d.c." sundays at 7:00 p.m. eastern here on msnbc. thank you for watching. "deadline white house" with my friend nicolle wallace starts right now. >> hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. as she has at the lowest points of donald trump's brief but jarring political life, melania trump today attempted to clean up some of the mess made by her husband's near universally canned policy of separating children as infants at the border at a detention center in mcallen, texas, the first lady thanked doctors and medical staff. it stands in stark contrast that looked more like a walk of shame when he was forced to retreat from the actual awakening of his cruel policy of prescriptions. the recriminations continue. the "wall street journal" editorial board writing today, quote, in classic trumpian fashion, the president took credit for reversing a policy he

had previously said he couldn't reverse, but this was a problem of his own creation. and warning that if trump doesn't tread carefully on his immigration policy, democrats will run against gop failure in november. we are also learning more about what brought on the president's rare walk-back. axios reporting today, quote, tv was the tipping point. a person who knows trump's mind -- poor person -- told me, quote, the president watches more cable news than most americans. so he experienced an overdose of the outrage and the media frenzy. none of the white house messaging seemed to be helping so he decided mostly on his own rather than at the urging of advisors, that some action was required to change the narrative. not to get babies out of being locked up. and washington post gets to the president's central concern in the entire crisis that left those babies and children

wailing and possibly permanently separated from their parents. quote, for trump what mattered most in a he is drg the family crisis was looking strong. i watched his speech last night. he looked anything but strong to me. take a look. >> democrats put illegal immigrants before they put american citizens. what the hell is going on? they're building up immigration. they don't want to show what's happening in congress where this whole scam has been revealed. so they want to stay on immigration. have you been seeing this whole scam? have you -- do you believe what you're seeing? how no matter what she did, no matter how many crimes she committed, which were numerous, they wanted her to be innocent. with me, nothing -- no collusion, no nothing, and they just wanted to take all of us. they wanted to put us in trouble, and it's not working too well. did you ever notice they always call the other side --

and they do this -- the elite, the elite? why are they elite? i have a much better apartment than they do. [ cheers and applause ] i'm smarter than they are. i'm richer than they are. [ cheers and applause ] i became president and they didn't. >> i don't know, sounds a little more bitter than strong to me. with us from the washington post national political reporter moderator of washington week robert costa is here. at the table associated press white house reporter jonathan lemire, former republican congressman david jolly. elise jordan former aide in the george w. bush state department and nick political reporter joins us. i read your piece last night on the rally. i watched that. he seemed to swerve between doing his honey dos, whatever was written for him on the teleprompter and getting back into his sort of bitter airing of grievances which was most of what we just aired. >> that is kpangtly right. a little throw back to 2016.

certainly plenty of hillary clinton attacks with -- accompanied by lock her up chants from the crowd. those have not gone out of style. plenty of complaints about the media coverage. in particular our reporting indicates he has in recent weeks been furious at how he feels like he's been given a raw deal from the press about his summit with north korea, that he hasn't gotten enough credit, he's not being appropriately viewed as the historic accomplishment that it is. certainly there was his up -- obsession with the fbi probe and trying to discredit those investigating him. more than anything, it was still about immigration. and it seemed like he was coming back -- he needed that warm embrace of his supporters after a rare reversal. of course, he tried to sell it as anything but a reversal. the kpaexecutive order that he signed yesterday was mentioned once in his rally speech in minnesota. instead he spent most of it thundering these sort of hardline immigration rhetoric. he invoked his campaign kickoff saying how mexico doesn't send their best. it seemed like he was trying to

prove his bona fides again saying, i am an immigration hawk. i am tough on this, as if to overcompensate for having caved on the family separation issue earlier in the day. >> so, i feel like we're in the same period of time that we lived in between the president's forced walk back after charlottesville where he read from the prompter i think in the room on something written for him, where he tried to walk back from saying there were good people on both sides. within about 48 hours he was back to dam right they're on both sides. i feel like we're in this window where we may see him stick with the e.o. but as you say, we know where his heart is and we know he didn't change his mind because any part of him felt -- i think the whole country felt pain, hearing the audio of children wailing. seeing the images of very young children. and then if none of that cracked your heart open, you belong in therapy. but then learning of the tender age facilities for very, very young babies. none of those things move donald

