that's it for me. i'm gigi stone woods. the news continues right now with my colleague, david, who's been tweeting this whole hour -- >> constantly. thank you very much. great to see you. good afternoon, i'm david gura at msnbc headquarters in new york. we start this hour with president trump who is spending the weekend at his golf resort in bedminster, new jersey. the president ending his week touting friday's economic numbers. second-quarter gdp growth of 4.1%, that is the fastest pace since 2014. he's not been able to change the subject, avoiding all questions about the latest revelations from his former personal attorney michael cohen who nbc news reports is prepared to tell investigators that president trump had prior knowledge of that now-infamous june, 2016,

trump tower meeting between campaign officials including his own son, don jr., and a russian lawyer. the president has since denied any knowledge of the meeting and seems to be trying to distance himself from russia. >> they say i'm friendly with russia. russia's not happy about what i did with nato -- russia's not happy about all of this tremendous amount of money that now is flowing into these countries. >> with more is nbc's white house correspondent, jeff bennett. jeff, let me ask you first of all how the trump team is handling these recent revelations. we saw the tweet from the president answering the question before it was asked about whether he knew about the meeting in advance. what is president trump and his legal team saying? >> reporter: david, the white house is referring all of our questions about michael cohen as is custom to the president's outside legal team. the president's outside legal team, namely rudolph giuliani, is now portraying michael cohen as a disgruntled former employee with an axe to grind. it wasn't always that way. take a look at how rudolph

giuliani characterized michael cohen just a couple of months ago and then contrast that to what he said this past week. >> no, i expect that he is going to cooperate with him. i don't think they'll be happy with it because he doesn't have any incriminating evidence about the president or himself. the man is an honest, honorable lawyer. i expected something like this from cohen -- he's been lying all week or two weeks -- lying all year. there isn't anybody that knows him that hasn't warned he if his back is up against the wall he'll lie like crazy because he's lied all his life. >> reporter: rudolph giuliani winning no points for subtleties there. if michael cohen as rudolph giuliani says has been lying all his life, at least for most of his career he was living at the request of donald trump since he was on the trump campaign or the trump organization payroll. the question, of course, is what changed. well, you now have michael cohen alleging that president trump, then-candidate trump, knew in advance of the now-infamous trump tower meeting where there

was the promise of damaging information on hillary clinton's campaign made by the russians. president trump insists no such thing occurred, that he had no prior knowledge, and he's tweeting about it. the president says this -- "i did not know of the meeting with my son, don jr., sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam, taxi cabs maybe?" the president alluding that the management of taxi companies is under the microscope of federal prosecutors who are investigating michael cohen. so if what michael cohen says can be corroborated, it would certainly be a huge issue for donald trump jr. he could face perjury charges since he told a senate panel last fall, september, 2017, that he, in fact, did not tell his father about the meeting in advance, david. >> yeah. the problem there is you can lie to congress under oath or not under oath, and it is still a criminal offense. nbc's geoff bennett joining me from the white house this afternoon. thank you very much. for more on all this, i want to bring in my panel. charlie savidge, a washington

correspondent for "the new york times." also an msnbc contributor. betsy woodruff, politics reporter for "the daily beast." and msnbc contributor. and curtis lee, national correspondent for the "los angeles times." charlie, this is talk about the meeting on "rachel maddow" that's the focus from june of 2016. listen what he thinks the import of the meeting is. >> it's not about what donald trump did with that meeting. i think what is significant is what he did not do. if he knew that the meeting was to take place, he did not tell his son to cancel the meeting. he did not tell the fbi about the meeting. and if anything, he further encouraged and emboldened the russians to hack because he went out just about a month and a half after the meeting and said russia, if you're listening, which was two years ago from today as you pointed out, you would be rewarded for hacking hillary clinton's emails. >> charlie, i want to get a sense from you it of how you

view that meeting differently perhaps in light of what we heard on that tape, in light of what we've learned this week. cnn reporting, other outlets following here, that michael cohen is willing to testify that donald trump did know about this meeting before it took place here. we're talking about a potentially very birthday on tthe -- very pivotal period of two, three months in the summer of 2016? >> that's right. and if this is true, then michael cohen witnessed something and will testify to that effect, then of course that would be tremendously important. it would link the president personally to the meeting which -- in which his son was promised dirt from the russian government and responded eagerly, if it's what you say, i love it, in an attempt at collusion if nothing else. i think, though, that i'm a bit cautious about this particular one. i know that cnn reported it and a few others followed. notice that no one on the record is reporting it. and unless and until it comes out on the record from mr. cohen or his lawyer, i'm wondering

