they're good for people who investing and that's mostly really rich people. i'm wearing o ining orange to k wear orange weekend. it's a movement to prevent gun violence. 96 people died from gun violence every day in america. i'm ready for that to be over. that's it for me. right now on andrea mitchell reports, mr. postman. kim jong-un's right hand man on his way to white house to personally deliver a letter from the north korean leader to president trump. pointing toward a summit announcement to come. >> make no mistake about it, there remains great deal of work to do and we made progress here as well as at the same time made progress in the other venues the conversations were taking place.

blaming canada. the u.s. slaps tariffs on europe, mexico and canada with the president slamming canada and its prime minister fighting back. >> these are an affront to the long standing security partnership between canada and the united states and an affront to the thousands of canadians who have fought and died alongside their american brothers in arms. begging your pardon. is the president's flurry of insiders to his personal lawyer. even as cohen threatened a reporter during the kpanl. >> so i'm warning you, tread very [ bleep ] lightly because what i'm going to do so you is blk d [ bleep ] disgusting. do you understand me?

good day. the singapore summit between president trump and kim jong-un is looking more likely. a rare visit with a personal liter from the korean leader to president trump. kristen welker joins me now. a lot of action there today. we don't know what's going to happen. more likely it's after 1:00 when secretary pompeo comes to the white house. you're going to see or maybe not see this very unusual high level visit. >> reporter: that's right. that's the time frame that we are targeting right now because the president is expected to meet with secretary mike pompeo at 1:00. it would stand to reason his meeting with kim yong-chol. we are expecting he will be delivering a letter from kim jong-un. what will be in that letter? that's the big question mark.

the issue continues to be denuclearization with the white house wanting north korea ready to come to the table if there's the june 12th summit. ready to discuss and commit to denuclearization. russian foreign minister met with kim jong-un yesterday. muddying the water suggesting that sanctions should be lifted in exchange for denuclearization. the white house sees that issue very differently. muddying the waters a bit there but the stakes could not be higher. president trump departs for camp david at 3:00. the meeting will undoubtedly take place before then and hopely we'll be able to ask him questions about all of this and determine if the summit will take place.

>> let's talk about other news. a terrific jobs report. it was 3.8%. it's the lowest unemployment rate since 2000. way better than anyone expected. the president tweeting this was coming. that is unprecedented. >> reporter: it's unprecedented. let's remind everyone of the tweet. looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning. that came out at 7:21 a.m. we know that presidents get briefed on the jobs report number on the thursday before the release. there's nothing unusual about that but typically they have not waited on what the results are going to be. part of it has to do with this 1985 office of management an

budget directive. all employees of the executive branch who receive pre-release distribution of information and data estimates are responsible for assuring there is no release prior to the official release time. we have been pressing white house officials about all this all day including economic advisor who defended the president's decision to tweet beforehand. >> doesn't this go against the 1985 omb directive that says no one should reveal what the findings are before they are released. >> we didn't? this is very important. no one revealed the numbers to the public. >> reporter: that's the argument there. yes, the president indicated the jobs report was going to be positive but he didn't reveal numbers. other officials say there's nothing wrong with it. former obama officials the, other economists say there's something wrong with it because the president has the power to move the markets and this is

confidential information that shouldn't be released. jason furman said the president shouldn't get the numbers before hand moving forward. will that take place? know indication about that. larry was asked if he will brief the president next month and he said he has no indication of his plan. not committed to briefing the president before hand. a bit of a news woworthy event there. >> those number come out after 4:00 from the department of labor. they are briefed to very small group. that's it. of course they are entitled to brief the president. it's always held confidentially until the announcement. it is sensitive. the future's market did move.

