year time period. that helps the consumer knows what fact versus fiction or reporting versus opinion. twitter actually did something really good lately which is changing how their system operates to try and reduce trolling. >> which i know the watts, thank you very much. it's a fascinating book. that's it for me today. thank you all for watching. "deadline white house" with my friend nicole wallace starts right now. ♪ hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. an abc show that president trump once described as a show that was, quote, about us, his voters the men and women he often refers to in tweets and speeches as the forgotten men and women. it was cancelled today after its star roseanne bar sent a racist tweet. the show was abc's top rated program.

>> even look at roseanne. i called her yesterday. look at her rates. look at her ratingratings. [ applause ] >> i got a call from mark burnett. he did the apprentice. he's a great guy. he said i called just to say hello and to tell you, did you see roseanne's ratingratings? they were unbelievable, over 18 million people and it was about us. >> how big were they? abc cancelling the show after this tweet from roseanne bar aimed at former senior advisor to valley jaret. quote, muslim brother and planet of the apes had a baby equals vj. she later wrote, i apologize to valley jaret and all americans. i'm truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her

looks. the damage was done. abc cancelling the show just 11 hours after the initial tweet amid a firestorm of controversy. abc releasing this statement, quote, roseanne's twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values and we have decided to cancel her show. valerie jaret is speaking this hour to msnbc. we will bring you her remarks. in the meantime, how did we get here? with us today jason johnson, politics editor for the root. and ashley parker, white house reporter for the "washington post." a former clinton campaign advisor. steve schmitt is here. and elise jordan, former aide in the george w. bush white house and state departments. i've seen you since this news broke. how did we get here?

>> you know, i've been trying to answer that question, nicole. it has something to do with the blurry lines of what we reward and what we punish. what roseanne twe today, it's easy to condemn and it's easy for folks to reflect their own moral standing, their own anti-racism by condemning it. it's harder to ask ourselves the question why was she rewarded in the first place? people knew roseanne's positions. this is just the kind of accumulation of several racist and bigoted statements. yet she was rewarded with the show. you think about donald trump. his political career began in some ways with birtherism. he was rewarded after talking about mexicans as rapists and the like, rewarded with the presidency. so we have people trafficking all over the country today in very obnoxious and insidiously

racist language. and people are embracing them. and yet we have this instance here with roseanne barr really crossing the line. in some ways it was the straw that broke the camel's back and now she's being punished. i think we need to get clear on where the red line is and what is it about our current moment that allows in some ways folks to traffic in all of this hate and to exploit people's fears and benefit from it. at the same time, some of us want to condemn it. it's happening all at once. so it's a very confusing time in some ways. >> jason, let me come to you with the sound that i started the show with. it was interesting to me that in donald trump's words, he described the knicfictional sho that roseanne barr starredn as a show about us. yes. >> what does today's news sound like to the ears of the people about whom the show is described

by the president as being about? >> it means that abc and a lot of networks have recognized what the real us is. i'll be honest with you. from a pure cultural standpoint, i never liked roseanne. i didn't like it when i was a kid because i grew up next to people like the connors in the midwest and they weren't that nice. i thought the romanticization was unpleasant. entertainment in hollywood, they saw trump get elected. they thought, okay, this could be fine. that's why we also saw hank williams jr. coming back to monday night football. that's why a couple years ago no one was going to cancel duck dynasty despite what some of the stars said. there's a realization now connected to this blue wave, abc recognized, wait a minute, there isn't a market for this kind of behavior anymore. there will be consequences for us. there will be boycotts. there will be people who don't want to watch our channel. we have shonda rhimes who works for us.

we have black-ish. we can no longer economically tolerate this kind of bigotry. when trump says this is a show about us, that us isn't enough for the market to tolerate roseanne barr's behavior. >> discontent deepened and sharpened partisan conflicts. bigotry seemed emboldened. our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication. >> the conspiracy theories are what has been in the news. everyone covering this white house is knee deep in the president's conspiracy theories and lies. i remember it was this comment in the aftermath of charlottesville and i remember when i worked for him privately in the oval office the three things he feared the most were nativism, racism and isolati

