supreme court nominated before midterms, all conservatives recommended by an outside advocacy group and pre-vetted by the fbi. >> i interviewed and met with four potential justices of our great supreme court. they are outstanding people. they are really incredible people in so many different ways, academically and every other way. ante up? the president scolding nato allies demanding they pay more for defense. but a former supreme allied commander says he's missing the biggest sacrifice of all. >> i watched so many european troops do i ie in afghanistan u my command alongside u.s. troops. they're in there with us with blood and treasure, as the saying goes. >> we'll talk to to admiral stavridis coming up. and is scott pruitt trying

to scout a high profile job for his wife? more conflicts of history, and being heckled by a restaurant customer demanding he resign. >> we deserve to have somebody who believes in climate change and takes it seriously, for all of us including our children. so i urge you to resign because of your scandals. and good day, angeveryone. i'm andrea mitchell in washington, where president trump is zeroing in on his supreme court pick, stirring an intense political debate over the future of the high court. president trump met or talked to four potential picks. all four are federal appeals court judges with more interviews expected this week. the president now only six days away from a self-imposed

deadline to make his nomination known before the midterms, a move democrats are hoping to seize to rally their voters before those elections. joining me now, nbc's peter alexander at the white house, and nbc news justice correspondent pete williams. peter, first to you, on the politics of all this, the rush to get the someone confirmed, clearly they are worried about losing control of the senate. what is their game plan? >> reporter: well, the bottom line is this is a tight timetable. now six days from that announcement by the president. these are all appeals court judges, as we've noted, which means they've been vetted recently but there still is some updated vetting that needs to be done, likely a process that would already be under way right now. we talked about the president saying he spoke to four individuals on that last yesterday, two or three more coming. i was upstairs in the west wing moments ago trying to get details. they will not reveal whether he will have meetings or conversations today or if he

does, with whom. the white house feels strongly it has, in the words of kellyanne conway, who i spoke to moments ago, a deep bench for its selection to the bench right now. they feel like all the 25 names on that list are good ones and feel particularly strongly that to come up with that list in the first place, there had been significant vetting done, which really raises questions about this idea that the president would ask any of these justices about their opinion about same-sex marriage or roe v. wade. the white house has a pretty good sense, because of the vetting by the federalist society, of where these jurists stand on those topics. >> the white house has clearly, and mitch mcconnell and senators on the republican side, have clearly already made the sale as far as public opinion is concerned. according to an nbc news/surveymonkey poll conducted online, 62% of those polled said

trump's nominee should be confirmed or rejected before the midterms. the whole argument over the speed and the timetable which the democrats hoped to make, they've kind of lost that argument so far, peter. >> reporter: it also explains why chuck schumer in a new op ed is trying to rally public opinion, hoping that the public can force the president to pick a more moderate, consensus candidate. but the bottom line is the democrats' hands are in many ways tied at this point. if the republicans can hold ranks, they have sufficient votes to pass whoever the president's nominee is, which is why there has been so much conversation about republicans like susan collins and lisa murkowski. the president is going to west virginia where he'll likely talk about their own senator, joe manchin, a democrat who

supported the last pick, gorsuch, and could support this one as well. >> an important speech coming up tonight. pete williams, you've been drilling down on some of those he's already talked to. among those four are two in particular, and when you looked at the law review writings of some of these candidates, we're talking about brett cavanaugh, the issue of some potential issues facing this court over whether or not the president of the united states can be subpoenaed over the mueller probe, over whether he can be forced to testify. what can we glean if anything from brett kavanaugh's writings? >> reporter: in 2009 he wrote a law review article about presidential power. he said the president should be free from civil lawsuits or from criminal investigations and prosecutions while the president is in office, the job is too busy, there's nothing else like

it in the federal government, the pressure is relentless, he says in this article, so the president should be excused from the burdens of ordinary citizenship, some of them, while in office. now, he says that can only happen if congress passes laws to say a president can't be sued while in office, lawsuits should be deferred until afterwards, just like members of the military, and the same thing for prosecutions. presumably he believes without congress acting, a president can be investigated and prosecuted while in office. and by the way, he says if he got his way and these laws were passed, presidents could still be held accountable through impeachment. >> and he was on the team working under ken starr, the prosecutor in the clinton case. he also was in the bush white house. he has a paper trail and can be asked a lot of questions one way or the other. let's talk about amy barrett and her long record as well. >> reporter: when she was a law clerk to a conservative, lawrence silverman, on the d.c.