trump. he didn't like the press coverage. >> well, that's right. and he's not going to soften his stance on the bigger issue of immigration going into november. he's going to continue to be more hard line for purposes of frankly following through on promises he made to his base. but recognize what this president always does in moments like this. he has to project strength, not substance. you can make the argument he doesn't quite understand the nuances of the substance, but what he sells is strength. so, the reason he retreated from the g-7 was he couldn't show strength among allies and peers, but he could if he's standing next to kim jong-un. there was no substance to the deal but there was strength. what he is doing now, he created this problem. he'll never acknowledge that. he'll blame the democrats. but what we saw last night was this image of strength. that there was a problem and he solved it and his base loves that. they voted for him because of that obstinate strength he continues to project. >> in the washington post, trump reveals he's made a paper mache. it is fitting president trump has been forced into retreat by

babies. cruelty should never be mistaken for strength. i'm guessing you're saying it is his belief that he looks strong to his base. >> as a brand manager, how he got here is by projecting strength to people who were angry and wanted somebody to go to washington and be strong in the face of the establishment. what is missing is all the substance that's required not just for the president of the united states, but anybody who is responsible for policy. what is getting lost and conflated in all of this -- and it's important, this is one of journalism's finer moments to make sure the american people truly understand what's going on -- is the difference between an unaccompanied minor like we saw the spike in 2014 of unaccompanied minors. >> right. >> and what this president is actually doing splitting up families. we haven't seen that before and we can't let the right wing media empowered by donald trump actually change the narrative to that moment, to that type of what aboutism to both sides like we saw coming out of charlottesville. >> robert costa, i want you to weigh in on everything we're talking right here, but mostly your thoughts about this moment

where donald trump has been either forced to or from watching the press coverage, led to a decision that doesn't represent his true policy ideas. we know as a policy matter he supports the separation of children from their parents. he just couldn't sustain the negative coverage. can you weigh in on whether you see any parallels to other moments where he's been forced to pull back from something we know he believes in? >> in a sense this is a culmination of moments throughout his presidency where the president has been frustrated with his inability to get the funding for his promised border wall, dealing with a republican-controlled congress that has not been able to execute for him on that key promise. and because of that, you see him taking this hardline stance on immigration. just months before the midterm elections and a stance many congressional republicans are uncomfortable with. yet he still continues to call for it. and you see him not pulling back. he did cave at this time, but as

someone else mentioned, coming this september we could see him push for that wall again. it's a president disconnected at times with his party who are trying to keep their majorities. >> we have been covering "the wall street journal" editorial board which under no circumstance can be viewed as a message board for the resistance. they've been incredibly tough on the president. it feels like a bit of an intervention. i want to ask you about some reporting you and your colleagues had this morning. trump surprised his aides with the decision by ordering them to write an executive order and saying he wanted to sign it before leaving for minnesota despite telling reporters friday that such an order could not be done. kelly urged the president to continue pressing congress to pass a law and argued that signing an order would not solve the problem. so, take us inside the white house machinations and what you call caving, walk back. nup of them, the president so obsess the for projecting strength even if it represents cruelty is likely to welcome.

robert? >> you see a president right now, he's trying to adjust to this political moment. he's calculating even against the advice at times of his white house counsel don mcgahn and chief of staff general kelly who are telling him there are legal issues with trying to move forward with this kind of executive order. but he's watching cable news all the time. he's getting pressure from gop lawmakers to take some sort of action and even advice from his own family about how to move from this position. yet he's always torn, he still wants to go to minnesota and have the rally where he says he's tough on immigration, tough on the border, but he also wants to make sure that he doesn't lose all of his political capital. that's why he moves with his executive power. >> elise, melania trump went down to the border today, seemed to have -- seem to have been well received. i was reminded of her first interview after the access hollywood tape came out and how she's been deployed at some of donald trump's lowest moments. let's watch her trying to clean

that one up. >> as you can see from the tape, the cameras were not on. it was only a mic. and i wonder if they even knew that the mic was on because they were kind of a boy talk and he was lead on, like egg on from the host to say dirty and bad stuff. >> so, i think indisputably, that was the lowest moment of his campaign. beyond dispute, this is one of the lowest moments of his presidency. once again, melania bailing him out. >> when the trumpian move is deflecting, it's never their fault, they're never the ones accountable for the i alone can fix it at the rnc convention. he doesn't have any control over the policies he implements, it's their fault, it's president