>> reporter: it is and that's the big concern. i asked larry about that. he said the president didn't give the specific numbers and so essentially you cannot link the two and if markets are volatile any way. there's no doubt the president getting a lot of kricriticism at it. >> let's say they both know beetbee better and in their prior lives they would have been among the critics of this decision today. thank you for setting the table. there are norms, practices and regulations. the point of tweeting the direction this is going to be a great jobs report before hand, that is market sensitive information.

>> it is. presidents who will briefed on those numbers in advance refrain from saying anything about those numbers because they don't want impact on market. that's why that particular regulation was developed. the problem is it does impact on the market. the futures markets and much better if the president would abide by the regulation that his own administration has provided. >> they finally negotiated they were close to finalizing a new

nafta agreement this administration demanded. they made concessions to a new nafta deal and the white house blows it up. we know there's been internal disputes among the economic and trade advisors. what do we say to mexico and canada, to say nothing of europe and the way this impacts our own jobs? >> what do we say to americans that are going to be impacted by a tlad war? the reality is our economy is doing well. it's strong as indicated by those numbers. if we're going to go into a trade war and it looks like that is the case with the announcements yet. we're going to be in a trade war with china, in a trade war with europe, in a trade war with canada and mexico. any one of those would have been harmful to our economy but going into a trade war with all three is clearly going to impact on our markets, it's going to impact on jobs that depend on imports and exports and i think

it's going to ultimately harm that economy that this president supposedly cares about. >> the non-partisan peterson institute came out with numbers. far greater than what will be saved than steel and aluminum in certain parts of pennsylvania. some of the products affected. whiskey, apples, grapes, cheese, iphones, plane tickets, blue jeans, motorcycles, beer, makeup, orange juice, peanut butter. you're talking about a lot of stuff that is throughout the american economy. >> there's no question about it. i hear in the central krocost o california, they depend on those foreign markets and very concerned that impacting on

trade will impact on their livelihood. the problem here is the president operates in many ways by chaos. he's willing to edge gauge in rolling a grenade in a room and blowing things up and hoping that somehow things will come together. there's an argument for tactical chaos but an argument against strategic chaos. the biggest problem is there's no strategy about where we go from here. this creates tremendous uncertainty and alienates or closely allies and weakens the united states position when it comes to dealing with others. >> let's talk about north korea. you talked about throwing a

grenade and blowing things up on the economic front. let's talk about real grenades and real weapons and north korea. you have kim yong-chul, public enemy and sanctioned by the white house coming to the white house today. an extraordinary change. we should all be grateful there's this kind of direct communication, a letter to the president. how important is this and we with talk about some of the risks? >> well, it would strike me that t president said the summit is off. ms the problem is there's not must have time here. we're talking about 12 days away to that kind of summit. there's not an awful lot of time to prepare for the kind of comprehensive agreement that ought to be worked through. it strikes me the kind of

lowering expectations from what will happen in that summit. that's probably good. it's important that they meet. it's important they look eye to eye. it's important that they size each other up. i hope that they can agree to some broad goals here and frame work if what they will try to achieve. ult m ultimately this has to be left to serious negotiators if we'll arrive at a comprehensive agreement. that would be the best hope for what this summit could produce. >> john brennan responding to all the criticism from the president, from president trump as well as people in his circle. he said many have condemned by must be lick criticism of mr. trump arguing that as a former cia director i should bite my tongue. my criticisms are not political. i've never been and will never be a partisan. i speak out for the simple

reason that mr. trump is failing to live up to the standards that we should all expect of a president. he was most recently called a clown as was jim clapper for criticizing the president. why don't you weigh in as a former cia director yourself. >> well, i'm a believer in free speech in this country. this right to be able to speak out about our democracy is something that's important to ul of us. as former cia director who cares about the country and direction of the country has every right to express his views on that. if we have a president who is willing to tweet every day and go after people of one kind or another, thing others who held positions in the government ought to also have the right to speak out. that goes to the heart and soul of what our democracy is all

about. >> thank you so numuch for bein with us. power of the pardon. what kind of message is president trump sending to trump insiders swept up in mueller probe? at won't replace the full value of your new car? you're better off throwing your money right into the harbor. i'm gonna regret that. with new car replacement, if your brand new car gets totaled, liberty mutual will pay the entire value plus depreciation. liberty stands with you. liberty mutual insurance.

