reaction to the cohen/manafort new s from yesterday? you still support mueller, right? well, granted mitch mcconnell doesn't often answer questions on the go but the silence and silence of house speaker paul ryan hang heavy in the air. what will republicans do if the president makes a move against the special counsel? 59% of americans now back. the mueller probe and that number is growing. another number on the rise, the percentage of people who think there is a strong chance the president of the united states committed a criminal or impeachment offense. and that polling is from fox news. good morning and welcome to

"morning joe." it is thursday, august 23rd. joe has the morning off. he will be back tomorrow. we have donny deutsch with us along with professor at princeton university and column at "new york post" and contributor editor of "weekly standard" john and sam stein and washington anchor katy kay and benjamin. good to have you all onboard with us on another very busy morning. we begin with the very latest in president trump's former lawyer implicating him in his guilty plea yesterday. trump appeared to acknowledge his attorney's campaign finance violation and then walked it back in an interview all while maintaining it's not a crime and say he blamed attorney general jeff sessions for his former lawyer's prosecution. the president tweeted, michael

cohen pled guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime. what time was that tweet, alex? >> in the morning about 9:37. >> okay. >> so then president obama had a big campaign finance violation and it was easily settled. yes, he talked about that. trump was referring to a late filing on small dollar donations by the obama campaign, which resulted in a large fine given the scale of the operation, but is different than knowingly concealing campaign spending as pleaded to by cohen. and, which is routinely prosecuted in criminal court as with the fraud case against john edwards under the obama justice department. speaking, of course, to fox news, that's where i told you he'd go, president trump said he had nothing to do with leading doj. >> my first question when i heard about it, did they come out of the campaign because that could be a little dicy and they

didn't come out of the campaign and that's big. but they weren't, it's not even a campaign violation. if you look at president obama, he had a massive campaign violation. but he had a different attorney general and they viewed it a lot differently. >> ben, try to make sense of all the things that he's piling on to this answer here. can you make a parallel between violations, the one that he's talking about in the obama administration and the payoff to a porn star and a playboy bunny made right before i believe the election was going into full. >> well, to ask that question that way, you know, is the answer to it. so, look, part of what the president says, the only part that's true is that it is the case that normal campaign

finance violations are handled routinely as a civil matter and there is a system like with any regulatory system of penalties and fines and those are handled as routine matters and don't invoke criminal offenses. when you engage in an elaborate scheme on the other hand to circumvent those regulatory requirements by hiding things, by paying people hush money, by not then reporting the hush money payments as campaign contributions, you're going to invoke criminal authorities, or at least you may. and that is the difference between what he calls massive campaign finance problems that the administrators and technical filing errors for which they paid a fine and a scheme to get your personal lawyer to get tabloids or other entities to

pay off former mistresses before the election to keep them quiet. there is no comparison to be drawn there. >> there is none. it's flabbergasting. the entire interview for many reasons is actually staggering at this point. and the fact that he thinks he can push things along by mushing the truth into just complete dribble, actually. he doesn't even make sense at times. donny, i've been thinking all day yesterday about michael cohen and all the witches that so far have been brought in by mueller and pled guilty or indicted and i think if you look at what michael cohen has pled guilty to, how stupid do these people, how stupid are these people? don't they know what is going to happen if they have committed these crimes and they are

pleading guilty to these actions, how did they not know that they would be hauled in at this point and how stupid are republicans at this point to still stand by this president? to stand by all of this and say nothing? we don't even have enough room on the screen pleading guilty, pleading guilty, pleading guilty, pleading guilty, how stupid are these people to think that it wouldn't end like this? >> let's unpack the stupid suitcase because a lot living in the. t >> tell me about michael cohen. explain this man to me. you're friends with him. >> i'll step back for a second and get into cohen. what is aamazing about the trum interview, there's not a tape that exists of him directing michael cohen to say, do it in cash. like when he first found out about it. that doesn't exist. that audio doesn't exist.

we haven't heard it. as far as cohen, you know, cohen was an attorney working for trump and, you know, you're directed by your boss and i'm not using the explanation, but i don't think at that point you're saying to yourself, should i do this, should i not do this, you're a lawyer, you're working. he has stood up and he's facing the consequences. i think i'm going to stay with the stupid place in the case of trump and the republicans and that very brave gentleman mitch mcconnell who, you are the leader of the republican party. you are the face other than after the president, you are it. you go down the totem pole and there it is. the president's personal attorney has pleaded guilty to taking directions violating a felons law and you have no comment. no comment. and, john, we're going to stay in this kind of stupid universe, what does mitch mcconnell think when he thinks people are watching? oh, we won't ask you again,

that's okay. >> i think what he thinks is they're in hell and their whole hope is that they're productive enough and serve the interest of enough voters that they can spare themselves disaster in november. the timeline is very short here for them. it's from here until the november elections. tailwinds are looking very bad for them. if they can just focus on their work, ignore trump, get judges, get brett kavanaugh confirmed and mitch mcconnell can say, i did all of this. i had nothing to do with this guy. so, he doesn't want to talk about it because there is nothing in it for him in terms of this timeline from now until november to say a single word about trump, about cohen, about manafort and about mueller. anything he says is a disaster.