obama's fault. she took the trip today. i was heartened by it. she seemed genuine, caring, saying the right things. then i'm going to be honest, i don't know what to make of the jacket. >> what's with the jacket? >> it was very off message. the picture of her jacket from zara. i don't care in white lettering on the back of the green cargo jacket. she didn't wear it among the children, but she wore it boarding the plane. this isn't her first rodeo heading to a crisis zone and being critiqued for her clothing. she wore high heels -- >> this is a picture of melania trump boarding air force one to head down to mcallen texas to visit some of the children being held in detention centers. she's wearing a green jacket, we believe that came from the clothing store zara. on the back it's written in white, i really don't care, do you? it's on the back of her jacket. nick? >> look, the first lady spokesman said it was not meant

as a statement. i choose to believe it was not meant as a statement. but, it does speak -- it does -- >> she cares, it's just a jacket. she's a model. she knows the power of clothes. >> she does. the important thing is it does speak to the layers of theater this president deploys. one thing they're good at, this is probably conspiratorial, a split screen presidency. one screen for different audiences and one is what we saw at the rally, the other is the first lady making nice at the border. maybe the third message is her wearing the jacket on the way to the border. we're all obsessed with it for good reason. they narrow cast these messages for different audiences. >> that's an interesting bearing. i don't think it's conspiratorial. kids can't wear t-shirts with writing on them for certain reasons because everything is saying something. and i wonder what you make of melania trump again getting sent in to do clean-up, being well

received, and i think being genuine there. i don't have any doubt that she was there as a human being, but the fact that she has throughout so many of these crises put out messages that seem to stand in such stark contrast to her husband's. we found her tweet after charlottesville. she said our country encourages freedom of speech. let's communicate without hate in our hearts. no good comes from violence, #charlottesville. she was welcomed, warmly welcomed at barbara bush's funeral. there is a picture of her standing next to former presidents. none of the three former presidents voted for donald trump. what do you think of melania's vogue, but not rogue resistance? >> the jacket does confuse matters. we've seen so little of her reese entally. after that surgery, she disappeared off the map for more than a month, i believe. then she has slowly reentered the public sphere in the last week or two. but she does play a role, she

used to be pretty popular. her poll numbers are good, higher than her husband's. she has used them to change the subject, to give a softer edge to donald trump's very blunt, sharp sense. what's also striking, though, is whatever behind the scenes role she has played here on this decision. she of course did tweet a few days ago the idea that she was upset by these images of the parents and children being separated. it's also a spotlight has been cast on ivanka trump who of course has made her portfolio in the white house. she billed herself as a force for good in this administration, in the west wing and with a particular focus on parents and children. but she was silent throughout this crisis. obviously it is hard for a white house advisor -- and she's paid staff, not just the first daughter, she's paid staff -- to publicly disagree with the president. that said, it also perhaps speaks to the limits of her influence, but this could have happened all alongtio, particuly on an issue she says she's

passionate about. we only hear from her publicly after it's resolved. >> the limits of her influence is laid bare in the paris climate accord. ivanka trump, tell me a debate where she's prevailed. >> very few. >> are there any? >> there is washington cliche, every time there is a momentous thing, suddenly friends of ivanka, anonymous aides, white house officials, people familiar with her thinking press -- go to the press and say, well, she tried her best behind the scenes. she lobbied. she may have been successful, she may not have been. that is something she did. the proof is in the pudding and it seems like there is very little influence she actually does wield. >> robert costa, before i let you go, i want to ask one more question about what you saw last night. this is donald trump's sweet spot where he's in this monogamous conversation. it's just him and the base that loves him. do you sense that that is sort of the gravitational pull that all the people trying to be guardrails on this administration will ultimately just relent and let him sort of be that guy as often as he

wants? that's his highest and best calling, keeping that base happy? >> locking eyes with that political base is what this president is all about, having covered him for years. he is consumed with the idea of making sure that base sustains itself, that it will carry him forward politically, whether it's through the midterm elections through the 2020 campaign. and despite all the different voices around him, his family, different advisors, fellow republicans, it's the president and his base again and again on incendiary issue after insend heir i issue that carries him forward. antenna up, watching cable television, his instincts about his political base. that's what jars so many in his own party. >> it is also, though, that political base wasn't enough for donald trump to have drafted a victory speech on election night. it is not enough to give him enough confidence to have gone into election night thinking he's going to win but it is an interesting dynamic. robert costa, thank you for spending time with us.

