trump calling the most senior african-american woman on the white house staff a dog. yep, a dog. the president clearly rattled about omarosa's book tour tweeting -- >> omarosa responded this afternoon with our own katy tur. >> if he would say that publicly, what would he say privately? he has no respect for women and african-americans, as evidence instructing the chief of staff to threaten me saying things could get ugly for me and there would be damage to my reputation. he's unfit to be in this office and to serve as the president of the united states. >> omarosa's new tell-all revealing more of the dirty underbelly of the trump white house, and his treatment of women and people of color. >> one of the things i talk about that just raised such

great concern for me was his attacks on the widow of the soldier who died in niger, as well as congresswoman wilson, when he attacked her and general kelly got in on the act, they were tag teaming by attacking these african-american women. who would attack a woman who just lost her husband on the front line of serving for this country? that's exactly it. he's not in his right mind. he'smentally impaired. i saw where he grabbed you and he kissed you without you welcoming that. he did that very often with women. he's very physical. he would grab women, kiss them unsolicited any time, any day. >> eugene robinson tweeting this -- >> so it's fitting when repeatedly pressed today by our own kristen welker, the president's press secretary said she couldn't guarantee we won't

ever hear a recording of the president using the "n" word, a recording omarosa said she heard herself. joining me now are my guests. okay. eugene robinson, your words hit me the hardest today. please elaborate on your thought, the language of white supremacy, that's what we got from the president's twitter feed this morning? >> that's exactly right. that's what it is. i'm sure you could find that kind of language on a white supremacist website. look how many more examples do we need? how much more proof do we need of donald trump's racial views? we see it time and time and time again. and it's ridiculous to look away from it.

you know what? it's not a defense to say, well, he calls all women dogs. that doesn't make it better, okay? that makes it worse. and this is -- and we're talking about the president of the united states. that's what gets me, nicolle. you served in the white house. this is the west wing of the white house. this is the presidency of the united states. and this is the sort of person and the sort of people he has around him who now occupy what i always thought of as a very special place in our society. it's depressing. it's amazing, and it's just a continuing outrage. >> i saw you nodding. i want to get your reaction, but i want you to answer eugene's question, how much more is it going to take? why isn't everyone gutted by the fact that the white house secretary can't take the podium and say i swear to god you'll never hear the "n" word come out of this man's mouth? you know why? she knows it probably has. >> i any that's extraordinary.

when i saw that unbelievable tweet with the president saying all those derogatory things about an american, not a terrorist, not someone who has attacked this country but someone who worked for him, it seemed to be that his approach was just to say such vile things out in the open, that when whatever revelations that she may have of him speaking on tape come out, they don't seem so bad, because we've seen them -- we have seen him on twitter saying such vile twing things t directly, that's the same approach from sarah huckabee sanders, saying the president says nasty things, nasty, her words, to everyone. he's an equal opportunity insulter, somehow to perhaps buffer the blow when these tapes come out. it's extraordinary that he's using the, i don't know, the jerk defense ahead of all of this, that this is the approach that the white house is taking to defend the behavior of the

president. >> joyce, we talk a lot about the original sins in the russia investigation. but i want to ask you to switch gears and talk about the original sins and sort of the desensitizing of the trump base. the two original sins seem to be his reflex from misogyny and racist comments. it seems like his attack on omarosa, two i have to admit i don't know a lot about. i got fired from "the view" for good reason, but all the attacks she listed that the fight with the widow of la david johnson, an african-american woman who lost her husband in niger, the fight with the khan family, a gold star family that lost his life serving this country. all of the scandals, especially the ones that endured day after day after day, almost all of them have their roots, the roy moore, the president's unwillingness to believe any of the women accusing roy moore of sexual assault and really pedophilia. all of his political scandals have their roots in this reflex

towards misogyny and racism. where do you think we are if we've become desensitized to any of that? >> trump always has to have an enemy. i'm rereading george orwell's "1984," the leader has to have an enemy, but it doesn't matter who. trump always has to have an enemy to deflect to. but all too often, virtually all the time it's someone from a community of color, someone that is a woman. so i think that we need to reflect on the fact that whether we as a society have come to accept that as a norm. because that's the dangerous point moving forward. if we're willing to so devalue the oval office, that when we hear the president call a woman of color a dog, that same president who has only glowing words for vladamir putin or even for kim jong-un, then we're