whether this is real or is this a flirtation with mueller trying to get some kind of interest in terms of maybe he'll cooperate and make his problems in the southern district of new york go away. there's a lot of question marks hanging over whether this particular thing is concrete yet. >> betsy, i want to get your reaction to the way the president has reacted to the reporting about what michael cohen might or might not say here. we looked at that tweet a few minutes ago. he doesn't call out lanny davis by name. he doesn't mention michael cohen by name, as well. we see him as the taxicab medallion pedlar, something like that. you've written about this for "the daily beast." give me a sense of what that indicates to you, the way that the president is engaging with the story. >> sources told my colleague and me earlier this week that as the president was watching this news unfold late one evening on cable, he hurled obscenities at the television. he was deeply frustrated with the revelation that michael cohen may potentially make this claim to robert mueller.

additionally, when you look at these tweets, one thing sources pointed out, an observation, people close to the president, when he's upset with one, he truly feels has betrayed him, has let him down, and he wants to demonstrate the extent to which that person is cast into the outer dark, the president stops using the person's name in his tweets. over the last few weeks, the president has alluded to michael cohen multiple times, but we haven't seen any tweeting or any public statements from him where he's actually used michael cohen's name. he gave the same treatment to steve bannon, who famously or infamously claimed there potentially might be money laundering liabilities that the president or his family could have. that claim precipitated bannon being totally ejected from the president's inner circle. now the president goes out of his way never to use bannon's name. so one way you can tell the president is really deeply frustrated with michael cohen is that he's not even dignifying, if you will, cohen by naming him when he goes after him. >> curtis, it is not uncommon

here at the end of the week on a saturday to want to exhale after all that's happened. this was a particularly busy week, the desire to do that is greater perhaps than it is on many other weeks. it has been a pivotal one. you had the airing of that tape provided by lanny davis to cnn first and other outlets. on the heels of that, you had the report we were just talking about, charlie and i, about michael cohen's potential willingness, again reportedly to testify that donald trump knew about this meeting. and there's the specter here of there being more tapes. i want to get a sense from you here of how pivotal the week was when you look at the story with the broader view. >> absolutely. i think it was a very pivotal week. this is something where there have been questions swirling for months, since the fbi raided mr. cohen's apartment and offices, like will he, quote/unquote, flip on the president, on president trump. and then we have this audio coming out, and these other, you know, reports about, you know, cohen willing to testify that the president did know about this 2016 meeting.

this is -- this is coming to a head really. as mr. cohen is going to, you know, possibly testify before, you know, mr. mueller. and it's a very interesting time, though. >> charlie, how did you process hearing that tape? what did you think when you heard it for the first time in the day since it aired? you've had the president's team casting aaspersions on it sayin it ends abruptly, making the semantic argument that cash might not mean green currency and the like. what was your reaction to hearing the tape, and how did it change the story for you? >> well, i mean, the tape itself is pretty difficult to make out and garbled. the thing that struck me about it was that transcript of sorts that the president's team was floating before we add the actual audio was different than what we heard on the tape. they were sort of adding a few words here and there to make it sounds better surrounding that word "cash," than my ears at least were able to detect. i think most normal humans were

able to detect. and that, if nothing else, is a sign of suspicion that they felt the need to do that. and also a little bit weird because the tape existed, so it was going to come out. so why -- why do something where you're so obviously going to get caught? that's the takeaway i had from it. >> i want to spend the last couple of minutes talking about the relationship so much as there is one here between the president and the guy who was his lawyer for such a long time, and betsy, your piece has a great headline alluding to the fact that the president's legal team want to bury michael cohen at this point. we've talked in weeks past about the screws being turned on michael cohen. what's happened to the relationship this week? what's your sense of michael cohen's thinking at this point from what you've heard from i guess mostly from lanny davis with regard to the picture that we've seen painted here of michael cohen today, what he intends to do, what he suggested might happen in the future? >> the relationship is toast. it's done. it's not ever going to be fixed. these two men are never going to be friends again, never going to have any sort of cordial bond.