when we come back. the enduring scandal, the children may never find their way back to their parents. one of the few reporters who has been inside those detention centers in texas joins us right here at the table. also ahead is the political discourse circles the drain, new reporting on donald trump's legacy as the man responsible for normalizing cruelty. as we just mentioned ivanka trump who over sees women and children's issues as jonathan lemire reminds us, stays really quiet until the scandal has passed. (birds tweeting) this is not a cloud. this is a car protected from storms by an insurance company that knows the weather down to the square block. this is a diamond tracked on a blockchain - protected against fraud, theft and trafficking. this is a financial transaction secure from hacks and threats others can't see. this is a patient's medical history made secure - while still available to their doctor at their fingertips. this is an asteroid live-streamed to millions of viewers from 220 miles above earth.

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nbc news has now confirmed with the washington post first reported this afternoon that the pentagon has been asked to make room for 20,000 migrant children on military bases. 20,000 migrant children on military bases. that's something the trump administration is seriously preparing for. starting as early as next month. this news coming as questions mount over the fate of the children already separated from their parents at the border before trump ended the policy with an executive order yesterday. many of those children have been sent thousands of miles away from where they last saw their parents. at least 13 states say they're housing those separated children. the trump administration has still offered no clear plan to reunite these children with their parents. nbc's jacob soboroff has been incredible on this story since the earliest days joins us at the table. and nbc's julie ainsley who has been equally as incredible following the story on the government's response joins us from washington. what do we not understand about what is going on down there? >> i think we all really clearly

understand what's going on which is there are 2300 kids we don't know what's going to happen to them. i can't stop thinking about that. i just got back from new york being down there on and off the last six days. i went inside the brownsville shelter with 1500 young boys, spent 22 days inside of walmart. on sunday on father's day i went inside the detention facility where you see little kids sitting on the cage on the floor. i can't stop thinking about what happened to those kids where are they today, bill de blasio said on our air on nbc, 2300 of them are here in new york city. we continue to ask multiple times a day. >> let's go to the map of all the states. they are now spread out over 13 states that we know of. i talked to a former national security official who said that -- and the only analogy here is in tracking people released. when you look at people we deport, they don't leave with sim cards. >> right. >> the idea we're going to take children from these 13 states

and reconnect them with their parents who have been deported -- and you have to assume a lot of them left, not conditions they have a forwarding address. >> not only do they not have a forwarding address. we're not talking about people that are walking away with bags of cash. these are some poor people coming from desperate situations and don't have money to hire high-priced attorneys much less any attorney to start calling up the united states and say, hey, do you know where my kids are? they're given a piece of paper which we were hand in the detention center. call this 800 number. 1 for english, 2 for spanish. good luck. >> i saw your tweets last night. h.h.s., the government distribltdistribl distributed images of girls and babies. we're not showing those pictures until you or members of the media -- >> i appreciate that because, you know, first of all, why are they giving them out to fox news first and having the h.h.s. secretary go there for a press conference on fox news to give this administration's side of the story?

why don't you let us in so we can provide some context to the images that we are seeing out there and to h.h.s.'s credit, i do believe in the coming days we're going to get into a couple of these shelters. we're scheduling that. right now, but why has it taken so long? why is it one week since we got into the first one, months after the policy started? had we been in let in there from difficu day one, we wouldn't be talking about 2300 kids separated from their parents. it could be far less. >> julie, you've talked about how it is not just possible, but likely that many of these families will never be reunited. >> that's true. when we talked to the former acting director of i.c.e. john sand wag who was overseeing the border crisis that was not self-inflicted, but occurred around 2014 when a lot of families and unaccompanied children started coming up from central america, and he saw in some cases that there were families pulled apart for other reasons than just a legal entry

and misdemeanor. but they were pulled apart and he says in some cases family separation is permanent. and when i wrote that story, nicolle, i.c.e. got back to me and said, well, look, we do everything in our power. if a parent is going to be deported, they can request that their child meet them. i got into some of the technicalities. what if they have to leave very quickly because they're being deported, they're on the next plane out? what if they don't know where their child is? are they given a number to reach their specific child? are they even updated on what state their child might be moved to or from? and they couldn't answer those questions. and so it seems like there might be some processes in place like that hot line that jacob mentioned. there is really no systematic way to track down 2300 children and reunite them with their parents overnight. and even more importantly where would they stay. a lot of these prarnts are still waiting to have their day in court, federal court for their charges, or immigration court which takes way longer. sometimes those cases can be set