really at risk as a society of rolling back many of the gains we've been able to fight hard to make. >> let me ask you a serious question -- >> i have a lot of serious things to say. >> i want to hear it. and at the end of your serious things, i want you to answer this question for me. i'm done asking where the bottom there. >> we're not at the bottom yet. in a psychotic fevered dream, i could imagine things lower this, so if i can imagine it, we'll go there in this white house. >> where are we that he still has defenders on fox news, in congress? we found one tweet from a republican that said he had a problem with this. >> if people are willing to defend him for charlottesville, you make the list of things -- >> that's relativity. this is abhorrent behavior, full stop. >> he's done horrific -- on a scale, he went long ago went over the line, that any decent person would not be able to defend him.

so those people have decided that they will not be moral or decent people. they decided they're not going to defend him no matter what. they've already decided there is no bottom for them. they're just going to stick with them. first of all, the reason you were fired from "the view" is not because you didn't know who omarosa was, it was because the universe knew we needed you here. >> i love you. >> the second thing i'll say is this tweet. our other panelist has spoken to this. again, not a news flash. how many times have i been on this show and we have to keep saying over and over again. he's a racist, we know he is. >> you can't stop saying either. >> i'm saying it again. the tweet's kind of incredible. it begins with, when you give a crazed, crying low-life a break and give her a job in the white house. has there ever been a president before whose attitude was, there's a crazed, crying low life -- >> keep talking. we've got to see eugene's face.

>> here's what the president should do as president of the united states. what i should do is take a crazed, lying low life and give her a job in the white house. that's what he says he did because he was "giving her a break." the reason he gave her a job in the white house, the reason he liked her until the moment general kelly fired her, he said yesterday that he kept her because she kept saying such great things about him. he said that twice on twitter. as long as she was saying nice things about him, he was willing to tolerate what he claims was her crazed, low-life behavior, which i don't think is the right way for a president to run things. one last thing -- the president is a dog hater, right? and -- >> we know that, because -- [ overlapping speakers ] >> the dog thing, and this is not to in any way mitigate or deminish the notion that donald trump is a racist. he's a stone racist, okay? but he also hates dogs.

so he over and over uses this epita epitaph. he used this over and over during the campaign. he doesn't like dogs. the last thing is this -- the reason that sarah huckabee sanders would not say that she wouldn't hear the tape, is because she's been paying attention the last 24 hours. she's doing what smart people do when they don't know the truth, she's hedging. she walked this mark burnett thing, mark burnett says there's no tape. i will not believe a single word of that tweet until mark burnett puts a statement out and says i had that conversation with donald trump. on the basis of everything we know about donald trump's lying, that tweet alleging this conversation with mark burnett, there's no basis which to believe it's true and nip more than a figment of president trump's imagination. >> that's an important point. how many times has sarah huckabee sanders hedged like

that on something that's a fairly straightforward answer. on many numerous occasions, so many times that we couldn't even -- we would take up way too long with the show, she's had no problem just stating absolute nonsense. >> lying. >> outright lying. so the fact that she wants to hedge on that shows that she probably thinks there's a high degree of probability that donald trump has indeed said that word, and probably said it on multiple instances on tape. >> eugene, i feel like we've wasted too many days of this omarosa cycle, questioning her credibility. here's the bottom line -- she was in this white house. donald trump put her in the white house, and she has recordings. most of what she's written, she's backed one a recording. i have no idea. i didn't know who she was until she was in the trump whoulite house. let me ask you about the concept of how disorienting all these people are. i think we grade these witnesses to trump's conduct on the curve

that she shouldn't. she was there, she heard him, saw him, she recorded him, she taped him, she's played the recordings. we should stop taking away from her credibility, because of who she was. this is who trump is, too. >> well, yeah. i mean, the reason there are questions about her credibility is that she lied to us for many months, for years. and when she was on the trump train, right? when -- i remember her vigorously defending him after charlottesville. i remember that interview she gave to pbs, i think, right around the time of the inauguration when she said people were going to have to bow down to donald trump. so look, i sat down yesterday to write a column about it. and my view, as i sat down was, what she has on tape, you know, that you can't argue with. she's got the goods. and i didn't even deal with his use of racial epitaphs, because