at least that's the assumption under which michael cohen is operating. he is making peace with the fact that this man who used to have a central, almost defining role in his life, this man he spent years and years working for, defending, even in some ways jeopardizing his reputation to protect, that this relationship, this co-relationship is no longer exsistent. in fact, the president has completely turned on him. the two men are going from being a loyal and committed to pair to being almost out to get each other. another thing that cohen and his allies are preparing for is for the onslaught of attacks that he's going to receive from people in the president's circle. we don't expect the attacks to come from the white house per se because that would affect their, i don't know, credibility, i guess. people in rudolph giuliani's circles, allies of the president, are going to be going after cohen. his credibility is a liability to them. >> all right. betsy, kurt is, charlie, thanks to all of you, appreciate it. still ahead, the summer of 2016, who knew about that trump

tower meeting? the legal complication says for anyone who decided to keep it a secret and contempt or impeachment? house republicans trying to make the case to oust the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. weighing in next. (vo) why are subaru outback owners always smiling? because they've chosen the industry leader. subaru outback holds its value better than any other vehicle in its class, according to alg. better than rav4. better than grand cherokee. better than edge. make every adventure a happy one with subaru outback. get 0% apr financing on the 2018 subaru outback.

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supervisory and satisfactory mode, so yes, i do believe that. >> that was house caucus chairman mark meadows who's leading the efforts to impeach deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. rosenstein who oversees the mueller investigation who has under fire by house conservatives who accuse him of stonewalling on their requests for documents related to the fbi's handling of hillary clinton e-mails and the agency's use of fisa warrants. members of the freedom caucus say they will give the fbi until september to turn over documents, but democrats are calling the move nothing more than an effort to undermine robert mueller. congressman jeffries who sits on the house judiciary committee also weighed in tweeting, republican cover-up caucus introduced articles of impeachment against deputy attorney general. take a hike. congressman jeffries of the eighth district here in new york joins me now on set. let me get your reaction to this. this dropped over these last few days. you're in recess now, the district work period. pick what you want to call it. have cooler heads prevailed? how serious do you think your

more conservative colleagues on the republican side are about the effort? >> it remains to be seen. the speaker of the house, paul ryan, indicated that these charges in no way rose to the serious level of high crimes and misdemeanors. i think the view amongst all of us on the hill, democrats, and hopefully reasonably minded republicans, is that these articles of impeachment are not worth the paper that they're written on. and it exposes the great hypocrisy of the republican party. they've claimed for years that they are party of the rule of law. yet they have regularly supported a president who has gone after the fbi, gone after the special prosecutor, gone after career law enforcement officials, and now they've put forth articles of impeachment against the republican-appointed deputy attorney general for nothing short of his alleged failure to turn over documents. are you kidding me? when we have a president of the united states whose campaign possibly engaged in a criminal conspiracy with russian spies to

sell out our democracy and undermine the elections in 2016 and artificially place someone at 1600 pennsylvania avenue. yet the so-called cover-up caucus has nothing to say about that? but they want to impeach rod rosenstein on documents. it's just -- it's a joke. >> you mentioned that the house speaker addressed this. listen to what paul ryan had to say about conservatives in his caucus. >> do i support impeachment of rod rosenstein? no, i do not. since i've been involved, i've been getting a lot of compliance from doj on the document requests. we do not have full compliance, and we have to get full compliance. but we've been making tremendous progress to that point. >> congressman jeffries, let's going back -- let's go back to the hearing where the deputy attorney general testified. this came up, he defended himself, defended his department vid video sis -- vociferously.

how out-of-step was it with paul ryan and the rest of the republican party? >> he's trying to distract from the ongoing serious criminal investigation into the trump campaign and try and create this fantasy and fiction and fallacy that this legitimate investigation is a witch hunt. what perplexes me about that whole argument is that every single person involved in the alleged witch hunt is a republican. james comey, who started the criminal investigation back in 2016, is a republican. rod rosenstein, who's overseeing the current investigation, republican. christopher wray, current fbi director, appointed by donald trump, republican. and of course, bob mueller is a long-standing republican who was incredibly well respected coming into the appointment and has served his country. this is all just a charade, a kangaroo court. it is a three-ring circus that is designed to distract. we as democrats are going to keep our eye on the prize. we're going to call it what it