isolationi isolationism. i think for him to see all of those things realized and sanctioned and out in the light of day in the time of trump is sufficiently alarming. >> the nativism, the racism that you speak of, this is the original sin of the country, slavery, the idea that our counted, t country, the only one in the world founded on the idea that all men are created equal did not extend to everybody. it extended to white men. over time it has enfranchised women and gays and african-americans and hispanic-americans. in the whole story of the country, is the struggle that has existed between that perfect ideal and the forces that want to move us nearer from our flawed reality closer to it. >> who's winning? >> what we see now is a retrenchment, a pulling back

from it. we've seen this play out in our history before. we saw it with african-americans after the first world war where they fought valiantly in france and thought they would come to a country where they defended democracy abroad, that maybe this would be their hour. all these confederate statutes that went up in the 1920s went up not to celebrate civil war victories but to send a political message to african-americans. what we see as this vile conduct by roseanne barr, it's not a joke. it is a stone cold racist statement by one of the most prominent public supporters of a racist president, who time and time again has shown us his true colors and not for the first time at charlottesville. when she lectures the country ad he says there's good nazi's os there. the one thing we should all be clear on, despite idealogical

differences, there are no good naz nazis. we see the stirring of the race caron his president, part of a deliberate strategy to incite hisase with conspiracy theories, with dishonesty, with lying, with race baiting. he is stirring up every worst t t toxin. >> when mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. they're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. they're rapist. and some, i assume, are good people. donald j. trump is calling for a complete and total shutdown of muslims entering the united states until our country's

representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. look at my african-american over here. look at him. our inner cities, african-americans, hispanics are living in hell because it's so dangerous. you walk down the street, you get shot. but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. you had people thin that group excuse me. wouldn't you love to see one of those nfl owners when somebody disrespects our flag to say get that son of a bitch off the field right now. he's fired. he's fired! you were here long before any of us were here, although we have a representative in congress who they say was here a long time ago. they call her pocahontas. >> so stupid. it's stunning. those are his word, ashley parker. i know he likes to take your stories with 30 or 40 sources

and call them fake. he smeared the media this morning in a twitter tirade. but those are his words. and we show them just to put proof behind the point steve's making. is there anyone in the white house bothered by the blatant racism? >> the answer to that question is yes. there are absolutely people who are privately bothered by some of the things he says, although very few have reached the tipping point where they were publicly come out and condemn it or resign. so there does seem to be -- >> has anyone? >> i guess you could say gary cohen came out after the charlottesville in that interview, i believe with the financial times. but that was not what he resigned over. he resigned over a trade issue a couple months later. >> tariffs. close. >> yeah. >> i'm really offended by the trade tariffs.

>> you can talk about nazis. >> mnuchin and cohen are standing behind him like bobbleheads nodding when he's talking about there being good nazis. that doesn't precipitate the resignation. it's the trade tariff. too much. >> we couldn't take it. >> so occasionally people have come out but they haven't cited that as the cause for their resignation. there are some people privately who express discomfort. but again not enough to actually take those affirmative steps you might expect someone to take if they were so deeply bothered. >> tonight he's on his way to a large rally in friendly territory. any predictions about what he might say about this there? >> i've learned not to predict with this president. but i think it's safe to say that this might be something he very early on in the rally, you could see him possibly making an issue out of it. he does believe these sort of controversial wedge issues are

often -- maybe wedge issue is sort of lierghter term than i nd to use, but are good for his base. he thought the kneeling with the nfl and the than national anthe great for him. there was a period when we couldn't understand why he was doing this. but he believes that at least among his supporters, this is what they wanted to hear. >> the nfl folded like a cheap tent. the argument they're making today around fox news is that roseanne barr had a first amendment right to be a racist on twitter. nfl football players don't have that same first amendment right to kneel in silent protest. >> it's so tricky. you don't have a first amidendmt right to have a television show. that is not in the constitution. we're seeing the result of the normalization of racism. i remember specifically meetings we had on the campaign. i met with a latino media

person. we had our own private meeting, just the two of us at one point because we were like, we need to be able to come up with clear messaging around the fact that he is normalizing racism. that means that people are feeling like they can be emboldened and racist in public without any fear of social repercussions of any kind. i think it's important that abc decided to cancel roseanne. but to piggyback off jason's point, marvel is a disney property, which is tied to abc. marvel just made a billion dollars off of "black panther." they're preparing to make two and three. they need black people to go see those vies so our buying power is als factor as a response to this overt racism. >> what was abc doing -- i want your thoughts on this too, steve. then i'm going to go back out to eddie and jason. what was abc doing in bed with roseanne in the first place? i know everybody's patting them on the back today for firing her

