>> gina, thanks for joining me. gina mccarthy, a former epa administrator. i'm ali velshi. i'll see you back here at 3:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern. now time for "andrea mitchell reports." >> right now, the truth is out there. today rudy giuliani trying to walk back what he said on "meet the press" to chuck todd on why he does not want the president talking to robert mueller. >> and when you tell me that, you know, he should testify because he's going to tell the truth and he should worry. that's so silly because if somebody's version of the truth, not the truth. he didn't have a conversation -- >> truth is truth. i don't mean to -- >> no, it isn't truth. truth isn't truth. >> the big chill as the president compares bob mueller to joe mccarthy and threatens to revoke the clearance from a current justice department official. more than 175 former national security officials, most who have long avoided politics,

speaking out signing a new letter today saying mr. trump has gone too far. >> that sends a signal to folks in the intelligence community and in the law enforcement community that if you cross this president, your livelihood, your ability to do your job will be threatened. >> in a sense, it undermines the principles that our country is founded on. and it's really an attempt to undermine the institutions that protect those principles. >> we're in a strange world now. if the world ever turns right side up again, you'll see most of us fade back into the shadows. >> and sorrow and shame. in an unprecedented letter, pope francis apologized for decades of abuse by predator priests saying, quote, we showed no care for the little ones. we abandoned them. but is that enough? >> the real challenge is how do you prevent this abuse going forward? how do you ensure parents that their children will not be abused by the men who lead this

church? and good day, everyone. i'm andrea mitchell in washington. president trump and his personal attorney rudy giuliani are trying to do damage control after two major developments over the weekend. the president unleashing a three-day twitter diatribe against the special counsel and "the new york times." in response to new reporting by the times detailing extensive cooperation in the mueller investigation by white house counsel don mcgahn. 30 hours of interviews over the past nine months. then mr. giuliani taking a page from the president's playbook by using his twitter account to explain a stunning exchange with chuck todd on "meet the press." >> i'm not going to be rushed into having him testify so that he gets trapped into perjury. and when you tell me that he should testify because he's going to tell the truth and shouldn't worry, that's so silly because it's somebody's version of the truth, not the truth. he didn't have a conversation --

>> truth is truth. i don't mean to -- >> no, it isn't. truth isn't truth. the president of the united states says i didn't -- >> truth is a truth. do you realize -- this is going to become a bad meme. >> don't do this to me. >> don't do truth is a truth to me. >> donald trump says i didn't talk about flynn with comey. comey says you did talk about it. so tell me what the truth is? >> chuck's reaction, priceless. joining me now, nbc white house correspondent kristen welker, kathy rumler, former white house counsel to president obama and deputy attorney general. and msnbc contributor jill weinbanks, former stuftant watergate special prosecutor. the twitterstorm, twitter defenses, rudy, all of it. start wherever you want. >> it's hard to know where to begin, andrea. but, look, what we saw from rudy giuliani over the weekend was this sort of aggressive defense.

it's become increasingly defensive. in which you heard giuliani say, look, we're not concerned about don mcgahn cooperate with the special counsel. we feel confident whatever he told investigators would be supportive of the president. but then you saw chuck really push him and he ultimately acknowledged, yes, of course he can't know everything that mcgahn shared with investigators. so this is sending concerns throughout the white house, throughout the president's legal team. president trump becoming increasingly aggressive. ramping up his attacks on twitter against the special counsel. and effectively trying to not only undermine the special counsel, but trying to say, look, i gave don mcgahn a green light to talk because this was a part of our strategy of being transparent. i'd just point one thing out, andrea. remember when this all sort of first unraveled, the president had a very different legal team. he had ty cobb, who was someone who wanted to give as much

information as possible to the special counsel. there was a real split about whether or not that was the right way to move forward. john dowd also a part of that legal team. and now, of course, those are not the lawyers representing the president. you have rudy giuliani, jay sekulow who is one of the originals. but bottom line, they've become much more aggressive and this original desire to be open and to share everything sort of runs counter to what rudy giuliani sees as the right strategy moving forward. so i think that you're seeing a president increasingly lash out as this gets closer to him, andrea. >> kathy, you are a former white house counsel. and i want to be clear because i'm not sure the president, at least initially, understood this. don mcgahn is not the president's personal lawyer and he's not even the president's lawyer, per se. he's the lawyer for the office of the presidency. so there is, yes, you tell me is there an executive privilege? rudy was suggesting there is