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the operator came on the

line and said is this d'souza. yes. hold the line for the president. he said you've been a great force for freedom and he said that i got to tell you man-to-man, you've been screwed. >> conviction on campaign finance violations wiped clean thanks to president trump. he never applied for pardon. is there a link? thank you very much. great to see you. jere jeremy, how unusual is this for a no process through the doj guideline, no recommendation, that we know of, to white house

counsel. we have some pardons coming from the president. very suspicious according to michael last night. historians say this is not what the process is supposed to be. >> the president is trying to condition everybody to accept purely political pardons. that may be part of his strategy to quell the heat on the mueller investigation because he may be looking at pardoning people like michael flynn, who has already pled guilty. he may be looking at paul manafort, maybe rick gates. the president, i think, is trying to see and test the waters whether or not a pardon strategy has a way to get out from the mueller investigation would work. he's gone great distances to evade justice processes and hand out pardons. >> the pardon authority is

invested in the constitution. it's broad, unchallenged. according to legal experts, isn't there a provision that if the president is using the pardon to try to protect himself or others close to him and persuade them not to cooperate with prosecutions that creates problems. >> this is a story that unlike a lot of the stories that have come out in the mueller investigation, i think people are under reacting to rather than overreacting. the pardon powers is one of the very few powers invested entirely many the president. it's unreviewable by congress and the courts. it's an e mor nonormous power. if the president were to pardon people in an eft to stop or slow or criminal investigation, there would be no legal remedy for that other than impeachment. i think the pardon powers is absolute. it could be viewed as an obstruction of justice and basis for impeachment.

i think congress has got to be making clear to the president right now because it's clear what he's up to. they've got to be making clear, if you start using the pardon power in this way that clearly wasn't intended to as a way of protecting yourself from legal liability, that is going to put impeachment on the table. i think it would put it on the table in a more serious way than the comey firing. >> sam dash, the former watergate hearing lead counsel said afterwards when he saw another tape that had not been released, another nixon tape plus personal tapes that rachel maddow revealed last night of resurrected, he kept audio tapes and audio diary at night. richard nixon twice eluding to and trying to specifically talk about pardoning him and he said you don't want to talk about that. let's not talk about that.

sam dash said that would be an article of impeachment. we teased it earlier of michael cohen's with a reporter with the daily beast and now with npr. this was 2015 rooegarding a negative story about trump that michael cohen did not want out. >> i know what you're planning on doing p and if there's any inference whether it's in the headlinen or any aspect of your article that indicates a rape and i don't care about some small [ bleep ] line that you'll throw in somewhere. mark my words for it, i will make sure that you and i meet one day over in the courthouse and i will take you for ever penny you still don't have. i'm warning you tread very [ bleep ] lightly because what i'm going to do to you is going to be [ bleep ] disgusting. do you understand me? >> this is the president's long time personal attorney.

at issue was a very negative story about the ivana donald trump divorce that was being resurrected from public documents in 2015. >> i've ahead language like that on some phone calls. at a scale of 1 to 10, this is an 11. it gives us a window into the way michael cohen and the trump organization has operated. >> sam, as we risk getting into the weed ons a lot of stuff, you've pointed out this is a big deal. >> whether or not this attorney violated the attorney ethical rules or committed a crime in his dealings with some of these people. we don't know that yet. judge wood and other people in new york are looking at these documents. we're still waiting to see. the president of the united states had a bottom feeding

