today is d-day. the date on which 160,000 allied troops threw themselves into the ndlimbed the cliffs off heto beat nas ck in france to give the u.s. and allied forces a toe hold in normandy from which they would ultimately break the nazis' grip on france and on europe and ultimately on the world. 74 years ago today on this day alone, more than 9,000 allied troops died on this single day, fighting against the germans. and of course you knowha ou kyt aut american military history, you know about world war ii. if you know anything about world war ii, you know about d-day, o

normandy where tens of thousands of americans put their lives on the line in unimaginable conditions where thousands died, all just in the first day alone, so the u.s. could put the fight to the nazis in europe and beat the heck out of the nazis. you know that, right? you know that. the u.s. state department does not know that. the trump administration has just installed a new u.s. ambassador in germany who is not doing great. for the second time in a couple of weeks now, the state department has had to field questions about his behavior in germany and comments that he's made that are widely seen in germany as super inappropriate for any ambassador. honestinis first month that he has been there, some icials a already talking openly about germany possibly rejecting him and sending him back to the united states. bue fielding questions on the new ambassador yesterday, state department spokesperson heather nauert, who

the trump administration hired straight off "fox & friends," she explained that despite whatever else might have come out of ambsagrinnell's mouth ts nobody should doubt the strength and the solidity of the u.s. relationship with germany. she said, "we have a very strong relationship with the government of germany." and then she wanted to show off that she knows her history too when it comes to us and germany. >> tomorrow is the anniversary of the d-day invasion. we obviously have a very long history with the government of germany and we have a strong relationship with the government. >> we have a strong relationship with the government of germany, a long-standing strong relationship. just look at usda amany. on d-day. d-day was us attacking germany. d-da a great way to note the strength of the commitment and the historical solidarity

between us and our world war ii allies. germany is a lot of things, but on that day in particular our relationship witerath germany ths withur allies. and that's one thing if you're like failing a book report in fourth grade, maybu ve played some weird dystopian alternate history video games where the u.s. didn't fight the nazis in world war ii. so you're confused as to who might have been on which side on d-day. but if you're the spokesperson for the united states state department, on the d-day anniversary, this is -- this is something else. this is -- this is our lives now during the trump administrat lots of news today. senior staffers at the epa are jumping ship, we have learned tonight, leading to lots of

speculatn tonight that epa administrator scott pruitt mighf his nih life ae st scandal-written t in the trump administration cabinet. we'll have more on that story in just a minute. democrats pretty much ran the table last night on the biggest primary day in the country ahead of the crucial midterm elections. nothing is set in stone. everything is subject to change. t craticarty aft laight is pretty much exactly where they want to be in terms of positioning themselves to try to win control of at least one house of congress this fall. going e eve kornacki here in just a few minutes to talk about what happened there and what happens next. this story that broke this afternoon, i've got to say i'm not sure exactly what to make of, but you should know this exists. buzzfeed has now broken the news that the president's eldest daughter and now white house niordviser ivanka trump, she was not only involved in those secret efforts to pursue a trump tower moscow project during the presidign, as part of that previously unreported

invoement, "during the campaign ivanka connected herfa russian athlete who offered to introduce donald trump to vladimir to facilitate the trump tower moscow project." according to buzzfeed, details on ivanka trump's interactions with this russian have been scrutinized by the senate intelligence committee and by robert mueller's investigators at the special counsel's office. it's not clear where that might be going, but at the very least, quote, the contacts reveal that even as her father was campaigning to become president of the united states, ivanka with aussian who offeredhael to arrange a meeting with one of the u.s.'s adversaries in order to help close a business deal that could have made the trump family millions of dollars. and all of the armchair psychiatrists among us have long argued that this president is particularly aggravated and can be particularly unnerved by any potential scandal or trouble involving his kids, particularly

