no one has your back like american express. so where ever you go. we're right there with you. the powerful backing of american express. don't do business without it. don't live life without it. very good morning to all of you. i'm alex witt. 8:00 a.m. here in the morning. 5:00 a.m. out west. here is what is happening. maybe, maybe not. what a new report is saying about the chances of the president agreeing to be interviewed by special counsel robert mueller. michael cohen's new strategy, what the hiring of a new attorney means and could there be a greater chance of him flipping on the president. lost. the trump administration says it cannot locate the parents of 38 young immigrant children. whether an extended deadline would provide the help that is needed, we'll see. don't worry, parents get

encouraging words from their sons as rescuers debate with the clock ticking on how to save that soccer team still trapped in the thailand cave. but we begin this hour with a live picture of the white house. just two days away from what the president is billing as a primetime event, that of course when he is scheduled to announce his pick for the supreme court justice. the president is at his new jersey home this weekend, he is finalizing his decision. he is not giving away too much about just who justice kennedy's replacement might be. here is part of his weekly address. >> in choosing a new justice, i will select someone with impeccable credentials, great intellect, unbiased judgment, and deep reverence for the laws an constitution of the united states. >> meanwhile new details from the "new york times" about a strategy from rudy giuliani as he negotiates that sitdown interview between the president and robert mueller. so giuliani now says mueller first needs to prove that the

president committed a crime and that his testimony is essential before agreeing to an interview. joining me now, jeff mason from reuters and josh borrow for business insider. gentlemen, with a good morning to you both. josh, you first here. what do you make of this latest declaration, what kind of a signal does it give you, is there is a shift in strategy? >> i think it is best to understand the statements about under what conditions the president would submit to an r interview as political and pr actions rather than legal. the supreme court precedence are clear that presidents can be obligated to testify under certain circumstances which it seems to me that mueller would be likely to be able to meet here. that said, putting the president through the process of being subpoenaed for an interview would be extremely time consuming and perhaps also politically costly to mueller as it would for yourself him in

it would force him into a court battle before any question of any wrongdoing by the president. so i think this is basically an effort -- and giuliani says this openly in the interview to continue to call into he question the legitimacy of the mueller investigation. and also i think perhaps to sort of plumb the mueller team for information. they say we want to see proof of a crime from the president. if they can get mueller to hand over evidence that he wouldn't otherwise be obligated to, that provides information to the president and other potential witnesses about what mueller does and doesn't know that can be helpful to them before they go in and talk. >> jeff, giuliani says the chances of the president being voluntarily questioned, and voluntary is the word here, that it is all growing increasingly unlikely. so what happens, is there even a remote possibility that it happens voluntarily or will it happen only under subpoena? >> it certainly sounds like there is a remote possibility, but as josh was saying, the president's counsel is playing that down and putting responsibility -- shifting

responsibility really to the mueller team. and trying to get information out of them as they weigh that decision. it is interesting to see sort of what giuliani has said in context of what the president himself has said, president trump has said before that he would be willing to sit down. in fact that he would be eager to sit down and talk to the special counsel because he believes that there is nothing there. but his lawyers obviously need to think through that very carefully. and this is just might be a shift in strategy but a long term strategy that giuliani and his team and the team of lawyers advising president trump are considering. >> but then josh, giuliani is also saying, well, look, fact is we don't expect mueller to agree to these interview demands. so what happens next? >> i think it has been unlikely for some time that the president would submit to this interview. the question is how much mueller thinks that he needs that interview. mueller could decide no, i need to interview the president and i will compel him to testify whether or not he wants to or mueller could decide that that is not worth the trouble or that

he doesn't need the evidence from the interview and not even seek testimony from the president. mueller has been pretty close to the vest about what his strategy is and what he knows and doesn't know. so i think we're waiting -- i frankly have been surprised to have been waiting this long to find out whether mueller is even going to try to interview the president. but ultimately that will be his call and i don't think we can tell from available information how essential he really thinks it is to interview the president. >> pretty certain he'd be the final interview, jeff? >> i'm sure that the mueller team is strategizing about who they would want to be the final interview and it would make sense that he would be as they are coming close to a conclusion. and this would also sort of fulfill one of the demands that the president's team has said, which is you need to wrap this up. >> right. okay. guys, let's switch gears and go to the supreme court nominations. i'll start with you, jeff. i know of course the president is going to announce his pick at 9:00 p.m. eastern on monday. and you wrote about broth brett kavanaugh and as well as raymond