after that tweet. i don't know what you have to do if this doesn't get you fired, calling valerie jaret the product of the muslim brotherhood and planet of the apes. >> giving roseanne the show, to me, is hollywood pandering to a charact ch c caricature. you look at when donald trump really started this nfl kneeling protest outrage. it was during roy moore's campaign. he did it in alabama, his harshest language in the south. that's donald trump pandering to southerners because he thinks they're racist and he shares their views. i feel that it's degrading to my fellow southerner who is look at that and look at donald trump as doing anything other than a con because he is trying to exploit

the dirtiest, most horrific part of america's history. >> i heard you trying to jump in. was that you, eddie? >> yeah. i can say something. >> or son. i'm sorry. >> i completely agree. again, i think we can't overlook what's absolutely critical on all this. you're making a good point. gosh, none of this is new, right? she said stuff about suzansan r and she still ended up getting a show. look, abc and a lot of other networks thought, hey, we can make money off this level of bigotry now. they thought it would be fine. again, they were rewarded. it's the number one show on abc. what they've recognized is there are more people who find this offensive. this is not to in any way --

people are willing to tolerate a whole lot of terrible behavior as long as they think it's profitable. even before she said what she said, she was also attacking chelsea clinton and spreading anti-semitic rumors about george soros. we've got murphy brown coming back this fall. they'll be part of the resistance. there's an america out there that doesn't need this kind of television anymore. when we come back, valerie jaret, the subject of those tweets reacts exclusively to msnbc news this hour. also rudy bottom lines the president's current legal predicament. to impeach or not to impeach? conspiracy theories go mainstream. we'll break down the president's lies about the republican authorized, republican led investigation into russian

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we are just now getting our first reaction to roseanne barr's tweet from its target, former obama senior advisor valerie jarrett. she's speaking to msnbc right now. take a listen. >> tone does start at the top. we like to look up to our president and feel as though he reflects the values of our country. but i also think every individual citizen has a responsibility too. it's up to all of us to push back. our government is only going to be as good as we make it be. people on the inside have to

push hard and people on the outside have to listen. >> people on the inside have to push hard. do you get the sense that anyone on the inside is pushing hard against this president, who we aired the reel and that really wasn't even everything of his own racist comments? >> i don't think we have anyway of knowing if they're pushing back hard. i don't want to be fair and think there's perhaps someone in the white house who's willing to tell the president that what he's saying is racist or sexist. if you feel that way, why are you still working in the white house? i remember being on air after charlottesville and saying if you disagree with these excelle comments, then you should seek different employment. unless your job is national security, i think this is a fundamental issue. i think that we need to start talking about this in a serious way and stop acting like racism

is only the n-word or a burning flag or the klu klux klan. >> i remember hearing that these were the darkest days there, that a lot of people did think about leaving, especially when a lot of people free to speak their minds was saying that everyone that works there is now stained with the president's comments after charlottesville. do you get any sense that they have their arm s around the proportionalty of donald trump's racist comments? >> when i spoke to people in the west wing and they said at the beginning of the administration he would send out a tweet. initially they would say their heart would race and they would panic and wouldn't know what to do. now it's just become sort of a part of daily life in the west wing. there is sort of a normalization argument. if you've been there since the

beginning, the next thing doesn't feel that much different from what you've already experienced. i covered donald trump on the campaign trail in 2016. i traveled. i went to just about every single one of his rallies. i don't believe and i think i overly simplistico say that all donald trump supporters are racist or sexist. but the thing i was struck by was at these rallies i heard phrases and words, racist, sexist, anti-semitic that in covering other campaigns i had never heard before and you would never expect to hear in a public forum. i was always struck by it felt like at these rallies a permission structure was created for people to say things and do thing s very few of them would ever do in regular life. it was very striking. you would be interviewing someone before the rally and they could not be more polite and respectful. then suddenly the rally started and it just sort of brought out

a frenzied dark side in people. >> some of that had its birth in the sarah palin crowds. you and i both saw it. across the midwest, john mccain was reprimanding his supporters when they called president obama a muslim, sarah palin revelled in what you just described. >> post the economic crash when it was clear we were going to lose, we had supporters in these crowds that were frustrated. it made us cringe. our candidate denounced it. in 2018 we have a president of the united states -- first off, any of these people who are working in a political capacity in this white house, they are complicit with this. they are not hostages. they are not serving the better angels of our country. they are in on it 100%. the coarsening of this country with this mean ed racist