is but then focus on governing for the people to make life better for everyday americans, not for the wealthy and the well off, special interests, mega corporations, big donors. >> before he left for new jersey for the weekend, president trump spoke on the south lawn of the white house. he talked about the economy. he talked about trade. he talked about the recent gdp read. and it became clear that that's going to be what he's going to be campaigning on as we head to november. you're going to be out in the streets in brooklyn, elsewhere, in new york campaigning for democrats. i want to ask about this issue in particular -- you're going to keep your eye on the prize and all that entails when you look at the democrats' plan. what's your sense to the degree which voters care about this issue, about the russia investigation, you talk about letting it play its course, run its course, and is that something you hear from constituents that they want that to happen? how much is this front of mine from those you're talking about in prospect heights or elsewhere in new york state? >> one of the reasons democrats have indicated in our conversations with the american people that we're going to be focused on pocketbook issues is

because we know when we're out talking to our constituents that they care about things like the health care costs that are skyrocketing out of control and that the republicans are making worse, not better, as a result of the attacks on the affordable care act. we're going to work to drive down health care costs, strengthen the affordable care act, and dramatically reduce the cost of prescription drugs which we hear from our constituents all across the country. we have a crumbling infrastructure, and what we're going to do is rebuild america. and that will create 16 million good-paying jobs. we have a trillion-dollar plan. the republicans have a fake plan. it will increase pay for those involved. and repairing crumbling roads, bridges, mass transportation system and ports. we're also hearing from our constituents that they want us to do something about cleaning up corruption in washington so that government works for them, not for the privileged few. and so that's what we're going to be focused on as part of our "for the people" agenda, not for the privileged, for the people.

>> congresswoman, great to see you. >> thank you. >> hakeem jeffries from new york. editor-in-chief of "law fair," and senior fellow at the brookings institution joining us, and former cia analyst. ben, let me start with and the debate that's been raging on in "law fair," debate, ink has been spilled over the issue of impeachment and rod rosenstein. want to get your perspective on what we've seen from more conservative members of the caucus. your sense of the potential longevity of this argument after we had this august recess. >> well, i mean, they are clearly very committed to putting a lot of pressure on rod rosenstein. and impeachment is one, you know, threat that they can wield in order to do that. another one is contempt. of course another one is just the endless blizzard of subpoenas and document requests that then fuel all of the other

threats. it's absurd, quite ridiculous. it's very dangerous because the -- you know, there simply has never been a time before when congress has demanded this kind of information in this volume about pending investigations. that said, they're not going to impeach rod rosenstein. so the specific threat is a bit silly. >> nada, i want to get your perspective, as well. we've heard from the president and his advisers, attacks on the fbi, on the justice department. is this advancing that? is this taking that to a new level when you have members of congress here raising the specter of impeachment? >> absolutely. i think that it is. when you listen to what ben had just said, this does take it to a whole new level. when you look at how devin nunez had treated the information, intelligence, when he wrote his infamous memo, he politicized everything to fit his narrative.

i think it's a valid argument that we would be concerned that this group of lawmakers would be doing the same thing. and it's extremely dangerous when lawmakers take intelligence and then use it and spin it to support their own case because what it does, it distorts the facts. it can also expose sources and methods. that's also a very real concern. >> ben, there was a piece in "the new york times" by michael schmidt, focusing on robert mueller's investigation, what he might be looking into, looking at the tweets of the president. this was something that donald trump responded to. we can talk a bit about the way that the president has reacted to reports in the news over the course of the last week. let me read this one tweet in particular, he said, "the only collusion with russia was with the democrats. now they're looking at my tweets along with 53 million other people," whatever that means. "the witch hunt continues. how stupid and unfair to our country. so the fake news doesn't waste my time with dumb questions," he continues a second tweet, "no, i did not know of the meeting of son, don jr. sounds like someone is try igto make up stories in order to get

himself out of an unrelated jam. taxi cabs, maybe he even retained bill and crooked hillary's lawyer. gee, i wonder if they helped him make the choice." we'll take the tweets in kind starting with the first one here. the interest in the tweets. what we can learn about the president and his thinking from his 140, 280-character tweets over the last two years. >> we can learn a lot. we can learn that he's a very focused thinker who's clear about what he's trying to say, right. and who's always on message. what to make of those tweets. >> you had me for about five seconds. >> yeah. coherence is not the -- the strong suit. look, i mean, bob mueller of course will look at the tweets. this is one of the principal means by which the president is signaling things including to people who are involved in the investigation. so if you're thinking about the pattern of activity that the president is engaged in and how