kethledge. those being the two most serious contenders that the moment considered by the president. who do you think has the edge here? >> well, kafr gn >> kavanaugh is still the person to beat. amy coney barrett is still in the mix. the president did say on friday that he had whittled the list down to four and probably actually two. so he is sort of giving a few mix the signals. but it certainly seems to be down to kavanaugh and barrett and perhaps kethledge has well. he has been meeting with advisers, he had dinner last night with vice president pence and is going to be looking over his decision as he spends the weekend in bedminster, new jersey where he has property. and, yes, as you said, he will make that call and announce it in a public speech monday night. and sort of dramatic fashion the same way he did with now justice gorsuch. >> and your thoughts, jor s jos.

by the way did either of you you pick up on orrin hatch writing about all this and in the second to last paragraph, he referenced a "she "on proce" proceed nounn. would he have inside information? >> no organizati >> no, the president has been known to change his mind in the process of making these decisions. i don't think orrin hatch would be previous have i to the finiv. i think all the names on the short list would be very acceptable to conservatives. all are judges with clear records of conservatism. though amy coney barrett has been on the bench for less than a year, so her record less extensive. the paeappeal of kavanaugh, he a long deep record, an excellent

pedigree that appeals to conservatives. and the republican party for deck and iburned by people that turned out to be a liberal. so the party is careful about vetting these candidates very clearly for their ideological position. and i think they feel that they have done that for all three of these. but perhaps especially for kavanaugh and kethledge. >> so if we look at the week ahead, pretty busy week for the president. scotus announcement monday, meeting with the nato allies, then goes on to th tn to the sm putin and meeting with theresa may and the queen. so what do you think will make the biggest headlines? >> i think the biggest headline of that trip after the decision on the supreme court on monday will be the summit with president putin. he does start off in brussels

and meets with nato and he will no doubt continue to put pressure on nato allies to increase their spending on their dwins. so that might continue that narrative of tension between president trump and european allies which also has an undercurrent of tension over trade. which is not a theme at nato, but the same leaders who will be at the table. then he will move on as you said to britain, see theresa may, prime minister may, and see queen elizabeth. but the main headline i think will be when he gets to helsinki on sunday night and then meets with president pew tu tutin the day. the white house has given a whole lot of detail about that meeting, but he has said himself to reporters on air force one that he will bring up election meddling with president putin and will also discuss other areas of concern and tension including syria and ukraine. >> so you agree then, josh, a big crescendo of a week? >> yeah, i think the big question is whether there is a

significant deliverable out of that putin summit. whether there is just a photo-op and they say nice things about each other. david ignatius suggested that the president and putin might be working toward a deal over syria that would basically recognize the assad regime's permanence there, basically giving up our support for so-called moderate rebel groups in syria and then in which exchange the russians would try to reduce the level of iranian influence in syria. so president trump has expressed a desire to get out of syria about that and it is possible that he would find a way there to do that, but that would also be ceding significant russian influence. and russians are also looking for more influence in eastern euro europe. >> all right. guys, great to chat with you both. thank you so much. happening now, rescuers racing around the clock save those 12 boys and their soccer coach from that flooded cave in thailand. they have been trapped for nearly two weeks now. the stakes are higher with

expected torrential rains as early as sunday. and the dropping oxygen levels. let's go to bill neely there from thailand. bill, it is a frightening tale. lots of concern there. what is the latest? >> reporter: frightening especially i think for the parents who are in various places around here, but it must be agony what they are going through. they were able to write letters to the 12 boys. we haven't seen those boys in several days. but we have now heard from them because they wrote letters back. handwritten letters, just full of love, full of reassurance. and giving us a real insight into what they are thinking. they are by and large confident, they are saying things like don't worry about us. we're all strong. and over and over again i love you. they also talk about how much they want to get home quickly. one says to his teacher please

not too much home work. so typical boys. and they also talk about what they want to eat, fried chicken, crispy pork, so on. so they are confident, but they are also team arelalso deeper w. one talks about how cold there is, another one talks about if i'm going to be safe. so not wholly confident and honestly who can blame them. there are a lot of worries. as you mentioned, falling oxygen levels. they have reached what is regarded as a pretty critical level. one reason is that there are so many people inside the cave system that the very divers who are there to rescue them, the levels inside the boys' cave have fall en to levels of under 15%. scientifically, that is actually a critical level. think about altitude sickness in a high mountain range and that lack of air, the difficulty of breathing. that is the kind of thing those

