on this thursday morning. we'll be reading axios am in just a little while. you can sign up at signup@axios.com. "morning joe" starts right now. >> i have the honor of honoring the nomination of donald j. trump as the president of the united states of america. that is congressman chris collins just over two years ago at the republican national convention. today he joins this list of people charged with or pleading to crimes. trump's second campaign manager, trump's deputy campaign manager, trump's campaign foreign policy

adviser, trump's first campaign manager and now trump's first congressional endorser and member of his transition team. >> hey, i'm no special counsel, but it kind of feels like there's a pattern here and maybe, maybe one of these witch hn hunts where you just walk out of your front door and all the witches are landing in your front lawn. >> good morning and welcome to "morning joe." i don't know, it seems like a pattern on this thursday, august 9th. we have joe, willie and me and sam stein, political writer for "new york times" nick, white house reporter from the associated press jonathan lamir and former justice deportment spokesman and now msnbc security analyst matthau mih matthew mil of kcdc on msnbc, oh, yeah,

kasie hunt. >> it was a confessional from jenna goldberg who said confess to the band that you like that is not cool and he said, okay, i'll start. the monkees. i jumped right in there and said the carpenters. they rocked something that you wouldn't admit to your cool friends. but incredible writing and incredible arrangements. who is your uncool band and it can't be like black flag. it's got to actually be uncool. >> i'm thinking as you ask because it's become not cool but i'll stick with dave matthews. >> come on, that's a cop out. >> i will ride the dave mal

matthmat matthews train as long as i can. >> why is that a cop out? >> because, because there are enough people to think that dave matthews is cool. you have to go with like the monkees or the carpenters. >> dave matthews is not cool. totally disagree. >> like, for instance, sam stein told me before the show he still has a poster of hansen up. >> i love hansen. that's a good answer. >> it's not about the music. >> and nick just went there and he said the wiggles, which is really strange. >> straight up def leppard guy. >> that's fine. >> i like andy gib and the . >> but, jonathan, we're not

going to be talking about music with you, we're going to be talking about baseball. i think we owe the boston red sox an apology. we predicted as red sox fans and, why wouldn't we, because it happens. we predicted a complete and other collapse about a week and a half ago. they've done just the opposite. >> we were guessing for the four-game series for the yankees last weekend and hoping for a split and fearing far worst than that. but, yeah, they played, i mean, that was tremendous, the way they won every game and, joe, they are 81-34. >> geez. >> willie, i was look. somebody just posted the teams that have done this well in the history of major league baseball. it's a pretty short list, but one of them was the '27 yankees there are times as a red sox fan waking up the next morning or midnight to see when the yankees would start losing and it was

always frustrating because you're like, darn, they won again. it's just one of those seasons and you look at the yankees record, it's a great record. they're both going to be in the playoffs and this is still going to be an extraordinary playoff. >> the yankees, thank god, bounced back and swept the white sox last night. they did that last night. every night when you wake up the red sox have won 10-5 or 13-6. >> isn't that karma? >> as a yankee fan, it feels like it's not going that good, the pitching isn't good, but they're having one of their best seasons ever. they're trending down a little bit. they could win 103, 104 games and finish ten games out of first place. >> i worry this red sox team is built more for the regular season than playoff. starting pitching isn't great and the bull pen is shaky. i still have my concerns. >> you know what i'm thinking,

jonathan, we're probably going to get swept in like three when we get divisional playoffs. so, i mean, but, listen, it was a fun summer. mika, why don't we go to the news. in an interview last night president trump's lawyer said special counsel robert mueller will personally have a lot to answer for just hours after they rejected mueller's reported latest offer to get a sit down interview with the president. trump's legal team said they have made the counteroffer listing their conditions for access to the president who is a subject in the wide-ranging investigation of russian interference in the 2016 election. trump's attorneys also publicly voiced their desire for the probe to end. within the next three weeks and suggested that mueller would be violating doj policies, if it does not end. >> don't have an internal deadline. we are moving. i use the phrase, expeditiously. i said and i know you said, we

want to see this come to closure soon. mayer? >> it is about time it ends and i also think and i hope the special counsel as sensitive to it as we are, we don't want to run into the november elections. so back up from that. this should be over with by september 1st. >> if it isn't over by september, then we have a very, very serious violation of the justice department rules that you shouldn't be conducting one of these investigations in the 60-day period. >> but, what giuliani claims would be a serious violation is, in fact, a distortion as the justice department inspector general recently wrote that the 60-day rule is not written or described in any department policy or regulation. adding it is generalized, unwritten guidance that prosecutors did not indict political candidates or use overt investigative methods in the weeks before the election

not that they terminate investigations. >> mika, it's important to remember that rudy giuliani back in the 1990s, he was into the investigation of bill clinton and it was perfectly fine that ken starr conducted an investigation and went on years and years through one election after another after another. robert mueller is not going to be indicting anybody right before an election and that will be consistent with guidelines. but you have, if you're in pursuit of a couple of dozen russians who you have evidence that violated american democracy and tried to undermine american democracy, you don't end that investigation because rudy giuliani tells you to end that investigation. in fact, you need guidance from rudy giuliani and go back on just about every topic and see what he said when republicans were indicting or trying to

indict bill clinton. >> so obvious disingenuous. went on to challenge the special counsel motive and suggested that mueller will soon be the one under scrutiny. >> we offered him an opportunity to do a form of questioning. he can say yes or no. we can do it. if he doesn't want to do it, he knows the answers to every question that he wants to ask. he's going to ask him, did you tell comey to go easy on flynn? the president is going to sarx , no, i didn't. why to you want to get him under oath? you want to trap him into perjury. we're not going to let you do that. the reality is, he doesn't need to ask a single question on obstruction, he has all the answers. the president is not going to change his testimony. so, stop the nonsense. you're trying to trap him into perjury because you don't have a case. i've never been involved in an investigation on either side

that's more ilegitimate than this one and i wonder where is the sense of justice on the part of mueller, on the part of the justice department. the real story here is not that this case isn't going to fizzle. it's going to blow up on them. the real question is, what we talked about before. a lot more to what they did that nobody knows about yet. and mueller is going to have a lot to answer for. >> you know, willie, with rudy giuliani going around and izeyes bulging while he's talking and looking disoriented, you look for excuses for america's mayor, for being this wildly off base. again, we just showed off the top of the show all of the members of the trump administration and the trump campaign that have already been indicted and are also, that have also pled guilty.

that have already pled guilty. i mean, you on top of that have 25 russians. this is an active investigation. now, rudy giuliani says they have nothing. they already have trump's second campaign manager. trump's -- i mean, indicted. trump's deputy campaign manager indicted. trump's national security adviser indicted. this is like the grand jury indicted all of these people. trump's foreign policy adviser that he said was one of his two most important, indicted. trump's first campaign manager had charges dropped. and trump's first congressional endorser now indicted. the man who put him, who put his name into nomination for republican nominee now indicted. and 5 russi25 intel agencies sa

is the forensic evidence of vladimir putin, the gru, ex-kbg agents trying to undermine de c democra democracy. how does rudy giuliani even have the nerve to go on there and say what he just said? >> that is an awful lot of indictments and plea bargains. trump's legal team continues to put out these arbitrary calls based on, i don't know what, other than they want it to end to clear the president. may 10th the vice president of the united states said, quote y think it's time to wrap it up. rudy giuliani said again, and also repeated last night that bob mueller doesn't have anything. laid out everything bob mueller has shown he has. neither rudy giuliani or you or

i know what he has. >> first of all, the president's team who has been delaying for eight months an interview is also saying they need to hurry up and end. but, second, just look at -- i'm just always amazed what the mayor's team will say on the record. what he said in that interview is that the president's story, if told to mueller, would put him into perjury. so, what he's saying is the president's story is wrong. it's a lie. he just admitted it on national tv because of the president's version is true, its it is not perjury trap. we have kind of blown right past the fact of what he admitted just there. >> matt miller, go ahead, joe. >> i was just going to say to nick, hey, nick, the point and people think i'm joking about it. i'm not. if i were president of the united states and all of my

lawyers thought i was too stupid or too much of a liar to sit down and just talk to robert mueller, i'd fire them. but this is all we have heard consistently from donald trump's lawyers. that he's too stupid to sit down with robert mueller. that mueller will twist his head in circles. or that he's such a liar that he can't, that it would be a, quote, perjury threat. now, listen, if i were going to sit down and ask you a series of questions, there would be a problem if the editors of "new york times" called me up and said, you know, we can't let nick know on today. why not? you'll catch him in lies. my response would be, don't lie. just have him tell the truth. this is what every time giuliani and his lawyers come on and say he's too stupid or he's just not smart enough. they say that behind the scenes to keep up with the robert

mueller. but every time they come on to a show like hannity say we can't let him on because he'll perjure himself. he's such a liar, he can't help himself. >> sit down with the special counsel is no joke and even an innocent person would go into that with fear and trepidation. this is the president and he has a team of qualified lawyers around him who could prep him for this and if he can learn to tell the truth for two hours he could get through it. >> learn to tell the truth. >> here jewgiuliani is, what do he think we're, he accuses miller of thinking that the president's teams are fools. i think he should be accused of thinking the american people are fools. we need to like call it out. you know, this is ridiculous. they want justice, let's do the justice. you can demonstrate justice in front of us. >> what giuliani is doing. not much of a legal strategy.

this is a public relation strategy. trying to drum up outrage among republicans or perhaps some independents about this probe. we have seen it's been somewhat effective. like the polling on mueller's probe has dropped in recent weeks and months. we know he's been chipping away at people who view this investigation has integrity and should continue. and they, meanwhile, as we just pointed out, they're the ones dragging this on. that's part of this argument. it's taking too long and a waste of taxpayer money and waste of time and distraction and slowing down the president's agenda and becoming more and more of a talk point and as the doj of regulation, mueller may push pause here but he doesn't have to wrap it up before september 1st. and, of course, we saw from james comey high doe doesn't ha

push pause either. >> so, matt miller all the times i laid out previously that the trump administration and trump's lawyers have called for an end to it, bob mueller has ignored those calls. is he aware and conscious and do you think he feels any pressure from the outside on his investigation? >> i doubt he feels a lot of pressure from the outside. when bob mueller was running the fbi, he handled his job with the fbi the same way he handles this one which is to put his head down and plow forward. one of the interesting things about the president's strategy is i think the time when mueller's probe was in this long, kind of five-month period between when they indicted russians for the social media interference and indicted russians for the hacking. there was a five-month period where they were really dark. the president was making some headway arguing at this was going on too long. he is now back in business. he's back out. kind of indicting russians.