if he says, i no longer support trump, the republican base turns on him. if he says i support trump, he sells his soul. his wife is in the cabinet. it's not good. >> mika, let me ask a stupid question since we're on the stupid line to john's point about let's do business as usual. the reality going into that fox poll is that basically and this is the signature work of the trump administration so far has been the tax plan. that is 11% less popular than the signature work of the obama administration, which is, of course, obama care. you take the enthusiasm polls and optimism which is down 11 points going in the right direction and you take the president on tand other than th core republicans nobody else thinks the economy is going in the right direction. hard for them to run on business as usual at this point. >> look, we've got so much to cover and so much more to get

to. but it is flabbergasting how stupid michael cohen and the other that we have covered in this witch-hunt, which i'll use the president's word. i don't get the republican party at this point because, because they're leaders. and it's about right and wrong. it's about the fabric of this country. >> they're not leaders. >> it's about the truth. and they're not leaders and they're letting americans down. we move on, i want to get sam, benjamin, back in. you will notice that president trump has changed his original explanation for when he knew about michael cohen arranging for payments to women. >> did you know about the $130,000 paid to stormy daniels? then why did michael cohen make it? >> you'll have to ask michael cohen. michael is my attorney and you'll have to ask michael. >> do you know where he got the money to make that payment? >> no, i don't know.

>> did you know about the payments? >> later on i knew. later on. >> is he lying here? yeah. again. the president just lies. michael cohen has a tape from 2016 which the president's tweeted about its authenticity of the two of them discussing at least one of the payments. >> i need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend david. so i'm going to do that right away. i have spoken to alan about how to set the whole thing up with funding. yes. and it's all the stuff, all the stuff. because you never know where he's going to be. so, i'm all over that and i spoke to alan about it.

when it comes time for the financing. >> what financing? >> we'll have to pay -- no, no. >> the president has an explanation for the payment that he thinks makes everything okay. >> you have to understand what he did and they weren't taken out of campaign finance. that is a much bigger thing. did they come out of the campaign? they didn't come out of the campaign? they came from me. i tweeted about it. i don't know. you know, but i tweeted about the payments. >> lying, again. experts say that claim doesn't work out either, you just can't evade campaign finance. it was during a campaign. sam and eddy, it was during the campaign. it was to protect his campaign from knowing about his

lascivious relationships and affairs with multiple women and not wanting his wife to find out and americans to find out so he could win the presidency. how stupid, let's stay on theme here, how stupid does the president think the american people are? >> there's so many levels of stupidity, i guess. one is what we hit on which is he is admitting to the campaign finance crime essentially. >> correct. >> what he wanted to say is we tried, you know, we meant to disclose it in the proper fashion and we failed to do so, we should have amended a report and maybe that would have given him legal cover. instead in the illegal form. secondarily, of course, is the whole issue of the fact that he's on tape recording admitting to knowing about the payment and now says he only knew about it after the fact. he's asking us to believe up is down and the sky is green, whatever. that's crazy in its own right. i'm struck a little bit and i

tweeted about it as if that absolves, i have no idea what he's talking about. who care physical you twes if y it, it doesn't matter. one thing that was sort of nagging me. we have basically just taken it as a given and not at all an extraordinary thing that he had an affair on his wife with a 5-month-old kid and paid hush money to cover it up. i mean, this in normal presidential times would have been extraordinary scandal, certainly for someone with the devoted support of the evangelical community. but at this juncture, we're just sort of like, okay, he did that and let's talk about the campaign finance crime element of it. it just seems crazy that we're losing the moral element of it. not that i am a moral warrior here. but he does have a huge evangelical following that under

any other administration. >> so, eddy, chime in. so many layers to this and it all resolves around the truth and the president manipulating the truth. and, again, the truth being really in jeopardy for this country. >> donald trump has an uneasy relationship with the truth, we all know that. think about what senator orrin hatch said yesterday about donald trump and his extra marital affairs. obviously, he's a better person today than he was when he committed those affairs. we get a sense that a lot of people aren't concerned about the underlying moral question here. just as a generous read we might want to make a distinction in terms of the audiotape, it was more about karen macdougal than stormy daniels. you could make the distinction that he didn't know about the stormy daniels' payment, but it doesn't matter. at the end of the day, what we do know is that donald trump is

