book. we will do that next time. we will go deep. est messing with the enemy. must buy. must read. you will love it. the book is called messing with the enemy. we just showed you the cover. that does it for our hour imi'm nicolle wallace. hay hi chuck are you ready for game one. >> i will. >> are we going to stay friends no matter what? >> i promise i will pardon you. no matter what. >> it is like an 800 number. i'm going to leave my name and number on the hot line. do me next. >> actually you are never going to get the pardon. i have a better shot than you do. i am a talking about from him. not us. thank you nicole. >> if it's thursday, pardon me. tonight, a special message for special counsel witnesses. how today's presidential pardon parade marches to the beat of the trump allies in mueller's probe. >> it was probe to pardonen dinesh d'souza and the president

has the ability to do so. plus a presidential rewrite. president trump now says the probe had nothing to to with james comey's firing. but there is this tape. >> i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a made up story. >> and why there is no party like a trump party. >> there is no republican party. there is a trump party. >> this is "mtp daily," and it starts right now. ♪ good evening i'm chuck todd here in washington. welcome to "mtp daily." lying, prgery, obstruction of justice, violating campaign finance laws and corruption. folk with today's news, a president has sent a clear mess badge the russia investigation, that those crimes shouldn't necessarily matter. the president's personal lawyer is being investigated for possibly violating campaign

finance laws, which is a charge others could face in mueller's investigation. and today the president pardoned a conservative commentator who was convicted for violating campaign finance laws. the president himself is embroiled in a far reaching investigation involving stir and corruption. today the president told reporters aboard fair force one that he is thinking about pardoning rod blagojevich, someone synonymous with conspiracy and corruption. the president's lawyers are worried about him lying if he talks with mueller. and today the president said he was also thinking about pardonaning martha stewart, who was charged with among other things, lying to investigate oorls. and last month, the president pardoned scooter libby, who was convicted of among other things, perjury. the president's former campaign chief, paul manafort is being squeezed by federal prosecutors perhaps in an event to flip him against the president or simply to go after him for other crimes. speaking of which, the president already partoned joe arpaio, who was convicted of defying the

justice department, essentially not abiding by the rule of law. folks, you could easily argue that the president's justification for these pardons and potential pardons project his own conspiracy theories about politics, if justice department, and this russia investigation. the president argued today that every other politician is basically just as criminally corrupt as rod blagojevich. he argued that, quote, everybody else just gets a slap on the wrist when they violate campaign finance laws. he said that dinesh d'souza was somehow treated hoshbly by the justice department. and the president argued that martha stewart, prosecuted by james comey, by the way, somehow was treated unfairly. folks, it feels as if the president is attempting to condition the public to justify behavior that previously has been found to be so dishonest and illegal that it sent people to jail. and i haven't even mentioned that the president actually made a statement today that is a verifiable lie involving the russia investigation. we will talk about that later in the show. chuck rosenberg is a msnbc

contributor, form u.s. attorney and a former cia official who worked with both james comey and bob mueller. he will join tonight's panel, shane harris, heidi priss bowla, and ram herb pew due rue. chuck, let me start with you. i'm curious today, when people like yourself, prosecutors like yourself, career prosecutors, see a president -- see people convicted of -- properly convicted of crimes get pardoned, what is their morale after something like this, especially if it looks like a pattern? >> when it look like a pattern, chuck, it can be pretty demoralizing. i can tell you from my own experience as a prosecutor, there are things you can control and things you can't control. you can work really, really hard on a case, a righteous case a white collar case, and a judge decides that that person not

ought to go to jail. and it can be disappointing, but at least you feel that the process was fair because the judge did not have some underlying political motive or imperative. here it is a little bit different because there seems to be an underlying political imperative. from a prosecutor's standpoint, even though we understand there are some things we can't control, it's typically not coupled with a bad motive. >> do you see mad motive here? >> i'm beginning to see bad motive here. i don't like to speculate but a pattern is emerging. i'm not the brightest guy in the world, chuck, but there is a pattern emerging. and a number of the people that the president has pardoned or signalled that he might pardon seem to fit a certain pattern. you articulated it in the opening. >> you know, there is something else he said today. i want to open it up to the panel here. this is the president on rod blagojevich on air force one. he said this, there is another one i am thinking about pardoning, rod lag blag in jail for being stupid and saying many