involving his eldest daughter, ivanka. that expectation alone just puts kind of a silent exclamation inoneaine ke this one today at buzzfeed. ivanka trump was in contact with a russian who offered a trump-putin meeting. but again, we're not sure exactly what investigators might be doing with this information. weushat th've got it. there is a lot -- a lot of interest that has been breaking over the course of the day today, a lot of gobsmacking stuff. a the most gobsmacking news in american politics today i think actually happened five time zones away in the uk. in the uk today, we finally got settled one of the core questions at the heart of the big existential national security foreign influence scandal that looms over everything else in this presidency. everybody on what i like to ae

u.s. intelligence community, the bipartisan membership of the senate intelligence committee, even occasionally the trump administration itself, everybody on earth 1 admits now that russia, the russian government, russian military, russian intelligence interfered in the u.s. presidential election in 16 to try to help donald trump win that election. to put a finer point on it, we got that indictment in february filed against 13 russian individuals and three russian corporate entities. indictment filed in federal court in washington that spelled out the findings of robert mueller's office, the special counsel's office on how exactly russia conducted that operation, at least the part where they conducted their own influence operation from outside t united states targeting the u.s. plic opinion in ways that would benefit trump during the election. we've got that spelled out in that indictment. we n'have any denitive public findings on

thus far is the question of whether or not the russian government also found ways to directly assist the trump campaign as an entity rather than just targeting u.s. public opinion. i mean, we do have evidence about that, but we don't have definitive public findings of the kind we might see in an indictment. we do know, though, that there were lots of contacts between the trump campaign, the trump organization and the trump family with russians while trump was running r president. we know those contacts were kept secret at the time. we know those contacts were frequently the subject of lies and misrepresentations once they wecovered. was the trump campaign in on this russian influence operation to try to affect the campaign? i mean, well, we know they were notified of russia's efforts to help trump win the election. that was part of setting up that trump tower meeting in the

summer of 2016. this is part of the russian government's efforts to help the trump campaign, right? did the trump campaign become a owanin that russian influence operat change the outcome of our ection? did it become a joint operation between russia and the trump campai? well, there are some blunt connections, right? russia, of course we now know stole documents from the democratic party and the clinton campaign. they then organized and distributed those documents back into the united states in ways that were designed to inflic maximum n hilly tocaaign. even after widespread public reporting and discussion about the fact that that hacking operation had been conducted by the russians, candidate trump himself openly encouraged people to seek out those documents. he encouraged russia to steal and leak more of those documents. then late last year, we learned about another operational link between that russian influence effort and the trump campaign when it was reported that cambridge analytica, this data firm founded by trump's biggest donor, robert mercer, headed up

by his campaign chief steve bannon, this firm they paid millions of dollars to late last ar, we learned that firm had reached out to one of the entities that s distributing en russi cambridge analytica offered their services, offered their help to help index andlici these stolen materials. and that kind of just sounds like details, right? sounds just like, oh, one more been walking since trump was e elected as we've been trying to figure out what exactly happened there in that election and what exactly russia did. itt unds like one more detail. but step back from it for a second. whmeans when we found out that cam reached out to wikileaks and said hey, can we help? what that means is we've got a russian intelligence operation under way to illegally influence the u.s. election in trump's favor, and we've got the data firm paid by the trump campaign offering operational help to that effor

so that was a big deal when we got that revelation last year, that cambridge analytica offered to help wikileaks index and distribute the stolen russian documents. that's a big deal. that shows somebody working for the trump campaign trying to help the russians in their influence operation. well, today "the guardian" newspaper in britain reports ivn fong than previously more nt "the guardian" reporting today that a senior executive at cambridge analytica met with julian assange from wikileaks, which is the entity that distributed the documents that russia had stolen. she met with him in february of last year at the embassy in london where he's hed up, trying to fight extradition, and the guardian reports that in addition to that meeting, she' total numerous people that she also surreptitiously arranged payments to wikileaks. she arrangedoc