and to the point i think jonathan made, you know f txwok president agreed to the interview a long time ago or drawn the line a long time ago, i'm not going to agree to this interview, they're going to have a better case. but a better political case that this was going on too long. by dragging it out themself they are the ones responsible for the obstruction of justice portion of this. it could have been wrapped up a long time ago if the president aagreed to an interview. >> they're doing thedo their be but they're even horrible at this. i mean, you look at the fact that now the administration is saying that they are going to sanction russia and foreign governments for interfering with elections. they're doing that specifically because of the indictments that were laid down last month. robert mueller using the u.s.

military information had the specifics of how the russians tried to destroy our election. what computer screens, what their key strokes were. what buildings they were in. the detail was so specific that we busted them red handed beyond any reasonable doubt. but think about this. if mike pence had his way and this had been shut down in may, like mike pence was saying, we would never have this evidence that, basically, showed what the russians tried to do and what they're going to try to do again in 2018. >> oh, yeah. that's just one part of it. i mean, for instance, before the mueller probe began, we were operating in which the trump campaign and trump white house was insisting that there was no contact with russians at all. >> but mike pence said, can you believe that mike pence actually had the nerve to say in 2017, we

were never talking to any russians. nobody related to this campaign ever talked to any russians. we were talking to americans. just as extraordinary lie when you look at the collection of russians that they were talking to throughout 2016. >> i feel like sometimes people don't quite, it's not presented comprehensively in front of people and people don't grasp how much robert mueller and his team and sometimes we're jaded about it. for instance f , if we just fou out today there was a meeting in trump tower, we would think it is a political crisis but now it's. the issue and i think we have to bring this in here because it's a prong of this, it is not just the media pressure and it's not rudy giuliani going out there, there is intense capitol hill pressure, too.

rachel maddow last night unearthed a private recording of devon nunez saying they were going to take another stab at the impeachment of rob rosen ste stein. so we have this congressional prong that seems to be working to provide some for the trump white house and to kasie because she's so plugged in on the hill. is this a serious threat from nunez or acting rogue here? >> we're going to have to ask paul ryan whether he would let something like that go forward. in theory, they could make that privilege and force his hand. but the broader point you're making, sam, is the right one. we're really headed for the real wreckeni reckoning and easy to lose sight of it and the drips out of the special counsel's office and evolving what seemed to me a set

of excuses that rudy giuliani was giving to republicans that would question what is going on with robert mueller. but, look, republicans are going to have to decide at some point depending on what bob mueller is going to find. are they going to defend the president at all costs? that's what nunez is saying on that tape. he's saying no matter what mueller finds, we need to stand behind president trump. there is going to be republicans on the hill who are going to do that. and i think a wide middle that is going to have to really look inside themselves and decide, okay, how am i going to handle this? we saw that in water gate what turned the tide for richard nixon after it was clear that there was crimes that were proven that republicans in his own party turned on him. >> you know, if you look at devon nunez, if you look at some members of the freedom caucus, they remind me of the people that we conservatives used to call useful idiots that would fly down to nicaragua that the

united states is doing terrible things and we're apologizing and we conservatives, we republicans called them useful idiots for always apologizing for the russians and always being part of the blame america first crowd. well, when you look at what leaders of the freedom caucus are doing, when you look at what nunez is doing, i think we need to stop saying what they're doing is trying to protect donald trump. because what they're actually doing is they're protecting vladimir putin and covering up more crimes that the united states military and intel agencies are digging at right now this very moment. they've unearthed some of his crimes. they're looking for more crimes. but you have devon nunez

bragging about trying to stop the investigation and russia's interference. it's shameful. >> a division within america in here between the white house and the institutions of america in here. we're actually, basically, what i hear about trump supporting and invade the investigation, i hear him defending the mafia, the biggest mafia of the world in vladimir putin, basically. you have a have to address him d address that head on rather than being divided among us. i feel like president trump has a choice here. step up and lead the country ethically speaking and stop defending corrupt leaders around the world. >> no sign that's happening any time soon. but that would be the hope. still ahead on "morning joe" criminal charges ahead, chris

collins says he will be on the ballot this november. we'll break down the government's case against him and what it means for republicans' message heading into the midterms. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. you've tried moisturizer after moisturizer

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and lets you control your network with the xfi app. it's the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. all right. willie we have some clean up here. we're going to be talking music. we have some cleanup here. i must admit i must have been sleepi sleeping. >> he did an interview addressing the back lash for the first time. kasie doesn't like dave, but they do, along but they go to

every phish show. >> before you go hating on dave matthews, you need to watch the movie lady burird. >> i have seen it. >> you realize where they're making fun of dave matthews, it is the mean girls making fun, you're being a mean girl about dave matthews. >> i'm hurt by that accusation, joe. i really am. the boys i went to high school with who listen to dmb just left it, i can't do it. i can't do it. >> so, sam stein, is this sort of -- is this along the line of creed. is this like a creed/nickelback

backlash? >> am i wrong? >> yeah, you're wrong. >> i don't know. >> it's the fans of dave matthews. who we recall as the big fans of dave matthews from high school and college and, of course, willie, have turned us against him. >> is this what we're really talking about today? >> can we please move on. >> i have to say, willie, you know, alex says we're circling the drain. >> we're down the drain. we're not circling. >> you know, i did not for some reason like steely dan when i was in high school and college, but i like him now. some great music. >> okay. >> i'm going to help alex and try to pull us up out of the drain. mika, this is for you. chris collins of new york has been charged with insider trader and lying to investigators alleged to have worked with his

son to avoid significant losses on a inesthavestment. prosecutors say collins was at a congressional picnic at the white house last year when he learned that they received bad news about a drug trial for the company's only product. he served on a board for three years until 2017 and remains one of the biggest shareholders. the congressman frantically attempted to reach his son, cameron, who he tipped off to the corporate information days before it was made public. they claim cameron collins and several others used the information to avoid more than $700,000 in losses. when news of the failed drug trial was made public, the shares of the company aplplumme. he refuted the allegations against him. >> the charges that have been levied against me are meritless. and i will mount a vigorous

defense in court to clear my name. i look forward to being fully vindicated and exonerated ending any and all questions related to my affiliation. as i fight to clear my name, rest assured i will continue to work hard for the people and constituents of the 27th congressional district of new york and i will remain on the ballot, running for re-election this november. >> you know, collins is just the latest member in the trump orbit to find himself in legal jeopardy over financial gain, including at least one with the same prosecutor. his former personal attorney as president, michael cohen, also as you know, under investigation by the southern district of new york for tax fraud. that, according to "wall street journal." cohen simultaneously served the president and had a business and cashed in on his connections.

a top donor agreed to paid cohen $10 million if he successfully pushed a project. sitting with questions of financial misdoings. forbes recently, man, what a report, that commerce secretary wilbur ross' practices have sparked lawsuits and reimbursements and a fine from sec and tom price was also questioned about a favorable purchase of a stock at the time that was also at the center of collins' arrest. price was fired amid scandals and former epa administrator scott pruitt talk about the swamp. it's now up to trump's neck. he, of course, intendinattended

white house and then he was allowed to resign. but, willie, there is such a -- such a culture of corruption there. somebody yesterday said that collins had to feel picked on when you had wilbur ross, in their words, doing insider trading at a pace the guy thought he only had two weeks to live. and, you know, since trump says he's only good until 11:00 a.m. in the morning, that was a pretty busy 9:30 to 11:00 block to do insider trading. you look. look at the "forbes" article. just a culture of corruption and, of course, as they always say, the fish rots from the head. >> matt miller, these are just the people around, profiting off hotels and ivanka had to shut down her clothing line. they put money in a trust that

does not isolate them from profits, certainly, to put it mildly. >> i think joe hit the nail on the head when he called it a culture of corruption. democrats have the ability now to make this case that there is this culture that starts at the top with donald trump and starts with his family members and pervasive throughout his administration and also list the treasury secretary on government planes and under inspector general investigations and now moving it over to a member of congress. the problem for other members of congress. this is not to say every republican member of congress is corrupt. of course, not. but every one is allowing this to go unchecked. no one in a leadership one on tg we need to stop it and investigate it and shine some sunlight. that becomes a political vulnerability for all of them. one of the interesting subplots of this chris collins thing, he is the second person to literally have committed a crime

on the white house grounds. they made that call while he was standing on the white house grounds. it's the same place where mike flynn, in his white house office sat down with the fbi and lied to the fbi. the highest crime rate of any neighborhood in washington. >> i don't know if i'll go that far but maybe. you know, the point that i keep coming back to is 2006. that year democrats mounted a fairly robust culture of corruption campaign to take back the house. and it was effective. you talk to any democratic strategists that work in those races. that was the theme that they resonate the most. this go around you have arguably way more data points to point to here as we listed right now. but i don't see democrats making this case. i mean, matt's right. i mean, you could argue that a really effective campaign strategy say, look, republicans are letting this go unchecked

and we have x, y and z and you need to elect us so we can actually bring some ethics and disability and oversight to this process. but that's not really in the democratic playbook and i'm not entirely sure why. >> democrats almost have an embarrass of riches to figure out how to run and some people who are nervous on that side that they will not come with a clear message, it will be too muddled. if they regain control of the house, something that trump allies have told me. more than impeachment proceedings which could be a gift to the president. day after day and where they're marching up every single person who has any affiliation in front of the cameras on capitol hill and bogging them down that way. to follow up on matt's point, it's remarkable. the indictment has the listed time in which he makes the call to his son to tell him this. footage of him on the phone at that moment. there aren't too many occasions where we have live streams of

insider trading. >> beyond democrats, iful feel like we ne to have -- we have politicians helping write the ethics rules of insider trading and all of these things corrupt. we need to go back beyond the parties and we need to go back to the people and people need to vote for people who are ethical. go back to the people and people want ethics and valus and all of these things. i want to say one thing, though. he needs to have a fair investigation is the fair thing in here. so, we do need to give due process due process so we don't jump to conclusion but we need to watch all the warning signs in here and go back, again, to saying what is right and what is wrong. >> well, kasie hunt, that is absolutely right and to an extent i think people are open to the truth.