of the things that many other politicians say, plenty of other politicians have said a lot worse and it doesn't -- he shouldn't have been put in jail. rame ramesh, what do you make of this rationale? >> i think there is a kind of cynicism that shades into a kind of cheap, you know, pseudosophistication where you say all they are owl crooks. and in fact blagojevich was significantly worse than most politicians are. if it's true that our standards for corruption are too low, which is i think what he is bisque chi arguing here, that is not an argue for a pardon for blagojevich. it is an argument for enforcing the law against everybody else. >> that's too logical and rational. heidi, you can help but look at this as if he is trying to essentially what aboutism, his entire mueller investigation. >> he is trying to fuzz it up. and create this image as well of the justice department as this deep state well of corruption that is out to get people like

him as well, who are idiologically similar to him in theis ka of dinesh d'souza. but you item also the specific crimes, which is really interesting when you draw a line between all of these individuals. in the case of d'souza for instance making false statements, wire fraud, conspiracy. who does that sound like? >> i believe his name is michael cohen. >> right. >> right. >> yes. >> again, we can't say for certain but we can point out the pattern. i think that is what we need to do is point out the pattern. >> shane, this is what the president said approximate d'souza. he said what should have been a quick minor fine like everybody else with the election stuff, what they did to him was horrible. father-in-law the justice deputy was so cruel to d'souza that his ex-wife wrote a letter to the

judge, she writes please accept this letter as my effort to correct the record for the false allegations with regarding me and his relationship with my daughter. i trust the court will consider my letter and impose a fair appropriate and justice sentence. she went out of her way to essentially not be light on this guy. that's how unfairly she thought he was treated. >> somebody close to the events. >> what i find fascinating about what the president said, he is holding himself out as the final asher the of justice. >> right. >> this is a recent case for which the person convictioned has not demonstrated public contribution contribution which is usually the requisite step for getting a pardon and then there is a review. no, the president says i'm going the fix this or fix that. and then he says i'm the only one who can fix this mess.

>> there is a question too of how these cases are being brought to him. donald trump does not come into office with a list of people who he thinks have been unfairly treated and can't wait to pardon. >> a perverted way these are creative trolls, these pardons. i don't know who is putting these guys in front of him. they are creative trolls, they spin up the right enemies for the president and appease the right part of his base. >> he pardoned five people, conservative cause celebs. d'souza, joe arpaio, and -- i forgot. >> scooter libby? >> yes. look, there are lots of miscarriages of justice in this country. it seems hard to believe that so many of them would involve members of his political base. >> chuck rosenberg what's the unintended consequence of the president essentially, he is bog this asher the. shane described it he will with, he is going object the asher the of fairness here. but if a president is saying that basically all the campaign finance laws in this country are

meaningless, because that's kind the argument he is making. they are not serious. they shouldn't be enforced with the same seriousness that, you know, defrauding somebody personally would be, what's the unintended consequence of that in the legal world? >> well, he is substituting his judgment for the judgment of lots and lots of people who know the substance of this much better than he does. now, there is no argument about his pardon authority. it's unfettered. he can pardon whoever he wants. but taking a class of offenses, let's say it's campaign finance, or bank robbery, or tax evasion, or whatever it might be, and saying that that shouldn't count is really an act of substituting his judgment for that of not just the reare of the executive branch but also the legislative branch. so i think it is a dangerous path. he does have unfettered authority but there was always a process at the department of justice to bring pardons before him, as shane said, when the

person seeking the pardon had shown contribution and the pardon was therefore an act of grace and not an act of sort of political tunism. >> chuck, let me put up -- we have here the five standards essentially for having a pardon considered. character, conduct and reputation, assuming you are actually trying to improve that. dinesh d'souza's twitter feed would tell you otherwise. seriousness and relative reensness of the offense. atonement. need for relief and some sort of official recommendation from others. obviously, this did not go through any traditional department of justice protocol, correct? >> it seems that way, chuck. but these are policies. the policies were put in place not to restrain the president because everyone understands as i said earlier that the power here is unfettered. but to protect the president. to make sure that when he acts in a graceful way, when he confer as pardon or a comutation