at that point all we had was her word about that. now we have the tape of her discussing that with other campaign aides and, so, yeah, she apparently has the goods. as long as she has the goods, she ought to have the credibility. just one broader thing i would say, if you're going to have a civilized society, in present day america i don't know if you do, but if we want to have one, and in a big, complicated, diverse country, people -- there's a certain restraint that people have to use in their dealings with each other. it's called like being polite and civilized and considerate. and all the things that you learn in kindergarten and sunday school and that president trump didn't learn. and you know, the worst thing, one of the worst things that could happen out of this trump

aberration, even when he's dwgo and we get back to normal, we have forgotten that that's a reason for civilization, there's a reason for being polite to people, even people you don't like, because that way we can get along. and that way we can make progress and we can do great things. but not if we always give voice to our deepest and darkest and craziest urges. >> try raising a 6-year-old in these times. let me play the tape you just referenced. here's the tape you talked about, where they seem to acknowledge and have baked in the cake a belief that donald trump did, indeed, use the "information" word. here are the enablers trying to deal with that.

>> that's all of his press advisers trying to deal with the crisis of this tape coming out, trying to figure out how to spin it and coming to the conclusion that they should just acknowledge he said it. no doubt in their minds. >> look, by the time we got to the time of this tape was os ste tensably made -- ostensibly made, again, there's no one on the campaign, whether they thought he was genuinely a racist or whether they thought he was a political racist, she claims that she thought he said to her, the president, the

current president said to her the reason he embraced the birther theory was to make political inroads. they all knew the kind of things, they knew the kinds of things that we knew from the howard stern tapes that were already out at that point, that he had said, repulsive, disgusting things about women. all of them had every reason to think whatever the worst thing was anybody thought donald trump said on tape, including the access hollywood tape, they thought thought there was a worse, that there was -- >> he said there are a lot of trump states. >> one last thing about sarah sanders, which i love, i want to -- for anyone who missed the briefing today, she said one incredible thing, which to argue that donald trump could not be a racist basically because bill and hillary clinton had gone to his wedding. >> she said that?

>> she did say that. >> it's amazing, because one of the realities of being a white person in america is that we have all gone to the weddings of racists. that's just the reality. there are hidden racists everywhere. we've been to weddings where someone's aunt or uncle, someone in that room is a racist. the second thing is -- doesn't he want to lock her up? [ overlapping speakers ] bill and hillary clinton should be locked in jail forever because they're the worst scum of the earth. but today when we're trying to prove he's not a racist, he went to the wedding. >> we have to sneak in a break. after the break, omarosa on the mueller investigation. the president's former adviser confirms that she's met with the special counsel's office. this after accusing the president's press and communications staff of sending the president out to lie. also ahead, with the president's morning twitter try aid reveals about his inner

angst about the multiple investigations in his campaign, white house, and inner circle. don't go anywhere. we'll be right back. in the u.s. it's america's most popular street name. but allstate agents know that's where the similarity stops. if you're on park street in reno, nevada, the high winds of the washoe zephyr could damage your siding. and that's very different than living on park ave in sheboygan, wisconsin, where ice dams could cause water damage. but no matter what park you live on, one of 10,000 local allstate agents knows yours. now that you know the truth, are you in good hands? it was always our singular focus, a distinct determination. to do whatever it takes, use every possible resource.

to fight cancer. and never lose sight of the patients we're fighting for. our cancer treatment specialists share the same vision. experts from all over the world, working closely together to deliver truly personalized cancer care. specialists focused on treating cancer. using advanced technologies. and more precise treatments than before. working as hard as we can- doing all that we can- for everyone who walks through our doors. this is cancer treatment centers of america. and these are the specialists we're proud to call our own. treating cancer isn't one thing we do. it's the only thing we do. expert medicine works here. learn more at cancercenter.com cancer treatment centers of america. appointments available now.