lawyer going around bullying people in a way that reputable lawyers just don't do. this just unprecedented. these aren't the sort of lawyers we have seen hanging around presidents of the united states. >> i've had threatening calls like that from lawyers and cops and once from a chief of the white house staff once. you don't expect it and it's not done. >> let's keep our eye on the big picture here which is that there are two people in that white house. there's president trump and there's the donald. this kind of an example of the donald and the way they were used to operating. in 2015 he was not president trump. he was the donald and that's the m.o. they've had. the other part of the m.o. that's truly concerning, back to the pardon issue is the way

president trump has been attacking main justice, attorney general, attacking justice itself. when he hands out these pardons it's not to do so politically, it's an afront to prosecutors and every member of the legal system who brought people to justice. >> attacking his own attorney general. to leave it there. great to see you both. coming up, backyard brawl. democratic congress joe kennedy on the trump trade wars and the mid temp mid terms. stay with us. jardiance asked: when it comes to managing your type 2 diabetes, what matters to you? you got a1c, heart, diet, and exercise. slide 'em up or slide 'em down. so let's see. for most of you, it's lower a1c. but only a few of you are thinking about your heart. fact is, even though it helps to manage a1c, type 2 diabetes still increases your risk of a fatal heart attack or stroke.

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order your kit at ancestrydna.com ithe race for governort. has turned into a scam. gavin newsom's trying to elect a republican who was endorsed by trump. and villaraigosa's being bankrolled by a handful of billionaires. it's everything that's wrong with politics. and none of it is helping struggling families. here's my pledge to you. i'll keep our budget balanced. invest in affordable housing. fight for universal healthcare. and stand up to donald trump. as governor, you can trust me to do what's right- because i always have. i support the affordable care act, and voted against all trump's attempts to repeal it. but we need to do more. i believe in universal health care. in a public health option to compete with private insurance companies. and expanding medicare to everyone over 55. and i believe medicare must be empowered to negotiate the price of drugs.

california values senator dianne feinstein i want to be very clear about one thing. americans remain our partners, our allies and our friends. this is not about the american people. we have to believe that at some point common sense will prevail, but we see no sign of that in this action today by the u.s.

administration. >> canada's prime minister firing back after the white house slapped massive tariffs on several u.s. allies including canada. this after a rather insulting statement from president trump saying "the united states has been taken advantage of for many decade os on trade. those days are over. earlier today this message was conveyed to the prime minister of canada. the united states will agree to fair deal or there will be no deal at all." thanks for being with us. where do you stand on this trade war now with our closest allies? >> first off, thanks for having me. >> good to see you. >> this is -- the president has a point when it comes to the issue of trying to up dade nafta to make sure everybody is getting fair deal out of it. that being said, alienating our two biggest trading partners in

canada and mexico is no way to go about doing it. this could be devastating for a number of massachusetts industries including an important one, cranberries. we risk having a whole lot of other jobs and industries getting caught up in the cross hairs. this is another example of where this administration comes up with an awful lot of bluster and no plan at all about how to execute on it. apparently this deal fell apart like many other ones have by some sloppy statements by a high administration official. i hope they've got a clue of what's going on. i hope they are able to get back to the table. canada and mexico, we need, add allies and partners if we're going to try to address some of these other major concerns we have up there. i hope the administration knows what they're doing. >> they have been negotiating for months and canada and mexico

were reluctant to re-negotiate nafta. the president's tough negotiating style got them to the table. there were concessions and think rea -- they reach agreement and the whole thing gets blown up. more american wage earners and farmers in different sectors, autos, agriculture are going to be affected. >> a number of levels this doesn't make sense. it's not that easy to unwind. i hope the add mrnministration clue about what the next steps are here. a couple other points. when the president talks about an opioid epidemic across the country, you have to recognize that over 90% of the heroin used

on our streets comes from mexico. if you're serious about addressing an epidemic across america, you have to work closely with our mexican authorities to make sure we're doing all that's necessary to make sure that crop doesn't exist and doesn't come across our borders. trying to create a trade war with mexico at the same time we're trying to work with them to crackdown on heroin is nuts. while this sounds good for a quick press release or bluster about being tough. when you turn back around and on a number of other issues, when o you need both to standing up to china and the real adversary in this is not when it comes to trade is not canada and mexico and europe, it's china. i think the president's geography has been a bit off. >> i want to ask about the midterms.