court of appeals, the same court where brett kavanaugh now serves, she wrote a law review article for the notre dame law school where she eventually graduated from and became a law professor until president trump put her on the court of appeals last year, and she says, quote, we believe catholic judges if they're faithful to the teaching of their church, should be against the death penalty. at a ceremony at notre dame marking the 40th anniversary of the roe v. wade decision, she criticized it for setting off what she called "roe rage," saying the decision ignited a national controversy, that it wasn't necessary for the court to do this. this was almost exactly the view that ruth bader ginsburg had expressed as well, she thought the court jumped into the roe controversy too soon. >> what a fascinating -- first

of all, fascinating group of candidates, as we begin to explore a lot of their writings, as the confirmation hearing will. one more thing, pete, on this. when we saw the confirmation of justice gorsuch, there was less focus, less pressure, if you will, because he was replacing, you know, a conservative, scalia's seat. >> reporter: right. >> do the democrats have a fair argument now that they should take more time and ask more questions and be able to explore more issues in the judiciary committee or, you know, can the republicans just shut them down, because it's potentially going to change the court, obviously? >> reporter: i guess there are two ways to look at that. politically, that is their argument. secondly, if you're looking at simply whether a person is qualified, then that shouldn't matter, i suppose you could argue. one other thing i would point out, andrea, all of these people that we talked about are either in their late 40s or early 50s.

barrett is 46. tom thomas hardiman, we didn't mention him, presumably he's one of the people that the president is going to talk to in the next two days. >> thanks so much for that briefing, pete williams, and peter alexander. joining me now, joyce vance, former federal attorney, and nina totenberg, legal affairs correspondent for national public radio. nina, first to you, let's look at what happened with amy comey barrett and dianne feinstein at a previous confirmation hearing when she was nominated for the appeals court. i want to play that, because it became controversial. >> i think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. the law is totally different.

and i think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you. and that's of concern, when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country. >> first to you, nina, about judge barrett, and her catholic faith, mother of seven, this of course became a controversial issue, but how do they assess how she would adjudicate on this on the high court? >> she's written a lot of law review pieces. she did say roe had been erroneously decided. perhaps more importantly, looking ahead to susan collins' vote, susan collins has said she

would not vote for anybody who is hostile to roe v. wade, and i don't know how you find that out per se. and hostile to precedent. and amy barrett has written in a number of ways in a number of places that she thinks that people get too wound up about precedent, essentially, that there's no reason that things have to stand if they were wrong. and i'm not sure that she cited brown versus the board of education but plenty of other people have, and that's the quintessential case in which precedent was disregarded in order to say that schools could no longer be segregated because it violated the constitution. but, you know, and this religion question came up. and it's very interesting to me, because if you go to some of these hearings for lower courts, which i do from time to time, and i was at that within, i did not think that that was a huge -- that that was an

incredibly anti-catholic question that dianne feinstein asked. i thought her point was that i see religion as opposed to law rearing its head in your writings. and certainly catholics, to a person, on the republican and conservative side, thought it was deeply offensive and anti-catholic, and that this is not a standard that would be applied to other religions. >> joyce, one of the things we've learned from our surveymonkey poll is that 64% of women in our poll, 64% of woman want the next justice to be someone who will vote to uphold roe. 27% want that person to be someone who would overturn it. 72% of white women under 45 years old want the justice to uphold roe compared to 64% of white women 45 and over. is there is an age disparate there. but there are overwhelming majorities here to uphold roe as