executive and lawyer/client privilege but a weak lawyer/client privilege here if at all. but you're the lawyer. help me out here. >> that's exactly right. i think rudy is wrong. i understand why the president is wanting to take credit for the fact that his white house counsel has apparently provided a lot of information to the special counsel, but it really wasn't a choice. wasn't a matter of strategy. don mcgahn is the white house counsel. was a fact witness in a criminal investigation, and he has an obligation to answer questions that are put to him. it's as simple as that. the d.c. circuit court of appeals in 1998 decided this question pretty defin of itly and said if you are a government lawyer working on behalf of the american people, and you are advising the president or other government officials, there is not a traditional attorney/client privilege in the way we think about if you would go out and hire a lawyer as a private citizen and you are able

to talk to your lawyer with an expectation of confidentiality. so that ship has sailed. and, you know, did the idea that somehow president trump allowed his white house counsel to provide information, i think is, frankly, silly. there wasn't a choice here. >> and jill, i wanted to share with all of you a sunday tweet. one of the many tweets from the president. quote, the failing "new york times," parenthetically, by the way. in any case, the failing "new york times" wrote a fake piece today implying that because white house councel -- misspelled -- don mcgahn was giving hours of testimony to special ccounsel. kathy has just cleared up the law for all of us. you know it as well, jill, about

what a white house counsel's job is, but the john dean reference is right in your ballpark. >> yes, and john dean was a terrific witness when he decided to cooperate, instead of continuing the cover-up. he had the most amazing memory, and he didn't know that there were tapes that would later corroborate everything he said. so he testified based on his memory. and it would have been going back to giuliani's, what is the truth? i will tell him what the truth is. the truth is, those facts that are corroborated by more than one source. in the case of dean and nixon, it wasn't he said/he said. it was dean saying and being corroborated on tape and by all the other documents and witnesses that we had. and truth is nobel. it is not nonexistent as the white house and giuliani would have us say. the president said don't believe

what you see and hear. believe me. i don't. i believe the witnesses and the evidence, and that's what we need to look at. and thank heavens for john dean and the tapes. >> john dean has actually tweeted a response to the president tweeting, i still have trouble using the title mr. president for someone installed by putin. i doubt you have any idea what mcgahn has told mueller. also nixon knew i was meet with prosecutors because i told him. however, he didn't think i would tell them the truth, which is a point you were alluding to, jill. let me just say something else about rudy giuliani because here he is claiming that this was, well, he's acknowledged that they don't really know. they're talking it from john dowd, the previous personal attorney, what he may or may not have told bob mueller. but if you were just doing the document presentation, presenting documents describing perhaps the narrative of, you

know, the chronology, if you will, would that have taken 30 hours, or does 30 hours suggest that he's talking more than he would have to under a very literal interpretation, or is it hard to say? >> the special counsel's office is being very thorough. we know there's a lot to cover here and again, i think that that would be consistent with my expectation. that's not out of the realm of, you know, normal investigations. when you have someone who was apparently in the room, presumably in the room with the president when a number of these important decisions and statements were made that are, obviously, directly relevant to the question of the president's intent in firing jim comey and in making the statement from air force one. it doesn't surprise me at all that it was 30 hours. assuming that's true. this is all reporting based on

an anonymous source. i feel quite confident the anonymous sources are not coming from the special counsel's office. and so you have to ask, who has an incentive to be sharing this information with "the new york times"? i think we can all speculate about that. but i feel very, very confident that it wasn't in the special counsel's office interest to provide this information to the media about their investigation. >> and just to clean one other thing up with you. then i'll ask kristen about some of the other things rudy giuliani had to say on "meet the press." from what we now know, could the special counsel, if, let's say this is a good fact witness, an officer of the bar. and he is speaking to what could have happened in a meeting about, well, i want to get rid of sessions. i want to get rid of mueller and the reasons or intent, whatever the president said in those meetings. would it be possible for mueller to proceed without having to litigate the subpoena issue, the