years into the future. so is there a way to get them from marshals custody into the i.c.e. family detention centers with their children? and i don't think that this government would be in a hurry to do that because they are already so pressed for space. we know that there's only a little over 3,000 beds available for families right now and they're pretty much at capacity and so that's why they're trying to expand by 20,000 with the defense department. i mean, what impetus would they have to reunite all of these people and space that just isn't available right now? i don't know when or how they'll do it. >> let me put up a tweet from my former colleague mark salter, senior advisor to john mccain who wrote, if we had a functioning congress, the relevant committees would call the hhs secretary to appear, ask how many shelters and where they are and threaten to cut off all money until they were open to members of the hill and press scrutiny. that's certainly the case in the old days when there was controversy around bush era terrorism policies, when there

was controversy around the influx of unaccompanied minors during the obama years. do you have any sense there is anyone on capitol hill in leadership that would like to see any of these government agencies held to account? do you think anyone wants to ask any questions? senator bill nelson from florida was turned away from a shelter. is anybody up there alarmed by what's happening? >> yes, they're alarmed, but it seems that the anger, at least the temperature has cooled a bit since the executive order was signed yesterday. we saw a lot of people, orrin hatch comes to mind, a lot of people who are definitely immigration hard liners, john cornyn, say separating families is wrong. but we haven't heard as much from them since the executive order was signed, nicolle, they were already in a position of attacking the president for one of his policies. but we need people to stay on this like you're staying on this story. continue to ask these questions because you can't just let 2300 children disappear because they happen to come into the -- into

this country in between two dates that happened to have one of the toughest policies that we've ever seen. >> that is the dumbest -- republicans have lost their minds. that is the dumbest analysis of a scandal i've ever heard. it started yesterday when he admit it had was too stupid even for him. the scandal started yesterday. it didn't end. what is wrong with them? >> this is whereas much as coverage has been provided on this issue, i'm not sure the american people still realize exactly what happened. the united states government split up families. this is very different than the surge of unaccompanied minors in 2014. i was in congress. we wrestled with should we provide additional infrastructure, resources for the border, do we bring in additional judges, do we change the system so instead of last in first out we go to first in first out, quickly adjudicate people. look, those are policy decisions we've got to decide as a country. the notion that we need to have infrastructure to house potentially 20,000 people, do we

want that to be on a military installation, do we want to do that in communities across the country? those are all policy decisions. but what is lost still in what happened is that the united states government over a period of the last few months split up families and they are going to be children that grow up in the united states never knowing their parents again because of a decision by the president of the united states. >> and it's irreversible. i guess what i don't understand about the republican-run congress is i've asked this before, i'm done doing it, they've lost their souls, that's evidence here. why don't they want to help clean up the damage? this may be irreparable damage done to children at their hands. donald trump, paul ryan and mitch mcconnell potentially ruined the lives of 2300 children. >> it may be too late. this is something that's never been done before. there is not a way to undo what is done. they may be search for a way but there quite literally is not a way. the other thing i want people to think about, those cages, those detention centers, the reason

we're reckoning with them is because there were babies in them. america has been putting migrants in those cages on those mattresses with those mylar blankets for years. if you're shocked by the fact children were in them, i was shocked, you should be shocked we put human beings in there, democrat and republican. >> elise? >> i have absolutely no confidence that our government is capable of reuniting these 2300 children with their parents. you look at what happened with puerto rico and the horrific response there, and now we're supposed to buy that the government is competent enough to reunite these 2300 children -- >> in 13 states. >> that we know of. >> this is the worst political crisis that if you were just scripting what could be the most h horrific scenario i could dream up -- maybe that's part of the problem we've had a failure of the imagination of the trump administration how depraved they

can be with their public policy. >> the business section of the stories about microsoft and hollywood figures and hollywood wanting to walk away from working with the federal government and working with fox news who defended this policy, you guys have covered every angle of this story. where do you think the solutions will come from? will they come from the private sector who says, we weren't able to stop this, but we're going to stop doing business with the -- microsoft, employees at microsoft took a stand. i mean, this seems to require, as elise just said, more imagination to sort of help engineer some solution for reuniting these children with their families. >> look, we have seen some airlines refuse to put some of these kids on their flights. the private sector in some ways has been a real counterattack on the president in the past few months. in a country as rich as we are and as powerful as we are and innovative, surely we can do a better version of this than splitting them up from their