boys will be feeling. so they are really worried about that. in fact they told some of the rescuers to get out so the boys have more air and they are trying to pump air in. again as you mentioned, second thing is torrential rains expect bed. we don't know exactly when. but they are talking about maybe tomorrow, be sunday, maybe through monday. and then it will rain for days and days. so there is a critical point where all that pumping of millions of gallons of water out of the cave complex is negated by falling rains that go back into the cave. so decision time is clearly coming. time is against them. the commander here said in his last news conference it is a war against rain and against time. and he says nothing like this rescue operation has ever been attempted before. we've just won the first battle which was discovering the boys. everyone thinks we've succeeded.

but he says we have not. so time, falling oxygen levels, heavy rains coming. and you know, alex, it is exactly two weeks ago today since the boys went through that entrance behind me and into those caves. decision time, but getting them out really is fast approaching. >> so bill, i was reading a number of different options, things that at the can pursue to bring these boys out of the cave. and one idea is finding a back entrance. they believe that a cave this large, there would be a back entrance to the cave. but that would look like a hole in the ground from which they would have to, you know, drill, widen it up to bring the boys out. that is complicated in itself. isn't it a jungle, that whole area? hard to find a hole in the ground. >> reporter: exactly right. but they have got teams not only looking for those holes or shafts, but actually finding them. so they found more than 100 so

far of which they say 18 are promising and one goes down 400 yards towards the boys' cave. but i think that option and the other option of just leaving the boys there until the monsoon season is over in september or october, i think those two options are fading as this calculation between risk and reward becomes more pressing, if you like. and i think the option of getting the boys out the way they came in and doing it in the next few days, that is really the option that they are looking at because what you described of, you know, drilling through the mountainside, that has its own dangers. >> absolutely. thoughts and prayers from around the world for those boys and his coach. bill, thank you. coming up, deadline extension. new reporting on the migrant

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a new report this morning on the russia investigation as the president's lawyers lay down new rules. the this morning times is reporting that united kingdom says special counsel robert mileler nemil mueller needs to prove he has evidence that the president committed a crime. joining me now with more is

danny a val danny a value. this seem like putting the cart this front of the horse. is this a legal strategy, is this a delay tactic? >> it is a bold strategy. in every other criminal investigation, a criminal attorney who asks them to tell me what you got going to get a laugh on the other he said of the phone because u.s. attorneys don't give away information about their investigation. but of course this is no ordinary client. the general rule about offering your client up for an interview with investigators is it is not a good idea, especially if your client has potential criminal exposure. or if your client is somebody who is not likely to sit down and tell the truth and the whole truth to investigators. because even a client with zero criminal exposure commits a brand new crime if he sits down

and tries to fabricate in front of federal investigators. this that is an independent crime. so any decision to sit down with investigators is a really difficult one for criminal defense attorneys. and even more so in a case like this. >> so the adds to the mueller team, does it point to signs that the whole process is accelerating or that maybe a piece meal fashion mueller will hand off parts of the investigation? >> mueller is always going to hand off parts of the investigation. he is not there in the trenches conducting interviews himself. he has people for that. and so the addition of new folks, new team members, there is not a whole lot to read into that because the mueller team isn't going to tell us why they have been add. it might be more helpful to look at their areas of specialty, what they are really good at. but it is just not going -- it would be reading tea leaves to guess what each individual personnel choice means for the overall investigation. but as he is changing personnel,

that can reasonably tell us that the investigation is either moving in different directions or possibly expanding. >> we certainly appreciate the way you read the tea leaves. thank you so much. joining me here, gregory meeks, a member of the foreign affairs and financial services committee. always good to see you, congressman. let's talk about before the news of the day the "new york times" article with the mueller team adding career prosecutors, fbi agents to their team. also giuliani's request of them to give him what they have got basically before they decide whether or not the president will sit down for an interview. what are your thoughts? >> i think the president and his team are getting nervous. they want to find out what the mueller investigation has. and so they are trying to figure out what can we find out when and it is just garbage really. i think the mueller investigation will continue. i don't know of any u.s.

