's attacking him, it's attacking american. he cannot see foreign enemies, he only sees trump enemies. he is the first president in modern history, and i'll include nixon in this or clinton, who is immune from shame. shame used to be the weapon that could hold the top in line. it means nothing to him. the one thing i'll say, though, he is not being that successful.

he has the office, but there is only one mark to market event in politics. you know this, election day. and his numbers are bad, among the worst ever. he's heading toward what could be a very traumatic election day for the republican party institutionally. we will see what the day after the election looks like, but he is not a political success. >> i want to stay here. i've got something i want to share -- i am so sick of people coming even on this show and telling me that his base isn't going anywhere, his numbers are going up. he barely won. i mean, it was an electoral victory, but -- >> he has a rasputin trick going. which is everything, and i was one of them, said, he's going to lose by 4 million votes, it's over the demography, then he won. >> he still lost by millions of votes. i'm not relitigating the outcome. it's not like he has this buffer that has him immune from anything. you don't need that many people to wonder if maybe he's full of it. >> if you replay the election day to day with the demography of the country, basically who's died, he'd lose.

>> i feel better for the first time. >> i don't have a time machine but it's the fact. >> i'm buying it. let me put up the list of all the conspiracy theories of yesteryear. that obama wiretapped -- i think he said "tapped my wires," i like that he separated that. democrats colluded with russia. ted cruz's father was involved in jfk's assassination. obama wasn't born in the u.s. thousands celebrated 9/11 on the rooftops. millions voted illegally. syrian refugees are isis terrorists. made up a theory about scalia's death. he's questioning the legitimacy of the "access hollywood" tapes since the first moment he heard it. >> so, i think this is beyond lies. it's propaganda, right? and i do think it's strategic. i think of all that list, you could have done many more, the ones that are closest to the truth and his vulnerabilities are the ones where he projects in a very simple way by saying that, in fact, his opponents are the ones who have done exactly what he does, right? creating an entire structure during his campaign around the

criminality and the rigging of the election that is happening by the democrats, when we all know that many people, at least many people in his campaign and his family, if not he, knew that there were russians who were trying to give them information to do exactly that. that's classic misinformation. that's misinformation. >> they sat in the meeting. >> they sat in the meeting. they wanted the meeting. when we ask why is he so uncurious, it's because he was unable to see that if someone is offering something that will help him win, his son, his son-in-law, his family members, his top campaign aides said, yeah, bring it on, national security interests be damned. that's why he's uncurious whether russia meddled in the election because we see what their campaign's disposition was to exactly that promise. >> all right. coming up, harvey weinstein, the man many view as the first domino to fall in the "me too" movement arrested on rape charges today. a day one of his victims said she didn't believe would ever come. w out of control,

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are you sorry, harvey? harvey? >> mr. weinstein? >> harvey, have you got anything to say? the charge of rape, did you rape those women? >> harvey weinstein turned himself in to police in lower manhattan and appeared in court on charges that he raped one woman and forced another to perform oral sex. "the new york times" describing it as a watershed moment in a months-long sex crimes investigation and in the "me too" movement. the "times" adding, with camera shutters clicking and reporters asking questions, this is a scene from the red carpet where harvey weinstein presided for decades as movie hollywood and king of hollywood. but after decades of harnessing his wealth and his influence in the movie industry to buy or coerce silence from women and after withstanding an investigation into groping allegations three years ago, mr. weinstein's reign ended behind bars in a police holding

cell on friday morning. nbc's rehema ellis was at the court when weinstein was charged and joins us now and with us on set, msnbc legal correspondent and host of "the beat," ari melber has joined the table. rehema, if you can bring us up to speed on a day that has been this historic and monumental event not just for weinstein's victims and accusers, but for all of the women who have been freed, i guess is probably not the right word, but who have been inspired to speak out because of these women going public with their accusations against harvey weinstein. >> reporter: for sure, nicolle. it has been an extraordinary day for some of the reasons that you just pointed out, a man who was known for walking the red carpet. and then we saw him in a perp walk with his hands in handcuffs behind his back. tonight he is out on $1 million cash bail after he voluntarily surrendered to authorities early this morning at a precinct

house, not half a mile from here. then he was brought here to this courthouse in manhattan in handcuffs, and he stood before the court to face felony charges, two rape counts and one criminal sexual act in what's called the first degree from two separate cases involving women. one that happened in 2004, another happened in 2013. he left this courtroom not in handcuffs, but he was given an opportunity to walk away, surrendering his passport. and he has an ankle bracelet on so that they can monitor his movements. he will be able to go to new york to his home in connecticut. but anything else out of those boundaries, he's going to have to get permission from authorities. and when his attorney came out, i asked a question and that is, after he said he's going to vigorously defend harvey weinstein who denies that there was any nonconsensual sex, and i asked him what does he say to all of those women who accuse him of bad behavior in connection with this case?