settled law especially when you look at the gender divide. >> there is certainly a strong public feeling that supports at least some of the privacy rights that roe establishes. so it's important that we think about the larger framework. and something that nina talked about a little bit is the idea that when we select a supreme court justice, what we want is someone who doesn't promise that they'll follow their personal ideology when a case appears in front of them. what we want is a judge who will look at individual cases based on the law and the facts. and that's why we talk about the importance of following precedent. here the precedent is roe, and the expectation is that none of these judicial potential nominees if asked outright would say they would vote to reverse roe. instead the risk here is they'll denude it, perhaps increasing waiting periods of time, approving statutes that say women have to wait 72 hours or

even longer before getting a procedure after consulting with a doctor, or other sorts of restrictions that don't flat out reverse roe but simply lessen the amount of privacy that it affords women in making these decisions. so whether the views that we're seeing in surveymonkey and other polls ultimately will survive this choice i think is very much up in question. this is a list of candidates approved by the federalist society and the heritage foundation, and it goes without saying that most of them will have a strong anti-roe lean. >> and there's also a trend with state legislation coming up and the state legislatures are predominantly republican, because of new technology, let's face it, new amniocentesis and new sonograms and a lot of other things that have taken place since 1973, that viability might be defined earlier, so to limit the time period where abortions could be safely or ethically done. let me also ask both of you

quickly about the mueller investigation. do you think it is a fair question during confirmation to ask each of these nominees, potential nominees, where they stand on questions regarding the mueller probe, regarding whether there is precedent or whether there is law that a president can be forced to testify or, you know, forced to cooperate with the grand jury or investigated, even? >> there are ways to put the question. and if you don't get an answer -- you know, nobody is obligated to vote for a nominee if they don't get an answer. you just have to be willing to lay down the marker there. and for the most part, you know, the republicans control the senate and the senate judiciary committee. >> joyce, your take on that? >> this is why it's troubling to have a vote on a supreme court nominee while a president is under investigation, because senators will have to ask these

kinds of questions and weigh them. really it would be better if we could wait the few months or whatever we have left for mueller to issue his report. >> it seems like they have the votes to make sure that's not going to be an option, so we have a lot of conflict coming up politically as we follow this story. thank you so much, joyce vance and nina totenberg. coming up, could a meeting with vladimir putin jeopardize president trump's nato summit before it begins? (♪) i'm a four-year-old ring bearer with a bad habit of swallowing stuff. still won't eat my broccoli, though. and if you don't have the right overage, you could be paying for that pricey love band yourself. so get an allstate agent, and be better protected from mayhem. like me. can a ring bearer get a snack around here?

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the kremlin announced today that if both sides agree, president trump and president putin could actually meet privately without their aides before the start of that official summit in helsinki. the summit is set to take place less than two weeks from now. what could go wrong? joining us, msnbc's terrorism analyst malcolm nance, author of the new book "the plot to destroy democrats," and john mclaughlin, former acting cia director and msnbc global affairs analyst. welcome, both. malcolm, you have outlined in your book exactly what the kremlin did to undermine the election and you now warn that they could as well, looking towards the midterms, and they've interfered with elections all over europe. what could go wrong with

president trump sitting down one on one with vladimir putin, without any aides? >> good god, what could go wrong? he could give crimea to russia just on a secret handshake and we would just dismantle the 75 years that we've put in, keeping international law and the sanctity of international boundaries away from invasions and literally create a crisis throughout the world on what the president of the united states will do behind doors. so there's a lot of danger here. donald trump does not share anything that he is thinking about with vladimir putin. but it appears that vladimir putin is very comfortable with getting information out of him. >> and the fact is, john mclaughlin, we keep hearing about these developments from the kremlin first. i can't remember a single time that there has been an announcement from this white house or this state department before the kremlin announced something that happened,