unindicted co-conspirator in a felony. he has participated in a felonious act and we have people like senator mcconnell and people like paul ryan and republicans, generally some republicans who are outliars who are okay with the fact that the president of the united states is an unindicted co-conspirator with a crime and that suggests to me that we are in a dark place in this country. >> so, you heard the audiotape that michael cohen's lawyers released and that's not all. according to federal prosecutors who say they have more hard evidence about the payments to women. assistant u.s. attorney andrea gr grizwold says records obtained from the april warrant of search and seized electronic devices and audio recordings made by mr. cohen along with text messages, messages sent over encrypted applications and phone records

and e-mails. she said they would also submit various records via subpoena including records from the media company, this as "wall street journal" reports that the chairman of american media incorporat incorporated, which publishes "the national enquirer" provided prosecutors with details about payments mr. cohen arranged with women who including mr. trump's knowledge of the deals. cited people close to cohen and others familiar with prosecut s prosecutors' discussions posted late last night. a tweet from the president and, of course, i asked, alex, the timing of his tweets. tweeting from 9:37 in the morning to 1:10 the next morning washington time. this came at 1:10 a.m. no collusion. rigged. witch-hunt. something keeping him up at

night? >> yeah, looks like it. not very usual for the president to be up at 1:00 in the morning, more like 6:00 in the morning when he wakes up. he's not sleeping very well and that is not surprising because there are legal and political implications for him with this one. all around the issue of campaign finance and as "wall street journal" report seems to be hinting the two women we know about or are there other women a and, in that case, do we get into the realm of racketeering that there was a concerted effort to protect the candidate with multiple payoffs potentially to try and stop damaging stories against him. and then, the political one. that's what is really interesting at the moment. the question of whether this 87% of the republican party and sam was eluding to the evangelical base earlier. any of them will shift their minds when it comes to the president because of what they heard over the course of the last 24 hours and what else is going to come out from michael

cohen. our initial reporting, the number of republicans and trump voters that we've spoken to over the course of the last day suggest that, you know, they are still rock solid behind the president. we spoke to one woman who said everybody commits some kind of finance crimes and we said, well, this is the president of the united states. and her response was, oh, that just makes him human. there is no point to which some of these supporters will aband on the president. we're going to have to watch those numbers and see whether those numbers decline because of this. >> absolutely. i think the fox news polling that we started the show with are quite telling. people supporting the mueller probe and they feel the president is up to no good. we started the show with the concept of stupid. at some point, people are going to ask themselves the question as to whether or not we've got nefarious going on pointing all to putin. at some point, people are not this stupid and they've got to be up to something.

that's my gut. but we've got so many facts to work with, we'll just stick with the facts. so, is sticking to the facts, benjamin whaurkts is tt is the and present danger? >> it has to be michael cohen's direct statement under oath in court that he committed felonies at the direction of the president, then the candidate personally. that's a very threatening thing. it's not, you know, russia. it's not obstruction of justice and interactions with the law enforcement apparatus of the country as president. but it is a, you know, it's the most dramatic, serious thing that is ongoing right now. >> still ahead on "morning joe," is the president poised to pardon paul manafort.

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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. >> like everybody else. one of the reasons i respect paul manafort so much he went through that trial. they make up stories. people make up stories. this whole thing about flipping, they call it. i know all about flipping for 30 or 40 years. i have been watching flippers. everything is wonderful and they get ten years in jail and they flip on whoever is next or as high as you can go. it should be outlawed. if somebody is going to spend

five years like michael cohen or 10 years or 15 years in jail because he defrauded some bank, the last two were the tiny ones. campaign violations are considered not a big deal, frankly. but if somebody defrauded a bank and he's going to get ten years in jail or 20 years in jail, but if you can say something bad about donald trump and you'll go down to two years or three years, which is the deal he made, in all fairness to him, most people are going to do that. and i've seen it many times. i've had many friends involved in this stuff. it's called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal. >> wow. wow. benjamin, we'll let you stew on that a little bit and get right back to you. john, president trump is reportedly considering a pardon for paul manafort using a similar rationale that has been floated for why top officials

met at trump tower in 2016 and that defense is everybody does it. take a look. >> i have great respect for what he's done in terms of what he's gone through. you know, he worked for ronald reagan for years and worked for bob dole and worked, his firm worked for mccain. he worked for many, many people. many, many years. and i would say what he did some of the charges they threw against him, every consultant and every lobbyist in washington probably does. >> according to fox news, the president reportedly said that he would consider pardoning manafort. the former head of the trump campaign was convicted on tuesday on eight counts of bank and tax fraud, as well as failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. the president spent part of the day yesterday railing against the outcome of manafort's trial and the jury being unable to reach a verdict on ten of the other counts against him. he wrote on twitter, the president, a large number of

counts, 10 could not even be decided in the paul manafort case, witch-hunt. but we now know a single juror held out on convicting manafort on all 18 charges. trump added, i feel very badly for paul manafort and his wonderful family. justice took a 12-year-old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him. such respect for a brave man. following the president's tweets, the white house disputed that he was planning on pardoning manafort. >> the manafort case doesn't have anything to do with the president, doesn't have anything to do with his campaign and anything to do with the white house. >> even if it doesn't have anything to do, is that something he was discussing with the team, does it come up -- >> i'm not aware of any conversations regarding that at all.

