i said, whatever happened to getting something you want? some you have to be rough, some you have to be nice, bud whatever happened. let me tell you if i did go up and start screaming thshgs e would have said, he was terrible! he was so rude. it was horrible. his performance was horrible. whatever happened to fair press? whatever happened to honest reporting? i remember a nice man. i actually like him. he's very talented, with a big chart, and all that red is starting to get red, republican, that chart, red, red, red. a little tiny dot of blue along the ocean. his hands start shaking, ah -- look, oh, my god. another state came -- oh, my god, what's going -- fake news. >> so bob casey doesn't mind ms13 coming in.

these are the slicers. they slice people up. >> they wanted me to walk up and go like this. some of the president at his rally in pennsylvania last night and much, much more of that. good morning, everyone. it's friday, august 3rd. welcome to "morning joe." we have a number of important developments to get through this morning, including a stark warning from the intel community. russia is at it again. they've got the public's attention, but what about the president's? does he care? what's going on? plus, dan coats speaks truth to power, again. the director of national intelligence admits he still does not know what the president told vladimir putin last month in helsinki. think about it. the director of national intelligence. and ivanka trump says that it was a low point for her when the separations of children from their family were happening

under her father's administration, through her father's policy. she says it was low point. she was, felt bad about it. the big question is, will she do anything about it? besides prepared comments. with us we have national affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc john heilemann. donny is here. donny deutsch is here. republican strategist and nbc political analyst susan del percio is here. columnist for the "washington post" david ignatius and pulitzer prize winning historian jon meacham, author of "the soul of america: the battle for our better angels." a battle we're in right now for sure. joe will be back aon monday. willie what did you think of the president? your gut watching? >> extraordinary a couple hours after his entire national security apparatus appeared in the white house briefing room laying out chapter and verse how russia continues to interfere in our elections the president went

out at that rally and called it a russian hoax and reportedly sent those people out. i also just thought it was sort of another pathetic grievance session airing his grievances talking how unfairly he's treated by the press, and i wondered what it would be like if he spent the time and energy he spends on that focusing on things like clean water in flint, or visiting troops in a war zone, for example. it just strikes me as a monument's waste of time for a president of the united states to go on and on and on on one or two subjects that he can't get past. >> and ham erg tmering the medi. john heilemann, what are you thinking at this point watching this man? >> you know, i'm thinking it's getting old. >> yeah. >> you know, there's just a -- the things that he's talking about are really beyond -- i agree with everything willie said. things that are disturbing and

he continues to impress italy, sometimes explicitly knock down his intelligence chiefs who he supposedly sent out. i want those five people to go out, make the case for me. i ordered them to go out and make it and goes on the stage and basically undercuts them, but as a political story, right? it's not just red meat. it's red raw meat for a very -- for the 35% that we as the core trump base, he's in a state where he's got a senate candidate who's trailing. he's not in a super strong position. is not going to win pennsylvania by appealing to that other than 35%. but what is he not talking about? not the economy, or things that actually matter to the pennsylvania people who are going to sflovote in that race. this message and grievance fest it is does nothing to expand the voter pool drawn on by lou

barletta or candidates across the country, republican candidates. >> there's a reason i'm asking. i'm going completely around the table, rapid fire here. david ignatius, we'll take you next. especially specifically on the media and on russia. your take on the president last night. >> well, it's as if we have two governments. one government that states responsible policies drawn from what our intelligence agencies have discovered issuing warnings to state governments, doing the business of government, and then we have this other government, this other ring in our national circus in which the president conducts a daily anti-elitist rant, the principle targets are people in the media. ate to say it, we're the best thing he's got going for him. he doesn't have other issues besides rousing the public to think se are elitiselitist, to s phrase "enemies," but he's

making us the central theme of his campaign. we have to see that right in the eyes, but it is as if, mika, they're two separate rings to this circus now. >> yeah. and it seems like some people are beginning to really understand that. especially -- he was going after generals last night. jon meacham, anybody in history, a figure in history, that parallels what's happening with this president? >> i think it's joe mccarthy. as if mccarthy had become president to go to john's point about it getting old. roy cohn, joe mccarthy's counsel and donald trump's. sometimes you don't have to make this stuff up. it falls in your lap. he wrote a book about mccarthy saying, a., he bought anti-communism the way other people buy a used car, it was just a vehicle to take over the american politics and particularly in the right wing,

and secondly, people got tired of the show. they got tired of having as fdr once said, the highest note in the scale repeated again and again and again. >> susan del percio, then donny. what's your gut? >> the first thing i thought of listening, again, to all of this falsehoods is, wow, this is really why his attorneys, president trump's attorneys, do not want him to go in front of robert mueller. he gets all revved up and he just -- he simply cannot tell the truth, and, yes, it's getting old, but thank goodness people are still speaking up and trying to, you know, speak out against it, but, boy, is he in trouble if he goes in front of mueller. >> donny? >> the saddest and most frightening thing to me when trump is at these rallies is actually not trump itself. it's the people. amazing stiatistic. >> people are excited to meet the president of the united states. >> yes, excited is a nice word, but the rigor with which they accept his information.

cbs news had an amazing poll stunning. people defined themselves as strong trump supporters. 90% of people who say their information from trump they believe is accurate. 60% from friends or family they believe is accurate. 10% from the media. think about it again. people in that audience, we have to describe them as strong trump supporters. if their friend or family member told them something they're less likely to believe it than that goff ball up there, crazy uncle donny. going back to the two governments david brought up, crazy uncle donny, a figure we continue to have completely unaccountable to even his own staff and no repercussion. we were talk this today, chris wray, bolton, this is a fact, this is a fact, their boss gets onstage and says it's not. crazy uncle donny talking to his base stunningly regardless what

he says will continue to go, but -- but -- the voters will speak in november. >> they will. >> and 33%, 34%, yes, a lot of vote in the primary, but a wave of likes have never been seen before. >> my take is this. it's blunt. fair to say. i've been there before and i did it when it wasn't cool to do. i'm going to do it again. he's not well. that's the bottom line. there's no way nine knows donald trump but has not bought in in some way could watch him last night and not come away with the feeling that the president of the united states is completely unhinged and getting worse by the day. perhaps the stress is really squeezing in on him. it's interesting that a former reality tv star and colleague of trump is releasing a book with the title "unhinged." this is a woman who knew him during his reality show days, very well. and then went with him to the white house and in it she describes a reaction to a man

that she had known for over a decade who is in a state of mental decline. it's a concern we've voiced on this show during the campaign and over the last tumultuous 18 months. try and find someone who's not politically invested or too fearful of donald trump or the republican party who knew the man a decade ago who will tell you that his mental state has not deteriorated erratically over the past few years or changed or come out in some way. it is transforming what we're watching. you will not find that person from donald trump's past. if they're telling you the truth. we were told of his unfitness for office by those closest to him on the campaign and we saw it ourselves up close in the december 2015 interview in which he first pledged his fealty to vladimir putin. let me tell you, you can pull that interview up. it's a little embarrassing, but i will say you can see in our faces in realtime us kind of going from jovial and fun to

sitting up and listening to him and realizing -- this guy's not right. and this is bad what's happening here. and we showed you this person throughout the campaign and we pointed out those issues. you listened to him talk about russia during the campaign on this show. we were told repeatedly that it was somehow out of balance to comment on the candidate's declining mental state and, yes, i'm not a doctor, but i know what i see, and we know donald trump. we also know what campaign staffers told us two years ago and i know the dangerous blustering bigot on the stage last night is more boorish and less connected to reality than he was ten years ago. donald trump is not well, and everyone close to him says it. they're all scared of what he's going to say or tweet next. his republican dupes know it, and yet no one seemingly will do

anything about it. not the people who can. same if it ever was, but much more precarious right now for the media, the press. far more dangerous for our democracy. >> mika, ewant to jui want to j a second. i watched an hour-long interview i did with him in 2007. his cadence, his nigh eyes. he was a different guy. look at old interviews with donald trump. he's not just younger. his entire mannerisms, entire way of speaking is different. so i'm glad we brought that up, because we all kicked that around a long time. >> watch our reaction. >> then it became kind of the norm. >> the page turns. the worm turns. >> so glad you brought that up, because that is an ongoing -- i think at this point almost a given when you watch this man's behavior. >> that is where we're at. got a sense from everybody.

state of mind watching that rally last night, and with that we go to the major developments yesterday. willie? >> i mentioned those national security directors in the white house yesterday. they gathered in the briefing room reportedly at the president's personal instruction, top national security and intel officials delivering a strong and clear message about russia's continued interference in the u.s. election process. >> this threat is not going away. as i have said consistently, russia attempted to interfere with the last election, and continues to engage in maligned influence operations to this day. this is a threat we need to take extremely seriously and to tackle and respond to with fierce determination and focus. >> the intelligence community continues to be concerned about the threats of upcoming u.s. elections. both the midterms and the presidential elections of 2020.