joe found out on the campaign trail himself giving his constituents bad news in realtime, even if they didn't like hearing it, that helped him actually at the polls. but in this case, the truth is being so devalued. i just worry that it's going to be a very difficult landscape running up to the midterms and beyond for republicans especially for some of who are participati participating. >> that answers sam's question why democrats aren't using this broadly. they tried this against president trump and they tried to make everything stick and nothing sticks to the guy, it seems. i'm not convinced based on my reporting that is going to be true in the midterm elections and strategists are saying people are demanding more from their candidates, but part of the reality is, too, democrats aren't calling for collins to be shoved out of office. that's partly because, you know, they face their own ethical problems.

i mean, bob menendez fought an indictment while he remained for quite a while in a powerful post on the foreign relations committee. this is a problem that goes across the establishments in washington and i think people are frustrated by that. and don't forget, one thing animating the democratic base right now is opposition to corporate money in elections. one litmus test issue for a lot of progressive candidates is are they refusing to take donations from corporate packs? that's also something that leadership in washington is grappling with. they're not sure what to do about it. i do think they're creating some problems for themselves in that way. still ahead, another trump campaign figure facing serious legal jeopardy. we'll check in on paul manafort's trial. how an alleged $16 million spending spree came into play. that's coming up on "morning joe." you're turning onto the street

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in day seven of the trial of paul manafort an irs agent

testified that the former trump campaign chairman had at least $16 million in unreported income from ukraine, which manafort allegedly spent between 2010 and 2014. just a few years before he sought an unpaid role leading the president's campaign. after the conclusion of testimony by manafort's deputy rick gates there was a tense moment between counsel prosecutors when ellis discovered an expert witness had been in the courtroom for other testimony. as "the washington post" described ellis erupted saying that he typically bars all witnesses, save the case agent from observing the proceedings and thought he had done so in this case. u.s. attorney uzo asonye said he believed the transcript and

ellis snapped. i don't care what the transcript said. maybe i made a mistake. don't do it again. >> matt miller, the judge, the judge has been bheads with the prosecution and doesn't seem to like the prosecuting attorneys too much. what is going on there? >> i think a little case of black robitis. he is known to be a tough judge and he has been out of line here. if you look at him here. almost like when your parents say, doesn't matter what i said, do this anyway. sort of admitting that even if he made a mistake he's blaming the prosecutors on it. he is accusing one of the prosecutors of crying. i think the ultimate question is what impact it will have on the case. if this were a much closer case, i bet the prosecution would be pretty worried that his remarks some of which would be in front

of the jury would have an impact. such strong evidence against paul manafort and such strong evidence of his guilt that it is not likely to tip at end the of the day. >> i was surprised when the judge told one of the attorneys to stop crying in the courtroom. he's like, i'm not crying. it's just like yesterday where they said, but you said he could. read the transkrcript. i don't care what's in the transcript. not the sort of stable justice that you want overseeing an important case like this. what is his story, what is his background. >> let me just say something about the crying. that particular prosecutor that was crying. he locked up the family in new york and actually, actually had to be around the clock protection because while he was investigating, they tried to assassinate him and have him killed. i doubt he was crying in the courtroom because of tough words

from the judge. this judge has been on the bench for long time. you know, judges, look, they have lifetime terms for a reason. to make them insulated from political pressure and lack of accountability. i think largely we like that, but there are always down sides that come with the good sides. you see some judges that have this arrogant approach in the courtroom and you hear from people who practice in that court that judge ellis is like that in a lot of cases, but he's also a judge that i think when reporters are in the room and high profile and likes to show off a little bit for the press and i think you're seeing some of that here. >> all so fascinating. the ohio congressional race that was already too close to call gets even tighter, thanks to a couple hundred uncounted votes. we'll show you where the candidates stand this morning. we'll be right back.

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welcome back to "morning joe". we're having sort of a battle of the bands and it is going in the downward direction. i'm going to our control room. alex, do you have a confession, a rock and roll confession >> huey lewis. top of the list there. partridge family to some people. but i'm picking huey. >> these are all classics. abba, "waterloo." beethoven's fifth. one are two pieces by tchaikovsky. >> hall and oats. >> willie, you don't have any problem with huey, do you? he was a sound track to ""back to the future"."

>> i didn't know he wasn't cool. i think he's great. >> everybody just stop. we're all so old. still ahead president trump and his legal team appear to be playing "hardball" with robert mueller over a possible interview. member of the judiciary committee senator richard blumenthal will join us to weigh in on that and rudy giuliani's timeline for the russia probe, rudy expects it to be done soon so i guess we should all hurry. plus, we'll talk to the michigan demonstrate who is poised to become the first muslim woman in congress. rashida talib will be our guest coming up on "morning joe". (ford chime) it's the ford summer sales event and now is the best time to buy. you ready for this, junior? yeah, i think i can handle it. no pressure... ...that's just my favorite boat. boom. (laughs) make summer go right with ford, america's best-selling brand. and get our best deal of the summer:

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. america needs a full time president. and a full time congress. particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad. to continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would absorb the time of the congress when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home. therefore, i shall resign the

presidency effective at noon tomorrow. >> that was president richard nixon, 44 years ago last night as today marks the anniversary of the first and only time a president resigned from office, joe. >> mika, you had said before that your father, obviously, knew richard nixon, and after his wife pat died, that he actually came over to your house, and you remember seeing him as such a broken man. >> yeah. it was, obviously, i think the loss of his wife. but he was sitting on our porch on a chair was pulled out from the table with a setting sun behind him down the hill and i just sort of couldn't believe what i was seeing. so much history and so much turmoil for this country all wrapped up in his story. >> but, really, willie, it's interesting the only time richard nixon broke down in

public. anybody saw him breaking down in public was when his wife pat died. at the funeral he broke down so much he was embarrassed about it later. but that 44 years ago, john meacham says it's his first memory of any news event despite the fact all he talks about is the french and indian war. we should talk more about watergate. >> walter isaacson is here, the "new york times" tweeted out their front page. still takes your breath away for a skorngsd president of the united states resigns from office. >> yeah. the issue here is that it resonates with what happens today. it's an obstruction of justice. nixon afterwards and mika remembered him being sad. afterwards nixon became kind of a statesman. he talked about the world, doing

discussions. he would do these amazie ing to. during his time in office he became unhinged when it came to justice. we have to go back and look at things. >> walter, i'm curious, when you look at the people that got indicted, got in trouble during the nixon administration, we went over a laundry list and, of course, nixon was in for six, seven years before things really completely blew up for him. just in a year's time, a little over a year's time donald trump has seen his first campaign manager or second campaign manager indicted in a trial right now. his first national security adviser indicted, pled guilty. his deputy campaign manager indicted, pled guilty. a guy that worked for him

through the inauguration who, of course, already pled guilty. one of his top campaign foreign policy advisers pled guilty and is pleading with the government. his first congressional endorser and member of his transition team has pled guilty. along with 29 russians. we don't know what the 29 russians have been indicted, what they have to do with the trump campaign and whether there is a conspiracy to influence the election. that's part of the investigation, but even if you just look at the list there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven -- six or seven people that have already been indicted and most of them pleading right now, guilty. how does that stack up with nixon and watergate even seven years in? >> well, it's stinkier in a way because he said drain the swamp. so many of these things involved

just people wanting to make large sums of people. people slurping at the trough like the congressman doing insider trading on the white house lawn. nixon at least wasn't lining his pockets. you see that with the trump hotels and their businesses and finances. this is the type of thing voters rebelled against which is this pure line your pockets and get rich type of corruption. the other thing is nixon did like trump try to discredit the institutions of our society. discredit our norms. but nixon never went as far as this to call, you know, to try to obstruct justice publicly in a way that trump is doing. so, it's amazing that we've gotten back to this. >> it is amazing. sam stein, of course, you're

reporting always tries to take it to a higher level, 30 years after, of course, richard nixon resigned you are, of course, digging deep into a controversy about the dave matthews band and what happened in chicago 30 years later. >> don't do it. >> and scandal, sam, that according to your reporting was called poopgate. explain. >> okay. >> it's breakfast time. >> we were doing so well. >> you want to jump off of walter's point? >> i'm only quoting your tweet, sam. you just tweeted it like ten minutes ago. don't sit there acting all innocent. follow up on walter's -- >> well, i'll say -- >> talk about watergate or

poopgate. >> and maybe you can weigh in on this. >> i was struck by how a lot of what we see with trump, we sort of don't take as seriously as maybe we should because it happened so out in the open. so for instance, a tweet he put up a week and a half ago, roughly, in which he basically was talking about firing jeff sessions for not closing down the investigation. i thought at the time that was pretty wild. then i thought to myself, having read the memo and sent it privately to jeff sessions about getting rid of the investigation into russian collusion and that memo has been read by a journalist we would think this is the craziest thing ever. because he tweets it out in the open part of us think this is trump being trump. same thing to a lesser degree with the respective break in. so if the russians had literally broken into the dnc and stolen a file cabinet as opposed to hacking e-mail account, maybe we

would conceive of this differently because it would be physical as opposed to something on the internet. i'm wondering to a degree, how does this affect our thinking? >> well all of our norms have been totally disrupted and when you set out to break norms, norms get broken. we now have a society in which people can do things like openly to affect justice. openly line their pockets. and somehow we've become ignored to it. if we watch it in plain sight it's like they destroyed all the norms. the biggest norm of all which even nixon tried to do, i'm trying to bring people together. i'm a unifier. here you have a guy who outright tries to divide the couldn't. >> yeah. >> yep. >> you had watergate tapes and now this time around you just

have everything that the president says on television. there's no tapes to be uncovered. as you see with us we have sam stein, walter isaacson. the fact that omarosa thinks he's unhinged. >> omarosa can secretly tape the president of the united states inside the white house, the fact that his lawyer and so-called fixer is taping the white house, what do you think the russians and the chinese -- >> what a useful idiot is what they are thinking. the fact that he would bring in someone close, that he would be so unbelievably reckless to bring in someone close who would audiotape their conversations. what kind of people do you have around you? again, he needs a wall around him. white house reporter for the associated press jonathan lam

erelameer is with us. kasie hunt is with us. >> joe, are the google dolls cool or uncool? >> that's a good one. let me tell you something. the google dolls are cool. amazing. iris amazing. you know what if you don't like the dolls, if you don't think black balloons aren't the best songs of the '90s turn off the tv right now. >> and eamon javers is here. >> he often sings his questions to the white house staff and the president in tune. >> i was more of a punk rock guy than a google dolls guy. they were harder core and then

drifted more into a poppy kind of thing. i liked them before they sold out. >> i liked them before they sold out and after they sold out. it's great. >> you're good with all of it. >> anybody like pink floyd? >> we all liked pink floyd. >> got it. >> okay. here we go. >> in an interview last night president trump's lawyer said special counsel robert mueller will personally have a lot to answer for just hours after they rejected mueller's reported latest offer to get a sit down interview with the president. trump's legal team said they made a counter offer. i'm sure it's fantastic. >> there was one of my favorite episodes on the simpsons was when lionel huts said to mr. burns we have a counter offer, we think you'll like it. and actually mr. burn turned it around and he wrote zero.