this wi-fi is fast. i know! i know! i know! i know! when did brian move back in? brian's back? he doesn't get my room. he's only going to be here for like a week. like a month, tops. oh boy. wi-fi fast enough for the whole family is simple, easy, awesome. in many cultures, young men would

stay with their families until their 40's. have you been interviewed by the special counsel? >> i have. >> you said you have more tapes that robert mueller could be interested in. what sort of tapes? >> if he calls me, i certainly will participate with anything that he needs. i'll provide him with what he needs. but that's the extent i can talk about. >> you said he's interested. can you give us a little more? >> i will just say this, there's a lot of corruption that went on both in the campaign and in the

white house. and i'm going to blow the whistle on all of it. >> fighting words. that was former trump white house adviser omarosa on whether she's been before the mueller investigators. turns out she has. and based on her incriminations of the white house staff and penchant for secretly recording her colleagues and the president, she said trump had advanced knowledge of the hacked e-mails of the clinton campaign. >> you were instructed to bring up the e-mails at every point you could at the end of the 2016 campaign, hillary clinton's e-mails. >> yes. >> did donald trump know about the e-mails before they came out? >> absolutely. >> he knew what was coming out before wikileaks released them? >> yes. >> you're saying donald trump had a back channel. >> i didn't say that, you did. i am going to expos the corruption that went on in the corruption and the white house. i'm going to continue to blow the whistle. >> how worried are staffers about this mueller investigation? >> they should be very worried.

>> are they worried? >> absolutely. they have been hiding things from the american people and being very dishonest. >> my friend, katy tur doing a killer job there. joyce, let me start with you. what did you hear in that, that might be of interest to robert mueller? >> if she can prove it, then mueller and his team will be all ears. if she can't prove it, then it's just more hearsay. >> kimberly atkins, let me ask you about this idea that people in the white house had sort of casual knowledge and hearsay knowledge of what went on, both on the campaign in terms of the chain of control or the knowledge ahead of time about the hacked e-mails. >> yeah, i mean, i think it's an extraordinary claim. i agree with joyce that you need some sort of evidence to back it up if that does exist, that could be potentially explosive. i think the way that omarosa talked about it is also interesting. it seems that she's preparing

for this legal battle that she's about to engage in with the campaign, who has filed an arbitration claim to -- over this book and saying that they had an nda with her. by saying that she essentially is a whistleblower. she kept using that term, that seems to be the defense that she's going to mount against it. so i think these are both areas to watch here, as this legal fight moves forward. in terms of robert mueller, obviously he's going to want receipts to back up anything that any testimony that anybody gives with respect to this -- with this claim. so if that exists, robert mueller already has it. >> the idea too, this campaign was so small, that one thing people have to understand about campaigns, everybody knows everything. this campaign was one, not normal, and two, not a normal size. so i wouldn't put her outside of the realm of possible people who would have known. >> here's the two things i would

say, joyce was fantastically concise, but you need to unpack it. thank god for joyce. the reality is, proof is a high standard, right? so there are a couple of things. it doesn't mean that she's not a potential witness. she seemed to suggest last night she's already been interviewed by mueller once and now she's offered to be interviewed again. she's home run been there, so mueller may know what she knows already. the second thing is, i covered the trump carefully in 2016. you're right, it was an abnormal campaign, it was also small. i don't think omarosa was near the inner circle of the campaign. so the notion that she would have had direct evidence of any coordination, collusion, conspiracy, call me skeptical. however, she's really good friends with members of the trump family. so she talked to eric trump's wife, don trump, jr.'s wife. >> and that's who tried to hire her. >> she's talking to other people

in the trump orbit. does she have valuable hearsay evidence from one of the family members that would not necessarily be conclusive in a court of law but could provide an important lead to the mueller investigatio investigation? that i'm less skeptical of and that it happened on things she heard from various sources. whether she has concrete evidence like an e-mail trail, probably not. but she might have heard stuff. >> elise, we worked in the white house. this idea that they were there and somehow operating under the belief that they had to adhere to ndas is asinine to me. we had to adhere to the white house -- office of the president, who is the records control. how does this culture of ndas clash with the culture of sort of official white house records? >> it's clearly unenforceable. >> even the white house counsel has said that. >> i remember getting briefings about classified information and about how anything that you are