in regards to russian involvement in the midterm elections, we continue to see a pervasive messaging campaign by russia to try to weaken and divide the united states. these efforts are not exclusive to this election or future elections but certainly cover issues relevant to the election. >> our focus here today is simply to tell the american people we acknowledge the threat. it is real. it is continuing, and we're doing everything we can to have a legitimate election that the american people can have trust in. in addition that that, it goes beyond the elections. it goes to russia's intent to undermine our democratic value, drive a wedge between our allies and do a number of other nefarious things. >> our democracy itself is in the cross hairs. free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy and it has become clear that they are the target of our

adversaries who seek as the dni just said to sow discourt and undermine our way of life. >> during the day in the white house briefing room, a pretty clear message. fast forward a few hours later. this is what the president said in that rally in pennsylvania. >> in helsinki i had a great meeting with putin. we discussed everything. had a great meet. i had a great meeting. we got along really well. by the way, that's a good thing. not a bad thing. that's a really good thing. now, we're being hindered by the russian hoax. it's a hoax. okay? i'll tell you what. russia's very unhappy that trump won. that i can tell you. but i got along great with putin. and everybody said, wow. that was great -- that was great. a couple hours later i started hearing these reports that, you

know, they wanted me to walk up, here's the podium here. they wanted me to walk up and go like this -- son of a -- they wanted me to go up and have a boxing match. i said, whatever happened to diplomacy? and, by the way -- whatever happened to diplomacy? and know? i used to study -- not too much -- diplomacy. i said, whatever happened to getting everything you want? >> so there's a lot in there, obviously. president putin at that press conference in helsinki said very clearly he wanted president trump to win, the then donald trump to become president. >> twice. >> davis ignatius, walk through this. what we heard yesterday is not a new conclusion. wa what's the intelligence agencies came to in january 2017, 19 months ago, just going

out stating it's still happening and continues in the 2018 midterm elections. so why would president trump, if reporting is president trump sent them out to do that only to undercut that a couple hours later? obviously, it's a mystery in some ways, but what i've sensed since the helsinki summit is that -- in the public, i know dan coats in his famous interview with andrea mitchell, he was stuned by what he didn't know, but he just, you know, told the truth. question after question. secretary mattis, i've listened to secretary mattis speak at a dinner in public. he's gone into the press rooms, followed into the pentagon, much more forthright about what he sees and thinks is going on. some of that from secretary pompeo at the state department. i was interested to see kristen

nielsen, dhs secretary often backed up by criticism from president trump saying emphatically, our democracy is in the cross hairs. they're using strong language to describe to the public what they say. and then you have the president, it's almost like lawyers talk about jury nullification. going to the jury. what those people tell you is not as important as these te terrible outrages down me and minimizing it. it's not the first time a politician has gone the other way from his administration and tried to arouse the base completely independent of what the government does every day. >> right. >> i think the question that we're facing, we're going to get an answer in a couple months. what the public makes of this weird two -- two-stage circus, two-government thing we're watching, but it was good to see the senior officials of our government be so emphatic and

clear in stating the truth as they understand it. >> those men and women don't stand up there in the white house briefing room without the president knowing about it and probably signing off on it. is he giving himself cover saying we have come out strongly against russia and then can continue to say that it's a hoax on twitter and at rallies? >> i actually there there's two tracks. has to cover himself on the security side. doesn't want to seem weak here, but as he went after mueller and the team and tried to bring them down, i think he's trying to -- he knows what he's done, and i think he's trying to build up putin so when we do find out what his dealings were, he's not seemed as such the bad guy. he's basically just doing a reverse mueller to help himself, that the facts come out and we say, oh, well, putin's not such a bad guy. the president's been telling us that that. we can be friends with him, so whatever he's done won't seem as bad. >> lots of evidence of contrary,

that vladimir putin is not such a bad guy. >> we know that, but as donny mentioned. the people who believe in donald trump believe what he says and they will to the end. >> can we ask republicans a question? based on what the entire intelligence community has said, why, two weeks ago, they voted down an amendment to spend an additional $250 million to make our election safer? actually said, no. we don't want to spend that money to protect our election. i have a question for mr. meacham, i often do, john, call you up tuesday and thursday nights to get historical perspective. everybody tosses the word impeachment around. if we have a president whose job is to serve and protect this country. protect this country. and it's clear his entire intelligence team said this is a threat and when you think about a threat. god forbid we had elections and the day after it came out they were truly tampered with, we'd have chaos in the streets. so if the president denies that, why is that not an impeachable offense? any historical perspective in a

situation like this? no different than a missile aimed at us, that our intelligence -- he says, no, it's not. we're okay. why is that in his basic job not in the most simplistic terms an impeachable offense? >> i think it would be. the phrase in the constitution as you know, donny. i appreciate you're setting me up for this, is -- treason, bribery and other high crimes or misdemeanors and treason is defined as giving aid and comfort to an enemy, and so i think that would fall clearly within the definition if a majority of the house and if two-thirds of the senate wanted to do it. gerald ford once said that, an impeachable offense is whatever a certain number of legislators think it is at any given time. one of the issues about impeachment is in the constitutional convention james madison and others did not want it to be a weapon to fight what they administration.

immediately for it to move to an impeachable one. our three big impeachments, andrew jackson, richard nixon, bill clinton, but this would fall within it clearly. mid-term election is essential here. what i've been hearing and you all, too, i'm sure. democrats do extremely well on the generic ballot around the country. when impeachment comes up, that number, i'm told, goes down somewhat. which is an interesting dichotomy. i think people still have some regret over the bill clinton episode. so i don't think the country broadly put is there yet, but i think if you have a democratic majority in the house and i think it entirely depends on what director mueller comes back with. mueller is the iceberg in american politics. we see the tip. we don't know what's below, and

it's coming. >> all right. also i want to get to this story. it's important. this week the passing of former congressman, mayor and united states marine ron dellums. ron was a former u.s. representative and oakland mayor known for helping found the congressional black caucus and speaking out against apartheid in south africa. joe describes ron as a progressive hero who was a fierce advocate for all the liberal causes he embraced but managed at the same time to be a man respected and beloved by conservatives and liberals alike. and joe wrote on twitter, "one of the great surprises in congress was meeting this guy and loving every second around him. ron dellums and i rarely voted together, but he was beloved and respected by everyone from john lewis to tom delay. ron was a marine. a dedicated public servant and a great american."

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of former trump campaign-aid paul manafort. yesterday prosecutes sought to knock down an argument calling to the stand manafort's former bookkeeper testifying manafort was "very knowledgeable and detail oriented" adding "he approved every penny of everything we paid." the book cokeeper had no idea at his bank accounts. rick gates handled some business matters but manafort was the main source of approval. she added gates was not involved in manafort's personal expenses. in an effort to clear up confusion from the prior day, the prosecution says it does intend to have gates, its star witness, testify.

joining us now, contributor barbara mcquade inside the courtroom most days this week. good to have you with us. get us caught up on day two. how important is this bookkeeper to the story the prosecution wants to tell? >> critically important to the case, because the defense really has been that it was all rick gates. that paul manafort was a very busy man running his business. he didn't have time to attend to the business side of things and it was rick gates who was doing these things that committed these crimes, but when we heard from the bookkeeper, she made it very clear that paul manafort was paying very close attention to the details, and that he approved every penny of expenses and was involved in the revenues and so i think most of what she said undercut that defense strategy. >> so barbara, you've handled prosecutions, many of them, some like this. it feels from the outside and looks like prosecutors have a pretty strong hand. if you are prosecuting this

case, how would you be feeling right now? >> well, i think prosecutors are by nature pessimists and careful and worried about failure and so i think that it feels like it's going in well, but they know that there's also snag can trip you up. so they are always attuned to every detail and you can tell this team is as well. to look at it objectively, it's going in very well. this judge is a little bit cantankerous. a little bit of a micromanager. but most of the evidence is coming in and it has shown a couple things so far. number one, paul manafort had incredibly lavish taste, was buying expensive suits, expensive cars, landscaping for his homes, multiple homes and that he used these accounts in cypress to pay for those things. that's been clear. yesterday it came out that his business began to dry up in 2015 and so that he submitted what appeared to be false income documents to obtain loans on

mortgages on these properties. so one interesting observation, won't really come up as part of this case but could come up in the september case, at the very moment from paul manafort, someone who loves money, issing wering flat broke, goes to work for the trump campaign for free. what was that all about? an intriguing factor relating to the other part of the case, which is the russia part. >> john heilemann here. an amazing thing to see just how broke. i mean, we say he was in financial duress, the man was dead broke in early 2016. i saw a piece of reporting yesterday from some of the documents that he had a credit score of about 550, which would have put him in sort of subprime territory. the question that you just raised is a totally fascinating question. how can this man afford to go to work for donald trump for free? what's the story there? but -- i think it's very important, and super crucial to the overall narrative, but does it matter to this case why paul

manafort was able to, or would want to, go to work for donald trump for free in the spring of 2015? >> no. for this case his work for donald trump i don't think is even going to get before the jury. i don't think they'll know about that aspect of the case. what matters here is he was broke, and why that matters, because that provides the motive for him to engage in his bank fraud. why would this incredibly wealthy man engage in bank fraud? so desperate for cash. at one point the bookkeeper testified she warned them, so low on cash, they weren't going to be able to afford health insurance for david manafort partners, that's when she reviewed documents that appeared to be fake inflating the income by $4 million, that were submitted to banks to receive loans and that's because the cash flow for paul manafort was completely absent after, in contrast, to what we heard of these incredibly expensive

tastes of the money he was pumping into this luxury lifestyle. >> barbara mcquade in the cum. day four of the trial starts in about three hours. thanks so much. appreciate it. now to the overpriced rare jacket correspondent donny deutsch. the ostrich on the left, 15 grand. python, 18.5. what's the better buy? >> insulted you even asked me. anybody who kind of follows exotic animal jackets. >> python. right? >> this show is of a high intellectual caliber. you ask obvious questions, audience is disappointed. they come to us for news you can use. this is news you already know. >> disappointed by the ostrich jacket. we expected feathers, no skin. >> the jacket was made of ostrich. you kept thinking plumage. looks like a leather jacket. big deal. >> one of more liberace and less

manafort. >> we won't daudon't want peopl disappro disapprove. >> enough. 95 days until the midterms. some congress' republicans are having a hard time. talk how an endorsement from president trump can affect a candidate's chances this fall. "morning joe" will be right back.