he picked it up and said we'll take it. release the hounds. that's what robert mueller is thinking right now. you have a counter offer. listen, i got what they call a subpoena. i'll just put that one on you any time you want. >> this is incredible. so trump's team listed their conditions in their counter offer for access to the president who is the subject in the wide ranging investigation of russian interference in the 2016 election. which endangers this country. trump's attorneys also publicly voiced their desire for the probe to end within the next three weeks. >> that's not going to happen either. >> and suggested mueller would be violating doj policies if it does not. >> actually that's a lie. >> giuliani went on to challenge the special counsel's motive for seeking an interview and suggested mueller will soon be the one under screw ti. >> i. >> not true. >> we offered them an opportunity to do a form of

questioning. he can say yes or no. we can do it. if he doesn't want to do it. he knows the answers to every question that he wants to ask. he's going to ask him did you tell comey to go easy on flynn. the president will say no i didn't. hey, bob, you know it. why do you want to get him under oath. do you think we're fools. you want to trap him in perjury. we're not going to let you do that. i've never been involved in an investigation on either side that's more illegitimate than this one, that's so more obviously illegitimate and i wonder where the sense of justice is on the part of mueller, on the part of the justice department. the real story here is not that this case isn't going to fizzle, it will blow up on them. the real question is what we talked about before, there's a lot more to what they did that nobody knows about yet and mueller is going to have a lot to answer for. the investigation here has to be

on the investigators because we cannot let this happen again in american history. we may not have a president as strong as president trump. unless a president could have really been cracked by this. >> walter, i'm an older guy. i know you, of course, are not, you're a spring chicken. >> yes, he is. >> us older guys do you remember that unbelievable saying in absence of malice when it was said, i got these things called subpoenas, now you can talk to me now or i can give you a subpoena. and either way i'm going to talk to you and i'm going to get the truth out. rudy giuliani of all people trying to negotiate whether donald trump is going to talk to robert mueller is so rich because it was rudy giuliani in 1998 who told charlie rose when we're talking about bill clinton, it doesn't matter whether the president wants to talk to the special counsel or

not, if he's given a subpoena, he has to comply and sit down and talk to the special prosecutor. >> you know, rudy giuliani keeps going on air to make it seem more and more like there's smoking guns all over the place. he's doing the greatest disservice to a client i've ever seen a lawyer do. then he says well we don't want to testify because trump may accidentally tell the truth or he may end up lying and both will be bad. well it's just ridiculous what he says trying to trap him in perjury, it wouldn't be perjury if trump went there and just told the truth. so i don't know why giuliani is out there unless he's some sort of weird agent trying to undermine his client and to make this investigation look even more stronger than it is. >> he's out there because he wants, it's a very simple political objective which is to turn public opinion against robert mueller. only way you'll do that is

hammering him every day. main people who are receptive are people who watch fox news. it's not just republicans who are souring on robert mueller specifically it's viewers of fox news who are souring on robert mueller's investigation, that's because there's a constant drum beat of negativity from rudy giuliani -- >> real quickly, let's say it quickly. robert mueller has not been leaking. >> of course. >> he's an honorable man. he's been extremely successful in this. he's a life long republican. he's a person who has served the country with honor. how can they have no shame when they do this? >> this is tactical and not just with the mueller investigation. i go back to this quote that trump gave. he talked cynically about his anti-press comments, this whole fake news thing. he said very clearly the reason i'm doing it is because i want to be so when you report

critical stories of me half the country doesn't believe it. >> that's obvious. they have been softening the ground whatever mueller comes out with they discredit it to people who believe this. they have been reporting this from vice president pence down to rudy giuliani. time to wrap it up. they are giving a directive to robert mueller to wrap up the investigation. it's worth taking a step back. robert mueller is looking at russian interference into the election. >> we've seen very little concern of that from the president of the united states. we know, of course, he missed the opportunity in helsinki to chastized putin on the world stage. we know justin last week or so, we saw that display of force at the white house where his national security officials did finally talk about steps we'll take. warned about russia doing it again in the mid-terms this fall. but that felt like a moment of president versus presidency. they seem very out of step.

hours later donald trump goes to a rally in pennsylvania. i was there and said called the whole thing a hoax, it was a hindrance and holding back our ability to have a better relationship with russia. this is what they were doing. mueller will not leak, talk publicly and they are just going hammer away. as you say weigh down public opinion and eventually to when mueller does deliver this report to have half the country not believe it. >> walter, i want to ask you a question. the way i hear it is a bunch of bully, bullying everybody, and distracting everyone from the truth. if you go back to nixon, how do you take back the discussion, actually? how do you go back to what is real, what is unreal and what is untrue? >> the way we did it is the way we did it when it happened with nixon. honorable people in the republican party. honorable people in all parties. honorable people in the administration step forward and say no this is not what america is about.

we try to tell truth. >> a lot of republicans are not stepping forward and playing the trump game. what's your message to them. how do we speak to fox news people audience. >> in the mid-term elections people say this culture ever corruption is not something i want to have continue. leadership in the republican party, they will follow what they hear. it only happens if the mid-terms vote out some of the people who have been spineless. >> we know congressional republicans are helping the president do his bidding on this. they presented the freedom caucus did anyway on the idea of impeachment. rod rosenstein deputy attorney general is overseeing the special counsel's investigation. rachel maddox played last night in primetime devon nunes saying they would like to get rod rosenstein but wait until after kavanaugh has been seated on the supreme court. what's happening on the capitol

hill as they rally around the president. >> you look at the president and say those voters who were supporting the president those are our voters too. therefore, we got to do what the president wants. we have to appeal to those voters. at the same time you have this bizarre sort of long form slow motion negotiation, the ultimate art of the deal in term of whether the president will sit down or not sit down. look at the timeline. you see rudy giuliani on tv saying we want mueller to wrap this up, we want it to be over by september 1st. but you have these offers and counter offers going back and forth. it seems as if the giuliani team has an incentive to stretch this out than wrap it up. and push it past the september timeline. and then at some point the department of justice will not want to move forward with anything dramatic if you get too close to that mid-term election because we'll have the same problem we had back in 2016 with announcements coming out that

could be accused of manipulating the election. if you look at the series of offers and counter offers going back and forth about whether the president will sit down. i did some reporting on this yesterday. some people involved in all of this who feel there will be more rounds of offers and counter offers. i think that ultimately helps the president push this out as far as he can, push it closer to the mid-term election. that gives them many months to try to tilt public opinion against the mueller investigation. the longer they stretch this out the better they are despite what rudy giuliani is saying. >> so, you obviously, are covering the chris collins investigation. give us a sense of where it goes from here and how it plays into all the problems plaguing this presidency or the questions plaguing this presidency. >> chris collins said last night up in buffalo he'll fight this. he thinks he's done nothing wrong. he said he lost money himself personally on this insider trade. that's not the issue.

what the prosecutors have alleged is that what chris collins did was use his position on the board of the company to illegally tip off his son and his son was then able to avoid masses losses. when that stock went down 92% when it turned out that the drug that the company made didn't work at all that was a dramatic loss for the son and some of the friends and family around the son, they were facing that loss. able to sell and get out ahead of it and dump that loss on other unsuspecting people in the financial markets. collins said i held on to mimi shares personally i didn't do anything wrong. i lost millions of dollars on this trade. prosecutors say all you need is somebody with a fiduciary obligation to the company which collins did have then tips and then a trade and then you have illegal nude e insider trader. collins will fight eight and run for re-election. will he be able to win while

still under indictment and that's possible. >> all right. >> cnbc's eamon javers. thank you so much for being on. >> a punk rock fan. >> i want you to play the ramones all day on your office computer. >> i doubt we'll do that. mika, we met -- thank you. by the way, it was great to meet jimmy buffett a couple of weeks ago. >> you were on stage on broadway playing. >> jimmy was nice enough. >> margaritaville. >> this is a guy that bob dylan told rolling stone of his favorite songwriter. he's playing fenway tonight. wish i could be there. he's playing fenway tonight. he fills it up like every year. kind of crazy. >> so cool. still ahead on "morning joe," senator richard blumenthal joins the table.

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and lets you control your network with the xfi app. it's the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. welcome back. willie, i'm looking at some of these songs. we're getting responses. i got to say a couple of great ones and, again, you can't pick a cool band and say oh, well my guilty pleasure is elvis costello that concentrate count he's the king of cool. here's some great ones. abba, "bread." who can listen to david gates. gary puckett and the union gap. the archies. let me tell you something about

archies "sugar sugar." '60s radical, radical generation. "sugar sugar" one of the top five songs of the 1960s. and don't dis archie and jughead. that song rocks. have you figured out an uncool band yet that you're willing to mention? >> i'm going to stick with mine. i feel no guilt about the dave matthews band. there's a large faction of americans who don't like dave matthews and i picked him up in college. good memories around it. no apologies. but there's a backlash against dave matthews. >> bunch of hippies. >> in the next segment sam stein wants to ask you about the steve miller band. >> come on. >> sam not here at the moment. let's turn to united states

senator who is waiting patiently -- >> counselor you opened up the door on the steve miller band. you're not going to stop. steve miller band had a couple of extraordinary albums like from '75, '77, '78. >> take it up to stein. >> hit me where i live. "take the money and run." this guy was great on immigration policy. >> let's get right into it. a member of the progressive group provided the rachel maddox show of you a do of david nunes speaking at a fundraiser in washington last week for kathy rogers. in the recording nunes and rogers said rod rosenstein cannot be impeached but only because it would imperil the nomination of brett kavanaugh. say he should not impeached. nunes spoke about the importance of protecting president trump.