attorney office or anyone that would give information until in fact there is an indictment. and that is then see what they have. but until an indictment happens, you don't give up that information. >> we'll turn now to a new "washington post" article which sheds some light on the president's relationship with foreign leaders. given your position on the foreign affairs committee, we'll get to this. they find these relationships unorthodox diplomacy rattling all of this ahead of the nato trip, the putin summit. first of all, is the word summit the right word to use for the putin meeting? do we even know what is on the agenda or is it just a meet and greet? >> to me what trump does is try to have a made for television something or other and try to build it up and make it seem like it is something that it's not. when we find that he's had these meetings, there have been nothing of substance that has happened. whether it has been even -- he's had a number of these before.

when he brought members of congress into daca, said something would happen, nothing happened. when he brought folks in with reference to the nra, nothing has happened. and even when you think about what took place with kim jung-un, we find out that they are still building nuclear facilities, et cetera. there is nothing that we got out of it. we know what they got out of it. and here we go he again with this so-called summit with mr. putin. what do we get out of it? i don't see much. but i see how putin may get something out of it. >> so we have the full screen of the quote from the article that all of you can read as we're talking about this. but there are questions about whether or not the president gets played with the international politics by these leaders like putin which is referenced in this particular quote. but also by kim jung-un potentially. what are your thoughts on that in terms of the president's preparation, the deep knowledge that he ought to have going into these meetings and really having

the avenue that is best for americans? >> clearly he does not have the proper preparation. he is an individual that we know going in, he doesn't read much. and he is one that has gone so he says on instinct. and instinct that i think that we should not trust. you know, i get into this scenario where folks call him this great business person. clearly he's made business decisions that has caused him to go bankrupt. our country can't afford to go bankrupt. he has done bankrupt not once, not twice, not -- six times. that is not a good person to negotiate, that is not someone that has demonstrated skills it in doing a deal. he has been a failure at doing a deal but for our bankruptcy laws. our country can't afford that. >> let's talk about the president's disdain for nato, something that he discussed during that montana rally on thursday. let's play a part of what he said about that.

>> i'll see nato and i'm going to tell nato, you got to start paying your bills. the united states is not going to take care of everything. they kill us with nato. germany pays 1%. 1%. and i said you know, angela, i can't guarantee it, but we're protecting you and it means a lot more to you than protecting us because i don't know how much protection we get by protecting you. >> of course angela there is angela merkel of germany. so what do you think of expectations are for the nato summit given what these european leaders are hearing from the president himself? >> i think we're back to where we were when he first got elected where he said that nato was irrelevant. and the eu, you know, he completely disavows. and that is a dangerous game. he seems much more comfortable when he is dealing with strong men like putin, like kim

jung-un, like the president of malaysia. so he seems comfortable with them, but with our ally, he is not there. and that is why for me the most important thing that we can do is the november elections so there can be a check on him so that our allies will know where the american people really are and this president -- we are still allies with our friends who have stood by us since the world war ii and on. we have to show that we are still with them and not catering to the putins. world. >> and quickly to north korea. i read a readout of what secretary of state mike pompeo had to say before boarding the plane to come back to the states. he did not end up meeting with kim jung-un and says that was never on the table to begin with. there is discussion about a potential july 12th for another meeting, that that would not be state department meeting, that would be with the department of defense and a counterpart there in north korea. what do you make of all of this?

i mean how firmly do we have a deal with north korea? >> have we seen a deal? no. all we've seen is what we've given to north korea. now, you can compare this to all of the hard work that was done with the iran agreement of which he wanted to pull out of. that took months and months of negotiation and hard work. i can recall even i as a member of congress had time to go over to vienna and talk to people, to talk to scientists to try on to figure out what that deal was and look into it, how we would have access to all of the facilities to know exactly what was where. that took time to get it done. there is nothing here so to compare the two, you shut down a deal that took hard work to try to come up with something where there is no substance thi, this me is crazy. >> there were many making negotiations on the iran deal for weeks. >> absolutely. >> with access for all of the

reporters as well as to what was happening. very different case. >> absolutely. >> representative gregory meeks, always good to see you. president trump actually helped fuel the "me too" movement and now he is making fun of it. will that rally his base or the democratic opposition? that is ahead. ♪ hawaii is in the middle of the pacific ocean. we're the most isolated population on the planet. ♪ hawaii is the first state in the u.s. to have 100% renewable energy goal. we're a very small electric utility. but, if we don't make this move we're going to have changes in our environment, and have a negative impact to hawaii's economy. ♪

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