other than actually when he was asked by a news outlet earlier this week he said that he hadn't been thinking about that at all. >> one of the more useless moments of the day would be the white house press briefing. every single day. so, john, the concept of potentially pardoning manafort and flipping should be outlawed, go. >> so, as the head of the executive branch, he is the chief criminal justice officer in the united states. you just heard the president of the united states say that one of the key ways in which you uncover criminal conspiratorial action which is to put pressure on the defendant to give up other people who were involved in that conspiracy should be outlawed. so, let's just think about that for a minute. that's number one. number two is what he's doing to manafort, people are always

frankie five angels is going to testify against the family and they go and get his brother from sicily to sit in the courtroom to shame him into not testifying because that would be dishonorable. this is trump saying to manafort, don't break. don't break. don't flip. i respect you. you're wonderful. what a great guy. don't break. and i guess in there is the hint that he might pardon him. >> by the way, i thought that godfather analogy, i thought they were going to kill the brother. but what i find amazing about trump, mr. strength and mr. bravery is he would be the first human being in the history of human beings that would flip on anybody. so, i actually believe that even if they came to his children, he would send his children to jail before he went to jail. he is that depraved of any moral

center. he sits there and talks about the weakness and breaking point. stunning. >> i want to hear from sam and katty, at what point do they break but, first, benjamin, is a pardon possible and what are the legal avenues anyone could take if that happens? >> a pardon is certainly possible. the president's power to pardon people for federal offenses is essentially unrestricted and paul manafort has now convictions and a trial coming up and all those charges are charges on which the president could tha could pardon him. he takes an oath to preserve and protect the constitution and to

take care that the laws are faithfully executed. and you just showed a whole bunch of clips of him encouraging somebody not to cooperate with a lawful, federal investigation in which he has personal interests. and i, i just think that is worth pausing over. because he is such a peculiar figure, we treat it as this comical thing and talk about it in terms of the godfather and whatever. this is the president of the united states who went on television yesterday and talked disparagingly about the idea of cooperating with federal law enforcement. that should shock people. >> i mean, that's an impeachable offense. i mean, if you actually think about it inn ea series of artics of impeachment. the idea that the president would knowingly advocate

impeding federal investigations could be viewed as an a high-crime and misdemeanor. as a violation of his constitutional oath. >> at this point, the only flipping that is going on is the president. he is like a fish on a hot, dry dock flipping around trying to get water. that is the flipping that is going on right now. and he ain't going back into the water. i don't know how this ends, but i'll tell you right now, the walls appear to be closing in. the question for sam, katty and eddy after the break will be about the republicans and if the pardon is a bridge too far for this president and for them in terms of their support for him. we'll be right back. insurance that won't replace

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well, we've been reporting all morning about this fox news polling support for the mueller probe and concern, also. that's the support for the mueller probe. look at that. up 11. 59%. okay. fox news. thank you, fox news, for conducting that poll. also, concern that the president has committed criminal or impeachable offense. extremely concerned up 5.

40%. something that perhaps the president might want to keep in mind, also maybe fox news might want to keep that in mind. eddy, flipping should be against -- where do we begin with what the president has even said as he spewed out his reaction to the legal siege that he's under yesterday to a fox reporter just going on and on around in circles about things like flipping should be outlawed. >> yeah, so, the first thing that came to mind is an old saying that happens in urban america about snitches get stitches, right? there is a sense in which he's engaged in a no collaboration, no informing kind of campaign, which is very odd. and john and ben have made that point. i think what's clear is this. donald trump is consistently in over his head.