>> >> so i don't think you'll get argument from most of our colleagues. the question is the timing of it right before the election. >> the senate has to start -- >> the senate would have to drop everything they are doing and start to, start with impeachment of rod rosenstein. then you take the risk of not getting kavanaugh approved. so it's not a matter of impeaching rod rosenstein it's a matter of timing. so there in lies your catch 22 situation where -- it puts us in a tough spot.

that's why we have to keep this. we have to keep the majority. if we do not keep the majority, all of this goes away. >> that's the voice of devin nunes. nunes office did not return calls seeking a response. joining us now a member of the judiciary and armed services committee senator richard blumenthal. thank you for your patience. let's talk about what you just heard. not news that devin nunes believes rod rosenstein should be impeached. he said it publicly. the freedom caucus introduced the idea of impeaching rod rosenstein as deputy attorney general. house speaker paul ryan came out the next day and said he did not support that, the impeachment of rod rosenstein. what nunes is saying there we'll put it to the side for a moment while we get kavanaugh on the

bench. but we come back to the idea that rod rosenstein should be impeached. what does that tell you and how seriously do you take that? >> that tells me republican leadership is putting priority on confirmation of brett kavanaugh. we may be the one to determine whether the president has to comply with the subpoena. this strategy is really the most craven and brazen kind of politics in its approach to undermining the rule of law and the second point to be made here is that the reason for retaining a republican majority is simply to protect the president against potential consequences that may involve other subpoenas uncovering other wrongdoing. this culture of corruption is so pervasive, wilbur ross, other

members of the cabinet, the president himself violating the clause by taking foreign benefits and payments. we have sued the president, other members of congress have join my lawsuit. it's unparalleled in american history. >> as you look ahead at the dominos that could fall if somehow rod rosenstein were impeached is that to put somebody in place, do you believe who could then fire robert mueller. is that the ultimate goal? >> that's a really key question because people look at the special counsel and say his position is critical, which it is. but ultimately the one responsible for approving the potential indictment, all of the budget, all the personnel of the special counsel is, in fact, the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. so in firing him or impeaching him or unrecusing the attorney general to fire him is really at the core of what i think this

strategy is. >> senator, a question for you. nunes is known as somebody who hates the investigation, who has cast doubt on it. but seeing the number for house republicans echo his comments, rogers echoing his sense of the strategy was new to me and i wonder if you take that to mean that the full house leadership is actually secretly behind this plan to impeach the deputy attorney general? >> in my view the republican leadership is ambivalent. it knows what the right thing to do here is. it needs the grit and back bone to stand up and really uphold the rule of law. and that applies to brett kavanaugh as well because right now the republicans are engaged in a conscious effort to hide and conceal documents that are necessary to evaluate brett kavanaugh's nomination. they've not only limited the

scope of the documents to exclude all the relevant paper and communications involving brett kavanaugh's service in the bush white house as staff secretary but they've also turned over the screening process to a team of republican lawyers headed by a lawyer who was, in fact, kavanaugh's deputy in the bush white house. and now is serving as a lawyer to a number of people in the bush administration or formerly in the bush administration like brett kavanaugh and they are cherry picking, pre-screening, sanitizing documents so that we have now filed a freedom of information request, we the democrats on the senator judiciary committee, we did it yesterday, because it's the last resort. >> you know, walter, getting back to devin nunes and what devin nunes' strategy is going

against rod rosenstein, even the white house sources are telling reporters that the white house considers nunes and the freedom caucus' attacks on rod rosenstein to be a joke. they know it's not serious. they know it's not going anywhere. yet you just wonder why paul ryan is allowing it to continue, and people are now looking about and trying to figure out what paul ryan's legacy is going to be. right now if this continues his legacy is allowing a guy to destroy the intel community's bipartisanship, historically bipartisan nature and secondly allowing members to run around and try to provide cover for vladimir putin by destroying an investigation that looks that putin is crying to undermine american democracy. it's pretty straightforward isn't it?

>> the white house considers it a bit of a joke that nunes is acting this way but it's not a joke. we used to be able to have a consensus in congress that people are going to rise above partisanship at times like when we got attacked by russia. i would love to turn it to the senator because i don't quite -- i mean you remember the times when there would be republicans and democrats who say, okay, this transcends our partisan differences, let's figure it it out. other than bob corker and jefr flake who are honest. republicans in the senate are talking to you and saying maybe we ought to move this along. i know mark warner has had some success on the intelligence committee doing that. is there some hope there? >> i always have hope. that's the reason i go to work in the mornings. but i am deeply disappointed in the republican leadership in the senate as well as the house. they've really collapsed like rusty lawn chairs.

and the real crying need is to return to that bipartisan consensus. we face an ongoing threat. not only the special prosecutor looking at putin and the potential conspiracy involving the trump campaign in the past and obstruction of justice which is unfolding before our eyes in real-time it's looking forward what putin is doing right now, the pervasive and ongoing threat to our democracy is what's really important. >> looking into the florida voting wells too and it's amazing to me that both parties don't want to say let's stop russia from hacking our election system. >> they are saying the right thing. but what's missing is action. and that will require republicans really standing up to be counted. as they did during watergate. >> senator richard blumenthal,

thank you so much for being on "morning joe" today. still ahead, in 2016 she was booted out of a luncheon for heckling donald trump. now she's on course to become the first muslim woman in congress. rashida tlaib joins us next on "morning joe". oh! oh! ♪ ozempic®! ♪ (vo) people with type 2 diabetes are excited about the potential of once-weekly ozempic®. in a study with ozempic®, a majority of adults lowered their blood sugar and reached an a1c of less than seven and maintained it. oh! under seven? (vo) and you may lose weight. in the same one-year study, adults lost on average up to 12 pounds.

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thank you very much. >> wow. that was rashida tlaib at a speech held in detroit by then presidential candidate donald trump. joining us now the winner of tuesday's democratic primary race in michigan's 13th congressional district, rashida tlaib. she's poised to become the first

muslim woman ever elected to congress and thank you for being on this morning. >> thank you for having me. >> so let's start with tezy questio -- the easy question but i have to love it. why your running? >> look, i'm really tired of being outside of the ring, especially now during a time when our country, i think, a lot of us are going through what i really believe is a troubling time in history where we don't feel like we belong or that we feel we're being left behind no matter your background. i think a lot of us on the 13th congressional district want to be able to have equal access to thrive and that's what i ran on and that's why i felt this need to run and to really fight back for all the families that are my neighbors, the people that, you know, helped raise me in the community, and i'm really excited for the opportunity to actually be able to be a voice

for all of them. >> rashida tlaib, first congratulations for winning. my question for you is you're a woman of color, you're of muslim -- you are a muslim, of immigrant origin. your parents are immigrants. you just won. how are your going to speak to some of the white americans who are scared, who are scared of they are going to be a minority, scared of people of color, of immigrants. how do you reach out to them and make sure they are on board with you and see you as an ally. >> it has to be through action not just through words. so for me my congressional district is predominantly african-american and white. many of them supported me primarily because of my history in the michigan legislature and what i stood up for. and many of them are going to have to have that direct human contact with me and the work i'm going to do. and throughout the district i'll create neighborhood service centers getting people to every

day issues will go hand-in-hand with the legislative work i do. it has to be through actions. they have to be able to proudly say yes she represents my ovals, she represents what i'm about. so many of us want to only be able to label people. she's a child of immigrant. she's palestinian. she's arab. she's a woman. but i'm a girl who grew up one wayne county like them. many of them really relate to the fact of my struggles as a new mom with the public school system, growing up in again in detroit with all of the different issues with poverty and challenges that we face every single day. so it's going to be through action and going to be able to be spoiled by me and they are going to forget that i may not look like them, but i think me having the similar challenges and me having their backs is what i think they are going remember and why they are going to be able to continue to support me. >> fair enough. yet we have a president who is working on divisive politics in this country. it's about us and them and fear

is a major role in that. how are you going to address that? you know in terms of divisiveness, in terms of fear of muslims. you know beyond action, how are you addressing that sentimentally even in your own words. >> our country is not divided. people truly believe that. i believe we're disconnected. i stood up when president trump called mexicans rapists. i stood up and absolutely said that's the most unamerican thing company have said. absolutely unfair. i stood up for my african-american neighbors when police brutality is still number one issue. black lives matter to me is something that i stand up for because as an american we all should be standing up for. we are just as connected. that's the problem with our country. that disconnection is why, you know, president trump and all the different people that are surrounding him are able to be able to be loud and be able to

continue to divide us is because we're not talking to each other and i'm hoping to be able to build a lot of that connection so that people can see just how beautiful our country is and we'll continue to be able to be. >> beautiful country. >> we just saw the video footage of the august 2016 donald trump speech which you were thrown out of. walk us through that moment. what were you proifting. what were you trying to communicate there. can any line be drawn from that day to what happened this week with you now running for office? >> you should know that moment. it wasn't just me. it was 12 other women that were with me that day. every two minutes he was asked a question. this was the first time ever that the detroit economic club didn't allow us to ask questions. he was a candidate that wanted to run for president of the united states. people don't always ask me what did you say? i asked him have you ever read the u.s. constitution. it was important to me because he was pushing for the muslim ban. he was pushing for things i

thought was against core values of our country and against the essence of the u.s. constitution. and all of us as i stood there, you know, i did it as a former michigan state representative and a lot of women knew i was coming they felt a sense of like okay if she can do it i can do it. i wanted to help elevate their voices and stand up. i'm proud of that moment because it was the most american thing i ever could have done to push back on that rhetoric. he was spewing out so much of information but not really getting to the core issues that were important to me and the other women that were in that room. >> sam stein here. i think to mika's point about women running for office, the man you will likely replace, representative john conyers was ousted in part because he was accused of being a serial sexual harasser of people in his office. he denies it, of course, but