going to write in a book or article, you would have to go through the clearance process. classified information is one ball game. this is a whole other ball game, and certainly considering that so many individuals from every administration end up writing books like this, i don't see where she has a problem like this. but yes, going back to official records, all of those e-mails are going to be fully available to the public in due time. so we will see how some of that plays out. but for now, there's no way she should be silent. i've been impressed how calculating she's been throughout this entire time. she recorded people because she knew no one would believe her. so she would have evidence. so she was clearly planning, which makes me think she's enough of an operator to get to the bottom and find out as much information as she could, so that she had leverage. >> let me do one more thing. >> do you know if she had a security clearance? >> she could have had for the job she had. i feel like we've done justice to the blatant racism, but his

disparagement of women. let me show you a highlight reel. >> you called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals. your twitter account -- >> only rosie o'donnell. >> one of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest. he loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them. and he called this woman ms. piggy. then he called her ms. housekeeping, because she was latina. >> you can see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. >> yes, she is a low iq individual, maxine waters. i said it the other day. i mean, honestly, she's somewhere in the mid 60s i believe. >> i'm automatically attracted to beautiful women. it's like a magnet. when you're a star, they let you do it, you can do anything.

grab them by the [ bleep ]. you can do anything. >> you once told a contestant on "celebrity apprentice" it would be a pretty picture seeing her on her knees. >> i think the problem this country has is being politically correct. >> i asked this question before, as a woman i worked at the highest levels at the white house, how does kellyanne conway and sarah huckabee sanders stay silent and not break with the president and his calling a woman a dog? how do the senior women in the cabinet, the women that get a paycheck from the american taxpayers stay silent on a day like today? >> they value power over decency. >> what power do you have if you work for a man that says those things about a woman in no power. >> they have to live with themselves. this is the legacy that they're leaving to their children, to their grandchildren. a legacy of enabling a man to tear down some of the important work that had been done in this

country with race relations and with women in the workplace. and that just -- every time i hear his words again, it gives me the chills. and today, when i saw omarosa doing that interview, i had a little bit of deja vu seeing her and some of the way she played with words and the way she's talking on president trump, and so many trump supporters i heard say he wasn't talking about megyn kelly and the bleeding, that's just somebody in the media making something gross out of that. but today she talked about how donald trump, i'm not going to say they were me too incidents, but he did grab and kiss women without their permission. >> joyce, what do the men and women who work in the trump white house say to their daughters and sons? >> i have no idea how they look at themselves in the mirror at this point. trump and his tweets attacks

nellie orr. he attacks the wife of andy mccabe, the former fbi director. and it's as though he's saying women can't work in the same areas as their husbands, because they create a conflict of interest. so professional women in america sit down, stay at home if you don't want to get in the way of your husband's job. we're not talking about that yet. i find those comments to be deeply offensive. but this president's misogyny is so on view front and center that we haven't fully unpacked what it means for women in our society. >> kimberly atkins, last word. >> i mean, i free with joyce. that reel you played, you left out "nasty woman." we've seen time and time after time the president use more vitriol when he speaks of women, particularly women of color. his own words speak for themselves. and it's the silence of leaders from his party. he's the top elected republican.

i saw a tweet from senator jeff flake. the silence from others in this party is deafening. >> deafening indeed. thank you so much for spending some time with us. after the break, donald trump lets it rip on twitter this morning, assailing his favorite targets, the mueller investigation, the fbi, and jeff sessions. doug, doug!

douglas! we're running dangerously low on beans. people love your beans, doug. they love 'em. doooooooooug! you want to go sell some tacos? progressive knows small business makes big demands. doug, where do we get a replacement chili pepper bulb? so we'll design the insurance solution that fits your business. it's a very niche bulb. it's a specialty bulb.

but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life.