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president trump endorsed an ohio congressman yesterday urging people to vote for him next week. the only problem, that congressman is not on the ballot. in a now deleted tweet, president trump wrote, congressman steve stivers of ohio has done a fantastic job as chairman of the nrcc. he's a great congressman tough on crime and borders and an inspiration to our military and veterans. big on second amendment. get out and vote for steve on august 7th. a special election for ohio's 12th congress' district takes place on august 7th, but stivers represents ohio's 15th congressional district. the president later tweeted

looking forward to being in the great state of ohio saturday night where i will be campaigning hard for a talented future congressman troy balderson. the republican nominee who will face democrat danny o'connor in next week's special election. that mixup aside, if president trump manages to back the accurate candidate in a race, it could be a deciding factor between a win and a loss. let's bring in national political reporter for axios, jonathan swan, looking at how much value a trump endorsement has for some of these midterm candidates. so is there a lot of value, jonathan? or does it depend on where exactly? >> well, trump among republican primary voters, the interesting thing about trump is, he's historically popular among republican voters, and very, very unpopular among the jeng p general public. it makes republican officials very nervous, because a trump

endorsement in a primary is incred pkrecredibly powerful. list the former gubernatorial primary, pushed ron desantis to a double ditch cgit conservativ knows the state well. then you push them into a general election, they're tied at the hip to trump. a lot of republican officials that we're talking to are very nervous about the next phase after trump pushes them through to win the primary. >> so jonathan, it's hileman herhilemann here. talked yesterday about the stump in pennsylvania. strikes me that message is well tailored to a republican primary audience and not so well tailored to a general election audience, especially not well tailor in a purple or blue state. your very familiar with a lot of polling data and analytics. is there -- i'd like to -- talk a little about what the data

says about the stuff trump is saying and how it will play in places where republicans need to win if they're going to hold control of the house and the senate. >> well, you have touched on the central problem with all of this, which is that the messages that trump -- the messages trump puts out there, very hard-line on immigration, trade, some of these other issues and also just the general, as you say, rambling kind of character attacks and fairly extreme language about the media, that is woptd ewonderful in a republ primary. one of the problems, earlier in the year when trump stress add desire to barnstorm the country and basically visit every house district, he had people like corey lewandowski saying, mr. trump you are the greatest campaigner the world's ever seen. you should be out on the trail, everwhere, blitz the country. the problem some of these republican members were kwee qu

approaching the white house political shop and saying we don't actually want the president in our district, because some of the vulnerable republicans thinking of c carbellows from florida, they don't want him there. appealing to voters who don't necessarily appeal to the president's messages. >> jon meacham, the senate race between marcia blackburn, republican and former tennessee governor phil bredesen. popular in the state for a long time. how does it look like it will shake out in tennessee? >> the primary was last night. and it's bredesen versus blackburn. i think bredesen is up unusually. i think a little bit in most of the polling that i've seen. as you say, very business friendly. very moderate democrat, very

high-ranking republicans will say privately is, this is exactly the kind of democratic nominee they fear the most. because suburban women, millennials, african-americans are going to come out driven by an anti-trump fervor, but establishment republicans who had to put their principles to some extent in a blind trust in 2016 will be able to vote across the aisle in a race like this. vote for a democrat, and it matters n s nationally, not jus because i hope some day you'll be doing the weather on channel 5 one day. >> that's a promise. >> we have the helicopter chopper for you, the traffic thing. in a -- in a senate that's so narrowly divided, this is a republican pickup, because this is bob corker's seat. so what's going to happen is, you're going to see, i think, a lot of images between now and

november where trump will be in the state, doing these big rallies for blackburn, trying to keep that base moving. congresswoman blackburn is a figure on fox news. she's someone that campaigned for the president. he knows her. so you really do have a great microcosm, as you say, of what will be shaping the make upof the congress. >> all right. jonathan swan, thank you very much for your reporting, and coming up, ivanka trump says it was a low point for her, the separations of families from their children, and she also talked about whether or not the media is the enemy of the people. but the press secretary, given multiple chances, refused echo the sentiment on the media that ivanka put out. we'll talk about that ahead on "morning joe."

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that was low point for me as

well. i feel very strongly about that, and i am very vehemently against family separation, and the separation of parents and children. >> yeah, but you can do better than that. i'm sorry, willie. low point? ivanka trump. people seeking asylum in america trying to escape poverty, abuse, fear, violence. coming here and facing never seeing their kids again? that was ivanka trump yesterday acknowledging the impact of her father's policy on herself. the policy that tore children from their parents at the u.s. border. ivanka has never talked about the topic, other than congratulating her father over twitter after he stopped the policy that he created. yet hundreds, possibly thousands, of children's lives still hang in the balance, but

that was a low point for her. so these kids are sitting in detention facilities. they're at "summer camp" some would say, facing potentially never seeing their seeing their again. >> but also a low point for the administration, as into suggest that it's not like -- it's something that happened to the administration as opposed to something that the administration inflicted on these children. a low point for the administration. like the weather. >> a low point for her. i just want to say that because ivanka trump has her own political aspirations you're going to have to do this a little better. you'll have to try and act like you care. you have to try and act like people are not merchandise products. you'll have to try and act like this matters to the fabric of what this country was created upon. who we are. this is not just a low point for you. this is not something you can throw away by calling it a low point for you. like maybe your company and all the people you had to fire

because it's no longer politically convenient for you. this is not something you throw away because it's an out of production ivanka trump dress. no. these are people. these are children who right now we don't know where they are. we don't know exactly how many there are. we don't know how they are. but we know that they are being abused because they have been ripped away from their families, and some of them will never see their families again. and i just want to point out that this administration, this administration was warned about this policy. you heard the hhs secretary early this week talking about the effort to warn this administration, to warn you, it was an hhs official, warning you that this was the prong thing to do. that there would be bad outcomes here. and yet the president put this policy into place. the attorney general announced

it. the dhs secretary said we hope that people get the message, this policy will help them get the message. this policy ripped children away from their families and some of them will never see their families again. and you, counselor to the president finally speak on it and you call it a low point for you. i don't think ate low point for you. i think it's a national disgrace and i think there's a lot of people who still want answers how these children are going to be reunited with their families feign care get yourself to the border and stay there until something really substantive is done. otherwise your words don't matter. we actually don't care what this was like for you. we care about the children. and we care about their families. we care about people coming here seeking asylum, coming to america the way many of our family members did, the way you talked about your mother. i believe you talked about

people who come here from around the world, the melting pot that is america. you talked about it so positively. and yet what a low point for this administration and for you personally. it's still going on. it's not over. it's still going on. willie. >> the other maddening part about this is ivanka trump continues to talk like she's a bystander to all of this. she's the certificate advisor for the president. she's supposed to be with the president's ear. of all the children she's the one -- >> with her warning she could not stop it and bummed out for herself. >> again and again she comes in after the fact and talks about how distressing it was as though she has no say in the matter. >> that's exactly right. is she out there as the president's daughter. she has a west wing role and she does nothing. she voiced no agenda. she did have one thing she was kind of involved with. this should be her agenda. and to talk about things in the way of what i was upset and my

low point, stop it and do something. she is not on tv as the president's daughter. that's the question she was asked. that's not how she was asked those questions. frankly she sold her doe be more involved in washington what's going on. >> i think it was either do something or go back to new york. >> all right. we've got to get to the press angle on this and we want to get more on that. sarah huckabee sanders, more with david ignatius on that topic coming up. and whiskers on kittens ♪ ♪ bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens ♪ ♪ brown paper packages tied up with strings ♪ ♪ these are a few of my favorite things ♪ ♪ ♪

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welcome back to "morning joe". it's a few minutes before the top of the hour here. we've been talking about ivanka trump calling her father's family separation policy a low point for her and the white house. ivanka told mike allen that the press is not the enemy of the people as her father had said repeatedly. >> do you think that we're the enemy of the people? >> sorry? [ laughter ] >> we're the enemy of the people? >> no, i do not. >> she says no i do not think the press is the enemy of the people. president trump later tweeted they asked my daughter whether the media is the enemy of the people. she correctly said no. it's the fake percentage which is a large percentage of the media that's the enemy of the people. at the white house briefing yesterday sarah huckabee sanders refused to answer whether she agrees with president trump that the media is the enemy of the people.

>> it's ironic, jim, that not only you and the media attacked the president for his rhetoric when they frequently lower the level of conversation in this country. repeatedly, repeatedly the media resorts to personal attacks without any content other than to incite anger. the media continues to ratchet up the verbal assault against the president and everyone in this administration and certainly we have a role to play but the media has a role to play for the discourse in this country as well. >> the president of the united states should not refer to us as enemy of the people. her own daughter acknowledges that. i ask you to acknowledge that right here and right now. >> i acknowledge your passion. i share it. i've addressed my personal feelings. i'm here to speak on behalf of the president. he's made his comments clear. >> she says she speaks on behalf of the president. his comment has been that the press is the enemy of the people. even in these times at an

extraordinary moment when the press secretary will not say that the working press is not the enemy of the people. >> yeah. as you say, it's hard to determine which is a lower moment. it's an elective kind of base management. it's pernicious. this is dangerous. this is not media elite people defending elite media people. to declare that a free press is the enemy of the people. and i just would say this, if i had two minutes with president trump, which is very unlikely, what i would say is this, we know you care about success and ratings. most people do. what do you want us to think when we look at your portrait down the years?

do you want us to think of the reality show impresario and continued to govern just for his base or do you want us to look at you he got there by unconventional means but he tried to reach out beyond the people who didn't support him. the latter which is what you should want because this cycle is for a moment, sarah huckabee sanders will be dealing this with the rest of her life. these moments are for the moment. history is forever. and i just would think that -- the fact that it's in the national interest leave that aside. it's in their self-interest to stop playing this totalalitarian card. somebody will get hurt. it's not worth it. >> david ignatius, after sarah huckabee sanders had that moment in the briefing room, it was only amplified at the president's rally last night where he spent a large chunk --

he was there to campaign for somebody -- a large chunk of that speech railing against the media calling it the fake, fake, disgusting news was the term he used. on and won this obsession he's not treated fairly he's not given the credit he deserves for his achievements. >> it's a toxic situation. i think the president knows exactly what he's doing in his populism, media is the symbol of the elite that he wants to encourage the country to denounce. pretty soon we'll be getting the lock them up, the way things are going. that press room that sarah huckabee sanders is running is toxic. i've never seen anything like that in 40 plus years of being a journalist. she should be ashamed of the briefing process that she's running. it's just unbelievable when she's asked to deny that the press is the enemy of the people after the first daughter said

that is nonsense and she won't do it. and she won't do it because she's afraid of her boss, she's afraid of donald trump, and you can see watching him last night in pennsylvania why she's afraid of him. >> that's the big contrast. ivanka can't be fired and sarah huckabee sanders knows she can be fired. she's caring more about keeping her job. >> ivanka did what she needed to do for ivanka. sarah huckabee sanders is doing what she needs to do for president trump. in the process we're losing something incredibly important in this democracy. join the conversation to continue on this, eugene robinson. it's staggering to watch sarah huckabee sanders every day at the press briefing, every say it gets, if possible, more shocking and more disturbing when it

comes to manipulating or devaluing the truth. what i saw yesterday was something worse, and she was reading prepared statements. this is a strategy, this is not something that trump or she is stumbling into. the strategy of playing the victim. it's why i didn't agree with what at the white house correspondence dinner because we make ourselves potentially vulnerable to being chipped away at by those who want to hurt exactly what it is we do. but she played the victim but had a prepared statement. did you see what i saw? >> i saw the same thing. i certainly saw her reading the prepared statement. you know, this segment of history is playing out as tragedy and farce at the same time. it is stunning. i had thought months ago that