including that, you know, infamous meeting in the oval office. and now today we hear there could be a one-on-one. we've got a republican-only congressional delegation in moscow right now. in the past, it's always been bipartisan congressional delegations from the defense and foreign relations committees. >> yes. >> it seems awfully one-sided. >> it's one-sided. i think putin is very much driving this. and the concern that i think we all have to have is that the president seems quite primed, just based on what he said about putin, including his recent remark that putin continues to deny meddling in our elections, he seems inclined to agree with putin's preferences. putin of course wants to weaken nato, weaken the european union. and we've got a president who is inclined to agree with all of that. his remark about the european union being a threat to the

united states and incorrectly characterizing it as created to combat the united states, which is wrong. let's hope it goes well, but thinking as a former intelligence officer, and malcolm is as well, the president is an intelligence recruiter's dream. he's totally transparent with his tweets and his public comments. his frustrations, his desires, his weaknesses, his vulnerabilities, are all hanging out there. this is normally the kind of thing you have to do deep research on someone to find out, but he presents it all to you, and putin of course is a trained kgb intelligence operator. i think, among other things, the president has to be prepared to have the russians lie to him. he does that pretty well himself, so

si synchronicity there. when the russians do that, you have to confront them, they have to know that you know they're like, and things will get better. i'm not sure that will happen. >> malcolm, already the g-7, the president is associating up a context where he will be going directly from nato to this meeting with putin and putin is going to be on a high coming off of all of the excitement from the world cup in moscow. so he's really got a big advantage going into the summit. >> yeah, he's got home court advantage. and what's significant about this, and i'm glad you mentioned those letters, president trump sent letters to our nato allies chastising them on their contributions to the nato, you know, alliance. he does not understand, just

fundamentally ignorant, of what nato is and how it was formed. he doesn't understand that we created this after world war ii to create a collective security body to prevent war, and that russia is now the primary adversary that we defend against, apart from counterterrorism. and not knowing that, he has somehow bought into russia's framework that nato is a threat to russia, that nato should be dismantled, that it's not paying its dues. he thinks it's like mar-a-lago, a country club, paying its dues. that's not how it works. his comments that he would rather the u.s. be out of nato, that shows he doesn't understand that we created it. at the nato summit they're going to wonder is this man a representative of putin or a representative of the united

states? >> malcolm nance, the book is "the plot to destroy democracy." thank you so much. john, stick around as we'll talk about north korea as the president and pompeo consider what to do next and as secretary pompeo is heading to north korea for his third meeting therel. meanwhile, finally some good news. the miraculous discovery of 12 boys and their soccer coach found alive after they had gone missing in a cave in thailand for ten days. two british men found them in the cave. >> how many of them? brilliant. many people are coming, many, many people. we are the first. many people are coming. >> the recovery is still going to be very difficult. thai officials say all the boys appear to be in stable condition with no severe injuries.

finding them is only the first step. it's a very risky rescue effort. rescuers are fighting rising waters. the boys do not know how to swim or dive. there is the threat of more rain later this week and the boys will have to be taught to swim or taught how to negotiate these tiny underwater passages. experts say getting them out safely could take weeks or even months. and coming up, roadblock. a troubling new setback for parents separated from their children at the border. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports." stay with us. ♪ a hotel can make or break a trip. and at expedia, we don't think you should be rushed into booking one. that's why we created expedia's add-on advantage. now after booking your flight, you unlock discounts

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welcome back. for many migrant families, the search for their children is growing more desperate by the day. as some immigration lawyers now, the trump administration is denying bond to some migrants seeking asylum, prolonging the chance of reuniting. advocates say the undeclared new policy is an attempt to obstruct a federal judge's order last week requiring the administration to reunite separated families within 30 days. one immigration lawyer in particular working with separated mothers at a detention

center near austin, texas, spoke last night to rachel maddow. >> what do you imagine will happen at the end of the 30-day period? >> i'm sure the aclu will attempt to enforce the order in court. on the ground, what will happen is that the children and the parents will continue to suffer. i spoke with three mothers today separately, all of whom were completely distraught because they haven't seen their children in almost six weeks. their kids are calling them from the detention centers crying, saying they want to get reunited. 38 l there's a lot of suffering going on in the moment, it's hard to watch. >> joining me is the former acting director of immigration and customs enforcement, known as i.c.e. thanks for being with us again. could they have changed this policy even though they're denying they're changing the policy? the maddow team asked them and they said there's no new policy.