families. there has to be a technology solution. and what's more enraging i think for a lot of people is this decision they made was in the making for sometime. they had enough time to let out contracts, right, to find some beds for the first wave of kids. did it occur to anybody in that administration what solution for putting those kids back together. >> right. all right. jacob soboroff and julie ainsley, thank you for today. thank you for your reporting on this, so important. be sure to catch jacob reporting on the crisis "dateline" the dividing line airing this sunday. when when he come back, the politically incorrect politics of donald trump and what it means for national discourse. has he dragged us all the way to the bottom of the swamp? introducing e*trade personalized investments professionally managed portfolios customized to help meet your financial goals. you'll know what you're invested in and how it's performing.

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i see your senator. what a stiff, what a stiff. lindsey graham. the poor guy, you have to see this guy. i don't know what i said. i don't remember. by the way, i don't like this mic. whoever the hell bought this mic

system -- the son of a bitch that put it in. it's rubio. i never saw anything like it. it's pouring out of his mouth and the cameras are on him. i don't know, look, that's not presidential. for the most part, honestly, these are really, really dishonest people and they're bad people and i really think they don't like our country. sleepy eyes chuck todd, he's a sleeping son of a bitch, i'll tell you. by the way, is there anything more fun than a trump rally? >> no one can accuse donald trump of being mr. nice guy at his rallies if this past week has proven anything, it's that his trademark combativeness was more than just a campaign gimmick. it now serves as a patented governing style. peter baker puts it this way in "new york times." quote, indeed the lesson mr. trump took from his nastier than thou campaign, the more

outrageous he was the more insei sinn incendiary his rhetoric. thjonathan lemire is back a the table. you see that every day. >> i was at most of those rallies. >> we covered those, yeah. >> this is who he is. there was that brief talk during the transition that maybe the gravity of the office could change donald trump. >> from him, i'm going to be so presidential. >> most presidential, not just so presidential, that's not come to pass. you can see last night at that rally he almost needed that recharge from that crowd. and he wanted -- he -- every so often he needs to go out there and connect with his voters. it's surprising to me he's nz doing one of these a week. he is going to be out there being crass. we have seen people respond to it and people emulate it. the corey lewandowski on fox news where he appeared to mock a

girl with down syndrome separated from her parents, that is part of the political discourse, the change that we talk in politics donald trump has helped create. >> i wonder what it says about where we actually were because i think there was a lot of analysis that you couldn't talk about grabbing women in the bleep and be elected president. you couldn't do these things and win votes. what does it say that you can and he did? >> that there are a lot of people who are okay with that. and i think, look, past presidents have seen some value in protecting the gravitas and sort of mystery of the office. he does not. and i do believe -- >> let me just say, it's not the mystery of the office. it's the sanctity. it's not just -- the distance is something that bothers most presidents. they don't like the bubble. it's -- >> barack obama tweet in his own words on twitter? not much. there is a distance, right? and a bit removed. that's the value of the president. what i'm saying is there are a lot of people in this country on

the right and on the left who believe that civility is sort of a weapon of the elite and it serves interests that are not theirs. and that's one reason why his audience loves this and they call political correctness and that's their version of it. i think personally we are going to kind of look back in ten years what we lost here. >> a blow torch to the tinder, stoking racial tension is a feature of trump's presidency. trump is calculating playing to people's fears he can turnout maximum supporters countering criticism on the democratic side. his own base could abandon him if he's deemed too weak on immigration which was the center piece of his campaign. there is a through line through the worst moments and policies of the administration. the travel ban, charlottesville, puerto rico and family separation at the border. >> that's true. and he has to pitch it always to his base as a fight, that he's