long supreme court case of trying to get the president himself to testify? >> well, sure. and that happens all the time in criminal investigations because oftentimes the target of an investigation chooses not to be interviewed. and so, you know, that would be a very typical scenario. that assumes that special counsel mueller has concluded that he has the legal authority to charge a sitting president as we've talked about that in the past. that's, obviously, a very difficult legal question that there are different views on. but it would not -- it certainly is not a prerequisite to have interviewed someone who, again, is a target or subject of an investigation before making a charging decision. >> rudy giuliani also speaking to chuck todd yesterday about that meeting in trump tower. >> any meeting with regard to getting information on your opponent is something any

candidate's staff would take. if someone said, i have information about your opponent, you would take that meeting. >> from the russian government? >> she didn't represent the russian government. she's a private citizen. i don't even know if they knew she was russian at the time. all they had was her name. >> kristen, we know from don junior's e-mails that they knew she was russian. >> that's right. and you heard chuck push back against that. was really a striking comment, andrea. and in some senses may be a bigger exchange than the truth isn't truth because, a, he contradicts what don junior, as you point out, acknowledged in his e-mails. he also acknowledged the purpose of the meeting was to get dirt on hillary clinton. so that's another admission. and finally, he said, look, anyone would have taken that meeting, and that's just not the case if you look back at past campaigns in which they've been approached by foreign governments. so that response will undoubtedly create more legal

problems for this president and this administration. >> and jill, when you have these comparisons, the president comparing robert mueller to joe mccarthy. the irony there being that roy cohen, of course, who worked for joe mccarthy, was the great mentor and adviser for all those years, a lawyer for donald j. trump. >> for donald trump and roger stone, and i would say that they both exhibit much more characters of mccarthy than mueller. there is no comparison between them. it's just totally silly. and i want to add to something that kathy said which was john dean was actually asked to write a report that would go public for nixon. and he was asked to, of course, lie and make up facts. and he actually never did it because he couldn't bring himself to write down the lies when he knew and was advising the president without knowing the president had known for much

longer about the fact that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and that the obstruction of justice was happening. and so we need to keep that in mind as well. we look at who john dean was and who, hopefully, don mcgahn is, that he'll equally tell the truth. >> jill wine-bank, with that extraordinary insight into history. kathy ruemler, the experience of a former white house counsel and our own great kristen welker. i can't think of a better way to start the show. thank you all so very much. coming up -- bridge too far? hundreds of national security officials joining the bipartisan outcry over president trump's stripping of john brennan's security clearance. one of them, a former deputy cia director joining me next right here on "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. r grids, ...aging everything. we also have the age-old problem of bias in the workplace. really... never heard of it. the question is... who's going to fix all of this? an actor?

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the list of former national security officials standing against president trump's decision to strip former cia director john brennan of his security clearance is growing. expanding, not only with more former republican appointees but a long list of nonpartisan career professionals who have never before spoken out on a highly charged political issue. more than 175 former intelligence officials now adding their names to a previous letter stating that former government officials have their right to express their unclassified views on what they see as critical national security issues without fear of being punished.

why this unprecedented storm of reaction from the usually silent national security sector? joining me now, the former deputy director of the cia, former white house national deputy security director. she was the first to sign the letter opposing president trump's actions against john brennan. welcome both. thank you very much. first to you. you know the agency. you've been at the nsc and following that at the cia. why do you think this outpouring? >> i really think it comes down to the very fundamental principle you outlined at the beginning. i think people feel a frustration with respect to this abuse of power, as i see it, and, really, it strikes us, i think, that he's using the security clearance as just one mechanism that is in his arsenal essentially to try to quash dissent in a way that really undermines some of the