white house -- >> do you call anybody out? >> i'd put secretary mattis into that role. when pompeo goes out last week and he talks about, well, these words just kind of get thrown around out there. b.s. part of a deliberate disinformation campaign by this president. we've never seen the level of lying. we've never seen the level of race baiting. we think about the greatest president this country has ever produced, abraham lincoln. we think about lincoln calling to the better angels of our nature. donald trump every day from the moment he wakes up to the moment he retires summons our worst demons. d the people in that white house are in on it with him. they are coarsening the country. the level of lying, the level of deceit, the level of attacks on our institutions, the sundering of the country for political purposes, all of it, it is

deliberate, it is purposeful, it is premeditated. they know exactly what they're doing. there's a political strategy to it. it is not providential. it is not accidental. you're look at that and you recognize not only is it bad, it's borderline evil and it is hurting this country. last word about valerie jarrett, who served from the moment of president barack obama's inauguration to the moment of donald trump's inauguration. she served with dignity, with honor, with the qualities of probity and rectitude. valerie jarrett when we look at her conduct as a senior official of the government of the united states compared to these people, give me a break. >> it reminds me of the line in american president, she's way out of your league, mr. president. >> i think we have to turn it into a teaching moment.

i'm fine. i'm worried about all the people out there who don't have a circle of friend and followers who come right to their defense, the person who's walking down the street minding their own business and they see somebody cling to their purse or want to cross the street. or every black parent i know who has a boy who has to sit down and have a conversation, the talk as we call it. as you say, those ordinary examples of racism that happen every single day. i think that's why i'm so glad to be here this evening talking with all of you. >> valerie jarrett, just the embodiment of grace under fire. but her words were actually the same word mika brsaid after dond trump wrote about her bloody face. mika said, i'm fine, but almost exactly what valerie said. i'm worried about the people who don't have a voice, who don't have a platform.

can you speak to that part of what valerie's trying to articulate there? >> sure. let's be clear that donald trump is just an exaggerated indication of what's happening in the country. he's the tip of the iceberg. he's not the iceberg itself. what valerie jarrett points our attention to is this, nicole. we could talk about the politics, we could talk about what's happening in the white house and folks a for a lot of bla folk in this country, iteems white people have lost their damn mind and we have to raise our children in the midst of this. those two black men in starbucks were somebody's babies. that child that a police officer hung up by his feet at the waffle house, that's somebody's child. here we are in this environment where many of nus oin our past had people strung up from trees, have had to deal with legal

segregation and ongoing insult and injury and harm. we find ourselves in a historic moment right now where we have to worry about raising our kids. we have to worry about whether or not they will have opportunity. so we could talk about the politics, but there's something -- steve, you've touched on this. there's something deeply insidious that's borderline evil here. it's not just simply donald trump. it's about the moral monsters that are running around this country and claiming it as their own and making so many people vulnerable. my son just graduated yesterday on sunday. i'm thinking about how joyous he was. i saw that big beautiful smile and then i got to worry about him, nicole. why? because we can't seem to look the ugliness or who we are -- not just simply donald trump, but who we are and who we have been so that we can imagine oust ourselves better.

but again, as i'm prone to do, i'm being a moralist. >> what do we do next? >> i think it involves an honest confrontation. i'm working on this book on james baldwin. baldwin at the moment in which he died he was deeply and profoundly disillusions that the country had once again failed to deal with the contradictions at its heart. but he said we had no time to despair, that those of us who have a vision of democracy, who have a fundamental responsibility to all people, that we have to get out here and not just listen, but we have to fight we have to fight for a better america. we can't cede it to these folk who are in some ways nurturing themselves in hate. that's going to require not only voting. it's going to retire getting out and doing the heavy lifting in

our neighborhoods with people who often don't look like us. >> jason, let me ask you to pick this up and run with it. if barack obama were to use his megaphone, if george w. bush were to continue the conversation that he started by talking about racism being emboldened. is it time for everybody to step up and out of retirement? have the times become too perilous for people to take a pass on using their voices at this moment? are we in too much trouble for people to stay quiet? >> i think we're in a tremendous amount of trouble. this is a bigger job than the super team of ex-presidents. we're in a much more dangerous situation. here's why. this is a national security issue. i always think sometimes people overlook this. the divisions in this country by race that's what was being exploited on facebook. that's what other foreign