that was the context of him leaving office. so i'm not asking you to speak specifically to his case, but in general how much do you think this me too movement has both p deciding to run, but also voting sentiment about with what type of public officials they want holding public office? >> i think, you know, it's really important to know congressman conyers was pretty courageous. one of the things you should know about him is he voted against the iraq war when it was unpopular. he voted against the patriotic act, one of the very few. we never had to check him on his votes. obviously the "me too" movement is something that is very close to me because i'm a victim of sexual harassment. i remember that moment of not really understanding what just happened. it was my first job out of college. there are people in leadership, not only in congress, but if

companies all across the country and different areas of the vector of business, film, you name it that are silent that are now speaking up and pushing back against the environment that is very toxic and unfair for women. and i'm really somebody that i hope to bring a voice to and i know that for us women, we wait to be needed. we wait until, you know, i call it the bat signal. >> that's correct. >> trump was so much the bat signaller for us like, women, we have to push forward. people laugh at me when i say clear tout room, boys, it's time for us. i don't care if you're a democrat or a republican woman, if you put us in a room to fix and deal with the gun crisis, we would do it in a matter of a few hours. we're so much more courageous when it comes to those kinds of issues that are very personal to us. and i'm hoping that we fill the halls of congress with moms like

me, with people that are so much more focused because we have so much more at stake when we're not in the room. >> and we have so much to offer. you touch on so many points that i work, rashida, every day to express to the know your value community. and i met a woman running for congress yesterday who is stepping up for many of the same reasons. women may be reticent to step up, but with when we do, we are so frustrated and we have waited so long for our moment that we're like, we're doing it, move over. rashid, you're a politician, an attorney, a mother and a wife, you are the child of immigrants. thank you. still ahead, three weeks after the one-on-one meeting between president trump and vladimir putin, the u.s.

announces new sanctions on russia over the poisoning of of a former spy in the uk. "morning joe" will be right back. ♪ this is a story about mail and packages. and it's also a story about people. people who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams they're handing us more than mail they're handing us their business and while we make more e-commerce deliveries

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and lets you control your network with the xfi app. it's the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. you know, willie geist, while we've been talking about 70s acts that haven't gotten their due, we're overlooked one of them. bill murray and his lounge act, having the real words to "star wars" which my kids have been tortured by for 30 years. ♪ star wars nothing by star wars ♪ but you're talking to bill murray this weekend. >> yes, sunday today. we're doing a big two parter because it's bill murray. he doesn't do a lot of interviews. he has a 1-800 number.

he doesn't have a publicist or a manager. you call the 1-800 number. if he wants to call you back, he will. that's coming up on sunday today. >> very cool. so still ahead, president the president's legal team turns down robert mueller's latest proposed terms for an interview. >> we can hear you guys talking, by the way, sam. do you want to share with the rest of the class? >> i said nothing, literally. >> come on. do you want to shaure it with te rest of the class? steve miller rocks the house. >> that's how steve miller is. >> as rudy giuliani explains, the special counsel wants to get the president under oath to trap him into perjury. plus, republican congressman chris collins isn't the only person in trump's orbit with who is entangled in financial trouble. we're going to go down the list and it's a long one. "morning joe" will be right back. fact is, every insurance company hopes you drive safely.

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now that you know the truth... are you in good hands? i have the honor of seconding the nomination of donald j. trump as the next president of the united states of america.

>> that is congressman chris collins, just over two years ago at the republican national convention. today, he joins this list of people charged with or pleading to crimes. trump's second campaign manager, trump's deputy campaign manager, trump's first national security adviser, trump's campaign foreign policy adviser, trump's first campaign manager and now trump's first congressional endorser and member of his transition team. >> hey, i'm no special counsel, but it kind of feels like there's a pattern here and maybe, maybe one of these witch-hunts where you just walk out of your front door and all the witches are just landing in your front lawn. >> right there in the yard. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." i don't know. it seems like a pattern on this thursday, august 9th. we've got joe, willie and me and along with us politics editor for the daily beast sam stein, political writer nick comfosori,

john that here mere of the associated press and author zaneb salbi, former justice department spokes maman and now msnbc analyst matthew miller and now kasie hunt. okay. in the news this morning in an interview last night, president trump's lawyer said special counsel robert mueller will personally have a lot to answer for hours after he rejected mueller's latest effort to get a sit down interview with the president. they had they had made a court offer. trump's attorneys publicly voiced their desire for the probe to end within the next few

weeks and suggested mueller would be violating doc policies if it does not end. we don't have an internal deadline. we are more special dishusly. you've said and i said we want to see this come to chose your soon here. >> yeah. i also think and hope the special counsel is as sensitive as to it as we are, we don't want to run into the november elections. this should be over by september 1st. >> if it isn't over by september, we have a very, very serious violation of the justice department rules. but what giuliani claims would be a serious violation is, in fact, a distortion. as the justice department inspecer general recently wrote that the 60-day rule is not written or described in any department policy or regulation.

adding, it is generalized, unwritten guidance that prosecutors did not indict political candidates or use overt investigative methods in the weeks before an election, not that they terminate investigations. >> and mika, it's important to remember that rudy giuliani, back in the 1990s, was -- i mean, he was whole hog into the investigation of bill clinton. and it was perfectly fine that ken starr conducted an investigation that went on years and years through one election after another after another after another. robert mueller is not going to indict anybody right before an election and that will be consistent with guidelines. but you have -- if you were in pursuit of a couple of dozen russians who you have evidence have violated american democracy, tried to undermine american democracy, you don't end that investigation. because rudy giuliani tells us

to end that investigation. in fact, if you need guidance from rudy giuliani, just go back and on just about every topic see what he said back when republicans were indicting or trying to indict bill clinton. >> giuliani went on to challenge the special counsel's motive for seeking an interview. and suggested mueller will soon be the one under scrutiny. >> we offered him an opportunity to do a form of questioning. he can say yes or no. we can do it. if he doesn't want to do it, he knows the answers to every question that he wants to ask. he's going to ask him, did you tell comey to go easy on flynn? no. why do you want to get him under oath? because you want to trap him into originalry. t perjury. >> he has all the answers.

they're not going to change. the president is not going to change his testimony. so stop the nonsense. you are trying to trap him into perjury because you don't have a case. >> i've never been involved in an investigation on either side. that's more illegitimate than this one that is so obviously more illegitimate and i wonder where is the sense of justice on the part of mueller, on the part of the justice department. the real story is not that this case is going to fizzle. it's that it's going to blow up on them. there's a lot more to what they did that nobody knows about yet. and mueller is going to have a lot to answer for. >> you know, with rudy giuliani going around and his eyes bulging and he's looking disoriented, you look for excuses for america's mayor. for being this wildly off base.

again, we just showed off the top of the show all of the members of the trump administration and the trump campaign that have already been indicted and are also that have already pled guilty, that have already pled guilty. i mean, you, on top of that, have 25 russians. this is an active investigation. now, rudy giuliani says they have nothing. they already have trump's second campaign manager, trump's -- i mean, indicted. trump's national security adviser indicted. and trump's first congressional endorser now indicted.

the man who put his name into nomination for republican nominee, now indicted. and 25 russians where the united states military and the united states intel agencies have said, this is the forensic evidence of vladimir putin, the gru, ex kgb agents trying to undermine american democracy. how does giuliani even -- i mean, how does he even have the nerve to even go on there and say what he just said? >> that's a lot of indictments and plea bargains for an illegitimate investigation. may 10th, the vice president of the united states says i think it's time to wrap it up. rowdy giuliani has said time and time again, put up or shut up.

and he repeated as he did last night that bob mueller doesn't have anything. >> the president's team is now saying that they want it to hurry up and quickly end. i'm always amaze at what the mayor's team will will say on the record. what he said in that interview is that the president's story, if put into testimony, is a lie. because it would put him into

perjury. >> people think i'm joking about it. i'm not if i was president of the united states and all of my lawyers thought i was too stupid or too much of a liar to sit down and talk to robert mueller, i'd fire them. but this is all we have heard consistently from donald trump's lawyers. that mueller will twist his head into circles that he's such a liar. there would be a problem if the editor of the "new york times" called me up and said we can't let nick go on today. my response would be, well, then don't lie. have him tell the truth.

every time giuliani and his lawyers say he's just too stupid or he's not smart enough, they come on and say, you know what? we can't let him on there because he'll perger himself. >> a sit down with a special counsel is no joke and even an innocent person would go into that with some fear and trepidation. if he can learn to tell the truth for two hours, he can get through it without being in perjury. >> this isn't a clear obstruction of justice. you have a lot of construction here.

we need to call it out. >> he sets these arbitrary deadlines and he keeps moving the goal posts trying to outrage republicans or others. it's been effective. the polling on mueller's probe has dropped in recent months. they're the ones who are dragging this on. that's part of this argument here is they're saying this is too long, it's a waste of time, it's a distraction, it's slowing on the president's agenda. >> mueller may push pause here. he doesn't have to wrap it up before september 1st. this could be something that

resumes in november or december and, of course, we saw from james comey, he doesn't have to push pause, either. this is no hard and fast statute on the books that says he can't do this in election season. >> still ahead, there's donald trump and donald trump jr., michael anyone and michael flynn jr. congressman chris collins and his son, cameron. there's a new legal affair under streetmy at this time. we'll talk about it straight ahead on "morning joe." but first, here is bill carin wes a check on the forecast. >> we have 60 large tun tamed fires now in california. still burning in the mendocino complex and the carr fire is about to head into the top ten, too.

it's endless. we're not getting the wet weather or the cooler temperatures. and the temperatures themselves today are soaring. it's going to be 106 in the interior sections of washington state. so today's forecast in areas of the southeast, you'll get some thunderstorms to deal with. we're getting a break in areas of new england after the overnight storms. not too bad in the middle of the country. stray storm around chicago. but look at how hot. boise, 106 today and tomorrow will be even hotter. the possibility of getting up there, about 108 all-time temperatures in boise, 111. so not that far away. and no moisture coming this weekend as we head towards the west. saturday, watch out. another soaking rain coming from the mid-atlantic states. that should linger over the top of us on sunday. the weekend forecast has quickly gotten worse for areas around philly, new york city and southern new england for saturday and sunday. unfortunately i'm all full of bad news today. new york city, enjoy today is

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it's the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. the first member of congress to endorse president trump, chris collins is now charged with lying to investigators on an investment in an australian biocompany. collins was at a congressional picnic at the white house last year when he learned that innate immuno therapy putics received d news on a trial. prosecutors say the congressman franticly attempted to reach his son, cameron, whom he tipped off to the confidential corporate information days before it was made public. they claim cameron collins and

several others used the information to avoid more than $700,000 in losses. when news of the failed drug trial was made public, the shares of the company plummeted. speaking yesterday after being charged, collins who pleaded not guilty refuted the allegations against him. >> the charges that have been levied against me are meritless. and i will mount a vigorous defense in court to clear my name. i look forward to being fully vindicated and exonerated ending any and all questions relating to my affiliation with innate. as i fight to clear my name, i will continue to work hard for the people and constituents of new england and l remain on the ballot running for re-election this november.