i have threatened before and i'm going to threaten again. the president is back from vacation and a look at hit twitter account leaves us with the impression that he's nervous. >> but lurking deeply still for

president trump, postcards from the deep. a trio of threats inching slowly, ever closer in the form of robert mueller, michael cohen and paul manafort. feeling the heat perhaps, the president reupping his attacks on his sitting attorney general with this tweet -- >> if we had a real attorney general this witch hunt would have never been started. looking at the wrong people. let's start with you. the attacks on sessions are one of the weirdest things that happens on a regular base necessary this white house. >> what's interesting is, especially in the larger theme of today's tweet storm, you could end every one with i don't know why i hired this person to begin with. he has it in his power to fire them. what he doesn't seem to understand, for as animated as he gets here, it magnifies the weakness he has by not acting, by hiring the not best people

obviously. and look, robert mueller, he didn't hire robert mueller, but he hired rod rosenstein. it goes on and on and on. so that is -- it's not even the backdrop to everything. it's the front drop to everything. is there such thing as a front drop? >> there is now. >> which is the lack of agency that president trump possesses when it comes to having any say over who serves in his administration. and it was the same thing with omarosa when she was told -- when she told him she was fired, he said i didn't know about that. i didn't approve that. and it's like, okay, you're that out of the loop when it comes to your senior staff? not only did he give omarosa a job at the white house, he made her a top staffer, a commissioned officer with the full privileges that bestows upon one -- >> the omarosa and jeff sessions thing are identical. he liked jeff sessions when jeff sessions was saying nice things about him, just like omarosa.

all of a sudden -- [ overlapping speakers ] >> joyce, let me ask you a serious question. save us, please. the idea that -- i understand -- i am disgusted but i understand where he attacks jim comey. i don't understand why he attacks jeff session. if we know that the obstruction of justice inquiry includes his efforts to get jeff sessions to unrecuse, that he wanted someone at the justice department to protect him. protect him from what? why can't -- why are the lawyers so weak and powerless that they can't simply say, you can attack everybody, just leave off of jeff sessions, because you're under investigation. you may actually be a subject or a target of the obstruction of

justice investigation because of your threats to fire jeff sessions. >> sure. you know, trump apparently has no impulse control here. i feel certain that his lawyers have warned him on repeated occasions against discussing anything to do with his attorney general publicly. apparently, though, he just can't help himself. and the irony is that sessions -- and look, i think i need to say it, and i never thought these words would come out of my mouth but i agree with trump, that sessions is not a real attorney general and i look forward to getting back to the days when we can discuss criminal justice and civil rights where sessions is failing as an attorney general. but what he's doing remarkably well is he's going ahead and putting into play trump's agenda, whether it's immigration, criminal justice, and he's doing it almost emaculately, and with very little attention and hasn't drawn the negative attention that some of trump's other

cabinet secretaries have drawn. but he's the one trump is attacking and it's because trump is vulnerable on this investigation, he's always been worried about it and still is. >> i heard last wednesday before he sent out his attack on sessions or his desire, his request that sessions end the probe, that he was talking to friends, musing about firing him as recently as last wednesday. if he fired him now, what does that look like to the investigators? >> you know, i would like to think that firing jeff sessions is a line that this president cannot cross. one would hope that the folks up on the hill would finally regrow their backbones and stand up and say you can't fire this man who has had the decency and the legal accountability to recuse on an investigation where he had a clear conflict. you can't fire him over that. and that's clearly the only reason that trump would be firing him. to investigators, it adds a wholeal layer of

obstruction of justice. right now maybe they're looking at conspiracy to obstruct justice, and perhaps more efforts that have been more or less successful. but if you fire the sitting attorney and replace him with your own pick who can then take charge of that investigation, you've got a very strongly, completed act of obstruction of justice. i don't think the president can afford to go there. >> there's a couple of reality at play. we've discussed this before. whrn whether or not the president is right in this analysis, there are two people he can fire. jeff sessions, and for some reason he thinks the cost would be too high. we've had a debate whether republicans would do anything or not. but the president thinks there would be a cost to that. could he get another attorney general to the senate? has mitch mcconnell told him that he can't get a hand picked attorney general through the sena senate. the other person he could fire is rod rosenstein. but, again, the president, for

whatever reason, through whatever counsel or intuition, and maybe right or wrong, but he's decided those two guys, who he has fully within his power to fire, today, tomorrow, he's not going to fire them. so instead, he rails about them on twitter because he's engaged in a political campaign to discredit them. that may change two weeks from now, right before the mueller report comes out, he may decide that the thing is going to be so it will cli catastrophic for him, that he will fire them both. so far what he's done is trained all his rhetorical guns on them, but not fired them both and do a total reset on this entire investigation. >> gene, it's bizarre to hear democrats defend jeff sessions as they do sometimes. i'm old enough to remember when jeff sessions was viewed as a right wing nut. so it's weird to hear democrats