under attack. elise mentioned earlier a lack of confidence in the government's ability, the administration's ability to deal with the crisis. and we're wrestling with is it okay, is it a good thing he met with kim jong-un? is it okay that melania trump went to the border? these things other presidents we would give credit to. what i have arrived at recently is trumpism evokes a lot of dislike. there are a lot of people that like trump. his behavior evokes a lot of dislike. but there is a difference between dislike and distrust. and we always have to be careful not to let dislike inform our judgment of his policy decisions. those are assessments we can make whether we agree with the policy or not. but the issue of distrust is a legitimate lens through which we can hold him accountable. elise spoke to distrust when she said she doesn't have confidence in the fact that he will handle this. this president has lied to us every day for the last week. his administration has lied to us every day for the last week. it is appropriate for us not to trust this administration when he suggests he is currently

solving the family separation issue. that is what he has brought into the national narrative that somehow distrust is just a currency that he peddles. >> not only distrust, but washington post, yesterday the day before, both with pieces out about lying as a practice, not a by product. >> and it works because his base allows it to. you know the old adage, which is told too often, we have the government we elect. the reality is, remember when the woman stood up to john mccain and said, i don't trust barack obama. he's a muslim. and john mccain stopped her and said -- >> i was there, i was in the room. >> ronald reagan talked about the better angels. bush talked about the thousands points of light. john mccain stopped that woman. donald trump's carnage is a reflection of that woman and her spirit that has now been elected president of the united states and he continues to sell american carnage and division and it's a currency that the voters have allowed him to be successful with.

it is on us as much as it is on him. >> i guess i just keep coming back to the fact if he thought it was enough, he would have written a victory speech on election night. i'm done with thinking all is lost because he's always had them. he's always had those people through fear and racial animus excited they have. he had them -- >> we get the last word, nicolle. in november 2020, we get the last word. >> i hope you're right. thank you for spending time with us today. up next, ivanka trump wasted no time for praising her dad ending a policy her father's administration started. it didn't go unnoticed. what exactly is she doing in that white house?

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do you believe your father's accusers? >> i think it's a pretty inappropriate question to ask a daughter if she believes the

accusers of her father when he is affirmatively stated that there is no truth to it. i don't think that's a question you would ask many other daughters. >> but ivanka trump is the senior white house advisor. she's also the first daughter and depending on the situation of the day she's made clear that she thinks she can jump from one to the other. take this past week, the self-proclaimed force for good in the administration didn't comment on her father's policy of separating families at the border until after the president signed the executive order stopping it. here's her tweet. thank you, potus, for taking crit kamm action ending family separation at our border. congress must now act-find a lasting solution that is consistent with our shared values, the same -- joining us at the table is emily jane fox, senior report for vanity fair, author of a brand-new book out this week, born trump inside america's first family. buy it, read it, love it.

tell us what ivanka is up to. >> you know, i was asking around this week saying why is she being silent on this issue. these are people who advise her on these kind of things, whose advice she seeks out. they said to me she came to us therl we this week and said, should i say something? how can you not say something? she stayed silent. the only explanation i can give you is what i reported in the book. she has this twisted relationship with her father where she will never really speak up against him. we've only seen her do it one time in the entire time she's been in the white house and even throughout the campaign. it was with roy moore and he was furious with her after that. it seems to me that her father's reaction to her is more important than the advocacy that she came to washington to do and that she's been spending the last year and a half doing. >> i want to press you a little on the idea of her brand. i don't totally get what that means and she does, but she's

got this instagram page and her brand always seems to feature pictures of her as a mother, of her speaking about women's empowerment. how does she as the stwareward her own brand match up being complicit or silent to a policy that literally tore infants from their mother's arms? >> there is a unique trait some people in the trump family have where they can color their own reality and tend to believe it. this is something the president has where he says something enough times and believes it even though it's not true. i think sometimes ivanka trump has the same syndrome where she says i'm an advocate, i'm an advocate, even though there is no instance where she's actually been an effective advocate in the white house. and so she believes it. but there is -- a few weeks ago she posted a photo with her young son, it was a beautiful photograph. it happened to be the exact same time that everything at the border was starting to happen. she caught a lot of heat for that. people around her asked, didn't she know by now not to post that

kind of photo? and they were like she was president a which are of what was going on, the policy, she wasn't caught up on it. >> it's all over television. wa? it was all over treflgs. donald trump -- i mean. >> this is what happens. she has this spin machine is an ability to try and duck is we have been. this week she hasn't been able to duck and we have been around it. >> time to draw a box around the idea of her as an adviser to the president. >> okay. >> she has no policy experience, no experience in government. she is her father's daughter. her experience is in selling real estate and handbags. she has no experience to draw on as a policy expert. her power is entirelily dependent on the power her father gives her. if she choohe chooses not to li >> yaunk trump gets to enjoy the power and prestige of a white