that interacts with the obstruction of justice statutes, you're looking at the whole pattern of activity, and one thing that involves is private statements to individuals. one thing that it involves is acts like, you know, firing the fbi director. one thing it involves is public statements like, you know, helping draft the -- the denial of the trump trump tower meeting, right. and a lot of the president's public statements are in the form of tweets. so it will -- of course bob mueller is looking at that. >> nada, last question. they're invoking the trump tower meeting of 2016. again, we're talking about it because of the reports this week that michael cohen reportedly is willing to testify that president trump, then-candidate trump, knew about the existence of the meeting before it happened, contradicting what we've heard from his son and others. give me a sense of your interest in the meeting. we know who the participants are. a lot of them have spoken to reporters over the last again months. how much of a focus do you think

this deserves? what happened in that meeting, and who knew about it when? >> well, if you slice and dice this looking at it from an intelligence analyst's perspective, you look at the collection of meetings and the contacts and the enmeshment that trump has had or his businesses had with russia. i think this meeting in that context is fairly significant, especially if you take it with the e-mail that trump jr. received and responded to about maybe having salacious information on hillary clinton. i think in total it adds to the picture. and there's one thing i'd like to say about the tweets. >> sure. >> you know, from an intelligence perspective, there's analysts in russia look at how donald trump communicates. they're writing up intelligence reports, probably matching it with how does this line up with the russian narrative on various topics. there's january lifts working in -- analysts working in allied countries of ours also doing the same thing, wondering how much of this is lining up with

russia's talking points. so yes, all of america's reading those tweets. the rest of the world is also reading those tweets. >> great to speak with you. thank you very much. dave joining me along with ben, appreciate the time both of you. president trump says the white house has a zero-tolerance policy for foreign interference in our elections. what about russia? and 19 months later, what is the strategy for dealing with interference? we investigate what's not being done to stop a russian repeat for the upcoming midterm elections. i thought i married an italian. my lineage was the vecchios and zuccolis. through ancestry, through dna i found out that i was only 16% italian. he was 34% eastern european. so i went onto ancestry, soon learned that one of our ancestors we thought was italian

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nbc's intelligence and national security reporter ken delanian has been looking at the answers. i want to read a statement focused focused on interference saying the president has made it clear his administration will not tolerate foreign interference in our elections. as you've pointed out in your reporting, members of the president's cabinet focused on national security have said there is a need for there to be a central, unified effort to stop this from happening again. it doesn't seem like we got that yesterday. where does that stand? where does an effort to have a full-scale government response stand? >> there isn't such a response, david. that statement is really interesting. it's not clear to me to whom the president has made his view clair on this. he hasn't even been clear on whether he believes russia, in fact, interfered in the 2016 election. he's called it a home at different times. his press secretary has had to clean that up. look, some parts of the government are stepping up their game. the fbi has created a foreign influence task force. the department of homeland security is working with the

states to shore up their cyber defenses. but there has been no leadership from the white house. and here's the thing -- i mean, we can have all the cyber defenses in the world, but there's no way that that can prevent 100% russian military hackers from getting in somebody's campaign or getting in a voting system. they're very good, and they will get in. so what experts say is you have to deter the russians, you have to show that there's a price to be paid for this behavior. so far, the u.s. government hasn't done that. now in fairness, many people say the obama administration didn't do it either. the response to russian hacking by obama was considered pretty tepid. he expelled 60 diplomats. he closed some compounds. there were people in the obama administration pushing to do more. for example, the u.s. could release embarrassing information about vladimir putin's corrupt billions that he has stashed away in bank accounts. there's no evidence that we've done that. and as a result, you know, the director of national intelligence, dan coates, has said that the russians are in a daily -- on a daily basis continuing to interfere in our politics, manipulating social

media, spewing propaganda, and we saw that they tried to hack claire mccaskill's senate account the other day. so suggesting that they're not deterred from doing exactly what they did in 2016, david. >> we are just about 100 days away from the midterm elections. and we certainly heard dan coates saying that the lights are blaring, sirens are flashing, whatever it was he used. as we head into the midterms, what are you hearing about what we might face? off you've heard -- you've heard of active deterrence, what are experts fearing most when it comes to the elections? >> despite the fact we saw attempted spear fishing against senator claire mccaskill, most u.s. intelligence officials are saying they are not seeing the kind of preparing the groundwork for attacks on election systems. what they are seeing, though, is bot and trolls on twitter manipulating u.s. public opinion on a daily basis. it's hard to measure how that will impact the electorate.