fundamental principles we have founded our government on. and one of them is free speech. i think it was madison who said it was the cornerstone of american government. and, frankly, it's one of the key areas that sets us apart in so many different respects. we embrace disagreement. we encourage it. we think that's part of what helps us to reveal political truths and to have a better system of democracy. and what we see here is the president abusing his authority to actually promote a restriction on free speech. >> jeff smith, you are an esteemed lawyer, well-known washington figure, former general counsel at cia, and what are your concerns about, for instance, the threat against bruce orr who is a midlevel bureaucrat in the justice department, but could that be the beginning of a threat to current officials which could extend to the mueller team because if those prosecutors don't have clearances, they cannot continue their investigation. >> yes, avril stated the overall principle correctly. if he reaches into the ranks of

serving civil servants and pulls a clearance for the kinds of reasons that he's talked about, that's really threatening to the heart of our democracy because it would -- bruce would have to leave the government. others would be intimidated from speaking out. i think it would be an impossibliy difficult and dangerous situation for the nation and it's why i think many of us signed this letter. it's one thing to go after former officials which bothers me to begin with, but to reach into the ranks is just destructive. it would chill anybody from speaking the truth to power which would make our country much weaker, not stronger. >> now the president has tweeted today about the security clearances. everybody wants to keep their security clearance. it's worth great prestige and big dollars. even board seats. and that's why certain people are coming forward to protect brennan. it certainly isn't because of the good job he did. he's a political hack. jeff, i know you know john

brennan. you worked with him. the fact is he is not on a board and a lot of these people signing this letter. i'll go through some of it, some of the new additional names, have nothing to do with boards. nothing to do with making money off of maintaining their clearances. and everything to do with public service. >> i think that's true. it's certainly true that countless number of former government officials do retain their clearances because they are working in private industry. they are helping design weapons systems. helping develop encryption. all kinds of things that support the government's national security efforts. and that's vital to continue, but the bigger issue is the one of using -- abusing the president's power to silence his critics. and i think that's why we're all signing on. we love this country. we signed up to serve. i've got 25 years of government service. this is not something that we served -- we agreed to serve. it's not why so many people died on battlefields around the

world. we have a democracy. we don't have an authoritarian leader. >> john brennan, of course, was on with chuck todd yesterday. before that was on with rachel maddow on friday night. here's what he had to say on "meet the press" on sunday. >> if my clearances and my reputation as i'm being pulled through the mud now, if that's the price we're going to pay to prevent donald trump from doing this against other people, to me, it's a small price to pay. so i am going to do whatever i can personally to try to prevent these abuses in the future. and if it means going to court, i will do that. i love and respect and admire my former colleagues in cia and other places, and i will fight to keep their profession pure, objective and not being politicized. and members of congress need to step up. this is the time that your country is going to rely on you, not to do what is best for your party but do what is best for the country. >> avril, do you want to comment on what john brennan had to say

and also the president's tweet about him being a hack? >> yeah, absolutely. i was john brennan's deputy at the cia for close to two years. and worked with him for many more years than that. i can't think of anybody who is less of a political hack than john brennan. he is somebody -- i think the john brennan i know is the one reflected in bill mccraven's op-ed where he talks about the integrity and tireless efforts to keep this country safe. he's a voice of ethical standards within every meeting and every institution that he's been a part of. he's really an absolutely extraordinary man. and i'd say that, you know, i do think that, as we can see, john brennan is not being silenced by this abuse. but at the same time, he recognizes, as all of us do, that actually the revokation of his clearance and the threat to revoke other people's clearances and particularly bruce orr because i fully agree with what jeff said, is really the danger that we're facing.

the chilling effect it can have on folks who are not necessarily at the cabinet level essentially and whose livelihood may depend on their security clearance and the work they're doing in the defense industry and perfectly, you know, sort of responsible and public good jobs in effect, although they may not be in government who may feel chilled but also he may be undermining our institution's ability to do the work they need to do because he may be threatening security clearances of midlevel folks who are engaging in activity that he disagrees with. and as a consequence, they can't work on those issues, and it undermines the ability, for example, of law enforcement to pursue investigations that are proper and other types of work in the u.s. government. >> and i want to just share with all of our viewers some of the names, unusual names. william j. burns. he joined that letter. john bellinger, former counsel in the bush nsc. a former security adviser to bill clinton.