sarah huckabee sanders, you know, was the worst press secretary i had ever witnessed in my 40 years here in washington, and that her briefings were useless if she was just going to read, you know, sort of prepared nonresponses to perfectly reasonable and necessary questions and that's what she does routinely when she bothers to have a briefing. i think it's a, you know, on that level it's a waste of everybody's time. yesterday i guess it wasn't a waste of everybody's time. everybody put their cards on the table and we heard something that was just grotesque, i thought, the way that she sort of in a toady is the only word that comes to mind in her stance towards the president and she was so afraid to deviate from

this line, this enemy of the people line, even a little bit. and so she had to write it out and read it and wouldn't go beyond it because, you know, i mean she can get fired. but look, sarah huckabee sanders, mike huckabee's daughter, a god fearing woman, what does she say when she kneels down to pray at night. and what sort of, you know, is she bargaining? because how can she be proud of this? how can she -- >> i don't know. that's something she has to live with. we care about what's happening to the national conversation, and to the safety of our democracy, and donny and susan, this is a strategy that works with the base, i believe. i saw her perfection for the

base when i watched that briefing. >> yeah. look, without getting too, you know, high minded there are basically two pillars that protect our democracy. free elections and free press. and those are both obviously under assault. you know, what's scary is meacham mentioned a moment. trump is in a moment now. unfortunately the assault on the depression is not a momentary thing. even, thank goodness when trump is gone the combination of what he's left behind plus this little crater over here basically because we get information from so many places we forget what's the "new york times" or what's nbc versus what's some guy in his pajamas putting something out. those two kind of javelins coming at the press and the news will leave a lasting scab on what we as a people believe about the press.

if we don't -- if we didn't have watergate. but that to me, just on a personal level, when trump gets up and says the press is the enemy of the people, i think of all the things he's ever said is the most frightening because that's the direct, direct line to a fascist. that's it. >> also you have to look at what happens as you just mentioned as it trickles down. i've been involved in politics and government for almost 30 years. there's no trust left between reporters and politicians and their representatives. lying is now common practice. i've never in a million years i thought i saw people who lie to the press or even the principals, politicians themselves, i had clients say just lie. that's unacceptable. it goes to the concept of a free press. it sounds quaint but at the same

time it's so fundamental for everyone to be doing their jobs and to be held accountable in that way. so i think that's the biggest deteration, the thing that scares me the most the amount of lying that happens between those responsible for elected officials and conferring their communication. >> also at yesterday's press briefing, top national security and intelligence officials delivered a strong message about continued russian interference in the u.s. election process. >> this threat is not going away. as i have said consistently, russia attempted to interfere with the last election and continues to engaging maligned influence operations to this day. this is a threat we need to take extremely seriously, and to tackle and respond to with fierce determination and focus. >> the intelligence community continues to be concerned about the threats of upcoming u.s.

elections. both the mid-terms and the presidential elections of 2020. in regards to russian involvement in the mid-term elections we continue to see a pervasive messaging campaign by russia to try to weaken and divide the united states. these efforts are not exclusive to this election, future elections but certainly cover issues relevant to the government. our focus today is simply to tell the american people we acknowledge the threat. it is real. it is continuing. we're doing everything we can to have a legitimate election that the american people can have trust in, in addition to that it goes beyond the elections, it goes to russia's intent to undermine our democratic values, drive a wedge between our allies, do a number of other nefarious things. >> our democracy itself is in the cross-hairs.

free and fair elections are the corner stone of our democracy, and it has become clear that they are the target of our adversaries to sow discord and undermine our way of life. >> fast forward a few hours later and this is what the president said in the rally in pennsylvania. >> in helsinki i had a great meeting with putin. we discussed everything. i had a great meeting. [ cheers and applause ] we got along really well. by the way, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. that's a really good thing. now we're being hindered by the russian hoax. it's a hoax, okay. i'll tell you what, russia is very unhappy that trump won, that i can tell you. but i got along great with putin. and everybody said wow that was

great, that was aggravate. couple of hours later i started hearing these reports that, you know, they wanted me to walk up to his podium, they wanted to go up and go like this. [ laughter ] they wanted me to go up and have a boxing match. i said whatever happened diplomacy? by the way, whatever happened to diplomacy? you know i used to study, not too much, diplomacy. i said whatever happened to getting everything what you want. >> set up a lot of awful straw man. nobody suggested you should fight putin. you were to perform the basic defense of democracy. but president said russia did not want trump to win. let's remind you at a news conference two and a half weeks ago. >> now we're being hindered by

the russia hoax. it's a hoax, okay. i'll tell you what, russia is very unhappy that trump won that i can tell you. >> president putin did you want to president trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that? >> translator: yes, i did. yes, i did. >> yes, i did. yes, i did. david ignatius, there's a lot to wade through in there. the president filing grievances about the way the press covered what he thought were a couple of great summits in singapore, in helsinki. but his general theory of foreign policy, this idea that it's better to get along, that the goal is to have a good personal relationship with these leaders is something we've not seen before. >> well, the president in this schtick as i can describe his presentation in pennsylvania last night, rambling, kind of

breaks off in different directions, is trying to set up this idea of, as donni search said, uncle donald will be friends with vladimir putin, make deals. all the country expected the president to do when he was standing next to vladimir putin in helsinki, with overwhelming evidence of russia's effort to manipulate our election was to stand there forthrightly with dignity and pride in america and say this is unacceptable. people didn't want him to get into a boxing match. they wanted him to speak for the country. he doesn't seem to get that. why is that? we'll find out in the coming months. but this sort of whining narrative of how nobody is fair to me and they don't value all the great things i've done,

coming after a dignified presentation by the senior member of his cabinet, i have to say my esteem for dan coats is somebody who is prepared to speak out and say what he thinks and for secretary kirstjen nielsen who says it absolutely right, our democracy is in the cross-hairs, looks in the camera and says the words. they've gone up in my estimation and we have to hope that they are the continuity of government that the country needs, not this show we get when the president is on the road. >> so just on that point, david, my gut on that is dan coats and christopher wray, they did not get oust by the president to go speak to the press my gut is we're going to go out to speak to the press don't stop us. at this point if you're in there you got to do what you can do to save this country. you won stay in there to stay silent when something needs to be said. that's just my gut on the

background. i don't think president trump is pulling the strings on those guys. >> it's interesting because we had reporting from a variety of sources from places like "the washington post" and nbc news other places where administration officials telling reporters president trump wanted those people to go out, he directed them to go out. i think the instinct especially the way just hours later came out and contradicted them effectively by saying russian hoax makes you think perhaps that david ignatius' view of them that they are acting -- that they are doing something that's not a partisan act, not trying to help donald trump, they are trying to speak truth to power here, that maybe more accurate. so, gene, i ask you, when you look at this, what does your gut say, what does your reporting say. are we looking at a bunch of, the front line here of the defense of the american democratic process and our election infrastructure or are we looking at kind of a janit

janitorial crew trying to clean up the president's helsinki press conference. >> the latter. this is based more on analysis than reporting. but i think they are trying to clean it up. these are the top intelligence and security officials of our country went out there yesterday and i think it was in part because each of them has thousands of talented dedicated patriotic professionals working for them who see what's going on. and so that's another constituency they have. and officials who would have to go through a senate confirmation process, while no one has job security in the trump administration, they might have a little bit more because i think the president knows if he were to, you know, sweep away all the people who were pointing

to russia, he would have some trouble from the senate. so, you know, i think it was more in their initiative than his certainly and what did the president do? he came out and said it's all a hoax. what they said is all a hoax. it was basically a generous invitation to vladimir putin to just keep on doing what you're doing. you're my buddy. you're my pal. we're going to make all sorts of deals, and if he doesn't care, if the commander-in-chief doesn't care what putin is at this moment trying to do, to disrupt the 2018 mid-term election that's only a few months away, if he doesn't care about that, the commander-in-chief doesn't care, then, you know, why should anybody else care? >> all right. joining us now, former u.s. diplomat, served as director of global engagement at the white house and is now president of

the consulting firm global situation room. good to have you on. so here's what we heard from top intel directors yesterday. here's dni director coats the intelligence community continues to be concerned about the threats of the upcoming u.s. election both the mid-terms and the presidential elections in 2020. fbi director wray, the threat is not going away. is the american president paving the way for the process to be completely flawed, and could this be part of a grand strategy? what are you hearing when you listen to these intelligence leaders speaking out so publicly at the podium yesterday? >> well, five agency heads do not a strategy make and i think the absence of presidential leadership on this issue is incredibly concerning. we don't have the resources, we don't have the direction that's needed to deal with this issue, and while i think efforts were made yesterday to try to plug

some of the holes in that dam, information warfare is like a flood. unless you have a real strategy to deal with it it simply is going to find another route in and that's unfortunately what we're facing now. >> i'm looking at these pictures of yesterday's briefing. david ignatius, there's no way that the president, in my opinion, wanted this to happen. i think this might be a set of american patriots stepping up and doing the right thing. but what they said, david, was staggering and frightening about our future elections. >> well, mika, you're right. they are describing an attack on the united states and so i want to ask brett if the united states was going to get serious enough to really deter that attack, what would it need to do that it's not doing now? >> first thing is, let me steal a word from russia. we need a czar. we need an information warfare czar, someone who is going to

take the work that's being done at each of those agenciesand make sure it will have an effect. they need resource. nothing yesterday talked about additional resources that would be able to be brought to bare for this issue. we know something is serious when resources are put behind it. >> brett, this is willie geist. the implication yesterday was things have gotten better in 2018 than they were in 2016 presidential election in terms of stopping some of that russian interference. how do they arrive at that conclusion? what is that the result of. more resources? more focus on the problem? >> my theory is things haven't gotten better they got more sophisticated in hiding them. i think what we're going to face in the congressional elections are microefforts. they will microtarget key

districts. they will go into key states. we won't see the national effort so it won't be quite as visible. still ahead on "morning joe," we're seeing more and more reports about alleged abuse of children who have been separated from their parents. congresswoman karen bass is calling on congress to do something about it. with the fastest retinol formula available. it's clinically proven to work on fine lines and wrinkles. one week? that definitely works! rapid wrinkle repair®. and for dark spots, rapid tone repair. neutrogena®. see what's possible. when did you see the sign? when i needed to jumpstart sales. build attendance for an event.