leaders try to do. they want to keep this country fighting at the neck constantly about these kinds of issues so we are weaker as a whole. whether it's about immigration, or racism, these are national security issues. we cannot function as a country as long as these battles are seen as about personal inconvenience as opposed to a life and death difference for black people and white people. as far as the solutions, this is not about the president or previous presidents coming out. this is about regular people day to day making honest to goodness decisions about the humanitity of oth of other people. it's about other people standing up at starbucks and saying that's wrong. it's about a woman saying you can't call the cops on my husband at a barbecue in oakland. there has to be a return of shaming and economic consequences to this kind of

overt bigotry. there always have been racists in america, but they've been talking fast and loose the past two years b s because they feel empowered by donald trump. it's up to the rest of us to show them there are consequences for this type of behavior. >> we are so grateful to have had both of you for so much of our hour today. thank you. when we come back, donald trump tweeted out over a dozen lies and misheadi misleading st on the russia investigation just this morning. why is he so desperate? we're putting ai into everything, and everything into the cloud. it's all so... smart. but how do you work with it? ask this farmer. he's using satellite data to help increase crop yields. that's smart for the food we eat. at this port, supply chains are becoming more transparent with blockchain. that's smart for millions of shipments. in this lab, researchers are working with watson

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to a large extent, we're defending here it is for public opinion, because eventually the decision here is going to be impeach, not impeach. members of the congress are going to be informed a lot by their constituents. our jury, as it should be, is the american people. >> out tumbles the truth. the president's legal team has impeachment on the brain.

trump is fighting back by telling lies and pushing conspiracy theories to the american people on twitter. in trump's tirade just this morning, at least 14 separate lies and misleading statements. we'll share the most egregious examples. the president wrote, the 13 angry democrats plus people who worked eight years for obama -- there's no evidence that anyone working on the investigation is angry and many of them have served republicans as well. the president continued, working on the rigged russia witch hunt. so the investigation has yielded 19 indictments and guilty pleas. the president continued, will be meddling with the midterm electio elections. this would actually be a crime. to suggest that the mueller-led investigation would amount to meddling is beyond fantasy. it's trumpian projection. the president went on, especially now that republicans stay tough are taking the lead in polls. that was amy favorite. there is not a single poll, not even on fox news's website where

republicans are ahead. the president finished, there was no collusion except by the democrats. if you believed that, mr. president, you'd stop smearing the investigation into collusion and let them prove your innocence. even one of your friend suggested the me yesterday that may very well be the fatal flaw of your smear mueller strategy. joining me is former federal probability paul butler. president sounding guiltier and guiltier by the day while at the same time rudy giuliani basically concedes, hey, yeah, we're looking at impeachment, but if we smear the investigation we should be fine. >> the president's conspiracy theories are also instrumental. they're a means to an end. so when he claimed that president obama was a muslim who was born in kenya, that was to fire up his base. and this deep state nonsense is about attacking the investigation. it's about going after mueller because he's afraid of what the

investigation will reveal. now, i don't think it's going to matter to bob mueller. prosecutors don't really expect to be liked by the subjects of your investigation. the concern is, as rudy giuliani identified, the congress. and some of this stuff seems to be taking hold with them. senator cornyn said we do need to look at the motives. the motive was the fbi had credible information that trump's campaign aides were compromised by russians. so if the ball ultimately is in the hands of congress in impeachment, if some of the republicans are falling for this nonsense, we're in bad shape. >> steve, i'm old enough to remember when republicans were suspicious of russians, not suspicious of the people investigating the people who are in bed with the russians.

>> i'm old enough to remember when john cornyn used to be a judge, was a law man from texas, where we had skepticism towards hostile foreign powers. the 14 lies have to be looked as a package. he's on average lying 3400 times a year, is about the official count. that number today reflects that rolling yearly average. this is purposeful. it is deliberate. we have never seen a disinformation campaign, a propaganda campaign being orchestrated out of the white house, being led by the president of the united states. he is lying hour after hour to the american people. these are lies of authority, because the premise that he is putting forward is this and it's very simple. what is true is what the leader says is true. what is true is what the leader believes is true. no matter how delusional it is,