defending him. >> yeah, he is still a right wing nut and he is carrying out the trump agenda on criminal justice and civil rights or really his own agenda i think, as well, on criminal justice and civil rights to the debtmetrimef the country. but yeah, i almost find myself saying bully for jeff sessions. that's not where i usually am. i wonder if at some point years from now or months from now, days from now, we'll learn that the reason he hasn't fired sessions or rosenstein is that john kelly won't do it for him. he doesn't fire anybody himself. he just kind of has it happen or haske kelly do it or whatever. it may be that he's getting such pushback from kelly and others in the white house that they just won't do it for him. >> i would say that it's

probably mitch mcconnell, paul ryan level. we don't off talk about them as being the backbone keeping president trump from doing something. it's not just the intuition of the president that this is something he couldn't do strategically. i think that in so much as a leader of the senate and house can threaten a president with some kind of ramification -- charles grassley said we wouldn't be able to confirm. >> mcconnell delivered that message with respect to sessi sessions. he said, you can't do this. again, who knows what that mean? but i think you reported that a couple of times. >> jeff sessions comes from the senate also. i don't know if mcconnell has had that conversation with the president in the last six months. >> these new, sort of alliances are very much sort of the post partisanship we never thought we would want or see.

it's anyone that could be a guard rail. i just remember it's like imprinted in my brain that elizabeth warren came on this network and defended jeff sessions. it's like the enemy of my enemy is my friend. >> i wouldn't call this bipartisan. >> post partisan. >> look, it's self-interest. the whole driving force of washington and what we're talking about is self-perpetuation and tribalism. these are very strong forces in washington. and i think in this very, very narrow and significant way, jeff sessions has acted in a way that i think most people on both sides would say is honorable. >> just to his point, the thing that he wrote about in that book, it's a town full of clubs and the most ex-chew saclusive the united states senate and they tend to stick together. >> eugene, thank you for spending so much time with us. >> happy to be here. after the break, the defense

rests in paul manafort's trial without calling a single witness. ♪ introducing e*trade personalized investments professionally managed portfolios customized to help meet your financial goals. you'll know what you're invested in and how it's performing. so you can spend more time floating about on your inflatable swan. [ding]

where people go to learn about their medicare options before they're on medicare. come on in. you're turning 65 soon? yep. and you're retiring at 67? that's the plan! it's also a great time to learn about an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan,

insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. here's why...medicare part b doesn't pay for everything. this part is up to you. a medicare supplement plan helps pay for some of what medicare doesn't. call unitedhealthcare insurance company today to request this free decision guide. and learn about the only medicare supplement plans endorsed by aarp. selected for meeting their high standards of quality and service. this type of plan lets you say "yes" to any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. do you accept medicare patients? i sure do! so call unitedhealthcare today and ask for your free decision guide. oh, and happy birthday... or retirement... in advance. where we're changing withs? contemporary make-overs. then, use the ultimate power handshake, the upper hander with a double palm grab. who has the upper hand now? start winning today. book now at lq.com.

and that's that. paul manafort's defense team rested its case today without calling a single witness. donald trump's former campaign chairman is facing tax evasion, bank fraud and money laundering charges. closing arguments are tomorrow. then the jury gets the case. nbc's national security and justice reporter julie ainsley joins us from outside the courthouse in virginia. bring us up to date, julia. >> reporter: so nicolle, right now the defense and the prosecution have given the judge in this case the instructions that they want to use, what they want the jury to have when they go in to decide this. the counts, fraud, money laundering, tax evasion. there was an awkward moment where the prosecution said that they wanted more language that

would limit how the judge interprets how the judge has weighed in, in this case. we know he's been sharing his opinion a lot, asking his own questions of the witnesses. they wanted to make sure that the jury knew those were the opinions they wanted extra language. the judge said do you think i've been interjecting and entering my opinion? someone from the prosecution stood up and said yes. he's going to put in a little more language that will allow the jury to make sure they know those are his opinions. tomorrow is where the real action is, the closing arguments. we do that under a little bit of a cloud. there was over a two-hour period today where the public was not allowed inside the courtroom because they had sealed arguments. we believe that has something to do with the jury. i asked kevin downing if there was an issue with the jury in