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it gives you super fast speeds for all your devices, provides the most wifi coverage for your home, and lets you control your network with the xfi app. it's the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. . the trump administration says it believes the spotlight for finding hundreds of deported parents separated from their children at the border rests with groups like the aclu and not with the federal government. just think about that for a second, since the federal government did this. in court filings yesterday the justice department wrote that the aclu should quote use their considerable resources and their network of law firms, volunteers

and others to contact the deported parents of separated children. the administration also suggested that the group find out if the estimated 431 parents who were deported without their children wished to be reconnected, or whether they waived that option. attorneys for the aclu responded to the administration, saying it was trying to evade its responsibility bypassing its work off to private groups. meanwhile a 32-year-old employee at a shelter for migrant children in arizona is accused of sexual abusing a 14-year-old girl housed at the facility. according to court records the employee is accused of slipping into the girl's bedroom late at night and allegedly forcibly kissing and inappropriately touching her. the suspect was arrested and charged on tuesday with molestation of a child, sexual

abuse and aggravated assault. in a statement southwest key programs which operates dozens of shelters for migrant children across the country did not address questions about whether the girl involved was previously separated from her parents at the border. the company said the employee in question has been fired. damage done. >> quickly, what's happened to us? >> yeah. >> you know, on break we were talking just as humans, and it's easy to get lost. all the stories i want to rehash that we talk about today. those people at the rally, the 35%, are they so different from us? moment after moment after moment this man shows on a basic human level and this is the epitome of

this story are we so different. is everybody's moral code off base? just the lying and the detestable behavior on a simple human level. what are we missing that those other people -- it's not 5%, it's not 10%, arguably one out of three or two out of five people in this country go that's right. what are we missing? >> joining us now a member of the house foreign affairs committee, democratic congresswoman karen bass of california. here on set best selling author, very good to have you both. congresswoman, how do we ever get the answers about these children and also pointing to donnie's question. >> thank you for talking about the children. here's what i'm concerned about. i spend a lot of time on focusing on our nation's foster care system which is already

exploding. in some states it's doubled by numbers because of the opioid crisis. we don't have enough foster homes for children that need be there because they were abused or neglected. so the clock is tick on these children. if they are not reunited within a certain amount of time parental rights can be terminated and they can be put up for adoption. can you imagine years from now looking for their birth parents and the only reason they were put up for adoption is because of our policy. and some children are ineligible to be returned to parents. what on earth makes a person ineligible. our child welfare system if you have a conviction and by the way when i went to one of the detention facilities i asked what would make a parent ineligible. well the parent might have a conviction. give me an example of a conviction. we had a father who had a dui. can you imagine not getting your child back because you had a

dui? >> i'm curious, are you exploring legal options? at this point aren't we looking at defendings for what's happening here that perhaps we've never seen this before. isn't this abuse of children? isn't this kidnapping? isn't this now leading to more problems? and what are the legal rights of these children and their parents? >> well, not only that, we are taking them away and then may or may not reunite them but you know that we're charging the parents, so for example, if you get deported there are examples of parents who are told you have to pay $1500 because we're going to fly your kid home along with a chaperone. that's a lucky parent that knows where their child is. this is state sponsored child abuse. only reason you should ever separate a child from their parent is if there is documented abuse or neglect. not as punishment or as a deterrent. it's a complete misuse of the

child welfare system. >> i think there should be a legal avenue to defend these children if they are being abused unless anybody here at the table disagrees this appears to be a complete and utter abuse. >> absolutely. the administration's statement of the aclu that this is an aclu responsibility is cynical. we have a country that's violating its moral principles right now and we're projecting on our fear, on the most vulnerable population. people who are children, the most innocent and vulnerable population. we have fear. we should put it about the destruction of our institutional, the foundation of this institution on this country other than the most vulnerable people. so for me right now what we need to do in america is about individual actions, individuals regardless of who you are, what your beliefs are. if you have a heart we have to

stand up for these children and for their parent because this is about our hearts at the moment and our souls. >> congresswoman bass? >> you know, i think that we're going to have to keep up the pressure. i introduced a piece of legislation 37 days ago that said that it is the federal government's responsibility to reunite the parents and i think unless we completely expose this problem, they are just going to hope that it goes away. mika, i can't tell you what it was like to be in the detention center when the parents were reunited with their children. there wasn't a dry eye in the room. the idea that the secretary of homeland security would say some of these parents, maybe they will waive their right, maybe they don't want their children back. we treat animals better than this. >> in a few minutes we'll hear an organization protecting immigrant rights. congresswoman bass, thank you very much for being on. stay with us. we'll talk more about this.

we'll keep talking about it. it's more than just a low point. coming up, is the enemy of your enemy your friend? some authoritarian leaders may be willing to fight back against terrorism but what do they represent in its place. it's a fundamental challenge for american foreign policy in the middle east. we'll talk about president trump's approach to it next on "morning joe". come away with me barnabas! but i am a simple farmer. my life is here... [telephone ring] ahoy-hoy. alexander graham bell here... no, no, my number is one, you must want two! two, i say!! like my father before... [telephone ring] like my father before... ahoy-hoy! as long as people talk too loudly on the phone,

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the "new york times," david kirkpatrick. his new book "into the hands of the soldiers." let's talk about the middle east and david's book. in guess i want to first understand if trump has a policy in the middle east. how would you describe it? >> at the very least he's got some clearly articulating instincts. he sees bad guys and he thinks the only way to solve the problem is to crush them with military force and he's made that perfectly clear. >> how is that going to work? >> history shows it does not

work. history is likely to repeat itself. you can suppress people for a certain amount of time but in the long run it comments back at you hard. >> what do leaders across the middle east think about the president of course i would sit down with rouhani. does that turn previous u.s. orthodoxy on its head? >> it's not like the monarchs of the persian gulf are confronting me. they take the president's statements with a grain ever salt. people's perspective on that statement is what you see. >> what do you think about the situation now in egypt. this alliance that's formed between egypt, israel, saudis and uae. >> we've never seen anything at this level before. it all began in 2013. you were there and i was there when the military took over and removed the democratically

elected president who was a muslim brotherhood. and what forged the current alliance we see across the region between israel, cc and persian monarchs. >> when we talk about iran, as david said a lot of the middle eastern countries they want america to have a war with iran. >> let's not forget that obama administration was talking to iran. so the fact that you have a president of the united states who says let's have overtures with iran is nothing new. to david's point you would see trump would be met with a lot of resistance if he tried to meet with rouhani. the aback gulf countries would not welcome that meeting. we saw that with mike pompeo who a few hours after trump said he would meet with rouhani came out and said to when would not

happen without conditions and here's the conditions we want to see. >> in the book you write about the coup that brought cc to power in egypt and as we read the book the extent to which the obama administration was not only aware of but helpful in that coup is astounding. >> i stopped before helpful. this is not iran 1953 when the cia deposed a government. this is a little bit different. what you see is a pattern of mixed messages where obama down to the last hours is trying to say to the president i want to help you stay in power let's pull this off. kerry the secretary of state has given up on him and letting everybody know that he thinks he's toast. and the defense minister is saying look whatever happens i want to be friends. we got your back. then you're probably wondering what is the intelligence agency doing. the day of the coup, he got a call from an arab diplomat who said what do you think?

he said i know this is inconsistent with stated u.s. policy. i think it's a good idea. >> not helpful in a material way but as you write in the book some familiar characters like general mattis and general michael flynn were supportive of the coup. >> much of the american government outside of the president's office greeted it with applause. >> to the extent that the military relationship is now with the united states and somewhat strained in the last couple of years especially during the transition period, helicopters were suspended, aid was subject to being suspended what is the u.s.-egyptian relationship today? >> solid as a rock. most people and some others with chagrin would say the egyptian military has paid no price whatsoever for removing the democratically elected president in 2015. >> what's your assessment on america's credibility prior to 2015. >> always discredited.

is it clear for the egyptian population or the middle eastern population right now? >> i wouldn't say it's clear. people remember things that the obama administration was saying for a period of 30 months about how the only way to lasting durable stability is an open responsive government that reflects the will of the people. the u.s. government is not saying that now. not long ago that was main talk point. >> a lot of people are talking about russia right now, russia's interference in american democracy. do people find america has done that to us in many parts of the world? >> somewhat, but as you know you've traveled around the region there's plenty of people who like to feel that. our own president seems in some ways to resemble their president these days. he brings his family to the white house. he scoffs at the court.

>> sort of endorsing their own authoritarian will. >> a shot in foot. >> david kirkpatrick, great interview. thank you very much. the book is "into the hands of the soldiers." it's on sale this tuesday. you can pre-order it, though. we'll be watching "morning joe" "first look" at 5:00 a.m. still ahead new reporting about what went down in the oval office the day before mueller was appointed special counsel. it could help explain the president's anger. we have the latest reporting ahead on "morning joe".