it's to those people who really truly deserve and it proved it over time. so these are policies that are there for a reason. they have stood the test of time. they have work well. he has simply chosen to ignore them. >> we assume the other thing that there may be an audience -- and this is for the panel of three or four people here, perhaps in these pardons. michael cohen we have brought him up once. we know four people who haven't been interviewed by mueller, who could be targets. roger stone, michael cohen, brad par scale, and his con, donald trump jr. >> we have seen this in the earlier pardons, too. you pointed out how tightly they are lining up. >> it's transparent. >> he is conditioning and getting the public ready for it. i think it is also sending a message. that said i cannot imagine the

attorneys for any of these people are betting their strategy and the future of liberty on this. >> this is what he is doing. but it's part of a broader -- put it in a broader category here, a broader tap, another file of yet another tentacle another way of trying to undermine the organization. >> where is the outrage on the right? where are the rule of law conservatives who are going wait a minute this is an abuse of the pardonening. >> i think the arpaio pardon was a terrible abuse of power. and there were people -- >> national view and weekly standard all try to keep their principles. >> what i think trump is doing is trying the redefine our understanding of things like corruption. for him corruption is basically opposition to him. there is no neutral standard of justice. and when he talks about law and in order he is talking about his enemies, and they need to be held to account, his friends need to be rewarded. >> okay. i agree that that's all the case, that that's how he sees

this. where is the rest of the republican leadership on this? nobody else can actually believe that this is what it should be. >> what i think you are going the see -- you are going the see some people, d'souza is popular among some of the republicans on the right. others are going to ride it out and talk about other issues. >> spend ten minutes on d'souza's twitter feed and i can't imagine why anyone would want to stand with that man's character. thank you for being here. up ahead, we don't say this lightly. but the president -- it's verifiable today. we don't use the word here a lot. you beat us up for it. but the president lied about the russia investigation today. next.

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can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn? welcome back. the president is now lying about the russia investigation. we don't toss that word around on this show. but what else do you call something like this today. today he said, quote, i never fired james comey because of russia. definitive, he says. but folks, the president and his lawyer have said that he did fire comey because of russia. and they said it in front of tv cameras. lordy, there are tapes. >> when i decided to just do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a made-up story. it's an excuse by the delts for having lost an election -- democrats for having lost an election that they should have won. >> he fired comey because comey would not among other things say that he wasn't a target of the investigation. >> panel is back.

shane harris, heidi press bowla, ramesh. i know the social media debate about what do you call these things. this is one of those -- the president is saying the sun rise inside the west. ramesh? >> yeah, so, if you recall when comey was fired as director of the fbi the administration put out a memo from rod rosenstein, deputy attorney general, who was the purported justification for firing him, which laid out how he had been so unfair to hillary clinton. >> right. right. >> and then trump himself speaking to lester holt contradicts that. and maybe he has mixed up his own stories here. but for whatever reason, he is not sticking to one story on this. >> cognitive dissonnance. is that a defense? >> or disorganized dishonesty. >> he said it on tape. everyone on the hill knows, because he was not just pressuring comey. he was also pressuring a number of the committee chairs on the hill. >> he was pressuring coats, and

mike pompeo. if you recall. >> i cannot help but observe, chuck, that the lies seem to be coming more frequent and more brazen. we all witnessed over the weekend the president denying the actual existence of one of his administration officials who had just briefed about 100 people on the phone. and that is, i think in part due to the fact that he is succeeding. no one is calling him on it. >> right. >> in fact, there is actually a lot of enablers out there. i saw a column in the washtimes over the weekend that said in the enwhen it comes to the russia investigation the facts won't matter because perception is reality. >> that was one of my questions for this panel. has the president successfully inoculated himself from the worst of mueller. with his 35%. the core 35. >> i don't think that was a challenge to begin with. >> do you think he can get to the 40 or 45. >> when richard nixon was

resigning there was still 25% of the country that was behind him, too. there is always going to be an immovable core that stays. for them the reality is whatever trump says it is. i don't understand the logic of this contradiction he keeps demonstrating. if you have already got the 25 or 30% what is the logic between brazingly lying and distributing falsehoods when you are not lying. >> obviously the whole spygate thing is another one. and he's not helped by -- >> that goes to the conspiracy theory of paranoia. >> it does. but it's -- you have like two members of congress that pushed back on it. here. take a listen. >> there is no evidence to support any allegation that the fbi or any intelligence agency placed a spy in the trump campaign. >> when the president says spygate, that's not a -- there was no spy inserted into the campaign. have you seen any evidence of that? >> i have not. that's an espionage term. that's not a law enforcement