>> collins is just the latest to find himself in legal jeopardy, including with his former personal attorney as president, michael cohen, also under investigation by the southern district of new york for tax fraud. cohen simultaneously served the president and had a business to cash in on his connections. last week, the journal reported that a top trump donor agreed the to pay cohen $10 million if he successfully pushed a nuclear project. and then there's sitting and former members of the president's cabinet with questions of financial misdoings. forbes had recently, man, what a report, that comments of wilber ross's businesses have sparked lawsuits, reimbursements and a fine from the s.e.c. tom price was questioned about a favorable purchase of a stock at the time of -- that he was also

at the center of congressman collin's arrest, price was fired amid scandals and his use of private jets. and then there's former epa administrator scott pruitt. talk about the swamp. it's now up to trump's neck. he, of course, intended the white house fourth of july barbecue while under 16 investigations. many of those involving his personal finances. then he was allowed to resign. but there's such a culture of corruption. since trump says he's only good until 11:00 a.m. in the morning, that was a pretty busy 9:30 to 11:00 block he had there doing

some insider trading. but you look, you look at the forbes article, there is just a culture of corruption and, of course, as they always say, the fish rots from the head. yeah. and matt miller, these are just the people around president trump. what about the trump family itself, still profiting in many ways off its hotels. ivanka finally had to shut down her clothing line. but they are still making money. they put things in a trust in a way that does not isolate them from profits to put it mildly. >> i think joe hit the nail on the head when he called it a culture of corruption. democrats have the ability to make this case that there is a culture that starts at the top with donald trump, starts with his family members, kind of pervasive throughout his administration. you could talk about the treasury secretary's flights on government planes, the interior secretary has been under inspector general investigations. now we see it moving over to a member of congress pt and the problem for other members of congress, that isn't to say every member of congress is corrupt. of course not.

but every one of them right now is allowing this to go unchecked. there's no republican chairman, there's no one in a leadership position. there's really no one on the hill who is saying, you know what? we need to get to the bottom of what's happening in this administration and stop it and investigate it and shine some sunlight. so that becomes a political vulnerability for all of them. i think want one of the interesting subplots of this chris collins thing is that he is now the second person to literally have committed a crime on the white house grounds. he made that call while he was standing on the white house grounds. it's the same place where mike flynn, in his white house office, sat down with the fbi and lied to the fbi. you could make a case that the white house compound now has the highest crime rate of any neighborhood in washington. coming up on "morning joe," do as i say, not as i do. that's how you might interpret a heated moment yesterday between the judge and prosecution during paul manafort's criminal trial. matt miller explains that, straight ahead. "morning joe" is coming right back.

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in day seven of the trial of paul man naer fort, an irs agent testified that the former trump campaign chairman had at least

$16 million in unreported income from ukraine. >> wow. >> which manafort allegedly spent between 2010 and 2014 just a few years before he sought an unpaid role leading the president's campaign. there was a tense moment between special counsel prosecutors when the judge discovered a witness had been in the courtroom for other testimony. as "the washington post" described, ellis erupted saying that he typically bars all witnesses, save the case a agent from observing the proceedings. and thought he had done so in this case. u.s. attorney yuso asanye said he believed the transcript would back him up that he had allowed the case expert to remain. >> i don't care what the transcript said.

maybe i made a mistake. don't do it again. >> matt miller, the judge has been butting heads with the prosecution it seems from the beginning. doesn't seem to like the prosecuting attorneys too much. what's going on there? >> i think a little bit of a case of black robitis. judge ellis is known to be tough on the prosecution. i think a number of times he's been out of line here. if you look at him here, it's almost like when your parents would say it doesn't matter what i said, i want you to do this, anyway. sort of admitting that even if he made a mistake, he's blaming the prosecutors on it. you've seen him at times accusing one of the prosecutors of crying and personal terms. i think the ultimate question is what impact it's going to have on the case. if this was a much closer case, i bet the prosecution would be pretty worried, some of which would be worried if it were in front of a jury.

there's such strong evidence on of paul manafort that it's not likely to tip the balance at the end of the day. >> i was surprised when the judge told one of the attorneys to stop crying in the courtroom. he said i'm not crying. and it's just like yesterday where they said, well, wait, but you said he could. just read the transcript. i don't care what's in the transcript. not the sort of stable justice that you want overseeing an important case like this. what's the story? what's his background? >> let me just say something about the crying. that particular prosecutor that he said was crying used to prosecute the mob. he locked up the benado family in new york and had to be under round the clock protection because while he was investigating the benado family they tried to assassinate him. so i doubt very much he was crying in the courtroom because of tough words from the judge. this is a judge that's been on the bench for a long time.

judges, look, they have lifetime terms for a reason, to make them insulated from political pressure. there are down sides that come with the good side and one of the down sides is you see judges with this air began approach in the courtroom. you hear from people that practice in that court that judge ellis is like that in a lot of cases. but he's also a judge that likes to show off a little bit from the press and i think you're seeing some of that here. >> coming up, is seeing believing? the russian bots trailing social media. we'll talk about it next on "morning joe."

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talking about deficit reduction on the floor of the

house, during my spring break and i was watching that on c. span which tells you what a loser i have been for a very long time. >> a membership is expected to continue work on a broad budget outline embracing president bill clinton's economic plan that was unveiled to congress on february 17th, as well as the $16.3 billion fiscal year 1993 supplemental spending bill. >> the american people proved in 1992 that they were ready to hear the truth. >> reducing the federal government, being reform oriented and believing in change is ultimately the answer for the united states of america. >> so i believe that is how you spent your spring break back in 1993? >> '3. those were rocking good times. .and i will say, you move it forward now to 2018, and people should have been listening to tim penny and john kasich back

then. and, of course, we balanced the budget three years in a row after that, but right now, it's pretty remarkable. we've got the largest national debt ever. under donald trump and the republican congress. we've passed the largest spending bill in the history of america under donald trump and the republican congress. biggest pentagon budget ever in the history of the united states. we're spending more now on entitlement programs than we ever have before under this republican congress. more on domestic spending. i mean, every single category that you go through. donald trump and this republican congress, spending more and stealing more from our children and grandchildren than ever before. you know, mika, this is -- these people, if you just look at how they're spending our taxpayer

dollars, they're not only corrupt, but they'res also -- they're not conservative. they're not close to being conservative. they're big spending radicals and they're speeding us up towards insolvency. it's really reckless and irresponsible. >> you wonder who people are trying to protect and exactly why. joining us now, eugene robinson, brett stevens and deputy washington bureau chief at "time" magazinelty ex altman. the latest issue in time includes a piece called the real fake new crisis. bots and propaganda are part of the problem. the bigger issue is your brain. >> you know, brett, speaking of conservatives and republicans, you know, the one thing, we would always fight on the floor

of congress on with whether it's on foreign spending, foreign aid, whether it was trade, with whether it was getting involved in bosnia, whether it was -- when it had to do with taxes. there were always battles. but the one thing that always united conservative and moderate republicans where we were always together was on smaller government. >> right. >> on balanced budgets. on fiscal responsibility. and this radicalism, this spending radicalism that you can see in black and white, that you can see in dollars and cents, that you can see on the national debt clock, it shows just how radical donald trump and paul ryan and mitch mcconnell's congress has come to spending us into debt. >> right. they're unrecognizable as the republican party that i remember and that i was proud to see

my -- to affiliate with when rob a ronald reagan was president. not so subtle white identity politics and blow out deficits and blow out spending. so what's the point? it's the reason why people should be cheering the idea that democrats should take over at least one house of congress, not just for the political hygiene that would represent. but if you're going to have big spenders, let's have big spenders who believe in those purposes of government rather than essentially a hypocritical party mouthing pieties in precisely the opposite way, joe. >> and you have great advice for democrats who are running for office. you're saying forget collusion. just talk about the corruption. this is the most corrupt administration in our lifetime.

if you look just judge them on their first 18 months. one of the biggest problems for democratic candidates would be narrowing down all of the corruption and figuring out what to zam into a 30-second ad because there's so much corruption in there and donald trump, paul ryan, and mitch mcconnell's washington. >> corruption and then the questions of honor and integrity in the white house, the ones that, by the way, george w. bush successfully ran with in 2000 against a much less -- a much less tainted white house in bill clinton. i'm not saying forget collusion because i don't think it's potentially important or revelatory. what i'm talking about is strategy. if robert mueller comes up with the goods, if we discover it's as bad as many of us expect, then the chips will fall where they may. but i sometimes fear that democrats will spend all of their time talking, taking a

gamble in effect that the russia story is going to pay political dividends for them. it may or may not. what really they ought to be focussing on is the fact that you have a president who lies several hundred times a day, give or take an administration in which there's one scandal after another, most recently with wilbur ross with, tom price, scott pruitt, you know, that ought to be front and center in -- on every democratic campaign mat form. >> gene robin sorn. >> yeah. >> brett mentioned the lying. and we write about that all the time. but i don't think we actually pay enough attention to it. think about it. we have a president of the united states who lies at a clip of at the moment 16 or 17 times a day. he tells the american people things that patently are false, that are self-serving and false. we never had that before. we had presidents who, you know, lied here or there and who spun

things this way or that way. we've never had that. it's just an extraordinary situation. and brett is absolutely right. this is certainly the most corruption administration that i can recall and that's with no sort of, you know, not carrying any water for with, you know, nixon and, yes, there were some ethical challenges with the clinton administration and every administration. actually, except the obama administration, there's usually somebody indicted. but this is just incredible and extraordinary. i don't think democrats are going to miss that. at least i hope they don't. >> it's really hard to wrap our head around everything that's going on at this point. alex, let's go to the piece in time, the real fake news crisis. what is it? >> well, there's a dimension that academics and researchers have been noticing that goes beyond politicians spreading