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the wall and they will insist on building it. [ cheers and applause ] i just figured that out right now. >> the president is speaking last night at a rally in pennsylvania. joining us now editor-in-chief of instyle magazine, laura brown. hello. i love instyle, the latest issue's cover story takes a look at five women. five amazing women trying to protect immigrant rights in texas and they are amazing women. what are they doing >> when this aberration started happening on the border we put a call out firstly on social media asking women who are working in immigrant advocacy to put their hand up and discuss what they were doing and we got a huge

response from that. of course as soon as the prominence writers started because there was a facebook fundraiser by a family who was so distressed by the image imag h honduran girl crying at the border. they ended up raising $50,000 to help women pay bail. but what i want to do is get to behind this organization because there is a lot of outrage, and justifiable, but for us it was like, who are these women and what do they do? these guys have been working for something like 35 years, and now there's more of a spotlight and now it's more challenging. so we went down to their office and shot this image which is beautiful with the women and the

train and people crossing the border. >> it's amazing. they're stepping up because they feel it in their heart, they feel it in their bones. >> yes. >> not to sort of harp on this, but note to ivanka trump. if you vehemently disagree with what is happening with these families, profile these women. put them on your instagram. celebrate them. support them. help them raise money. perhaps join them. really. if it's what you believe, that's what you could do. >> or honor them. >> yeah, ivanka has a lot of followers. >> this is the most beautiful thing about america, i have to say. i've worked all over the world, and to raise $20 million for these immigrants, this is so beautiful, and we have to remember the values. >> there is goodness there. >> to the distressing segment you had before about the abused girl, we need these women to get these girls out of these places. they shouldn't be in there, but these women, it's a constant fight. yes, they are in the spotlight

now, they don't care about that. they're doing the work. they're sitting there in court with kids who should not be there. with kids who are signing waivers with a four-year-old. how many kids are not with their parents? >> i don't really know. >> who are actually written down. they're in there every damn day. they don't get paid that great. >> everyone can act. everyone can join them, show your support, show your love. go to the borders. this is what is beautiful about america, is that people, individuals, can act and do something. donate, volunteer, anything. >> and use your platform to help. what is the divide of keeping

families away, no matter what color they are? >> to your point, laura, this group didn't sprout up as a reaction. they closed 51,000 cases last year before there was a focus on this zero tolerance policy. what are the obstacles they're finding right now? who is in their way? >> trying to find people to put together. trying to find these children who were shuttled all over the place and parents who were sent back home. it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. it is not even having this group, it's this. that's altogether harder. but what they do have is public support and funds to be able to do this and to be able to get these women out of detention. >> what you talked about, ivanka, i've always liked ivanka, and if i could give her some brand advice right now, more than anyone at this table, she is in a position to do

something. can you imagine what it would doob fdo for her brand, her political career -- i hate to be transactional, but what it would mean if she took the football. she doesn't have to diss her father. she could say, i'm going to spearhead this. if it's 491, i'm going to find them. >> here's why it won't happen. we've all found this in our lives. the most important things that we've done, i think about know your value, you do it because you care deeply about it. you have to care deeply. and i'm sorry, you're not seeing that from this president or the counsel to the president. >> it's stunning. i always thought of ivanka as a decent person. just do a transaction. >> she needs to be authentic. that's what this country wants. >> she is, trust me. >> we need hearts, we need authenticity, we need truth, we need people to show up. this is the time to show up, any

individual. >> it's a little late for authenticity on her part. she hasn't done anything for three months. >> wherever it's coming from, do the right thing. >> laura brand, thank you, and thank you for profiling these women. >> it is my privilege. >> and people can go to the website and find out -- >> how to support them, and we've got all kinds of women working on this. please join the aclu. if you haven't joined, do so now. >> that's why i gave you a plug. >> thank you for being on this morning. we'll go live to the new york stock exchange for reaction to the jobs report. it's due out soon. plus this. >> i had obamacare done except one guy at 2:00 in the morning went in and said -- he went thumbs down. even though he campaigned for years repeal and replace. >> more from trump's rally in pennsylvania last night where, as you saw there, he continued his mockery of a u.s. war hero

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and started screaming, they would say, he was terrible, it was so rude, he was horrible, his performance was horrible. whatever happened to fair press? whatever happened to honest reporting? i remember a nice man. i actually like him, he's very talented, with a big chart. i saw that chart getting red, red, little tiny dot of blue along the ocean. his hands start shaking. oh, my god, another state came, oh, my god. fake news. >> so bob casey doesn't mind ms-13 coming in. [ booing ] >> these are the slices they slice people up. >> they want me to walk up and go like this. >> some of the president at his

rally last night in pennsylvania, and there was much, much more of that. good morning, everyone. it's friday, august 3rd. welcome to "morning joe." we have a number of important developments to get through, including a stark warning from the intel community. russia is at it again. they've got the public's attention but what about the president's? does he care? what's going on? plus, dan coats speaks truth to power, again. the director of national intelligence admits he still does not know what the president told vladimir putin last month in helsinki. think about it, the director of national intelligence. and ivanka trump says that it was a low point for her when the separations of children from their family were happening under her father's administration through her father's policy. she says it was a low point. she was -- felt bad about it. the big question is, will she do anything about it besides

prepared comments? with us we have national affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc john heilman. donny deutsch is here. susan del persio is here. columnist for the "washington post," david ignatius and jon meacham, the author of "the soul of america." a battle we're in right now for sure. joel will be back on monday. what did you think of the president last night watching him? >> two things. i thought extraordinary two hours after his intelligence apparatus, he was laying out how russia continues to interfere in our elections and he went to that rally and called it a russian hoax. reportedly he sent those people out as director of national intelligence and the fbi director. i also thought it was another pathetic grievance session,

airing his grievances, talking about how unfairly he's treated by the press. i wondered what it would be like if he spent the time and energy he spends on that focusing on things like clean water in flint or visiting troops in a war zone, for example. it just strikes me as a monumental waste of time for a president of the united states to go on and on and on on one or two subjects that he can't get past. >> john heilman, your thoughts. watching this rally last night as it pertains to all the rallies we've seen, but what are you thinking at this point watching this man? >> i'm thinking it's getting old. the things that he's talking about are really -- i agree with everything willie said, there are things that are disturbing, especially the way he is able to knock down his intelligence chiefs who supposedly sent out. the reporting was, i want those five people to go out there and make the case for me.

then he goes out on the stage and basically undercuts them, but as a political story, right? it's not just red meat, it's red, raw meat for the 35% that we as the core trump base. he's in a state where he's got a senate candidate who is trailing, he's not in a super strong position. he's not going to win pennsylvania by appealing to that 35%. he's got to be talking about other things, but what is he not talking about? he's not talking about the economy, he's not talking about things that will matter to the pennsylvania voters who will determine that election. so great to rev up the base. he's very good at that. he's proven that over and over again, but this message and the grievance fest that it is does nothing to expand the voter pool that's going to be drawn on by lou barretta or republicans around the country. >> there's a reason i'm asking. david ignatius, we'll take you

next, specifically on the media and on russia. your take on the president last night? >> it's as if we have two governments. one government that states responsible policies drawn from what our intelligence agencies have discovered issuing warnings to state governments doing the business to government. then we have this other government, this other ring in our national circus in which the president conducts a daily anti-elitist rant. the principal targets are people in the media. i hate to say it, but we're the best thing he has going for him. he doesn't have any other issues other than arousing the public to make them think we're somehow elitist or enemies. he's making us the central theme of his campaign. we just have to see that right in the eyes. mika, there are two separate

rings to this circus now. >> it seems that there are some people who are beginning to understand that. he was going after generals last night. jon meacham, is there a figure in history that parallels what's happening with this president? >> i think it's joe mccarthy. this is as if mccarthy had become president, to go to john's point about getting old. roy mccomb, who was both joe mccarthy's and donald trump's. j he wrote a book about joe mccarthy, that a car was just a vehicle to take over american politics and particularly in the right wing. and secondly, people got tired of the show. they got tired of having, as fdr once said, the highest note in the scale repeated again and

again. >> susan dell persio and then donny. what is your gut? >> the first thing i thought of listening again to all his falsehoods was, wow, this is why all of the president's attorneys do not want him to go in front of robert mueller. he just gets all revved up and he simply cannot tell the truth. and yes, it's getting old, but thank goodness people are still speaking up and trying to speak out against it, but boy, is he in trouble if he goes in front of mueller. >> donny? >> the saddest and most frightening thing to me when trump goes to these rallies is not trump himself, it's the people. >> people are excited to meet mr. trump. >> excited is a nice word, but the rigor they accept his information -- "people" had an article about people who consider themselves strong trump supporters. 80% said they believe the

information they get from trump is accurate. 60% thought information they get from their family is accurate. if their friend or family member told them something, they're less likely to believe it than that goofball up there, crazy uncle donny. there is the government that exists and we now have this figure that we continue to have completely unaccountable to even his own staff. and there is no repercussion. so we will talk this day today and say dan coats and chris wray and john bolton came out and said, this was a fact, it is a fact, and then trump gets on stage and says it is not. so we have crazy uncle donny talking to his base that stunningly, regardless of his base, will continue to go, but the voters will speak in november. 33, 34%, yes, a lot of them vote in the primary, but there will be a wave the likes of which

we've never seen before. >> my take is this. it's blunt, fair to say, and i've been there before and i did it when it wasn't cool to do and i'm going to do it again. he's not well. that's the bottom line. there is no way anyone who knows donald trump but has not bought in in some way would watch him last night and not come away with the feeling that the president of the united states is completely unhinged and getting worse by the day. perhaps the stress is really squeezing in on him. it's interesting that a former reality tv star and colleague of trump is releasing a book with the title "unhinged." and this is a woman who knew him during his reality show days very well and then went with him to the white house. and in it she describes a reaction to a man that she had known for over a decade who is in a state of mental decline. it's a concern we voiced on this show during the campaign and over the last tumultuous 18

months. try and find someone who is not politically invested or too fearful of donald trump or the republican party who knew the man a decade ago who will tell you that his mental state has not deteriorated radically over the past two years or changed or come out in some way. it is transforming what we're watching. you will not find that person from donald trump's past if they're telling you the truth. we were told of his unfitness for office by those closest to him on the campaign, and we saw it ourselves up close in the december 15 interview in which he first pledged his frailty to vladimir putin. you can pull that interview up. it's a little embarrassing, but i will say you can see in our faces in realtime us kind of going from jovial to fun to sitting up and listen to him and realizing, this guy is not right. this is bad what's happening

here. we showed you this person throughout the campaign and we pointed out those issues. you listened to him talk about russia during the campaign on this show. we were told repeatedly that it was somehow out of balance to comment on the candidate's declining mental state. no, i'm not a doctor, but i know what we see and we know donald trump. we all know what campaign staffers told us two years ago, and i know that the dangerous blustering bigot on the stage last night is even more boorish and less connected to reality than tehe was ten years ago. donald trump is not well, and everyone close to him says it. they're all scared of what he's going to say or tweet yet. his republican dupes know it, and yet no one, seemingly, will do anything about it, not the people who can. same as it ever was, but much more precarious right now for the media, the press, far more dangerous for our democracy.