at every turn he seems to not know the facts, as if he cared, but he just seems to be just si simply at every turn and then in the midst of that being in over his head, he just flails all about. right. and so what we see very clearly is that as he gets backed into this corner more and more, the danger of what will come out because he just simply doesn't know anything else to do because he doesn't have the capacity to do anything else. so, i'm really interested in the danger that follows from this. >> so, sam, take it to katty and john. i'm curious to hear you all, first of all, talk about what is the wall for the republicans here? is it going to be a pardon of paul manafort or are they going to let that go? let's not even joke with ourselves here. number one, is the pardon the wall and number two, at this

point, really shouldn't republicans be able to see the writing on the wall? >> so, you know, it's a good question. what line would he have to cross for republicans to finally abandon ship? and to be perfectly honest, i don't know. i certainly said lines have been crossed in the paths and i assume enough to undo him, but they never have. i think a pardon would approach that. certainly a pardon at this juncture. it would signal essentially that he finds himself and his contemporaries and associates to be above the law, paul manafort was convicted by a jury of his peers on bank and tax fraud. if that's not good enough, that would suggest that we're in a post judicial world. so, i would expect a lot of people to speak out at that point. but i, you know, i would also urge some caution. it looks like the fox news

interview he did this trumpian thing where he said i'm looking into things and he doesn't really mean it. and, mostly, i would suspect that people around him still are urging him to just pump the brakes a little bit on this to say, to address pardons only after, for instance, the mueller investigation is done so it doesn't look like he's trying to impede it. but trump is, if anything, compulsive. so, who knows. i don't know what comes next. >> see, i think the danger has changed here. shifted. for a year everybody was talking about how the danger has been the danger as mueller. so, what happened here is that michael cohen was, you know, pled in the southern district of new york, this is the thing that where we have a palpable, we have an absolute claim of involvement in a felonious act by the president of the united states. mueller's out of it. so, in a funny way, he could pardon manafort. he could fire mueller.

and the logic, by the way, of firing manafort. he has to fire mueller at the same time. incredible injustice. mueller is prosecuting innocent people and not fair and pardon michael flynn but none of that will change what's going on in the southern district of new york, which is more jeopardizing him than mueller is. >> okay. so, benjamin and then katty, please follow up. benjamin, this is a massive investigation, ultimately, about the national security of the united states of america. and whether or not our elections were tampered with by the russians which there is clear evidence that this is going on. at what point is a pardon actually witness tampering? >> well, so, i don't know that a pardon is witness tampering, but i have to say when i heard the president yesterday making those statements, issuing those tweets. you know, my first reaction to

it was, wow, what would the president have to do by way of talking in public to paul manafort and saying, don't cooperate. don't, you know, don't flip before you would really see it the way you see it in the godfather when they have the guy's brother, you know, in the room to send him a message. and i, you know, there is a statute that says that if you do that sort of thing with specific intent to corrupt, corruptly persuade a witness as to his testimony, you know, that's a crime. and, you know, i don't know what level of direct public communication to paul manafort that it would take in order to raise a question under that statute. but i, i do think that, you

know, publicly signaling to a witness holding out a pardon for you, thinking about it, don't be a rat, flipping should be illegal. i have so much respect for you for not breaking. >> your family. >> you know, your family is wonderful. to the extent you're saying these things in public in a specific effort to corruptly persuade a witness as to what, how they should interact with federal law enforcement. that gives me a lot of concerns. >> in terms of all the signals that paul manafort has been getting, frankly, if he doesn't get a pardon, i can imagine that he's going to be pretty annoyed about it, because the suggestion has been that he is going to get one. but if the president were to pardon him, he might do better to pardon him before the d.c. trial because that is a trial that we'll get more documents on

manafort shady dealings in terms with russia and ukraine and the kind of things that are central to the mueller investigation, much more than we had in the virginia trial. so, actually, if a pardon were coming probably in terms of the president's political benefit, it ought to come sooner than later. you asked the question, mika, we had indications from lindsey graham and john cornyn that this is something they don't like. i think the bigger wall, though, is going to be much more around russia and what the president does around russia. not what the president says and were they really the ones that were doing the meddling that he still seems to be keen to say. but if the president were ready to take action, that is the only wall that the republicans would find really difficult to handle. that is the republican caucus in the senate is being unified on to taking tough action against russia. if we start seeing the president to act on russia to make life easier for the russians, as far

as i can see, the only thing that the russians have been saying, okay, a step too far. >> my god, if they finally, finally do step up and say, wow, we're concerned about what is happening, the question is going to be, where have you been, paul ryan? where have you been, mitch mcconnell? where have you been, republicans? where have you been as this whole thing comes tumbling down. jeremy peters will join us with anecdotal information reporting on some cracks inside trump world. we'll be right back. can be relentless.

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i'm not going to be rushed into having him testify so that he gets trapped into perjury. when you tell me that, you know, he should testify because he's going to tell the truth and he 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 -- >> no it isn't. truth isn't truth.