payments to wikileaks in addition to this newly reported meeting at which she says they so, again, i to just sort of, you know, see the trees instead of the forest here, right? it's easy to follow each littl detail, new report that's from each day. but step back for a second. russian intelligence steals decratic documents, gives them to wikileaks to distribute in ways that will inflict the most damage on hillary clinton's campaign. the data fm working for the trump campaign offers to help with that work, and then holds at least one in-person meeting with wikileaks and then secretly funnels them money. what is the definition of collusion anyway? heuardian".t was this rning in then this afternoon in a parliamentary hearing we just got another big new piece of what the trump campaign did. earlier this year in march, you might remember there was a w flurry of revelations about this data firm cambridge analytica

there was an undercover sting u in which top executives om cambridge analytica were caught on tape saying all sorts of incriminating things. we also go nc w who had previously been the research director for that firm. he appears to have taken a whole bunch umentsrom the firm with him when he left. and in march he started talking to the press and sharing documents with the press about what exactly that firm did, how it was built and how it ran its business. the revelation from him that caused the biggest waves in this y nd the world, including at least temporarily knocking tens of billions of dollars off the valuation of facebook, was when he spelled out how this data firm, cambridge analytica, obtained i private information on tens of millions of americans without their permission. the data on which that firm's work was based it turns out had basically been stolen off of

cebook. according to the former research director for cambridge analytica, what the firm was based on was very, very detailed facebook data from 87 million americans that was all stolen without their consent. it was stolen by means of a program that was invented and deployed for the purpose of stealing people's data. that program was created for that purpose by an academic, by a professor, who has a joint appointment at a british university and also at a russian university. he is a professional who has received russian government grants for his work. so this data firm that the trump campaign paid millions of dollars to for the 2016 election, which their biggest donor robert mercer was involved in setting up whicevbannon was involved in running, their sales pitch overall is that they can microtarget very, very specific political messages to you based on incredibly detailed information they've got about you as an individual that's

based on basically everythin you've er done online. anything you've said you liked, anything you bought, anything you clicked onanythingou said online, your whole online they can get an incredibly ance as an individual, your personality, and what would affect you if it was specifically targeted to you as a political message at a specific time to get you to do a specific thing. that's been their pitch. well, in march this claimed that the way cambridge analytica got all that data on 90 million americans was by ealing it, stealing it using a vehicle created for that purpose, created to steal that data. a vehicle created for cambridge analytica by this professional who is partly funded by the russian government. the head of cambridge analytica testified before the british pant this year and he denied over ats istle- said. he denied this firm had ever

received that data, denied his firm had ever used that kind of data for their work. today in a parliamentary hearing room in britain he admitted actually he'd been mistaken in his earlier testimony and actually, ah, thatas the data that they used. >> the chairman asked you, "they've not supplied you with data information?" your answer again was "no." and the chair then asked again, "your data set's not based with information you've received from them?" again you said "no." the chair, "at all?" and your final response was "at all." so since then we've had some rather conflicting evidence from dr. kogan himself, from christopher wylie about what data was supplied and used. indeed mr. wylie described that

data obtained via the kogan act from facebook as the foundation data set of the companyhich may have collected data on up to al clearly the been ac by facebook following these revelations or allegations. do you want to clarify or amend now the evidence that you gave in february with respect to data supplied by gsr and dr. kogan? >> thank you. i'm grateful for that opportunity. look, clearly i accept that some of my answers could have been clearer, but i assure you that i did not intend to mislead you. of course the answer to this question should have been yes. there was certainly no intention to mislead the committee. that was my understanding, and it was a genuine misunderstanding. >> that's the head of the data firm that the trump campaign used in the 2016 elections now admitting what he had previously

denied about where they got their data that they used for their political operations, including their most famous victory. and there is a lot of drama in this story, right, around this firm and these characters in their own right. cambridge analytica as a firm s now technically been shut do. e inancial tim" reported fnt page this morning that as soon as reporters started asking around earlier this year about this data story about them building their firm based on all this stolen data, that guy who you just saw testifyingrethe ceo of cambridge analytica, according to the "financial times," immediately withdrew $8 million from the company. so alexander nix, the ceo, is now under considerable pressure on that part apart from investors who were helping the country essentially shut down as cambridge analytica so it could reopen as some new rebranded entity. they appear to be a little bit miffed that $8 million they thought was in the company's coffers had instead been taken home in alexander nix's pockets that led to some exceedingly awkward questions for mr. nix today about the money.