what's going on in california when you have democrats competing against democrats. you have so many candidates from all over the fence. aren't democrats going to be disadvantaged. there's eight seats there that could be pick ups if they don't compete against each other as the way they are. one of the challenges is you have great candidates stepping forward. they are all viable. is this a risk. in other words to unite a coalition to take on a republican incumbent. you'll need to have earned your way through it. is it precarious? yes. that's part of democracy celebrated. when you look across the country

whether it's in california, new york, pennsylvania, whether it's in new jersey, republicans have given us an awful lot to be able to make and draw contrast and run against them. a republican house, republican leadership policy in washington, beginning with donald trump echoed right through speaker ryan are bad policies for california and it's why republicans are hoping there's so many democrats and such democrat enthusiasm. they can't escape those policies when it comes to november and i think they will see that. >> thank you very much. good to see you. coming up, outbreak. new cases of the dead lly ebola virus. rs. i bet i'm the first blade maker you've ever met. there's a lot of innovation that goes into making our thinnest longest lasting blades on the market. precision machinery and high-quality materials from around the world. nobody else even comes close.

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so no matter what you trade, or where you trade, you'll only pay $4.95. fidelity. open an account today. an ebola outbreak from the democratic congo has 50 cases so far resulting in 25 deaths. health care workers are racing to inoculate people there with an experimental vaccine. on the same day, the trump white house thought to rescind, to kill, 252 million dollars to he responds to ebola cases with money left over from the earlier epidemic.

drc dr. kerry. welcome. great to see you. tell me more broadly about the fact that money is being cut for all sorts of global health. we see this rescission measure on ebola funding. how does this make any sense knowing what you know about the situation in the continent of africa? >> i think it's a great question and it's a global issue about not investi ining abroad and no making what are really needed priority in global health. there's really growing data that shows when we invest in health, you see improvements in economic growth, security, you see improvements in social cohesion. in many ways it's actually critical to achieving some of the goals that e wanted to see. for example, in 2015, senators

did a white paper that showed that countries that received fund i funding then receive saw much improvement on the human development index and saw marketed increases in economic growth. my colleague and i did a study through harvard that was looking specifically at countries recipients of health aid. we saw near immediate improvements in governing structure, safety security, economic growth and other me tri -- metrics of peace. we know this the critical beyond just the moral need for this to happen and the lives that can be saved. we're seeing this right now in the ebola crisis. there were not enough health profession noals to sound the

alarm. the good news is we're seeing some change in that now in the drc. >> what your program has been doing for a number of years is to train people in the country to take over and to be able to provide more health. explain a bit of that. >> it's really founded on this idea that we can create a path of better health forward and one of the key ways to do that is to invest in fundamental structure and the role of people. train and health professionals that provide the backbone of a health care system in order to provide not only clinical care to patients in need but who can train their own successors to create a sustainable pipeline of doctors, nurses, mid wives in these countries. we worked in five countries over the last five years. in our first four years we trained over 13,700 doctors,

nurses midwives. we have seen very directly the impact it can help and we've helped change some of the investment in the leadership in countries where we work in africa. we help train the minister of health of primary care in kunon our countries. these kinds of investments are important because they are sustainable. they allow countries to have the autonomy they need and ensure there will be better outcomes and economic growth and path to development. >> thank you very much. good to see you again. . >> thank you. coming up, end of an era. what's happened to civility in our politics? we'll talk to mark, coming up.