>> just remember what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening. >> joining us now, someone who has been rather busy over the last year and a half, the fact checker columnist for "the washington post". for the first time glen is using the word "lie" in regards to the president. the only other time he definitively used it was for lance armstrong. glen, he is lying. there are oftentimes where he gets facts wrong on purpose and you can call it an untruth or something else, but at this point, where do you see that the president is blatantly lying, specifically? >> well, this was a big decision for us, actually to use this word. and before you could never really get inside the person's head and determine did that person know when they were saying these things that it was not the truth. but we went through and looked

at the various statements that the president or his associates have made on his behalf regarding these payments, and it is clear from the very beginning that he knew about the payments, he was involved in discussions about the payments, and yet, you know, told the american people repeatedly he didn't know about it. so, it left us no choice but to actually use that word "lie." >> how about the dysfunctional brain defense. he's just a flighty guy. if you're going into intent and use that "l" word which should be used thousands of times, how about, to use mika's analogy this flipping fish on the dock and his reality on any given moment for him is not a lie. >> well, that's a very good point. i think the president is very situational. he may well believe what he says at the moment when he is saying

it and there are many examples we have in our collection of false and misleading claims where he has said things repeatedly, even though it has been fact checked as families. but this gets to it a different level. this is a continuing sustained effort to mislead the american public about what happened here. it's a kind of thing i would expect only to do, i hope, only once a presidency where you can actually document that this was a deliberate effort to lie, and i think the evidence is pretty clear that that's what we have here. >> so, you document that he's told over 4,000 untruths and now this is a lie. what does this mean for our democracy? when, for example, if i am not telling the truth i'm more comfortable in retreating into my silos, into spaces with people i trust. president trump's repeated lying seems to be only the very basic

of democratic deliberation. what are the effects of this constant, shall we say trafficking in the untruth or in this instance a lie? >> for pun departmedits to talke impact of democracy but i don't think it's necessarily working for the president. you look at the approval ratings he has despite a booming stock market and a pretty good economy, that the erosion of his credibility is something that is hurting him. and previous presidents, when they were caught in a lie, you think of nixon and the bombing of cambodia or dwight eisenhower and the lying about the u2 flights. those things undermine their credibility. bill clinton and monica lewinsky. it's not a -- add that on top of, you know, his repeated misstatements and falsehoods, i

don't think it's necessarily good for him personally. >> john, quick thought on this to the point where we are getting the fact checker for "the washington post" calling the president, i guess i can say it, a liar. i think a lot of us have done this a lot earlier but i can understand the thought that goes into this. >> i'm of the mind not to be the only pop culture reference of the blues brothers when john belushi is in a tunnel facing his ex-girlfriend who has a shotgun on him. i was waiting at the altar and you didn't show up what happened to you. and he says i got a flat tire, i got sick. you know, the dog ate my homework. you know, somebody crashed into my car. he just says everything in a row. and after he does it 20 or 25

times she says oh, honey -- so there's a way in which for a trump supporter the lies, the endless row of lies at some point either you say nothing come out of his mouth is truth or he's just trying so hard. he has all these enemies that come at him and it's just so unfair. >> bless his heart. you all know what that means in the south. thank you both. glen as well thank you. coming up president trump admits he knew about those hush money payments but says it's okay because it didn't come from campaign funds during a campaign. and number two senate democrat dick durbin joins us as his colleagues try to dodge talks about impeachment. morning joe is coming back. what's the hesitation? eh, it just feels too complicated, you know?

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high crimes? i don't know how you can impeach somebody who has done a great job. i'll tell you what, if i got impeached i think the market would crash. everybody would be very poor because we would have this thinking, you would see -- you would see numbers you wouldn't believe. >> okay. president trump more of his insipid interview on fox where he rambled, lied and took over.

welcome back to "morning joe," it's thursday, august 23rd, 2018. donny deutsche is still with us along with professor and katty kay. joining the conversation, associate editor of commentary magazine noah. "new york times" washington bureau chief elizabeth and jeremy peters and john harwood. great group of reporters. jeremy, let's start with your reporting this morning. of course, a morning where we wake up to, let's see, the president tweeting at 1:10 in the morning. so the president is not sleeping much. looking a little swollen and rambling right and left. we're waking up to fox news polling showing that support for the mueller probe is growing rapidly. and concern that the president has either committed a crime or an impeachable offense is also growing. fox news polling saying that.

this morning you have reporting about cracks inside trump world. tell us about it. >> i think, mika, that the level of distress among republicans broadly is about as serious as i've heard it since the "access hollywood" tape dropped. and that's because back then there was a real fear that this was all over. that his candidacy is no longer there. that's the same type of worry i'm hearing from republicans. and inside trump's orbit there's a real concern that the type of reckless and impulsive and self-destructive behavior he's known for will only get worse and they just don't know where it's going go next, especially when you have all of these factors that have yet to play out, such as the paul manafort sentencing and will paul manafort try to cut some sort of deal before his sentencing. what is in bob word woodward's .