term. >> interestingly enough, rudy giuliani attacked trey gouty today. he said the following, he is is drinking the cool aid and he adds i don't know what he did with a benghazi, he screwed that up. i don't know what he was diagnose. obviously if you are not on the reservation, you don't know what you are doing. tray gouty. >> enablers. it gets back to my point it wouldn't be happening and he couldn't get away with it if people weren't going out and attacking the messengers. trey gouty wasn't the only one. on social media before i came on here the far right news magazines were starting to attack him. vaughn hillyard was out on phenomenon ten -- >> trey gouty. >> youia. in tennessee talking to trump people at the rally. they believe this. they believe there was a spy, that the justice department is corrupt. >> i think the dispute over whether a confidential human informant can be characterized as a spy is a little bit of a distraction. >> you know that's not the

story. what he is saying is infiltrate. >> right. >> he is trying to int paint this as something that's' not. >> i agree with that. there is no evidence that there was an attempt to undermine the trump campaign through the abuse of law enforcement and counter-intelligence. that i think is right. but too much of this debate has gotten hung up on the terminology question of pie versus something else. >> this gets at what should we stop covering? the minute he weapon on this. we had a meeting, it is a bs story that's going to go away in five days. yet it will still leak out there and in the meantime he is trying to distract from the erik prince story or this -- you know, we knew this was what it was. >> we wrestled with it at the "washington post" before breaking this story before it became spygate. what we were recognizing i think is that the story was not that there was a spy or mole inside the campaign. there was a story however how the white house was working with the republican head of the house intelligence committee a member of the gaining of eight to try

to release information or extract it from the justice department to make people think there was a mole inside the campaign. that was astonishing. that's the oversight process breaking down. i think for journalists it's incumbent upon us not to pay attention to the distraction but pay attention to what's actually going on underneath that. >> that's to me this trap that we are in on those things. >> he knows it keeps us busy. there is only so many of us who can cover the story. this is day in and day out. the distractions are his strategy. >> we are confused by the day to day developments. >> yep. >> the american people are very confused. that is why it allows him to must it up and confuse things further. >> i sit here and i do -- i do my. maechd comes on, i ignore, stormy daniels. it's -- i know other people does don't. and that's a problem and it's making it easier for the president the do what he has done. >> keeping it in perspective at this moment.

it is a important thing for the citizenry and the analysts. up ahead, a very special very silent guest makes a triumphant return to the "mtp daily" set. perhaps the most popular guest we have ever had. we'll be right back. signature toughness... and one more thing... the world comes with it. the new, reimagined 2019 jeep cherokee. let's take a look at some numbers: 4 out of 5 people who have a stroke, their first symptom... is a stroke. 80 percent of all strokes and heart disease? preventable. and 149 dollars is all it takes to get screened and help take control of your health. we're life line screening... and if you're over 50...

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in this case he made his first meet the press appearance in 1988 with tim russert. >> this is it. the stanley cup 105 years old. this is real thing. the most recognizable trophy in all professional sports. >> ladies, lord stanley's cup is back. the greatest trophy in sports made its appearance here today in the meet the press studios. in a matter of days the cup will belong to either some team in las vegas that no one heard of before, the vegas golden knights, or your washington capitals. i sat down with the stanley cup's handler mike bolt earlier today and got a little stanley cup 101. >> it's 126 years old. started off just as a bowl in 1893. >> then you added layers. >> it started to grow. in 1947 it was more cylinder stove pipe like. they recommissioned it to be

redesigned. this ring represents the first 100 years then it went into the five tier format. this band goes back to 54 to 56. and it comes off when we put a new winner on. the winners get to slobber all over it. it gets dirty during the summer. >> each player gets it and they can do whatever they want this the day? >> pretty much. as long as they keep it prospectful. they get to have a lot of fun. sydney crosby slapped a life jacket on it. rode with it on his seadoo. parades, we have taken it golfing and fishing. >> has it been on every continent. >> no. there is a player on the capitals that's from australia. there is a chance it might get to go to the southern hemisphere. >> of course it's going the

australia. the caps are going to win. game will he is saturday night. somebody tells me it was the meet the press team that won the biggest. we had a line of people for about an hour today it with aing to be photographed with lord stanley's cup. we'll be right back. rs old in ae 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®. it was always our singular focus, a distinct determination. to do whatever it takes, use every possible resource. to fight cancer. and never lose sight of the patients we're fighting for.