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a couple of high-stakes d.c. events put on hold for now. the push to impeach rod rosenstein tabled until the end of the summer recess. conservative allies of the president will give the justice department more time to comply with their demands for documents. they have accused rod rosenstein of stonewalling in their requests for information related to how the fbi handled hillary clinton's e-mails and the agency's fisa warrants. also on hold, the proposed white house summit between president trump and russian president vladimir putin. national security adviser john bolton declaring this week "the president believes that the next bilateral meeting with president putin should take place after the russia witch hunt is over,

so we've agreed that it will be after the first of the year." bold prediction there from john bolton. for more on this is democratic strategist, former executive director of the new york state democratic party. also with me, republican strategist and msnbc political analyst. let's start with these articles of impeachment, susan. i'll play tape, folks from government reacting to what was proposed by congressman mark meadows and his colleagues. >> my deputy, rod rosenstein, is highly capable. i have the highest confidence in him. >> do i support impeachment of rod rosenstein? no, i do not. >> there's absolutely no basis to impeach rod rosenstein. it's an absurd idea, but it's designed to diminish the credibility of the justice department and undermine the mueller investigation, cause public doubts to be had, and it will cause long-term damage, but they don't care. >> you heard the house speaker there in the middle. two republicans and adent out of -- and a democrat, schiff,

there. how specific are you to what paul ryan is saying, he's trying to keep his caucus together? is this the hill -- i don't want to say that republicans die on, but is this a fight they should be dying on? >> this was a p.r. stunt. that's all it was. it was mark meadows and 20 of his colleagues in the house trying to give a nice present to donald trump, maybe they're auditioning, they want cabinet positions, who knows. it was not based in reality. we know it's not going to happen. they're on recess now for a month. it was important, not only was it two republicans and one democrat, but it was also rosenstein's boss. >> maybe it's wise that there's more bipartisanship, why isn't more stuff happening out of congress? what does this say about that, the fact that these articles were drafted, they were tendered, this is where at least one faction of the republican

party is at this point? >> it says they're not doing much, right. and for whatever democrats may get blamed for it from president trump or others, the republicans control the house and the senate. so we can during our recess talk to constituents and say, look, congress is not about infrastructure, which we talked about a year ago, but haven't talked about since. they're not about the working class or farmers, which we've seen over the last couple of weeks. they're about impeaching someone over documents as congressman jeffries has said. and i will take something that congressman jerry nadler also said, he said that rosenstein is the only person sort of standing in between overreach of the preside president. that is a very, very talking point for voters in the next couple of weeks because they're starting to see sort of, i think, a president -- i hate to quote omarosa's book -- >> yes -- >> to answer that, one of the

reasons many things didn't get done in the house that they couldn't have support is because of the 20, 25 freedom caucus members who wanted to get in the way of everything. that goes to speaker ryan's leadership potentially, but you know, these are the same people who are now coming up with that absurd plan to try and -- >> true, leadership coming to an end, as well. the question of what's next is there, as well. let me ask you about the second topic, that is we heard john bolton saying he thinks that the next summit, the sequel to the helsinki summit, should take place maybe in 2019 after the witch hunt ends, as he sees it ending. we saw the reaction to that summit across the aisle. many republicans were highly critical of the president going to helsinki, having the meeting one on one without the presence of anyone else, critical of the comments he made afterward. we're talking about whether or not republicans should be having the fight over the impeachment of rod rosenstein. how about the president's insistence that these meetings continue between him and vladimir putin? how is that resonating do you think with the republican electorate? >> not very well. let's not forget the reason why

that meeting came up and the president brought it up through bolton was because dan koetcoat was giving an interview, and it wasn't necessarily what the president wanted to hear. his -- sorry, his intelligence secretary. >> yeah, d&i. >> d&i. so donald trump just kind of threw it out there like he does many times. and that's what the real problems we're facing now is we don't know what policy is. these meetings, so what if they meet, we don't know what policy's going to come out of it. that's what's particularly frightening for the country, and i think republicans are pushing back on. they push back so hard on that impromptu meeting that it caused the white house to come out again and say, oh, no, we're going to wait until after january which is code for saying we're waiting until after the midterm elections are over. >> and basil, a lot of people thought the president was played by his russian counterpart. you had vladimir putin going before cameras saying not only