what this is creating here is a real panic that if the house weren't already lost, it's pretty much all but gone to the republicans because the types of voters that they really need to come out are they voters who are, not exactly trump supporters, you would say, but they are republicans who are willing to look the other way. they look other way past charlottesville even though that might have bothered them. they looked the other way after helsinki. it's the drip, drip, drip of all the chaos and the bad behavior from the president that they've said, you know what? that's it. we're done. when those people stay home the mid-term election is over for republicans. >> okay. john harwood, don't we have to make a distinction between the different types of republicans. you've been writing about the reckoning that donald trump now faces, but there's still the hard core republicans, i don't know if you would even call them

resupporters, they are trump supporters, they buy into this. after the last 24 hours they keep telling us it doesn't matter what he's done with whom, how he paid them off because of north korea, because of the stock market, because of the tax cuts, because of the supreme court. and they will never abandon him. how important is it to get the numbers straight on who is still with him and who is now starting to waiver? >> well, it's very important. i do think that the core base for donald trump remains solid, but the peripheral base -- >> how big is it? >> well, he's right now at 42% in the gallup poll. i think that he has hemoharrage college educated voters.

i think it's telling. i had a conversation yesterday with tom cole of oklahoma a veteran republican member, former executive director of the national republican committee, former head of the house republican campaign and he said look i'm very disturbed by what i see. there is a point at which members will act. he even used the "i" word. he said if something clear and convincing and impeachable comes out members will act. i think it's significant and elizabeth and jeremy's colleagues did a story also last evening about conversation with republican leaders signalling members that if you feel angst and you're in trouble you go ahead and speak out against the president. i think that counts. and it doesn't mean that anybody is going to turn en masse, but we all remember, at least all of us who are old enough to have lived through the watergate

situation, we know that richard nixon's allies hung with him very, very deep into that process and at some point they turned. it was very late. it was when the watergate tapes came out. i don't think that has occurred yet, but i think republicans are starting to contemplate when it might occur and to prepare themselves. >> so let's get to the latest in president trump's former lawyer implicating him and his guilty plea. yesterday trump appeared to acknowledge his attorney's campaign finance violation and then walked it back in an interview all while maintaining it's not a crime and said he blamed attorney general jeff sessions for his former lawyer's prosecution. the president tweeted, michael cohen pled guilty to two counts of campaign finance violation that are not a crime. president obama had a big campaign finance violation and it was easily settled. trump was referring to a late filing on a small dollar

donations by the obama campaign which resulted in a large fine given the scale of the operation but is pretty different than knowingly concealing campaign spending as pleaded toby cohen. by the way on women that they are trying to silence. and which is routinely prosecuted in criminal court as with the fraud case against john edwards under the obama justice department. here's the president on fox news explaining why he thinks cohen flipped. >> he makes a better deal when he uses me like everybody else. one of the reasons why i respect paul manafort so much is he went through that trial -- you know they make up stories. people make up stories. this whole thing about flipping, they call it. i know all about flipping. for 30, 40 years i've been watching flippers. everything is wonderful and then they get ten years in jail and they flip on whoever the next highest one is or as high as you can go. it almost sort of ought to be outlawed.

it's not fair. if somebody is going to spend five years like michael cohen or ten years or 15 years in jail because of a taxicab industry, because he defrauded some bank the last two were the tiny one, campaign violations are considered not a big deal, frankly. but if somebody defrauded a bank and he's going get ten years in jail or 20 years in jail but if you can say something bad about donald trump and you go down to two years or three years which is the deal he made, in all fairness to him most people are going to do that. and i've seen it many times. i've had many friends involved in this stuff. it's called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal. >> i don't know where to begin. elizabeth, help me out here. >> you took the words out of my mouth. i don't know where to start. >> it's staggering. let me ask you this. >> okay. >> first of all, what i see,

again, in that interview is the president flipping like a fish on a dock. like i said earlier, literally gasping for air. he barely makes sense. if you pull away and you look at the totality of the day yesterday it's hey paul manafort, i'll give you a pardon. you're a nice guy. you have a nice family. stay with me. i'll give you a pardon. michael cohen, you're dead to me. >> well, there's two things i noticed. one is that he's not talking like he's the president of the united states. he's talking as if he's involved -- he's talking like somebody -- i don't want to say -- it's just not the way the president of the united states should look at this. paul manafort has been convicted by a jury of a serious crime, and he's praising him for hanging on for not breaking whereas michael cohen he's very critical of him for talking to law enforcement as is the law. the other thing is that it's not

a crime to -- he also said in that interview it's not a problem if he gave the money to silence the women from his personal accounts so, therefore, it's not a campaign finance violation. this is not true at all. any kind of spending on behalf of your campaign, if it's not disclosed is a problem. and these payments were not disclosed. doesn't matter where the money came from. >> i wish that might have been pointed out to him as a response to his ridiculous allegation. noah, you'll say it, what do you see happening here >> elizabeth was very kind. i'll say it. the president sounds like a mob boss. he's talking about his former campaign chairman defrauding the public, robbing taxpayers, defrauding tiny banks and praising him like he's paul servino. he took his pinch like a man. the notion, for example, mr.