a senior tech operations adviser. if you remember "argo" the movie or in reality, that was the man who helped create that possibility for our diplomats to get out of being held hostage in the embassy in tehran. the canadian embassy. ambassador dennis ross who worked for all presidents both parties. sean o'keefe, former secretary of the navy. nick rasmussen, former director of the national counterterrorism center. dennis ross, also a middle east negotiator. jeffrey smith, you signed it yesterday. jeff, you know these people. you know bruce ridell and a lot of these players. they're not political. >> they're not political. they may have served in partisan or rather in politically appointed positions, but none of us regard national security as a partisan issue. we regard it as service to the nation. it's an honor to serve, and the president is doing a grievous dishonor in threatening to take

away security clearances. let me just add quickly, senator mark warner has proposed legislation that would essentially, as i understand it, prohibit the revocation of a clearance on policy grounds or on expression of first amendments. i think that's the sort of thing congress ought to do and essentially that was what john brennan was calling for yesterday. >> and we should also point out, of course, that john brennan is a national security analyst for nbc news and msnbc as well. thank you. avrvril and jeff, thank you for coming in today. coming up -- the sins of the fathers. pope francis breaking his silence about the decades of sexual abuse by hundreds of catholic priests in pennsylvania exposed by that attorney general's report. this is "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc.

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after a week of silence, an extraordinary rebuke today from pope francis. condemning decades of child abuse allegations against more than 300 accused priests in parishes across pennsylvania involving 1,000 victims and the subsequent coverup exposed in a scathing grand jury report.

in a letter released today, the pope said, quote, the heart-wrenching pain of these victims which cries out to heaven was long ignored. kept quiet or silenced. we showed no care for the little ones. we abandoned them. with shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been. that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and gravity of the damage done to so many lives. nbc's anne thompson has been covering this story and joins me now. the pope is now also tweeted his personal remorse over this unprecedented scandal. unprecedented because we've seen other scandals. you've covered them in boston and elsewhere. but the magnitude of this in one state alone is breathtaking. >> right. and what makes this scandal different, first of all, it is that there are a thousand child victims that the church had documents on, andrea. also it's the timing of when this report was released. pope francis goes to ireland on

saturday for the world meeting of families. and ireland is a country that has been absolutely scarred by the issue of clerical sexual abuse. priests abusing young boys and young girls. nuns running mothers and baby homes for unwed mothers who did just atrocious things. and that is a country i was in ireland just a couple of weeks ago, and that's a country where people are not only angry, they are so fed up, they have cut the church and the priests out of their faith. they say they have a relationship with god, but they don't need to go through the priests and the church. and that is the danger here because i can tell you over the weekend, in this country, lots of talk in churches. lots of priests getting up at sunday mass and talking about the grand jury report. and the scandal and how it's affecting people in the pews because this has been very devastating. and now, today, for the pope to come out and say, look, we didn't do enough. the church leaders let the

faithful down and we didn't do enough to protect the least among us, the children, is pretty extraordinary. >> and cardinal wuerhl has withdrawn from that trip to ireland because he is also under a terrible cloud because he was the bishop in pittsburgh when this all took place. >> and in fact, somebody vandalized a school sign there as the cardinal donald wuerhl's high school in pittsburgh. somebody spray painted over the sign over the weekend. people soare so angry. he's the archbishop of washington and is meeting with his council of priests to talk about the pennsylvania grand jury report and, of course, archbishop mccarrick who the church found a credible allegation that he abused an altar boy. so it's been an ugly couple of weeks for the catholic church in this country. >> really heartbreaking. thank you. coming up -- the verdict watch. the paul manafort jury entering

day three of deliberations. the president continuing to rail against the mueller probe. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports." stay with us. 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. oh! up to 12 pounds? (vo) a two-year study showed that ozempic® does not increase the risk of major cardiovascular events like heart attack, stroke, or death. oh! no increased risk? ♪ ozempic®! ♪ ozempic® should not be the first medicine for treating diabetes, or for people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. do not share needles or pens. don't reuse needles. do not take ozempic® if you have a personal or family history of medullary thyroid cancer, multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if you are allergic to ozempic®. stop taking ozempic® and get medical help right away