would i wait going to washington, but president trump is welcome here if the circumstances are right. what does that say about, i guess, president trump's engagement with the issue but the degree that which you have a russian president who's making hay out of all this? >> i would say that the president is not the dealmaker that he told us he was -- >> a daleal breaker. >> a deal breaker. i grew up in the bronx, and we don't get do-overs. he wants a do-over with the russian president. it can't happen , it shant happen. -- it shouldn't happen. this something, again, democrats will take to constituents, independents, and republicans. this is against decades of republican dogma what the president is doing. hopefully we can capitalize on that. >> great to say you both. thank you very much for the time on this saturday. the deadline has passed for more than 600 migrant children still in government custody. after the break, the challenge to reunite those children with their families.

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1,000 of them could face immediate deportation. 600 have been released under supervision. 392 are still detained and being held in i.c.e. custody. that still leaves 650 children the government deems ineligible for reunification because their parents have already been deported. i want to bring in my panel now. victoria is an msnbc contributor and professor at the lbj school of public affairs at the university of texas. jose, let me start with you. you're a lawyer in private practice here. you have made that journey to the border many times now. you have clients who are down there. what's the status of them? after passing that deadline yesterday, a lot of people are wondering how things are and what's next. >> gratefully, for 20 of my clients, i represent approximately 20 mothers. of the 20, only one mother remains there. she's absolutely anguished to still be there because she saw all of her fellow mothers being released and now she's the last one to be released.

we are trying so desperately to get her released and reunited with her children. unfortunately, as of today, she just called me this morning, she still is at the detention facility. >> victoria, i want to get your perspective on this as well, maybe more broadly looking at policy here. you had that judge out in san diego extending the deadline for this just a little bit. you saw the efforts that the government made to make this happen. what's your sense of where things stand at this point? how right the federal government has made this now that we've hit the deadline. >> the number 650 is a pretty big number to me. those are the number of children who are still in limbo. about 400 parents have been deported or have left the country, and then you have about another 200 kids in detention who are deemed ineligible to be reunited with their family because the parents have a criminal record or for whatever reason and they're pending further examination. so 650. and the question is how are we going to reunify those children?

what is being done, both on the legal aspect, are we working with foreign governments to contact the parents that are in honduras and guatemala and el salvador and try to get them linked up? what are the bureaucratic mechanisms? that's the question for me. aside from the human and the moral question. every day that passes that these children are alone in detention centers, we are doing irreparable harm. so there's the bureaucratic and the human component to this number. >> jose, you've been back and forth and i wonder how much things have changed. i want to read from that judge out in san diego. this problem cannot repeat. what was lost in the process was the family. there has to be a procedure or protocol in place. i recall jacob soboroff holding up that flowchart for what's supposed to happen for this to work. has it changed as you've seen it? >> it has made some changes. these families, the ones that i represent have been reunited. however, it is absolutely --

there is no that i can see any rhyme or reason. i've spoken to several i.c.e. officials and they keep shifting me around. call this number, call this number. it's been so difficult. i really think that luckily for some of these women, they had someone advocating for them. unfortunately, there are hundreds of mothers that have no one to advocate for them. and i don't know what, if any, safeguards there are. for example, all of the mothers that were released from arizona were given a sheet of paper to sign and they were told you want to leave here? sign this paper. that paper was in english. i was given a copy of that paper and it's a lot of misleading language in there that's only in english. and there's no one there to tell them, to read them, okay, this is what this means. this is what this means. it's just -- they're signing blindly. some of them are signing documents that they have no business signing. waiving certain rights. i am scared that a lot of women who were deported were deported not knowing what rights, if any,

they had and they waived them away. now they're separated from their children and it's going to be extremely difficult to reunite little kids, some of them 5, 6, 7 years old, with a mother who is thousands and thousands of miles away in a foreign country. >> i'm just going to read quickly from the aclu. they have asked the court to block any deportations for seven days after we are notified of reunification so that we can make sure families have the opportunity to meet with lawyers, are fully apprised of their options and can make the decision that is best for them. jose, thank you very much. victoria, my thanks to you as well. and that is it for me. i'm david gura. join me tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. eastern time. "all in with chris hayes" is next. have a great night. insurance that won't replace

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