>> did you take $8 million out? >> answer to your question is that -- >> yes or no. >> i'm not answering your question. >> can you use that in any circumstance? so this guy from cambridge analytica is under considerable pressure. the fbi special counsel's office is reportedly investigating cambridge analytica as part of this fundamental investigation into ties between the trump campaihat russian influence operation. in the uk that firm is subject to significant legal inquiries now and also a big parliamentary inion which is part of hearing.w day in t that's being driven in considerable part by concerns over whether cambridge analytica might have somehow illegally skewed the brexit vote on whether or not britain would leave the european union. but for all the lol drama around this firm and all the sort of lurid and elaborate trouble they've gotten themselves into since their role in the trump election campaign,

don't lose sight of the importance of this admission toy that we just got in this hearing in parliament in britain. we in this country are dealing with this existential question as to -- with everything else going on in the trump administration, everything else going on in the world, we are still every day dealing with this question of whether or not our president was chosen not just because of a foreign intelligence operation. we're grappling with this existential question as to whether his campaign was part of that foreign intelligence operation. and now there is this admission today that in fact the trump campaign's data firm in the election run by his top donor robert mercer, led by his campaign chief steve bannon, that data firm was a foreign firm using foreign workers microtargeting u.s. voters in swing states right up through election day, using an incredibly potent personalized detailed data set that was stolen for them by a russian researcher paid for by the russian government. and i -- and i know that sounds

like international news. i know that sounds like something about other countries, but that's the problem, right? because it's not supposed to be international news when you tell the story of how you got the current american president. stay with us tonight. lots to come. olay ultra moisture body wash gives skin the moisture it needs and keeps it there longer with lock-in moisture technology skin is petal smooth after all, a cleanser's just a cleanser unless it's olay.

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i don't know if you saw this today. if you have a liberal aunt who puts things on her facebook page, this is one of the contenders i think for a thing she might have put on her facebook page. this was today's visual ballet of washington, d.c. survival. see, when the president takes his water bottle off the table and puts it on the floor, that means now you take your water bottle off the floor and you put it on the floor too. a pawn to political survival. this was runng on a loop in our office today. okay, big cheese moves the bottle. second biggest cheese moves the bottle. keep up. never stop letting the boss know that you know he's the boss. oh, we're putting our water bottles down now, boss? okay. anything else, boss? that's one means of political survival. do what the boss does, right after he does it, and make sure he sees you do it.

and then there is whatever mysterious means of survival that gets you this public display of affection today. >> administrator scott pruitt, thank you, scott, very much. epa is doing really, really well. somebody has to say that about you a little bit. you know that, scott. >> the epa administrator getting the presidential pep talk is afternoon accompanied by a little nervous laughter from his fellow cabinet members. somebody's got to say something nice about scott. you might think based on what he's been up to that scott pruitt is having a rough day, a rough week, a rough year, but scott pruitt somehow has been making it. he has survived a gazillion scandals at epa already. he breathes in scandal the way fish breathe in water. he moves about in a cloud of scandal like the flies that are always circling around pigpen's head in the peanuts comic strip. but the pickle scott pruitt