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he's taking a day off from her co-hosting job. yesterday she was defending her dad against president trump's attacks. >> i don't like talking about my dad all the time but he keeps being brought up in rally last weekend. there were boos. obviously i was promised on a apology publicly that i did not receive that. we want to go tit for tat, this is not an administration capable of apologizing on their end. it's really good politics they are doing now because they are trying to change the narrative. >> joining me now is michael steele and mark saulter. it's going to hit new york times

best seller spot on june 10th. congratulations on that remarkable book. >> thank you. >> i know it wasn't originally viewed as something that would be perhaps the last eulogy, certainly before his diagnosis, terrible, from brain cancer. >> it was. >> your feeling about the white house and the president bringing up john mccain again without mentioning him by name. going after him the other day at a rally in nashville for that vote against the repeal of obama care. >> does it regularly. we're all used to it, i think. i wish they wouldn't. i don't think john cares. you know, obviously the president said a lot of intemperate things about the senator going back to 2015. usually makes the president look like a fool and john recognizes that and is a tough guy and doesn't really care. >> here you have the book, the hbo movie, which i saw on sunday night. >> monday. >> monday night. remarkable. moving. reminding us of all of the ups

and the downs. >> yeah. >> an unvarnished view. john mccain has a singular role, michael steele in republican politics. in our national politics. >> he does. he has been a stalwart. he has been someone despite how some in the party felt about him from time to time, he's been the guy who's always been in the corner for republicans across this country. never minding their political stripe as conservative or moderate, all that. it was the idea of what republicanism meant, and what it would mean for the country. coupled with this idea of service. that john mccain's life is more than a testament to. so when you see the pettiness coming from this white house, and from this president, and more importantly, more significantly for me, the silence by colleagues and friends of john mccain who still serve in the united states senate and in the house, that to me is despicable, reprehensible

and i don't want to hear their platitudes and all of that when that day comes. sometime in the future. don't start crying and talking about how brave and all that, because now is the moment to stand tall when you see this assault on a national hero like john mccain. >> just see the movie. see that film "for whom the bell tolls" and you will understand moor profoundly the heroism of john mccain, the years in hanoi. the opportunities he had to come home earlier. the opportunities he had after that first -- that first plane crash in vietnam to not go back and -- >> the first -- right. >> after the fire, barely survived that. >> yes. >> let me -- a book from, "the restless wave" you know so well on donald trump. i'm not sure what to make of president trump's convictions. the appearance of toughness or a reality show facsimile of toughness seems to matter more

than any of our values. talk about values. >> well, they're very important. always feels strongly about champions abroad as well as protecting them here at home. then candidate trump talked about killing the family and the wives and children of terrorists, or doing waterboarding or worse, or indiscrimina indiscriminate -- whatever -- i mean, it's a lack of understanding, and ignorance on then candidate trump's part, but he's reacting to that. from burma to belarussia. the president is known as the president of the united states. burmese, political prisoners 20 years. walked into a room they started to weep because they heard his voice on the radio defending

them. know know he fought for them. he's been a champion of that. it's an underappreciated part of his legacy very much like scoot jackson or -- >> i wanted to play from the, "for whom the bell tolls" from that hbo documentary. john mccain's voice about the diagnosis and how he reacted. >> you know, these doctors keep talking to me about people who, if you tell them the truth then they just give up and die. that you really want -- and i keep saying to them, just tell me. just tell me. that's all i want to know. you know? some say, well, it's not good. well, it's just -- [ bleep ] -- really drives me crazy, but then i talk to other doctor friends of mine that say most people that's not what they want to hear. why wouldn't they want it hear? you know? why wouldn't they want to spent a few more days here, you know? >> mark and michael that is john mccain. >> that's john, yeah. >> when that was filmed he'd