but women are not getting bond. >> andrea, clearly this administration is doing everything they can to detain individuals coming to the united states and seeking asylum. as we've talked about before, there's another way of doing this, ankle bracelets. it's not amnesty. it's just as effective as a security tool. but this administration is committed to doing this detention, seemingly at all costs. >> as someone who worked with i.c.e., you understand the mission of the agency. some of the i.c.e. employees, the officers, are uncomfortable being in the middle of this controversy. some democrats controversially calling for i.c.e. to be disbanded. others saying that's really bad politics, the president seizing on it. where do you stand on this whole debate over i.c.e.? >> andrea, i think the debate is a little misplaced. the focus shouldn't be on whether i.c.e. should exist or

not but the way this administration is running i.c.e. the frustration you saw from the letter, that 19 special agents in charge sent a letter to the secretary asking to be kind of cleaved off from the organization because of these policies, i think what that reflects is these policies actually hurt public safety. you have to understand that i.c.e. as a law enforcement organization needs cooperation from immigrant communities, needs cooperation from other law enforcement. this kind of policy makes those partners not want to cooperate anymore. >> i.c.e. was created after 9/11, it's a counterterror, counter-gun-running, counter-drug-smuggling agency. it's not supposed to be separating families. >> it's a legacy of the us customs service that does incredible work. unfortunately nobody knows about that work because of the fact that everything gets drowned out

by the family separation policies and the other activities that the trump administration is having i.c.e. do. the guys at homeland security investigations which is an division of i.c.e. do incredible work like saving children from sexual exploitation, stopping weapons from getting into the hands of north korea or iran. it's really unfortunate that these policies are hurting their ability to execute those critical missions. and this is you see the administration now at these detention centers and along the border doing things to throw roadblocks in the way of a federal judge's order. we don't see any evidence, for instance, that there is any effort to reunite these families rapidly. and they are now no longer giving us data, we're not getting the numbers of kids who are still -- and toddlers by age, who are still separated. >> andrea, i don't understand why they're taking this approach. they're running out of time on the court order that orders them to reunite the families within 30 days. there are simple and effective

ways of doing this that are not catch and release, that are not amnesty. they continue to try to find a path that includes only detention. hire some more immigration judges, expedite hearings, the problem is fixed, it's a lot cheap and her just as effective. >> good to hear a voice of experience from a former i.c.e. official. thank you very much, john, for being with us. coming up, hostile environment. embroiled epa chief scott pruitt getting an earful at a washington restaurant. stay with us on "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. i'm alex trebek here to tell you

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does your bed do that? don't miss the 4th of july special. save up to $500 on sleep number 360 smart beds. plus 36-month financing. ends sunday. and we are learning new details about scott pruitt's controversial spending and management style at the epa. two of his top aides spent hours answering questions before the house oversight committee last week, a republican-led committee. one aide told committee staff that pruitt pushed her to find his wife a job, paying more than $200,000 a year. let's get the inside scoop from charlie sykes, host of "the daily standard" podcast, and from karen tumulty, political columnist for "the washington post." scott pruitt was confronted

yesterday by a woman with her toddler in a washington restaurant. karen and charlie, take a look at what happened to scott pruitt when he was at lunch earlier this week. >> hi. i just wanted to encourage you to resign. this is my son. he loves animals. he loves air. he loves the water. we deserve to have somebody at the epa who actually does protect our environment, somebody who believes in climate change and takes it seriously. all 6 of us, including our children. i urge you to resign before your scandals push you out. >> that's a moment indeed, charlie. your reaction to that and to what's been alleged about scott pruitt's latest issue which is whether or not he was trying to get a job for his wife. >> well, perversely, scenes like that are probably going to strengthen his hand with the pun person who matters, which is ado donald trump. scott pruitt has become the poster child for swampiness in