>> mika, i want to jump on that for a minute. that popped in my head last night also, and a few months ago i watched a harrowing interview i did with him in 2007. his cadence, his eyes, he was a different guy. i would ask everybody to go and look at some old interviews with donald trump. he's not just younger. his entire mannerisms, his entire way of speaking is different. so i'm glad we brought that up because we all kicked that around for a long time, and then it became -- >> the page turns, the worm turns. >> i'm so glad you brought that up because that is an ongoing -- i think at this point almost a given when you watch this man's behavior. still ahead on "morning joe," as we mentioned in just the space of a few hours yesterday, president trump boasted of his burgeoning relationship with vladimir putin as putin warned of his attacks

on america. first, bill karens with a check on the forecast. bill? >> we haven't had really horrible flooding like we did last week in harrisburg, but take a look at lynchburg, virginia. the river was so high, one of the dams was overflowing. they thought it was going to fail. it didn't, thankfully. then they had evacuations of about 124 people. right now the water has dropped a little bit. let's get into the radar here. we're watching heavier rain develop in north carolina. once again the rains will move up into virginia, into the mountainous areas of the appalachians. 36 million people are at risk of flash flooding today. now we'll watch heavy rain shift through the mountains of virginia, washington, d.c., state college and new york. middle of the country is dry. there is no reason to really

talk about any wet weather in the west because there is not going to be any any time soon. on saturday watch out for early heavier rain. scattered storms in the southeast and getting better. finally, your reward in the mid-atlantic, a dry sunday. that's the day for the pool, the beach, the lake. get outdoors. still sunny and hot in areas of the west and the fire season continues to roll on. new york city, you have a dry morning on timing those thunderstorms out. right around 2:00 to 4:00 this afternoon. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. another anti-wrinkle cream in no hurry to make anything happen. neutrogena® rapid wrinkle repair® works in just one week. with the fastest retinol formula available. it's clinically proven to work on fine lines and wrinkles. one week? that definitely works! rapid wrinkle repair®. and for dark spots, rapid tone repair.

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save $200 on this dell laptop are you ready to take your then you need xfinity xfi.? a more powerful way to stay connected. it gives you super fast speeds for all your devices, provides the most wifi coverage for your home, and lets you control your network with the xfi app. it's the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. we mentioned at the top of the show at the white house press briefing, reportedly at the president's instruction, top intel officials delivered a strong message about continued russian interference in the u.s. election process. >> this threat is not going

away. as i have said consistently, russia attempted to interfere with the last election and continues to engage in maligned influence operations to this day. this is a threat we need to take extremely seriously and to tackle and respond to with fierce determination and focus. >> the intelligence community continues to be concerned about the threats of upcoming u.s. elections, both midterms and the presidential elections of 2020. in regards to russian involvement in the midterm elections, we continue to see a pervasive messaging campaign by russia to try to weaken and divide the united states. these efforts are not exclusive to this election or future elections but certainly cover issues relevant to the election. >> our focus here today is simply to tell the american people we acknowledge the

threat, it is real, it is continuing and we're doing everything we can to have a legitimate election that the american people can have trust in. in addition to that, it goes beyond the elections, it goes to russia's attempt to undermine our democratic values, drive a wedge between our allies and do other nefarious things. >> our democracy itself is in the crosshairs. free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy, and it has become clear that they are the target of our adversaries who seek to sow discord and undermine our way of life. >> that was a pretty clear message there. fast-forward a couple hours later. this is what the president said at that rally in pennsylvania. >> in helsinki, i had a great meeting with putin. we discussed everything. we got along really well.

by the way, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. that's a really good thing. now, we're become hindered by the russian hoax. it's a hoax, okay? i'll tell you what, russia is very unhappy that trump won, that i can tell you. but i got along great with putin. and everybody said, wow, that was great, that was great. a couple hours later i started hearing these reports that, you know, they wanted me to walk up his podium -- they wanted me to walk up and go like this. they wanted me to go up and have a boxing match. i said, whatever happened to diplomacy? and by the way, whatever happened to diplomacy? i used to study, not too much,

diplomacy. i said, whatever happened to getting everything you want? >> there is a lot in there. obviously president putin at that press conference in helsinki said very clearly that he wanted then donald trump to become president. david ignatius, let's walk through this just a lgt bittle . what we heard yesterday from dan coats and others was not a new conclusion. that is what intelligence agencies came to in january 2007. they just are stating that it's continuing here in the 2018 elections. why would trump tell them to do that if he's going to undercut them a few hours later? >> what i've sensed since the helsinki summit is the senior officials of this administration are pushing back harder, are more willing to speak frankly in

public, to the president. i've noted that from dan coats who, in his famous interview with andrea mitchell, he was stunned by what he didn't know, but he just told the truth question after question. secretary mattis. i was at a dinner where secretary mattis spoke in public. he is going to the federal pentagon. he's more open about what he sees and hears going on. we got that from secretary of state pompeo. kirstjen nielsen said very emphatically, our democracy is in the crosshairs. so they're using strong language to describe to the public what they see. then you have the president. it's almost like -- lawyers talk about jury nullification. that's not as important as these

terrible outrages being done to me and minimizing it. it's not the first time a politician has gone the other way from his administration and tried to arouse the base, completely independent of what they do every day. i think we're going to get an answer in a couple months, because what the public makes of this weird two-stage circus, two-government thing we're watching, but it was good to see the senior officials of our government be so emphatic and clear in stating the truth as they understand it. coming up on "morning joe," brand new numbers in the economy. plus, if president trump ever sits down with bob mueller, it won't be the first time. bloomberg's shannon pettipice has an interview for a job.

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chief of warfare, anderson benjamin witti and reporter from bloomberg news, shannon pettypiece. shannon, we'll start with yours which looks at the potential origins of president trump's anger with robert mueller. you're right in part. president trump sat with robert mueller in may of last year to interview him for a job, director of the fbi. the next afternoon trump was in another oval office meeting when an aide interrupted with news that mueller had taken a different post, special counsel to investigate trump's campaign. trump and jeff sessions were blindsided. the president immediately blasted sessions for not knowing the announcement was coming and challenged how the person he had just interviewed for the fbi job and who trump said had a past dispute with him over golf club fees could now be investigating

him, the person said. sessions was so rattled by the president's anger in that interrupted oval office meeting that he resigned verbally that day and later submitted a formal letter of resignation. acco according to the person briefed on the meeting. shannon, where do we begin? the president blindsided and what about the club fees? >> the point i'm trying to point out here is these two people have a history, a history that maybe hasn't been obvious to robert mueller but very significant to donald trump. so the moment he found out about mueller's appointment, he was not just angry that a special counsel had been named but that it was mueller. and i talked to a number of white house advisers who were around at the time and they said they would hear repeatedly trump raising the issue about these golf club fees. the version of the story that was recounted to people was

trump said mueller wanted to get back some golf club fees when he left as a member of trump's northern virginia golf club, and trump said those fees were nonrefundable. in trump's account of this dispute, they got into some sort of heated exchange, is the way trump have been talking about it. robert mueller denied there was any dispute. we couldn't get him to comment on this again. the other part that trump can't seem to give up is that robert mueller interviewed about 24 hours before he was named special counsel. in the president's telling of this story, he turned mueller down for the job. other people contradict that. just to put a little bit of the president's mindset and what he is telling those around him, he feels like he's being investigated by someone who has a grudge against him or some personal ven did he tevendetta.

that is certainly in the president's mind. >> the president tweeted that bob mueller is, quote, totally inflicted. you had this scene where sessions was so rattled by the president's anger over what mueller, he believed, had done to him in a disloyal way that he resigned verbally and submitted his resignation letter. what changed that cap ter in histo -- chapter. >> jeff sessions was completely blindsided by this announcement as well as jeff sessions' chief of staff was also blindsided by this. they felt they should at least have been given heads up by rod rosenstein. they could be told, we're making a decision about the special counsel. they didn't need to have approval, they didn't need to sign off on anybody, they just

wanted the encouragement. he resigned right will in the oval ofls. i was told that my president's advisers told her you cannot lose cohen at this point, that it would be too damaging to the special counsel even if your attorney general resigned in some way at this point. >> it's john heilman here. i just want to ask you on about snft stuff that shannon is reporting. he said there was this contentious relationship with bob mueller over golf fees, he said he tried to become director, et cetera, et cetera. given bob mueller's history, and given donald trump's we've ever heard from an american

president, whose credibility are you going to -- why do we have any reason to believe trump's claims on this, given the subject in question? >> imagine the scene in bob mueller's office where they're sitting around trying to decide whether to clear the president -- get rid of all these witch hunty allegations they've got. they're all sitting around a conference table and bob mueller's cracked staff. mueller looks back at him with that glare, and he said, yeah, but the golf club fees. if that's as comical as it sounds, that's clearly what bob

mueller is not thinking about. and, you know, the other issue is a little bit more substantial, i think, where mueller was interviewed for the job that he had had for 12 years the day before he was appointed. but here's the thing, there are very few people you would talk to about taking over the fbi in that crisis situation. and bob mueller is one of them, and he was there, presumably, at the president's request, not as a result of having, right? so then, you know, rod and says, hey, i need you to do this in a crisis situation, take over this investigation. . i don't really see what the issue is other than it looms very large in the mind of the

president. >> the department of justice seeming to confirm to you that president trump made up department data during his national televised first address to a joint session of congress. so here's what the president claimed in that speech back in february. >> according to data provided by the department of justice, the vast majority of individuals convicted of terrorists and terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country. >> you have people behind him nodding. but ben, you were not nodding. tell us your reaction upon hearing trump make that claim, and what did you do about it? >> when i read that claim, i knew immediately that it was false. there is a lot of terrorist and terrorism-related crimes in the united states perpetrated by americans. you know, things like charlottesville, right? and the only way you can make a

statement like that is if you ignore all the domestic terrorism that we have. you know, tim mcvey and that sort of stuff. i was stkeptical about it from the moment i read the speech, and i asked a couple of my law students to study it, and they produced an analysis that really gave me confidence that the president was wrong. i submitted a foyer request to the justice department for any data that would support that. and to boil it down, we had a long litigation. it took a year, but the other day the justice department wrote me a letter that said that there were no records describing the universe of terrorism cases that the president referred to in that speech. and so it's very rare that you get a letter from the justice department that basically says

the president of the united states made up justice department data about terrorism in a speech to a joint session of congress, but that's really what happened. >> you know, maybe the first time it's ever happened in the history of the country. >> that was not wilkes-barre, by the way, that was a joint session of congress, that speech. >> that's right, it was a prepared speech. the president lies all the time, as john said before, but this was a remarkable thing because this is, you know, the president standing in the well of representatives making a formal address and it came right at the time of the -- you know, the travel ban, the initial travel ban, and, you know, it was a particularly offensive thing to do because it was sort of part of his, you know, campaign of of vilification of immigrants

and this suggestion that a vast majority of terrorism is a function of immigration is just nonsense, and the attribution of that to justice department data struck me as a particular abuse of federal government statistics. >> well, we're at a point, i really think we're well past the point where politicians and members of the president's team and cabinet, they have to choose what side of history they want to be on. >> and they have to start being competent. that's a competence issue. they have policies that they have no idea what they're doing. >> or that they believe in or that they do. shannon pettypiece, we'll be reading your new reporting at bloomberg news. we'll go live to the new york stock exchange for reaction next on "morning joe." ♪