no matter how self-serving it is. this is straight out of autocrat 101. this doesn't happen in healthy, constitutional republics. there is nobody, and i mean nobody in the majority party, not the speaker, not the majority leader, not the whip, not on the senate side, not jeff flake, not ben sass. a couple of them talk a good game, but none of them will stand up and tell the american people the truth about what's happening right now. this is a threat to the constitutional republic that has endured since 1787. >> ashley you and your colleagues have some great reporting on this as the strategy steve's describing. one piece, giuliani says trump won't sit for a mueller interview unless all spy gate documents can be reviewed. giuliani sjuliaewel -- haven't

been shared and reviewed? didn't we do that already? >> we did do that last week. that's absolutely correct. giuliani is requesting that they be shared with the president's legal team. i would point to laettnter in t interview he said do you want to know why the president is mentioning spy gate? because it works. so there's abvery u very unabas strategy to say these things that may not be true and aren't even necessarily legal strategy, but to basically try to sway public opinion. even among the president's orbit among the people who sort of don't like the tweets and advise him to let mueller's probe run its course, they will sort of admit, you know, this is working in the public opinion. and some believe that the president and his legal team are getting ready to lay the groundwork for negative findings from mueller's team of investigators. or if he -- >> on the obstruction questions,

right? >> yes. >> it's going to come out of rudy's mouth in an interview one of these days. they acknowledge they aren't sure that the president is in the clear on the question of obstruction of justice around the comey firing. >> around the obstruction issue, around the issue if he doesn't sit for an interview or if he does and he ends up in a perjury trial. >> paul? >> the ironic thing is some of the stuff that he's doing now, which is allowing access from his lawyers to these secret documents, access that no other subject of an investigation would ever have, these jet mese meetings with only republicans, this is actually more evidence of his criminal intent. it's more evidence of obstruction. the point that this is not about law is absolutely right. this is not about justice. it's not about norms. this is a raw power play. the president is doing this because he can. >> i want to play for you more

rudy on sunday with dana bash. >> you told my colleague chris cuomo that robert mueller has agreed to limit that interview from five topics to two topics. what are those two topics? >> they would probably limit it to collusion and obstruction. the collusion part, we're pretty comfortable with, because there has been none. the obstruction part, i'm not as comfortable with. i'm not. the president's fine with it. he's innocent. i'm not comfortable because it's a matter of interpretation, not just hard and fast true/not true. if you interpret his comment about firing comey -- no discussion of firing mueller, by the way. if you interpret that as obstructing the investigation as opposed to removing a guy who was doing a bad job, then you

can say it's obstruction and then you can say is perjury which is even easier for them. >> i want him to keep talking. he limited it to collusion and obstruction which is all that we understand mueller to be looked at. i'm pretty comfortable on collusion because they all think he's too dumb to have colluded with russia. that's what they say in private. on the obstruction, not so much. oh no, we would never fire mueller. that's for next week's sean hannity appearance. >> first of all, i feel like agreeing to these ground rules for an investigation is like sending a politic to talk to a journalist and the journalist promising they're not going to ask what the most juicy topic is. the next point about rudy's interview that i found to be the most striking, i actually think there might be a teeny bit of a strategy there in that they're trying to paint these mean

prosecutors are out to get donald trump and can trip up up over language when he hasn't done anything wrong. even if he admits to obstructing justice or collusion, it's really just because these prosecutors were out to get donald trump. >> behind rudy's media venn rol there are lawyers like emmett flood working on this. are they ever going to advise the president to sit in a room with bob mueller and his binders and binders full of testimony there dozens upon dozens of people including his own white house counsel, don mcgahn, including reie priebus, jared kushner, everyone who was in the room when he made the decision to fire james comey, everyone who was aboard air force one when he wrote that bogus

statement. is anyone ever going to let him sit in a room and discuss obstruction of justice? >> no way. that would be grounds for malpractice. why do we think trump fired comey because of the russia investigation? because that's what he told lester holt. >> the star witness. >> the concern is he's going to go to mueller and say the same kinds of things, which might actually be true. you know, giuliani keeps extending the date, making up excuses. trump will never sit down in a room with robert mueller. >> paul butler, we always love having you, especially today. when we come back, ashley's latest piece detailing what it's like to work in this white house. we'll give you a hint. anyone seen game of thrones? it took guts to start my business.