already had three weeks of chemo, i think and radiation therapy. looks pretty good. >> yeah, yeah. >> and hallie jackson joins us from the white house. the arrival of jim yong-chol at the white house any moment. a high official with bill clinton a different kind of president and not as high an official at kim yong-chol to kim yong un. >> reporter: andrea, right. 18 years ago, the last time we saw anything even similar to this. tell you what will happen sometimes in the next five to seven minutes here. you will see kim yong-chol pull up along with an interpreter on the south lawn of the white house. he will be greeted by chief of staff john kelly. by national security adviser john bolton. you'll see that as it's happening. our tv cameras via the pool set up live. walk across the colonnade and into the over's office, where he will meet president trump we are

told. where this letter handoff will happen. remember what is why kim yong-chol, former top spy in north korea, you said, kim jong-un's right-hand man, it's a personal letter from kim jong-un to president trump. he didn't come all the way here to send a letter, go pound sand. it's probably a sign kim jong-un is trying to make the singapore summit happen june 12th. we know overnight according to north korean media committed to the restoration of the peninsula. a story we've heard before. we'll see if the u.s. takes it serious enough to take donald trump overseas. >> thank you so much, hallie jackson. watching the south entrance to the white house. security will diplomat entrance with a great deal of pomp and circumstance. opening up this to an arrival

picture is a significant sign of respect to kim jong-chul. not bringing him in the back door and hiding him away as we know michael steele is here with me and mark salter. he's going to be ushered in to the oval office. we may see a picture there. he'll hand over a letter and presumably they know the contents. they've been briefed on the contents. he sat for a day and a half with mike pompeo. i just came back from new york. they had long hours of talks. >> and, look, this is a -- a good moment to move forward on the terms of getting something together on the table regarding the peninsula of korea. but there's still a lot of work, andrea, as you know, and you've talked about from your experience watching these story lines unfold. they're like a ballet. very delicate. in many respects. how the administration handled this not just leading up to the 12th but after the 12th. the president's already indicated may about need for two or three more sessions after

that. we'll see. we're holeful it all turns out good, well, but we'll see how the president himself handled in in the mix of that meeting. hear's something he doesn't like does it change his demeanor? likes something a lot, preempts the protocol? we'll see. >> and mark salter, john mccain is still an active participant from arizona as chairman of the arms services committee. he knows this so well, better than almost anyone else in government. here you've got, by the way, a meeting with our secretary of defense within the last day in singapore with his vietnamese counterpart as vietnam is completely integrated into our colleagues in the region, and now we face the prospect that north korea could become normalized. there could be a peace treaty. >> could be. >> and there could be a de-escalation of tensions. a lot of ifs between now and then. >> i'd be skeptical that they'll

give up all nuclear weapons. i don't know what's left when they give those up. hopefully it represents a form of progress, but i guess i'm among the skeptics. >> to be skeptical is to, i think, be smart in this instance. if john mccain were sitting at the table, who knows more about anything? been there 30 times, seen their tunnels. he's saying it will take 15 years to begin denuclearizing. they haven't accepted inspect n inspectio inspections, cheated in the past. >> surely v. and develop add secret plutonium program. >> after signed agreement framework with the clinton administration have been an unreliable negotiating partner in the past are and don't have a lot. they do have nuclear weapons. >> begs the question, what is the expectation of the white house on the other side of this? >> you have to thank both of you. michael steele, mark salter, thanks, congratulations for "the restless wave."

>> thanks. and craig melvin takes over in new york. a big day at the white house. >> pick things up from there. good afternoon to you. craig melvin at msnbc headquarters in new york city. special delivery. got breaking news on this friday. any moment now president trump expected to meet with a high-ranking north korean official in the oval office. the highest ranking north korean official in some 20 years almost. we've been waiting for delivery of the letter from kim jong-un to the president. also watching for this meeting to start literally any moment. also -- breaking with the president. steve bannon, back in the spotlight. criticizing the president's attack on jeff sessions, and nation of outrage. the left celebrates the cancellation of "roseanne." the right calls for cancellation of samantha bee's show. have the standards in our culture shifted dramatically and perhaps permanently? those stories in a moment.