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goldman is in alexandria, former u.s. district attorney and msnbc legal analyst. daniel, what do we know today from the courtroom? one thing that has certainly bothered me over the weekend, just as a nonlawyer, is why they are not sequestered given all this news about the mueller investigation, plus the president's comments praising manafort after the case went to the jury on friday? >> it's a good question, andrea. ordinarily in federal court, the only reason to sequester a jury is if there are safety considerations. and prior to the trial, i don't think anyone anticipated that there would be any safety concerns or threats. but the judge did reveal on friday that he had received threats and he was under marshals protection. and he noted that the jurors would not be under marshals protection. so i think that as things have developed, there would be an increasingly good case for sequestering the jury. they are instructed repeatedly

not to read anything. not to look at anything. but given the heavy media attention on this trial, it's hard to imagine that jurors can go through their life living in a bubble where they wouldn't see anything about this case. so, yeah, it's a legitimate concern. but it's not going to happen now, i can promise you that. >> you know, in the old days when these instructions were first formulated, we didn't have social media, phones, devices, where, you know, there were three evening newscasts. that was it. you could not watch those newscasts. now it's almost impossible, too void a headline here or there. what about the fact they're still deliberating? does that indicate diligence going through all these documents or does that indicate there would be trouble for the prosecution or none of the above? >> well, this is the prosecutor and defense lawyer's least favorite parlor game is to try to parse out what the jury is actually thinking. we're now into day three, as you pointed out, about halfway

through. and i think there's no cause for alarm from the prosecutors, but there's no question that the longer this goes, the more it favors the defense. it does seem like from the jury's questions last week that they are very dill geigently go through each of the 18 counts and trying to match up the documentary evidence with those counts to figure out whether the government has met its burden or whether, as the defense argued, it failed to do so. so there is nothing to indicate that the time that they're taking is anything but that. but the longer this goes, particularly in a case that seemed, on the documents, to be as strong as it is, is a greater indication that there's at least some hang-up with at least one juror. >> and we've got less than a minute just to briefly talk about michael cohen. "the new york times" reporting that he could be charged with as much as $20 million involving loans to him and to his family and the taxi business but we

don't know whether that would be a sealed indictment, whether it is an indictment, whether he's in plea negotiations. hard to say, right? >> well, from my experience in that office for ten years, i'm guessing that the process would go something like this. the prosecutors would reach out to michael cohen's lawyers when they're ready to charge him. and they would say -- they would lay out what the potential charges would be. the defense lawyer would then go talk to michael cohen and say, all right, this is what the charges are. we know a little about what the evidence is. you have three options. one, cooperate. two, plead guilty without a cooperation agreement before the indictment, or three, let's fight this and go to trial. and i think we're reaching the point where that conversation is crystallizing and, to me seeing that michael cohen and in particular, lanny davis have been silent for a couple of weeks, i wouldn't be surprised if we're already in that process and michael cohen is already meeting with prosecutors. >> dan goldman, thanks so much.

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in today's global society, social media is an inevitable part of our children's daily lives. it can be used in many positive ways, but can also be distractive and harmful when used incorrectly. let's face it. most children are more aware of the benefits and pitfalls of social media than some adults. >> irony alert there. first lady melania trump speaking out against cyberbullying this morning as part of her "be best" campaign. this as her husband, the president, escalates twitter attacks against his critics, including today. her spokeswoman says that she is aware of the criticism but that will not deter her from doing what is right. let's get the inside scoop from the white house correspondent for pbs "newshour" and msnbc contributor. and sam stein, from the daily

beast and msnbc contributor. thanks to both. first to you, sam. i mean, today the president calling john brennan a hack. we've already discussed that. but the personal attacks comparing bob mueller in the last 24 hours to joe mccarthy? >> it's not the best material, i would say. but when the first lady says children are more aware and more vulnerable than some adults, then stephanie grisham on her behalf put out two statements today. one before a lot of the criticism and one about an hour later, which included a reference to the president, in fact. >> yeah, i mean, i think you have to separate these things out. one is the actual message that she's trying to carry forward, which is that cyberbullying is a real problem that can make some of the most vulnerable people, children in our society, can harm them in very deeply psychological ways. n that's true. all that is true.