house staff position, high-ranking white house staff position yet we have absolutely no idea what she does during the day. over the course of reporting her book what kind of meetings does she answer the, where do she reach out to the women and children agencies? what does she do? >> her chief accomplishment has been getting the child care credit. she spend time going to capitol hill. there is a narrow set of issue she cares about that she has made inroads into. when it comes to the big issue, the thing everyone around her thought she was going to be influence her father on it failed every time and left a lot of people disappointed. >> new reporting today on ivanka? >> that's right. it is that consistent silence, that you know she didn't speak up after charlottesville, didn't

do this. yes, she didn't call some law makers in recent days to -- on this issue saying this is something bad yes she talked to her father but her voice seems to carry no more weight than any other senior adviser. she could have changed that were she to speak out publicly. she didn't. kept her silence. only posted on twitter after it was over thanking her father for ending the policy that he was the one who enforced it in the first place creating this crisis. she is less the target of some of the others in the white house than she used to be but there are plenty of people who work in the building who wonder what ivanka trump does every day. >> jared kushner as well. ivanka was a preteen when she saw her media obsessed father leave her and her mother and brothers for marla and witness how he blew up or lit up depending on how the press

depicted him. if there is a throughline to donald trump you just got it there. it went on, she carried the burden of wondering whether her father would leave her again. she knew she could get him to read about her in the paper. >> the way in which donald and ivanka are the most similar is in their ability to manipulate the media. she knows that's the calling card and the diamond in her father's eyes. that's why she's the favorite. >> what about this pathology of thinking, wondering if her father would leave again or love her still. and the only way she could secure that was to have him read about her in the newspaper? >> the reality was when her

father left for another woman she would ask her mother, am i still going to be ivanka trump. is trump going to be my last name? she would call him over and over and over again, more than when he lived in the apartment because she was worried he was going to abandon them. when she went to boarding school her father would send her press clippings about him or about her. she knew how important that was, all of the kids know how important that is to president trump. that is one sure way to endear her father to her. >> the wook is called born trump inside america's first family. congrats on the possible li indication this week. glad you have to as part of the msnbc family. as part of the 4:00 p.m. family. we will sneak in a quick break. we'll be right back.

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this is this week's cover of "time" magazine a 2-year-old girl from honduras who stood wailing while her mother was frisked. time has her staring down the president, who put that policy in place. nick? >> this is not a time cover he is going to hang in one of his golf clubs, i suspect. >> it's not fake, either. >> it's real. real news. >> i wonder about the little girl. they still haven't managed to find her. the little girl in that picture, who broke all of our hearts because we have young children in our lives that we imagine crying and being scared and looking at that image, it just really hit hope with this policy. >> the piece of media real estate the president cares most about is the cover of "time" magazine. et cetera a born of his obsession in the 198 s when he was coming to his prime here in new york. he has fake ones at his golf course. he brags he has been on the

cover more than any other person. not true. this is one he is not going to like and will resonate with a lot of people for exactly those reasons. >> after charlottesville the economist, time, one other magazine had images of what that moment meant in terms of racism. this seems to be an image that captures another lower point of the trump presidency. >> there are always pictures that cover the lowlights of a presidency. i think this picture is going to be a hallmark this presidency, an emotional and vivid stand-in for this policy. >> i think you are right. >> part of me wonders if he is going to see his face on the cover of "time" magazine, and as horrible and devastating as that image of the little girl is, not care because he is on it. >> who would have thought. my thanks to jonathan, elaine, elise, and jordan. i'm nicolle val as. "mtp daily" starts right now.

hi, chuck. >> notebook, how are you? i see what you did here in the bank. >> i know what you are thinking. >> i'm impressed. well done. thank you nicolle, happy thursday to you. >> you too. >> if it's thursday, what is the damage? tonight, the remessaging on reuniting families. president trump deemploys the first lady to the border. >> it really bothered her to be looking at this and to seeing it, as it bothered me. >> and i would also like to ask you how i can help to these students to reunite with their families. >> plus, the president may have created this problem but he is desperately trying to blame everybody else for it. >> the big open border people. it is a whole big con job. in the meantime people are suffering because of the democrats. >> this is "mtp daily," and it starts right now. ♪ gen