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vojimmy (shouting): james!as been jimmy's longest. he's survived recordain and a supplier that went belly up. so while he's proud to have helped put a roof over the heads of hundreds of families, he's most proud of the one he's kept over his own. brand vo: get the most out of your money, whether you're using quickbooks smart invoicing to get paid twice as fast or automatically tracking your mileage. smarter business tools for the world's hardest workers. quickbooks. backing you. one picky customer shouldn't take all your time. need something printed? the business advisors at office depot can assist with exactly what your business needs to grow. get your coupon for 20% off services, technology and more at office depot and officedepot.com. we're back. ashley parker is with us in new york. we'll spill her secret for being

here tomorrow when she's not here. we can embarrass her. her latest piece describes the west wing where trump calls the shots. "largely gone are the warring faction that's dominated life at 1600 pennsylvania avenue in the first year of trump's term, replacinged by solie players, many with personal connections with the president and their own miniature thiefdoms. take us inside this white house right now. >> sure. i don't want to say blanket things are calmer. but there are less, when we sort of try to evaluate what is the state of the trump white house now which is the goal of that piece sh as you read, there are less warring factions. at the beginning of the white house, there were people who were either trying to weaponize trump for their own personal gain or trying to use their faction to sink another faction. and he sort of swept all of that out. and so -- >> largely the professionals against the family, right? battles waged sort of among the ivanka access and then some of

the washington -- >> the globalist and the democrats and the conservatives, that's right. and so now you have people who are brought in and, again, not arguing it's a finally tuned machine necessarily on all fronts, but do you have people who are brought in like giuliani and john bolton, larry kudlow who sort of don't have the open disdain for the president we saw publicly in the first six months or. so and they are his peers. take larry kudlow, even when they have disagreements as he and the president do on trade issues, you know, he'll try to moderate the president, argue his case but he sort of fundamentally respects him as his boss. and the president kind of likes as of now at least he likes the people as peers, friends, he likes giuliani as a release valve. so the mood has sort of shifted slightly. >> but one place it is still hot mess is the calm shop. and they had this report. aides fight in front of trump about leaks shortly after word leak that kelly sadler had taken

a nasty shot at john mccain. he had a tiny group of communication staffers meeting. sadler and john kelly and others gathered in front of the desk with a conversation with trum bp the leaking problem. the president told sadler she wouldn't be fired for her remark and then trump said he wanted to know who the leakers were. she stunned the room, to be completely honest, she said, she thought one of the worst leakers was her boss. i'm just never surprised by anything. >> what about the december snk and what about people turning on each other in front of each other's faces and in front of the president? >> what i think about is i'm afraid for our national security. beyond just the sort of back and forth and the pettiness of the people there and all they're inner personal drama. they're actually supposed to be governing the nation. right? and so instead of doing that, they are having fights amongst each other about personal slights and very insignificant things or, you know, offensive

comments said in meetings leaked to the press and we do it all again. i feel like we're in this sort of i'm dizzy. >> can you imagine bush calling you and me in andaying like who is doing it and you're like it's her! >> of course not. the only thing i can think of is the mccain mutiny and the steel balls in the hand on the search for the strawberries. this is madness. i have no doubt, right that, the story is 100% true. you know, the meticulous reporting that comes out of "the washington post," "the new york times." >> this was axios to give credit. >> the stupidity inherent in this conversation around a desk in an office where life and death decisions are made. it's not just the communications department. we launched $50 billion of tariffs against the chinese. they'll retaliate. they'll hurt farmers today.

look, even the act of just trying to have some basic level of decency, civility on memorial day. he can't get through memorial day without desecrating and defiling this sacred day of remembrance in this country. everyo everywhere you look whether it is the vape penning and the personnel office and 100 other things they shouldn't be doing, you show me one time and i mean one time in this entire tenure of this presidency where there's been a critical mass of people getting up in there and that building saying how do we make america better for our kids and grandkids? one time, one person, never. never. >> if it leaks, ashley parker will have it. disrupting business and taking on a life of its own.

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congratulations to you and your colleagues. >> thank you. >> we're glad to you have in new york. my thanks to our guests. don't miss our town hall tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern. that does it for our hour. hi, chuck. >> nicole, we did it. >> oh, my god. it took ten years off my life. last night i was -- >> we did it. >> warriors and cavaliers. >> we got it. >> we got what you wanted. we got what i wanted. let's just say -- i say warriors in six. anything -- anything -- if you can't beat them in six, then i'm not impressed. >> you're faking me out. >> i know. that's the whole point. all right. so it begins. have a good show. >> youot