this trial. he looked at me, kept his silence and kept going. there may be an issue here. if there is the defense could be pushing for a mistrial. >> joyce, are you still with us? >> i am. >> this doesn't sound like normal course of business stuff. what could we possibly be witnessing that julia is reporting? >> so as julia points out these hearings took place in a sealed format. so we're speculating. there has been an ongoing course and really i would say a crush of conversation between the judge and prosecutors since last friday that led courthouse observers to speculate this jury may in some way be tainted. that could be a very limited problem where the judge could clear it up by talking to the juror who was ex poeposed perhao outside material. if the judge is comfortable with

the juror's response then everything goes on. if it's more serious, the judge could replace the tainted juror with an alternate. the real problem is if the entire jury has been exposed to that. then the defense would likely file a motion for a mistrial and the important job for the judge in that case would be to consider whether the outcome could be tainted on appeal or if there should be a mistrial. >> joining the table today the reverend al sharpton, president of the national action network, i tracked you down and asked you to join us because the day's events have taken a sinister turn. we talked about omarosa, but it

seemed to hit a new low. i wanted your thoughts. >> i think that even i did not think a sitting president, even donald trump, would refer to a woman as a dog and then to see the white house say they could not deny that possibility, that he used the n word. you have major corporate ceos that have had to leave their jobs because they used the n word. i remember -- all of us condemned the n word. when this campaign started, many were attacked by rappers. i remember sitting in sony movie studios watching a ceo resign because of racial language. now we're told the president of the united states cannot emphatically deny the use of the term on the day that he also

calls this woman, who he said himself spoke nicely of him, calls her a dog. i mean, i don't think the presidency is being, in my opinion, being disgraced by these actions. >> you can't separate the one-year anniversary of charlottesville from the fact that black women are the largest group that didn't support the president and they trigger him the most violently. >> maxine waters. >> frederica wilson. >> on and on and on. he has not called putin a dog. >> he's not called him a thug, an enemy. >> he's not called him much of anything. even kim jong-un was only rocketman. we've not seem him this vicious

to enemies of the united states. >> here's the incredible thing -- >> this is as president. the n word may have preceded that. >> this is an incredible thing, he sends the tweet calling the african american woman a dog in the same breath that he's trying to claim he never used the n word on this tape. the moment when you're trying to say i'm not a racist, but that black woman is a dog. >> right, but how do you believe -- >> there's some weird psychological thing going on. he's giving evidence of the thing he's trying to deny within a few minutes of the tweet storm. i'll say to you, one thing about al sharpton who is not a perfect person, but was right about the central park five. the day that donald trump -- we go back to the "access hollywood" tape. he was making news by saying the

central park five were guilty despite dna evidence saying they were not guilty. that's all you need to know that donald trump is a racist. >> you've got to remember even after dna cleared them he said they should not get a settlement. they're still guilty. he's never wrong. anyone in this country that can believe that someone can call a woman, particularly a black woman, a dog and don't believe he could use the n word needs to have a moment of reflection. >> we have to sneak in one more break. don't go anywhere.

it's pretty amazing out there. the world is full of more possibilities than ever before. and american express has your back every step of the way- whether it's the comfort of knowing help is just a call away with global assist. or getting financing to fund your business. no one has your back like american express. so where ever you go. we're right there with you. the powerful backing of american express. don't do business without it. don't live life without it. stop fearing your alarm clock... with new*! zzzquil pure zzzs. a drug-free blend of botanicals with melatonin ...that supports your natural sleep cycle... ...so you can seize the morning. new! zzzquil pure zzzs.

what my 6-year-old asks me every day, what happens next? >> does he ask you that? that's a great question. >> where do we go from here? >> this is where we go from here -- i'll tell you where we go. my book comes out in two weeks. >> oh god. you're fired. >> are we on the air? >> yes we're on tv. >> what comes after is -- what's deafening about this is all the silence. there's a lot of silence by the republican house. certainly the woodward book, we'll hear from many others who will speak. >> my thanks to you all. katie is in for chuck. katie, amazing interview with omarosa. >> thank you. she claims the president calls his