trump's new swamp. but the reason he's holding onto his job is because he's perceived to be advancing the trump administration's deregulation agenda. he'll only lose the job when it becomes obvious that he's undermining that agenda because of his personal conduct. and it just seems like it is an unending stream of stories and scandals that really reflects fundamentally on his judgment. most people at this point in their public life have a gene that tells them, don't do this, don't cross these lines. and the fact that you have whistle-blowers coming forward right now is not a good omen for him. >> at the same time as this is happening, the white house is showing its political hand, both of you, in an unprecedented, to my experience, unprecedented use of the official white house twitter account. take a look at two tweets that went after two potential 2020 candidates against the president. one is senator kamala harris,

this is from the official white house account, now, taxpayer-supported, why are you supporting criminals moving weapons, drugs, and victims across the nation's borders? you must not know what i.c.e. really does. here is a link to help you out. and against senator harris, why are you supporting the animals of ms-13, you must not know what i.c.e. really does, here is a link to help you out. both are false statements, first of all. but they are egregiously political statements. karen, the use of the official white house twitter account, that's tax dollars, coming out of the white house. >> it is. there's a real difference, we've certainly seen this exact kind of language out of donald trump's personal twitter account. but the white house twitter account is a government resource. that twitter account belongs not to donald trump. it belongs to all of us. and if there was any sort of

parallel, it's an imperfect one, a loose one, but it reminds me, again, given that this -- we're talking 2020 politics here, it reminds me of some of the scandals of the past where we have seen fundraising done with official government resources. you know, i don't know who steps in to stop this, because we're now so accustomed to norms and protocols being broken. there is a line here that has been crossed. >> charlie, what about that? >> well, first of all, yes, it is outrageous, it is bizarre. and it is totally inappropriate to use this. but notice what he is doing. donald trump is very strategic in picking his enemies and saying i want the face of the democratic party, of the opposition, to be maxine waters or kamala harris or elizabeth warren. he's also very aggressively flipping the script, so we're not talking about the cruelty of separating families at the border. he is of course now focusing on criminals, on gangs, and quite frankly, i think that he and the

white house thinks the democrats are giving them a huge gift by talking about abolishing i.c.e. so yes, there's no question about it being indefensible using the white house account, but you also ought to recognize how strategic these tweets are to kind of freeze the opponent, put a face on the opposition, and by the way, it is not settled that he chooses an african-american woman once again to be able to freeze that opponent, that he wants people to say this is what i'm up against, it's either me or them. >> certainly so far at least it seems to work for him politically, it has already with the senate, with the confirmations scheduled for a supreme court nominee, according to all the polling, nobody is saying, hey, wait until after the midterm elections, most people, you know, as many as two-thirds saying they go along with the white house scenario and the mitch mcconnell

scenario. the president in his use of twitter is very tactical. and the question is whether the white house and dan cav evscavi government employee, will follow suit. coming up, the president taking on nato, the president putting allies on notice that he wants them to spend more on defense. i'll talk to the former american commander who used to lead the alliance, coming up next. booking a flight at the last minute doesn't have to be expensive. just go to priceline.

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secretary of state mike pompeo is heading towards north korea thursday for his third meeting with kim jong-un. this is nbc news is reporting north korea is trying to deceive the u.s. no surprise there. by increasie ining its fuel production at several secret sites. joining us now is diplomacy analyst, retired at michelle james devritis. former nato commander, acting director. i want to talk about nato but let's first drill down on north korea. we hear from the president in a tweet today, oh, they've given up their testing, which we knew they had done long before the

singapore summit. he's making all sorts of claims about the nuclear threat being over. and we have yet to see any evidence of that. and, in fact, to the contrary, we're seeing a lot of evidence, including public source satellite imagery that they are expanding their weapon's facilities. >> indeed they are, andrea. this is classic north korea playbook going back to kim jong-un's father and grandfather. it is lucy and the football. try and tee up sthin thomething looks good that you can kick a long way and the only thing that ends up getting kicked tends to be you. hopeful that we will end up in a diplomatic conclusion and i think we have a reasonable chance of doing so. but nothing here should surprise us in the least. it shows that mike pompeo's mission has got to be to start with a verifiable inventory of these weapons. actual sites where enrichment is occurring. then we can build out from there