but you cannot separate that from the fact that her husband is perhaps the most prominent cyberbullier in, you know, the nation. it's wild. and so i think that, you know, to a certain degree, they have to with the irony and figure out how to handle it. i don't feel, i feel particularly bad for stephanie griffin because she has a difficult job in her happennds. stephanie put out a statement referred to the president's tweet. adding a sentence to her previous statement just an hour or so earlier. the president is proud of her commitment and encourages her in all that she does. >> well, there are two messages coming out of the white house today. on the west wing you have a president who's saying fight on and you have the first lady who's saying the best. it is clear that the first lady is trying to say she's being

independent and her spokeswoman calling her independent of the president. she's trying her best to navigate what is a tough position to be in. president trump is brass on twitter and he attacks people on twitter. you see lawmakers all over the nation mimicking the way the president takes on twitter because that's the way he's able to get all the things accomplished and done. >> in some way melania talking about this issue, she's going to have to continue to talk about the fact that her president and her husband continues to attack people on the internet. >> now, there is another problem that the white house has a political problem which is the speech writer who had been debating this of the visiting instructor at duke university before he joined the speech writing team. he did work for steven miller, he was fired on friday after a

media inquiry of his appearance in 2016 at the club conference where he spoke on the panel alongside white premise. he is a white nationalist and regularly publishes works by white supremacists and others on the radical right. >> so just saying >> your classic case of the white national sending up on a white house jobs. they all happen in this case, i guess. >> where is the vetting? administrations and of this type of stuff never would have occurred because people, their applicants and they would have turned things up including stops like this and clearly problematic on a moral and political level. we have to step back and ask why

is it time after time that this segment of society we can call white nationals or alt-right, why are they so drawn to the administration and not just to go and work with them but they found in their rhetoric and policies of things they can share and support. the pattern is clear right now. sam stein, thank you to both. coming up, him too, the new york times reporting one of the biggest activist in the me too movement arranged to pay off her own accuser. a young man, that's next on "andr "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. >> to stay successful on "your business," we got your back with experts' advise to create eye contacting marketing. we'll focus on ideas for growing

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actre leader in the me too movement, actress argento is facing her own scrutiny of details for her to pay off a young actor and claims that he was assaulted when he was 16-year-old. stephan stephan stephanie gaus is joining me on this. >> this is an incident that took place may of 2013. he said he visited argento's

hotel room where he was allegedly assaulted. the new york times got he encriminaencrypted documents. she became this kind of spokesperson for the me too movement. he said that because she had come forward, he felt that he needed to confront her with these allegations and threatening to sue her on millions. he turned over the rights and copyright of a photo that was taken on the day of the alleged assault. >> andrea. >> that's pretty extraordinary. has she had any response yet? >> she did not respond to us. there was no comments from "the new york times." they tried multiple times to get comments from her.

we heard jimmy bennett, her lawyer, will be comining out wi a new statement hours or so. >> the charges that he faces here in new york city, criminal charges had nothing to do with argenta. there are still two ongoing investigations one in london and los angeles. there is no charges coming out of that. harvey weinstein denied any allegations of rape or sexually assaults. >> thank you, stephanie, thank you very much. >> that does it for us for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports," thank you for being with us. chris jansing is up next right here on msnbc. >> hi there andrea. >> good afternoon, i am chris jansing, best defense? well, it seems like anyone involved with the president's legal fight, past and present is in the headlines today.

most prominent, the white house counsel who reportedly spent 30 hours talking to robert mueller's team and the rest of trump's lawyers have no idea what he said. plus, the pope's response. pope francis acknowledging the flaws of the catholic church of what he says shame and repenitence. do words go far enough for the 300 plus victims of sexual abuse in pennsylvania alone? >> and bully-puppeting. the president attacked a current doj employee. what did don mcgahn tells the special prosecutor? only bob mueller knows. >> it was a mistake to have you speak without limits to special counsel mueller. >> why did you