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i'm hatch ton pearson with your cnbc market wrap. the major indexes all closing in the red after u.s. allies announced they would retaliate against tariffs placed on steel and aluminum imports. the dow falling 251 points. sears plans to shutter 72 locations in the near future. the decision to close another round of stores follows an earnings report that showed revenue down 30% and same store sales down nearly 12%. that's it from cnbc. first in business worldwide.

now back to "mtp daily." by the way, congrats to hatch ton pearson who is going to be retiring soon. welcome back. in one well swoop today the trump administration angered its foreign and domestic allies, injected more uncertainty into the economy, and complicated arguably the republican evident to maintain control of both the house and the senate. a you just heard hampton say, the president today slapped tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from canada, mexico and the european union. something members of his own party warned him not to do. hatch said the tariffs would have damaging consequences. brady, chairman of the ways and means committee said it put american workers and family at risk. the senator from nebraska said quote this is dumb. unquote. speaker ryan just weighed in saying he disagrees with this decision. it's about politics not just

policy. many of the states most impacted by these tariffs are the ones president trump won in 2016 and include districts that the republicans hope to hang on to in november. joining me now from chicago, the chairman of the council of economic advisors -- he was chairman of the council of economic advisors in the obama administration and currently is a professor at the university of chicago business school and our panel is back. austin, nice to see you. >> great to see you again. >> let me start with this. tariffs. any of these tariffs at all strike you as a good idea? >> no. no, look, this is -- maybe the vote in brexit or what the italians are proposing are the most uncertainty creating market threating things in some time. and this was the donald trump administration basically saying hold my beer, i can top that. this is a thing which, as you

pointed out in the observation, managed to enrage our military allies at exactly a moment when we are trying to lean on our allies on both iran, on north korea, and some others. and it's going to be quite devastating to manufacturing employment in the united states because so much of manufacturing here uses steel and aluminum that it just doesn't make any sense. i don't know why they have come back to the idea. >> wilbur ross, commerce secretary, being proponent of this. let me play to you what he said about this and get you to respond. >> even if the eu does retaliate, and even if some others do, it still will remain unlikely to be as much as 1% on our economy. >> all right, austin, wilbur ross says not much of an impact. maybe 1% of our economy. what does that mean? >> well, 1% of our economy -- if

we had a negative 1% growth rate of gdp, that would be catastrophic, we would be in a recession. i don't think we should -- that's approaching trillions of dollars. so let's be a little circumspect. the thing is, i think his argument is if you look at manufactured goods, the steel itself is a small component of the cost. >> right. >> therefore we shouldn't be nervous with we raise those costs because it won't raise prices by very much. and all i'll observe is since they announced this before, u.s. steel prices are about 50% higher than the steel prices in europe because people already started raising prices. and you have seen a series of manufacturing industries in the u.s. say that these higher costs are hurting them. so i just think it's mistaken to assume that we are going to raise taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars or billions and it won't have an affect. >> you are making an economic

argument. i want the get to a little bit of the political impact here. ramesh i have had you lead off all the time. i don't mean to put you on the defensive here on the right but politically it makes no sense. you are help look brown in ohio, heitkamp in north dakota -- i mean you are helping the exact -- you are hurting republican messaging in some of the states that they want to either win or to hold in the senate? >> i think this is politically harmful in a number of ways. the stock market, this hurts it. two, you have got the harm to the steel and aluminum using industries which are larger that the steel and aluminum industries themselves. three, you have potential retaliation and actual retaliation from other places. the one thing is the president is a true believer. >> let's check that. i was talking to somebody who

was talking to european ambassador today who are understandably lived but there is some talk in those circles about why would you for instance -- like australia exempt australia and not a country like britain? they feel like the president doesn't like theresa may but he likes turnbull. is there also personalization here a vindictiveness to it. >> i alone will be able to decide who gets left out of the tariffs and who doesn't. >> sure. it's made tariffs a punitive measure. it's had the about policy making or economic growth. to ross's point about a potential 1% loss in gdp. if these tax cuts are going the pay for themselves as the administration pointed out you can't afford the lose that 1%. where are the republicans' outrage when it comes to the pardon? you saw the outrage on this, which tells you the constituents care more about this.