into an inspection regime. hopefully we can land this diplomatically but to say the threat is over as the president has done repeatedly. . >> he told margaret brennan, pompeo could get this wrapped up in a year. he seems to be raising stakes on the secretary to do something the secretary himself told the senate could take a long time. >> the only way that could happen is if the north koreans could open up in ways that would be totally unprecedented. not just in them but in the arms control world generally. >> what do you think he's up to here? >> if you went back to his earlier statements, i theorized at one point he was trying to undermine the agreement. i don't think so at this point. i don't know what he's up to. i think it does make pompeo's

mission harder. this mission that pompeo is going on is extraordinarily important. and in a number of ways, very different from previous tasks that secretaries of state or negotiators have had. the big difference right here is that we know they're cheating. in the past, we haven't known they're cheating. >> let me ask you admiral, about nato. because going into this nato summit next week, the president has sent learnts letters as we. to leaders of these nato allies. germany, belgium, norway, canada. asking them to spend more. saying they're spending too little. he's taking on the nato allies just before he meets with vladimir putin. what are the implications of that? >> well, it's a terrible move tactically. above all, we need our network of allies, partners and friends around the world. and that's the nato allies, it's japan, awe steal ustraliaustral

and singapore. that series of a llliances is t greatest single strength of this nation. to undermine it by sending out these letters, the nato heads of state must feel like they're headed for a root canal with a dentist going to this meeting. it doesn't have to be like that. by the way, let me just give you a number, which is that u.s. defense spending $600 billion, the second largest defense budget in the world, full stop, is europe combined, about $300 billion. that's more than china spends, more than russia spends. yes, we want them to spend 2% and hit that goal. criticizing them sharply in public is not the way to get there. >> in terms of nato allies, the dutch prime minister was in with the president and the oval office yesterday. we don't see this very often. when the president started railing against the eu, take a look at what mark rajje, the

dutch prime minister, did. >> we are very close to making fair trade deals. i don't want to say good, fair trade deals for our taxpayers and for our workers and for our farmers. and a lot of good things are happening. i think the eu, we're going to be meeting with them fairly soon. they want to see if they can work something out. and it will be good. if we do work it out, that will be positive. if we don't, it will be positive also. because -- >> no. >> just think about these cars. >> we have to work something out. >> it will be possible. >> he said basically no, it won't be positive. if we don't work something out. it takes a dutchman to stand up to the president of the united states, admiral. >> i know prime minister quite well. he came into office while i was at nato. he is a tough direct individual and i think that's exactly what our president needs is people who are willing to stand up and give him the facts because he often, to put it charitably, does not seem to be fully in possession of the facts of these individual cases.

nobody wins a trade war. that's simply a fact. and we need to avoid this. words start from battles and skirmishes. we're in a skirmish right now. >> a very telling warning. thank you very much, admiral, good to be with you. john mclaughlin as well. and if you don't have the right coverage, you could be paying for that pricey love band yourself. so get an allstate agent, and be better protected from mayhem. like me. ♪

that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." have a safe and happy fourth of

july. celebrating our independence and our continuing freedom and the first amendment, if you will. follow us online, on facebook and twitter, @mitchellreports. craig melvin is here. happy fourth of july, craig. >> sounds like someone's not working on the fourth. >> so unds right. >> my friend. good afternoon to you. craig melvin in new york city. admissions test. the trump administration ready to overturn another obama era initiative. guidelines on how to consider the race of a student applying to get into college. part of a conservative campaign against affirmative action that a new supreme court justice could have a major impact on. also, desperate rescue. crews working to try and free those 12 boys and their soccer coach, trapped in a thailand cave. the complicated mission that could leave them in that cave for three or four months before they are free. and pr