misinformation or bots and controls or bad foreign actors. and that's the fact that we, the readers, are extremely susceptible to false claims spread around the internet. all day long, we use cognitive shortcut toes make decisions to help get us through our day. and those tend to break down when we're confronted with an avalanche of information. so we do things like move too fast, we click on headlines we haven't read. we share links that we've only seen other people's synopsis on. we rely on other people's credibilities. what academics and psychologists say if we want to stop the proliferation of bad information, we need to slow down and engage our critical thinking faculties because we are a big part of the problem. >> alex, what's the reality of that happening? the world is not getting slower, it's going faster every minute of every day. so how do you stop something

that is so pervasive and so becoming built into our brains, which is to say i've seen something before, i believe it to be true or not to take na extra step of confirming what i read or having to take everything online with a grain of salt? >> you make an excellent point. that's why a lot of the folks say it's really a public health crisis. in some effects, what we need you to do is rewire the way that we interact with when we're confronted on the landscape of the internet and all of these tore ends of information. we need to slow down. we need to read more carefully. we need to question the claims that we're seeing, whether they're by politicians who we may agree with, politicians who we don't. even studies that may seem to be tip top officials. so, you know, it's really on us. you know, i think that the -- the russian effort sort of to sew discord and spread false information government officials say is not going to stop, including with the president,

has a predelection for spreading this, this notion that fake news is pervasive. in order to avoid amplifying some of those claims, we have to do our own part. >> and i wonder, brett stevens, how much this really is new to american politics. and how much of it has just been part of our core for a very long time. you go back to the election of 1800, people talk about that being the nastiest race in american history. 1964, the famous book by richard hofstetter, and think about that fact. this is a politico headline from april 22nd, 2011. more than half of democrats believe that george w. bush knew about the 9/11 attacks and that was a story talking about how more than half of republicans believed that barack obama was

born in kenya. and so the question is, you know with, is this just who we have been? the difference is we have reckless public figures that are feeding into this paranoia. >> well, whether he said it or not, the line attributed to p.t.barnum for a long time, there's a sucker born every minute. i think two things are new here. one is the level of civic education has been declining. civics aren't being taught as they should in school so people believe all kinds of things about how government operates. how does a phrase like deep state gain as much currency as it has today, except through a kind of 30 or 40 years of miseducation of the american people? and then that has been weaponized, if you will, by the tools of social media in which

the dissemination of false or truthy news happens at a speed that is simply unbelievable. look, the other issue here is simply this. as the facebooks of the world have proliferated, as more people get their news from social media, the function of editors has diminished. and so, you know, what do editors do? we are a line of defense against, you know, a second pair of eyes saying, hey, that doesn't sound right to me. there's something the matter with that. and now the number of news organizations in which those editors play that core function is getting, unfortunately, smaller and smaller. >> and the reach of those news organizations that do that is less significant in terms of how people get their news. >> the post of the times are doing well. but -- >> exactly. but i mean, we used to be a filter, a big filter.

>> but that's a great point, gene, because think bit. you have the daily news in new york which is always provided an extraordinarily important function of keeping local and state officials honest. mean, b newsroom was wiped out. and you have facebook, which is having trouble figuring out whether alex jones conspiracy theories, same with twitter, about whether that's worth publishing or not. facebook itself, 50% of americans getting their news from facebook. i mean, therein lie also the problem right there. >> yes, that's part of the problem. we could do a whole show on the crisis in local and state level news. and as brett said, "the new york times" and "washington post" are doing fine. national, international reach and everything. but, you know, papers that cover cities and state government are

suffering. and, you know, there's malfeasance going on that's not being reported. >> ask yourself, how did the seth rich story not kill sean hannity's career. and that's -- i think that's some instructive -- >> the reason here is in this "times" story, right, the enemy really is us. what facebook is a mirror. it's the most effective mirror and concentrator of what we already care about and are passionate about. if you look at russian propaganda on facebook, it is mostly real material taken from actual real facebook faces. what they've done is held up the mirror to our own worse anger. what we have here is a hard problem to solve because it's really -- it's rooted in what we as americans want and are passionate about. >> alex altman, thank you so much. last hour, we spoke with rashida talib, poised to become

the first muslim woman elected to congress after her victory on tuesday in michigan. 2018 is set to become a record year for a variety of diverse groups with a record number of women. 185 so far having been nominated to run for the house alone. this november. and women are now the major party nominees for governor in 11 states. as many as 90 muslim-american candidates have ran for statewide or national office this year, the most since september 11th, 2001. and there are a record number of native americans and a record number of women among that group as well running for office in the midterms. our next guest is helping to usher in a rainbow wave with a record number of lgbtq candidates. more than 400 running for office this year. former democratic mayor of houston, aanese parker, joins u now.

thank you very much for being on this morning. tell us why you are running at this point. what's your biggest message? >> all of our candidates are running because they care about their constituents and they're focused on local issues. but they're also very aware that the lgbt community is facing a backlash across the country, particularly in state legislators, where anti-transbills, so-called bathroom bill, are popping up. where so-called religious freedom bills are targeting the lgbt community and they are motivated just as the other communities you mentioned, wanting to serve, but concerned about the direction of our country. >> and talk about this rainbow wave that you're looking at and you're running. we got 400 lgbt candidates running for office this year across the board. what is this inspired by? and is it trump based? >> it's partially trump based

but it's not just that. it is a concern about the direction of the country all across america. while there is a very real fear that the trump administration will roll back a lot of the progress we've made in the lgbt community, the worst of the bills that are targeting us are coming in the statehouses across america, and we have an unprecedented number, as you've said, more than 400 out lgbt candidates running. there are only 559 currently sitting lgbt elected officials. we have a map called the alpha america map. anyone can access it and look it up. 559 currently serving. this is a surge of candidates. many of them reflect that broader wave of women, of candidates of color, of transcandidates. we have a handful of republican candidates, a very tiny handful

of republican candidates. these are people who are values-driven leaders who want to serve their community who happen to be lgbtq. they may be running an anti-trump message but that's not the basis of their campaign. that's a tactic that may work in some districts. >> mayor, it's good to see you this morning. i've thinking about danica rome who won a seat in virginia. a transwoman. the emphasis of her campaign was to clear up congestion and get rid of the traffic on route 28 and she hammered that local message home until she was elected. some people even criticized her for not emphasizing more of the fact that she was a transwoman. so how do you recommend to candidates wanting to work that balance between their identity, how important is that, versus the themes and issues that are important to voters in their districts? >> all politics is local. danica execute perdly on the playbook. and that is to be open and authentic, to allow voters to

know who you are. and what she cared abouts what serving her constituents and that particular issue was the top issue for her constituents. that's what we ask our candidates to run on across america and that's what they're doing. they're running for the same reasons anyone else runs. they want to serve. and you have to match your district. you have to understand your district. >> anise parker, thank you so much for talking about the surge of these candidates running for office, stepping up. we appreciate it. >> you know, mika, we do so much throughout the day, three hours, it's hard to really consolidate the most important few minutes of every day. you know? >> well, i know, because there's so much going on. >> too much. >> before we wrap up today, joe, let's take a quick look back at the day's most important conversation. >> who's your uncool band, and it can't be like black flag. >> i'll stick with dave matthews. >> dave matthews is cool. you have to go with

monkeys or the carpenters. is this along the lines of creed? >> sam likes kiss. >> sam stein, he told me before the show, he still has a poster of hanson up. i said the carpenters. they rock -- >> anyone like pink floyd? >> yes, we all like pink floyd. >> and the dead? >> operation social distortion. >> hall and oats? >> mick said the wiggles. >> straight up def leppard guy. >> i like andy gibb and the bee gees. >> i did not, for some reason, like steely dan when i was in high school and college. i like them now. >> are the goo goo dolls uncool? >> i was more of a punk rock guy than goo goo dolls. huey lewis has to be top of the list. abba has made an appearance, partridge family. >> maybe i'm not cool. i didn't know huey lewis wasn't cool. >> i used to be with it but then

they changed what it was. now what i'm with isn't it and what's it seems weird and scary to me. it will happen to you. >> oh, my gosh. oh, my gosh. joe. really took things off the tracks. >> ten years ago, rolling stone put out a list of the top 25 guilty pleasure bands. ready for the top five? number five is chicago. number four is abba. number three is journey. number two is elo. and the number one guilty pleasure band according to rolling stone magazine, rush, number one on the list. >> oh. rush. >> pretty good choice. don't stop believing. >> what happened to van halen? are they a guilty pleasure or just a pleasure? >> just a pleasure, turns out. >> straight-up pleasure. >> no one says duran duran, right, because that's too guilty? >> no, no. >> we never admit that publicly. >> joe, you cannot forget the

reason kasie d.c. exists and that would be ac/dc. >> how about enya? i kind of like enya. >> way too cool for this discussion. mika, you mentioned bee gees. now, i hope you're referring to disco-era bee gees because that's a guilty pleasure of mine. >> andy gibb had an album -- >> -- the c-span soundtrack. >> i do like that. i do love that. >> and that soothing voice, mika, that soothing voice. >> well, shadow dancing. there's nothing better. >> well, actually -- yes, there is a hell of a lot better. we don't have time to go through that. by the way, i didn't know that rolling stone -- i didn't know that elo was a guilty pleasure. another great band. chicago. the eagles. >> let's just end it.

>> please. >> chris jansing picks up the coverage right now and saves us from oufrselves. >> i'm trying to wrap my head around eugene robinson and the bee gees. hi there, i'm chris jansing, in for stephanie ruhle. this morning, conversation stopper. president trump's legal question rejects robert mueller' proposal for an interview, saying any questions about obstruction should be off limits. >> he knows the answers to every question he wants to ask. he wants to trap him into perjury. we're not going to let you. >> stock and awe. congressman chris collins defiant after being arrested on charges of insider trading. calling the accusations meritless. but check out this newly uncovered video of collins glued to his phone at the white house nonetheless, at the exact moment prosecutors al he was illegally sharing inside information. and tale of the tape. shopping a new tell all book. four-time f