>> when will this actually hit the average consumer, some of these tariffs? when will we start feeling it? >> partly that depends on whether this thing spirals out of control or not. if they just put in these tariffs and europe had some response, and that did not set president trump off to put a series of more tariffs, i think the impact on consumers would be relatively limited. you will probably see it in the price of cars. you will probably see it on a few manufactured goods that you are buying. i think there would be an employment impact in a lot of politically sensitive states for steel users. but it would be sort of limited. i think the bigger fear here -- and it's the fear that's on the mind of all the economists -- is things like this when they light on fire they don't just stay in the fire pit. >> right. >> you saw donald trump get his dander up with china. he is going to put tariffs on

them. they put him back on him. he says well i am going to triple what i said i was going to do the first time. if that happens with our allies we will be looking at recession in the u.s. and everyone will feel that. >> guys this is the fear i hear among some foreign policy types, both left and right, who say this is the part where the president -- not everything is a unilateral relationship or a bilateral relationship. all of these things -- you have made the european allies frustrated and angry over iran. now you are doing this. you know, try a carrot and stick approach. don't forget the carrot. right now he is not presenting western europe with any carrots. >> it is not a disagree sum game though he is approaching it like this. we have long standing agreements. it has knock-on effects that are even difficult for economists to

predict. these are competent grated global economies. >> viewing it through a domestic political lens, the first year was a curtisy to the voters. the tax cuts. and the thing that they are most concerned about now is not this. they are concerned about the renegotiation of nafta. we have got an election coming up in mexico where there is the mexican version of bernie sanders. he would be more than happy to play a wild eyed game of trade war with us. >> austin, you have gotten into some discussions about nafta in the past. i won't bring up old campaign quotes but let me ask you this -- how vulnerable is nafta now. >> i think nafta is pretty vulnerable. but the canadians particularly have been kind of sly about it,

that they felt donald trump wants to blow up at somebody on trade. let's just slow roll nafta so nafta is not the thing he blows up on. they thought they could kind of get china to the front. now it's on steel and tariffs. and what i think is the bigger danger that no one is talking about yet is that i think it's quite likely china now goes, reaches out to europe and canada and mexico and says do you want to join us in launching a giant wto investigation of the united states? and they would be inclined to go along with it now. >> wow. that would be -- would offer an interesting way to get the president to retaliate on something like that. austin goalsby thank you for coming on and sharing your views. shane, heidi, and ramesh one more break. i promise you. up ahead, president trump's endorsement ooms. oops. ones that make it fast and easy to analyze and take action?

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♪ ♪ i love you baby applebee's 2 for $20, now with steak. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. welcome back. month meet the mid terms an unforced error from president trump, in a republican primary fight that could come back to bite him. he endorsed dan donovan saying there is no one better to represent new york and staten island a applause i knowwell very well than rep dan donovan. dan has my full endorsement. only problem with that tweet,

donovan voted against the tax cut bill. i think he actually voted against it three times. he was one of 12 republican nos on the bill and called the measure a quote tax hike on the people i represent. en remember you are not allowed to write-off your state and local taxes. michael grim wasted no time exploiting issue hitting donovan for voting against donald trump quote every time it has mattered. a grim primary victory would change thing. custom is why the president in his second tweet said the reason he is backing dan von is because of the roy moore mess. back with more "mtp daily" after this.

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smooed comedian samantha bee said i would like to apologize to ivanka trump and viewers for using an expletive on my show to describe her last night. i regret it. tbs also expressed their regrets. those apologies came after the white house called bee's language vile, asked for an apology. and it comes after a less forceful response from the white house this week after roseanne barr's racist comments. the panel is back. heidi, this is -- there's no defending samantha bee. and yet it's hard to ever empathize with president trump when they're asking, you know, for empathy, since he torches people all the time too. this is -- have we just -- where are we? >> i feel like the whole comedic industry in the era of trump is becoming something different than what the country needs