here's what his attorney had to say. >> my job is not to defend behavior. my job is to defend something that is criminal behavior. bad behavior, mr. weinstein did not invent the casting couch in hollywood. and to the extent that there is bad behavior in that industry, that is not what this is about. bad behavior is not on trial in this case. >> reporter: there are other possible charges against harvey weinstein because a special grand jury is looking into charges. and his attorney says he's going to decide next week whether harvey weinstein will testify before that grand jury. nicolle? >> rehema ellis, thank you so much for joining us. ari, these are -- this feels like the tip of the iceberg in terms of the legal exposure that harvey weinstein has in the face of, what is it, more than 90 women who have accused him. >> we're looking at an individual there in that perp walk who was once the king of hollywood, close to every major

media mogul businessperson, political leaders, and who -- because we talk politics on this show -- was close to the clintons, who could very credibly spend the rest of his life in prison and die in prison depending on how the trial goes. these charges, these three very serious felony charges are based on the accounts of two women, as you mention. 95 women have already publicly come forward. so, the allegation and legally that's what we call it, a series of allegations, but the allegation is not of someone who when you see some of the pictures here. the allegation is not of someone who had an incident or second incident or an alleged misunderstanding. the allegation is of someone who operated as a serial rapist with kind of a criminal enterprise around him, and a series of protecters and people complicit in this. and i would mention when we think about this again with the trump administration, all the talk about alleged immigrant criminals or black criminals in the cities and all these things we hear about, this was a very powerful white man who was

alleged to be a criminal in our midst at the highest levels of american life. >> a predator. you're not going anywhere. i have so many questions for you. when we come back, powerful reaction today from a woman who has become the face of the "me too" movement in hollywood and is one of the first to come forward and accuse harvey weinstein of rape. over the last 24 hours, you finished preparing him for college. in 24 hours, you'll send him off thinking you've done everything for his well-being. but meningitis b progresses quickly and can be fatal,

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second thing i wanted to change was the leadership of the company. and the third was for us to start listening. listening to our riders. listening to our driver partners. i think listening is ultimately going to make us a better company. he should go to jail forever. he stole so many lives. he stole, he ate, he killed, he -- i mean, he destroyed not just careers, but like the nights that i've been on the floor crying while he gets oscars. you know, and the other -- these women, we're humans. we were taken. our lives were stolen. >> if he stole your lives, do you get it back today? >> i think today is a damn good

start. >> your message to harvey? >> no more tears. not because of you. not anymore. today, today we rejoice. tomorrow will be hard again. but today we can have a moment for all of us. this is for all of us who have been told we are nothing. this is for all of us. because we are something and we can be free. it's a beautiful thing. >> she leaves me speechless, ari. can you just talk about the structural deficiencies of a justice system that leaves 95 women vulnerable prey to an animal like harvey weinstein? >> well, we are in new york state where the top law enforcement official in this state, a man roughly a contemporary in age of harvey weinstein, the attorney general eric schneiderman, was ousted when it was credibly reported and alleged that he had domestic abuse violations. if you are a woman in the system

and you look at it, and you think that being victimized once is bad enough, but reporting will lead to professional, personal, public or legal ramifications that are worse, then of course you're stuck in a terrible harrowing bind which is what we hear when we report on this and we listen to these stories. so, that is possibly starting to change, which is significant, but look what it took. it took "the new york times" doing an incredible investigative piece. it took someone who in harvey weinstein, although had a lot of power, became a figure because of his fame, maybe that eventually, finally in the end turned on him. how many women have stories for us that we've reported on all over the country where the person who allegedly hurt them is not famous and does not make for an interesting story so we don't get to this point. having said that, i think what ms. mcgowan and others are saying is important because things can change fast and they don't necessarily have to go backwards. so, there is a different attorney general in this state. there are different standards taking hold how prosecutors look

at this. and in the cosby case, to give one legal example, more women's testimony was allowed in and that can change the entire equation from a quote, he said she said, which is a limited frame to begin with, you know what i mean, to he said they said. that can make a big difference to a jury. oh, if this was a pattern, maybe we should do something about it. >> joyce vance, can you jump in on whether there need to be changes to the law or whether there need to be changes to the practices? and i guess by that i mean why is it always on the victims to carry the burden of banding together with 95 other people who allege the same atrocity until someone listens? are there problems with the laws or are there still problems with the culture? >> you know, ari points out the biggest issue that victims, usually women, face in these cases and that's getting the attention of law enforcement and getting the cases prosecuted. these aren't easy cases and that's not a flaw in the law. that's just a result of the fact

that prosecutors have to believe they can prove these crimes beyond a reasonable doubt to get a conviction from a jury. no one wants to put victims through the heartache of a trial that ends up in a not guilty verdict. and so as in other cases, the evidence is looked at. and when it's two people alone in a room, these cases can be tough to prove. but there is power in women coming forward, much like what happened in cosby where additional evidence led to a conviction. the law permits prosecutors to introduce evidence of what's typically called other bad acts. you might have cases where the victims are out of the statute of limitations or for whatever reason the crime against them can't be charged, but prosecutors can use their testimony and juries can hear from eight, nine, ten women to show that the defendant had a similar way of acting, that he had a similar motive, that he used the same kind of language or the same places to convict as crimes.