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breaking economic release of the monthly jobs report. how many jobs were had last month. >> 157,000, which isn't too bad, but they were hoping for 190,000, so this is a slower pace than we have seen. the unemployment rate did tick down, that's good, to 3.9% from 4%, right around that 18-year low of 3.8% we hit back may. so 3.9% wages, which are very important, rising 2.7% from last year. that's what economists were looking for. it's not the 3% robust number we want to see. with this level of employment rate, you would expect to see bigger wage gains for employees. we want to get near that 3%

level. haven't been able to do that. just in terms of the overall picture, because month to month it can be a little messy and volatile. jobs have been created each month. that's better than the pace of 2018 and it's impressive for this stage of economic recovery. we're entering our tenth year and firms are still hiring jobs, especially looking health this month, and manufacturing and construction. importantly for the markets, it doesn't do anything to alter the policy of the federal reserve, and importantly for the economy, it doesn't really do anything to alter the somewhat healthy pace of job creation and economic growth we've seen lately. >> susan dell persio, your gut on the impact the economy has on the midterms as we look at this report leading up to the midterms. >> it certainly helps republicans in the swing district if they can point to the economy. the trick is they have to point to the economy without pointing

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sfx: [cell phone dialing] no. no, no, no, no, no. cancel. cancel. please. aaagh! being in the know is a good thing. that's why discover will alert you if your social security number is found on any one of thousands of risky sites. kayla here with another video. the topic of today's video is putting yourself out there. so, like, what does that mean?

where is there. well, "there" can be anywhere that you wouldn't usually go, maybe because it's, like, weird or scary or something like that. >> >> i think you're so cool. >> i'm going to stop eating with you -- >> can i say one thing please? >> fine. >> thank you. look, when i was your age, i was not cool like you. you have all these interests and your videos and just how you express yourself in them is so -- it's just so cool. it's so great. and i just think maybe you need to put yourself out there a little bit more. >> please stop. >> oh, my gosh, this is so good. a look there at the new movie "eighth grade" about a teenage girl about to enter high school, navigating today's all-consuming social media age. did you see the phone at the table and she was like, you know, looking at it.

joining us now, the film's writer and director beau burnen. there's so many things. this is like an exploration of human anxiety in the technology age. >> i wanted to write a movie about how i was feeling at the time which is anxious. the more i realized i think i was feel like a 13-year-old girl for a reason. i feel like maybe culturally we're going through a bit of an eighth grade moment. feels like, yeah, the culture's sort of -- >> eighth grade is the worst. >> it feels like right now is a very crazy time to be alive and eighth grade was the craziest time in my life. the idea of being in eighth grade now feels impossible. >> we have a president who acts like he's in eighth grade now. >> eighth grade reading level. >> this is a connection, him and his phone and his twitter. >> this is about this -- kids, if you're -- i have a 14-year-old, 11-year-old daughter, this is the dominant thing in their lives. >> can you imagine? >> it's the dominant thing in

your life, what are you talking about. >> it's the difference between news -- it's pure social media. it's a daily scorecard every second about how they're doing against every other kid. the constant reminder of what they're not doing. and their self-worth is so tied up in this. and as a parent, if you talk to any parent of teenage kids, it's like the number one thing you're navigating. you're in the -- >> i feel like we're all act like 13-year-olds on the internet so i wanted to tell a story about the internet -- one group of people that was acting their own age maybe. the internet means something to me. i grew up with it, i mean, a little bit. it sort of became ubiquitous, social media, when i was 17, 18. i felt it wasn't being talked enough honestly. there's not enough depiction of -- >> that's you right there, right? >> that's me with awful hair. >> okay, so you're doing -- you're kind of downplaying the thing you just said. i was a little familiar.

you were one of the first -- personally one of the first viral youtube sensations when you were like 16, right? >> 16, 17, yeah. >> this isbiographical in a way? >> yes. the girl in the movie, she makes videos but no one sees them. yes, the way kids express themselves online, to me, people see them as narcissistic and a lie. it isn't just that. it isn't just fake. trying to speak yourself in existence. trying to live out loud in the air in front of you before you can put it into action i think is beautiful and isn't talked about. >> they all go "hey guys," they all start -- >> hey, guys, hello. >> it's how we start the show many mornings. >> here's more from the movie. this is kayla and her dad. >> can you not look like that please? >> what? like what? >> just, like, the way you're looking. >> looking at the road? >> you can look at the road, dad.

i obviously didn't mean that. just like don't be weird and quiet while you do it. >> sorry. hey, how was the -- >> no, you're being quiet, which is fine, just don't be weird and quiet. because i look over at you and i think you're about to drive us into a tree or something and then i freak out and i can't text my friends. be quiet and drive. don't look weird and sad. please. >> okay. that's worse. >> oh, my god. >> you nailed it. >> talk a little bit about these performances. the father, josh hamilton and the daughter are like giving incredible performances. how do you get these performances? >> the dad josh hamilton and kayla, elsie fisher, for me, it's giving the actors permission to be inarticulate. sometimes young kids in movies are forced to be able to speak

with an ability that is suspiciously similar to a screenwriter's ability to speak. like young poet laureates. the experience of being a young kid is struggling to say -- so the script is written like, yeah, um, the thing about being yourself, like, wait. >> and then add in your own. which makes it better. >> just about giving them permission to speak. >> i have two daughters and i have to tell you that impossible feeling on the part of the parent. you feel that with the father. you don't even see him in the shot. you're just like oh. >> i've never seen adolescence nailed like that or a father/daughter dynamic. that was me. what do you want me to do? i'll do anything. >> and they're so mean. especially girls i will say. but in eighth grade life, girls and boys can be incredibly mean to each other on this. is there any interaction with others? >> for me, the bullying has become much more subterranean.

even if it is that, it's much more just withholding attention. i think attention is sort of the currency kids measure themselves against. so it's much less -- i think kids would love to get swirlies and be shoved in lockers again. it's a much weirder stranger space to navigate. >> impossible and also unpredictable space. like, your day can go from, you know, from wonderful to the worst day of your life with the touch of a button. >> and you just don't get away from it. you wake up with your social life and you go to bed with it. at the end of the day, you have a choice between the back of your eyelids and all of the information and history of the world. that's a -- >> how do you share -- let's help some kids at home or some parents. you both are somebody who is kind of on one side of it, now you're write, documenting, analyzing it. as a parent, give me some rules or guideline, how do i manage my children with this? >> part of it for me, i don't want to speak with too much authority because i feel as in it as anybody. i think part of it is also paying attention. i hope the movie takes inventory

of this. it's not just looking at kid, why are you on your phone all the time, but what is the world we've made for them to look up at and why they may want to ignore it. also, to just, you know, listen to them and communicate. i think part of being an adolescent, an adolescent/parent relationship is about the parent being a punching bag. like, they're working out some of those feelings. that might be -- it's not meant to go perfectly. but i hope the movie -- because i've seen -- i think movie helps the kids sympathize with the parents and vice versa. >> it's got great reviews. we've got to plug this a little bit. "new york times," great reviews. >> surprise hit "eighth grade" now playing in theaters nationwide. beau, congratulations. >> thank you. >> that does it for us this morning. before we send it over to stephanie ruhle a little early i might add -- >> you going to punch me? >> stef. no, i'm not going to punch you because you want me to. we want to play for everyone this. remember from seth meyers that

stef is no one to mess with. take a look. >> wealthy ceos keep going on cable news to lie about the impact of the gop tax cuts. like this guy who went on msnbc this morning to repeat trump's lie that the economy hasn't surpassed 4% growth in years. only to be fact checked immediately by host stephanie ruhle. >> since the financial crisis until just recently, we were growing at 2%. >> correct. >> compare that to 30 years of growing at 3%. that's one-third less gdp each year for ten years. that is less prosperity. are we turning around? 4% gdp? when is the last time you heard 4% gdp growth? >> five times during the obama administration. >> okay. >> that right there is the face of someone who was waiting. >> that wasn't the side eye, that was the full-on kill.

stephanie ruhle, i hand it to you. this is why you need to have your facts. i want to know how it ended with that guest. was everything okay? >> everything was okay. actually, he could have double fact checked me because the answer is four, not five. but alas he didn't. and we kind of got to middle because you know this world as well as i do, mika. the frustration. these businesspeople know better. they know there are some deregulation that has been very good for our economy. there are actually some trump wins. yet trump steps on his own narrative with constant lies. if you are the ceo of a company, you could not lie about numbers. i have watched your show for the last three hours. it's amazing that i'm here on time. i've been like a crazy old lady screaming, right on, mika, you've got it right, all morning. the president lies time and again. when you watch people that run major corporations allow it and kind of giggle through it, it's really distressing. they couldn't do it in their business. they'd be fired.

>> it's wrong. all right. so we're going to pass it off to you early. donny and susan and i are going to box his ears. he just deserves it. i'll tell you later. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> i don't even need mika to tell me, i believe it. good morning, everyone, i'm stephanie ruhle with a lot to cover today. starting with a united front. top intelligence and national security leaders coming together to warn of new election interference. >> our democracy itself is in the cross hairs. >> we acknowledge the threat. it is real. it is continuing. >> within hours, the president went back to this. >> we're being hindered by the russian hoax. it's a hoax, okay. >> no, it's not and he knows it. and just in this morning, the brand-new jobs report. as apple joins a club of its own, blasting past a market