finds himself now, this one feels special. this one in fact comes with its own pickle. >> look, mwi i entrepreneur herself. i love, she loves, we love, chick-fil-a is a franchise of faith. and it's one of the best in the country. so that's something we were very excited about. d we nd more of them in tulsa and we need more of them across the country. so anyway, it's an exciting time. >> it's an exciting time for our chicken restaurants. that man is in a pickle. your epa administrator basically had no choice today but to sit there on camera giggling, saying how much he and his wife and his family love this franchise of faith. chick-fil-a, how there ought to be more of them. that actually was tape of a man arguably breaking the law right then and there by endorsing a product as a government official. but apparently he felt like he had to maybe break that law because he got caughiseek likely breaking that same federal law in another way when he ordered an epa staffer to get

him a meeting with an executive from chick-fil-a. quote, the administror would like to talk about a potential business opportunity with mr. caffey. that potential business opportunity set up by an epa staffer turned out to be a chick-fil-a fott pruitt wanted for his wife. this is not a normal scandal. this is not even a normal scott pruitt scandal. this one seems, a, unequivocally proven in documents and by chick-fil-a admitting that's what they were trying to get the meeting for, and b, it seems quite blatantly illegal. by law you are not allowed to use your official position for personal gain, like trying to get your wife a business opportunity. by law, you are not allowed to use government staffers to carry out personal duties for yourself or your wife. but here he ipeletters apparently doing both of those things. that are against the law. and again, the company approached here confirmst's exactly what happened.

so how does scott pruitt still have his j seco qstion, who is going to orking for him? today we got word of two more scott pruitt staffers handing in their resignations. these two staffers worked r scott pruitt when he was a.g. in oklahoma. they moved to d.c. to work for him once he got the new cabinet job in trump administration. each of these staffers were given big raises despite the white house objecting in yet another pruitt scandal that seems like it happened ages ago but it really only happened in april. one of the staffers who quit today is the sister of the aide who go to beg chick-l-a for a franchise for scott pruitt's wife while she herself got the job of trying to buy scott pruitt a mattress from the trump hotel. "the new york times" reports tonight that those two pruitt stuit toy. for all the different scandals that pruitt has survived so far, this thing does now seem like it might be pushing possibly to the r e thing, it led the epa's spokesman today to call a

reporter who was asking about it today, the epa spokesman called that reporter a, quote, piece of trash, on the record. it seems like things are maybe tohe bakinin little? hold on. e's more. hear that sizzle? yeah. red lobster's lobster & shrimp summerfest is back! get all the lobster and shrimp you crave, together in so many new ways. e's new cedar plank seafood bake. tender mne lobster and shrimp, cedar roasted to perfection. or new caribbean lobster grilled rock lobster,eappln paired with jumbo coconut shrimp. and wait. there's lobster & shrimp overboard! it's a seafood party on a plate. so hurry in. 'cause lobster & shrimp summerfest won't last. with tripadvisor, finding your perfect hotel at t lowest pr. is as easy as dates, deals, done! simply enter your destination and dates... and see all the hotels for your stay! tripadvisor searches over 200 booking sites... to show you the lowest prices...

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who's already won three cars, two motorcycles, a boat, and an r.v. i would not want to pay that insurance bill. [ ding ] -oh, i have progressive, so i just bundled everything with my home insurance. saved me a ton of money. -love you, gary! -you don't have to buzz in. it's not a question, gary. on march 1, 1810 -- [ ding ] -frédéric chopin. -collapsing in 226 -- [ ding ] -the colossus of rhodes. -[ighs ] louise dustmann -- [ ding ] -brahms' "lullaby," or "wiegenlied." -when will it end? [ ding ] -not today, ron.

epa administrator ot pr today.er he lost his executive scheduler and a top lawyer. they both turned in their papers. goodbye scott pruitt.

we got the news of these top staffers' resignations today, the day after news broke that scott pruitt had directed yet another senior epa staffer to ask the chick-fil-a corporation for help getting his wife a chick-fil-a franchise. by w of illurating l this government agencyight now, i want to show you th sponse when reporters got news of the first top staffer quitting mr. pruitt's staff today. this is from theatlantic.com,