then prosecutors can get those cases across the finishing line. so what's important here is that there be leaders who push these cases forward. >> heather, do you see a nexus between the legal developments in what's happening in our politics with women rising up? >> absolutely. i was just going to say. the real hero in this story is the "me too" movement. you're exactly right that when it's just he said/she said, it's a problem. but what happened it was sort of he said/american women said. and that changed the calculus. you saw all those faces of 95 women who were able to finally say, it won't be my career versus harvey weinstein. it will be me and my sisters. and then in industry after industry that has fallen and that's because this is not an individual issue. this is not about one bad guy, although this is a very terrible guy. it's about a structural power dynamic that has been a part of our society for so long.

we've seen rapid change on these issues in just the past couple of generations. but this is why social movements are necessary, to tip the balance of power so that no one person is alone fighting something which is a structural issue. >> all right. we know you have to go get ready for your show. you have a big show tonight. tell us about t. >> we're going to be covering this with megan tooey who helped break the story for the "new york times" and won that pulitzer. it will be interesting to get her views on this. and broadening beyond that we have the "vogue" editor with hal rains for a very special fallback friday, so a little bit of everything. >> i never miss it. i'm not going to miss it tonight. we have to sneak in a break. we'll be right back. could stop itself? in iihs front-end crash prevention testing,

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the only true progressive for senate. change california now is responsible for the content of this advertising. a stunning new report in "the washington post" reveals the details of a meeting that took place just days after donald trump took office. it may have helped set the tone for his entire presidency. the post reporting today, quote, the night before trump delivered his first speech to congress in february 2017, he huddled with senior adviser jared kushner and stephen miller in the oval office to talk immigration. the president reluctantly agreed with suggestions that he strike a gentler tone on immigration in the speech. trump reminded them that the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail and acting as if he were at a rally, he then read aloud a few made up hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed such as rape or murder. then he said the crowds would

roar when the criminals were thrown out of the country as they did when he highlighted crimes by illegal immigrants at his ralliesies miller and kushn laughed. bret? >> it's not surprising. >> it's appalling. >> this is a president who made his mark coming down that escalator, making remarks that were very similar. it's another reminder why he is utterly unfit to be the president of the united states. something like 17% of americans are foreign born. my mother was a refugee to this -- came as a refugee. my father was born in mexico. as a matter of statistical fact, immigrants, including illegal immigrants, commit violent crimes at a much lower rate than native born americans. but it goes to the heart of his demagogic appeal to a nativist base and a form of xenophobic

politics which has supplanted the kind of conservatism that attracted me as a kid, ronald reagan, shining city on the hill. people ought to spend time going back to a debate between george h.w. bush and ronald reagan and listening to the way they spoke about mexican or latin american immigrants compared to what we have today to trace the decline in the moral stature of the republican party. >> it's so frustrating because he does not understand nor does he care to understand that he's not just head of government. in our system, he's head of state, which means he has to be the up holder of the civic values that build the country. instead we have this high school pr pro-dukds of a tony soprano monologue. >> it also explains why they don't fire leakers.

that's flagrant racism in the office and they're laughing about it with the president's son-in-law and legal adviser. >> it's also a political strategy. i have to push back on the idea this has been so foreign to the republican party for so long. all of my life there has been a very clear formula, which is divide and conquer, stoke fear of minorities. it used to be more african-americans, and now it's more immigrants. link undeserving minorities to government, and then say that government needs to be squashed and shrunk because it either coddles or somehow is, you know, sort of giving more money to people of color. and that's actually the formula behind everything that trump is doing right now. so it's not just about race baiting. it's also about an economic agenda. >> i think we're going to have this conversation every day for the entire trump presidency. we have to sneak in our last break. we'll be right back.

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i always wish i had more time with these friends. my thanks to bret stephens, mike murphy and heather mcgee. i'm nicolle wallace. i'll see you back here monday for deadline white house at 4:00 p.m. the world according to trump. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm steve kornacki in for chris matthews. it's been less than 24 hours since president trump abruptly canceled his date with north korean dictator kim jong-un. once again, ratcheting up tensions on the world stage. despite that, though, president trump today declared that america is back and finally getting the respect it deserves. trump making that s