right now. there's a -- a lot of comedians are using it as a platform, because so many young people get their news from the late night shows, they're angry, and they're channeling it through their shows. a lot of what's happening is not funny, so it's become very ugly. >> a lot of what's happening in comedy is not funny either, if you ask me. >> but at the end of the day, how is it that the president is not responsible for this tone? you can't help but say it starts at the top. he regularly berates and mocks the looks of any of us. i've been one. and so when he expresses, i i can't believe they said that about me, it's hard to feel sorry for him. >> i think that's true. but i think it's also true that the criticism of him doesn't land to the extent that nobody in our culture is adhering to the old standards of civility. >> no apparently only donald trump is allowed to cross a line. it is interesting to me. everybody else in our society has been punished for things

donald trump doesn't get punished for. roseanne barr, he's said statements that many people have found racist, he hasn't paid a price. roseanne barr has paid a price. he's used vile, awful, ugly language, he didn't pay a price. samantha bee is paying a price. >> the white house's outrage would be more believable if it was consistent. >> they have yet to condemn roseanne's language? >> exactly. echoes of charlottesville all over again, over a tweet from a sitcom star. and now samantha bee's comments is directed at a member of his family, he's going to respond to this. >> trump doesn't believe in neutral standards. >> it goes back to what you said, it was a very good point. >> fake news is news that is unflattering to this president. it's not a question of a neutral standard of truth. if it's an attack on him, it's offensive. everybody's fair game. >> i feel like we're getting into unrecoverable territory.

>> i do. and that's why i feel like with samant samantha bee coming out, and a day after roseanne barr, you have to think about your words, because you know it will become part of the two sides. both sides do it. >> and i know it happens with a lot of these commentators, i have to speak out, because he speaks out. unfortunately, in order to get a shock factor, you have to use words that i thought were third rail words. like, you know -- >> maybe just to be fair to the president and his family for a second, the use of that word by samantha bee, that is a vile word. you would imagine that somebody like her is far more sensitive to the impact of that word, to the moment that we were in, in talking about and treating women the way men have, so terribly, in this moment that we're in, it is telling that her motivation was to direct that word at ivanka trump. i don't think she would directed that word necessarily at other women that she disapproved of. >> that's what i think made it -- put her more in an

indefensible -- using the word is so offensive. i learned today, it's more generational than we thought. >> it's okay in england, but it's not -- >> i have a millennial in my house and we don't use that word. >> every time we have a culture war fight, the president smiles, doesn't he? like, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. >> yeah, you know, the culture war is his oxygen, really. one of the great triumphs of the presidency for a large group of his supporters wasn't the tax cut. it was the nfl controversy. >> no, he's -- in that sense, he's almost weaponized the culture war, in his favor, in ways that are -- we're all feeling the effects of. all right, guys, you're released. thank you. appreciate it. up ahead, john boehner is living his best life.

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in case you missed it, television is a visual medium. so we're always looking for that one image to capture the american "zeitgeist," the particular spirit of now. several weeks we found one. this woman clutching her shopping bag, just trying to escape the press scrum outside the stormy daniels hearing in new york. in our mind, this woman was all of us, one person trying to keep her dignity intact amid all the

day's chaos. we have found another. it captures our hope for a better tomorrow. i give you john boehner as a conference in michigan, drinking a bloody mary. why does this picture carry such weight? let's go back a few years. >> hello, you can't! put something on the table, but nope! >> uh. >> the american dream. >> you remember all those john boehners? crestfallen, dejected, the speaker of the house divided against itself. that was john boehner circa 2015. he's john boehner circle 2018. affable, unperturbed, even more tanned, he high on life. and i bet being on the board of that marijuana company isn't hurting either. so fret not, if you don't like the times we're living in, they will change. because in the same way this woman is all of us now, this man

is who we can be -- working and bloody mary at the same time. speaker boehner, cheers to you, my friend. that's all for tonight. back tomorrow with more "mtp daily." "the beat with ari melber" starts right now. >> did you ever serve those bloody marys on "meet the press"? >> sunday mornings. that's how you survive in the trump era. >> can't hurt to get the guests talking. >> mimosas and -- we try to balance it out. >> are you a mimosa guy? >> no, i'm a bloody mary guy. >> the more you know. thank you chuck todd. i turn to something important, the top story in america tonight is donald trump, your president, pardoning criminals. now trump's not even pretending this is about due process. he's ignoring the justice department's review program and simply tweeted out today a pardon plan for a right-wing activist who was convicted of campaign finance violations. critics s