cohen is flipping, turning state's evidence and that the chief executive of the nation's laws is coming out against turning state's evidence. this saline that has been crossed. again, we cannot go back. this should be examined thoroughly by historians the moment at which our nation turned a corner and unless republicans behave as if this is an abuse, a serious abuse, perhaps even an impeachable abuse we'll very much regret this moment and what we lost in it. >> there was an interesting strategic shift in the fox news clip before the previous one. a new defense. it started with well it's a witch-hunt. then you can't believe what people are saying. then it's not really a crime. his newest defense is well i'm doing such a good job. he literally said the words out of his mouth were you would be poor without me. talk about a fascist line. john harwood, he literally said they can't impeach me because i'm doing such a good job, the stock market would crash and

you, he used those words, you would be poor without me and he pointed to his head. so that's his new defense. look how good i'm doing, look at the stock market. can't do anything to me. >> holding hostage. >> he sounds like a mob boss that's true. i see something else when you look at the accumulation of those clips. people talk about donald trump as a narcissist. i'm the difference whether people go to jail or not. they can turn on me and get a lighter sentence. i'm the one whose the difference between whether you're rich or poor. i'm doing a good job so you can't go after me. he's not showing a moral sense. he's not showing maturity. he's acting like somebody whose got something wrong with him in

terms of his level of maturity. whether that is -- whether that's narcissism he only thinks about what's good or bad for him in that moment and that's not what you expect from a president. >> so jeremy, i think the description of what we just saw on fox news is pretty on point that we turned a point. we hit a moment. what does it mean -- you say there are cracks. what does it mean when we confront the silence of senate majority leader mcconnell, the silence of paul ryan or you read bob costa's piece in the "the washington post" and talks to a republican donor who says this is a crisis point but we support his agenda. how do we square those two facts, those two realities.

you still have support. then we saw what we saw on fox. >> this is the bargain that the republican party made with donald trump when they gave him the nomination. or i should say when he basically hijacked the nomination from the party leaders who did not want him to be their nominee. they decided okay we're willing to overlook the personal flaws, the bad behavior the lack of professionalism and immaturity because he'll give us judges, because he'll deregulate, he'll cut taxes. you know what? that's what voters are seeing because they hear it from the president himself and i cannot overstate how much weight this president's words carry with his base, more so probably than any president we've seen in our lifetime. when he says it, it's true. when he says, no, i didn't break any laws. people say, yeah, that's right.

no, he didn't do anything wrong. he didn't break any laws. that's why it's so hard for republicans to criticize him and to say hold on a second, a line has been crossed. they won't said because to do so would be political suicide. i frankly don't see any point right now at which the party decides to say, you know what, mr. president, you just gone too far. they will say it privately but never said publicly. >> so, to use noah's word, more from the mob boss president and his interview with fox, he's now blaming -- this is in this part of the interview, he's blaming the justice department. take a look. >> i put in an attorney general that never took control of the justice department, jeff sessions. never took control of the justice department. it's an incredible thing. when you see muller with conflict. comey is his best friend.

he had a nasty business transaction with me in which he never reported. i've been talking about it. he never reports it. you look at the bad things. he wanted the fbi job. that christopher wray has. christopher wray was recommended by rod rosenstein. the fbi -- i'll tell you what if you took a poll in the fbi i guarantee you one thing. i do very well. there's such corruption. before i got here it's from before i got here. it's the obama administration. and you look at what happened. they surveilled my campaign. very simple. the fisa report. the phoney fake -- >> rod rosenstein signed the last fisa report. >> it bothers me. >> will you fire him? will you fire session? >> i'll tell you what, i wanted to stay uninvolved but when everybody sees what's going on in the justice department -- i put justice now with quotes. it's a very sad day. jeff sessions recused himself which he shouldn't have done or

he should have told me. even my enemies say that jeff sessions should have told you that he was going to recuse himself and then you wouldn't have put him in. he took the job and then he said i'm going recuse myself. i said what kind of a man is this? >> all right. elisabeth and then katty kay. elisabeth, i mean at this point this looks like a completely nonfunctional white house with a raging unhinged president whose clearly disregarding the truth and trying to save himself while there's a massive investigation on pertaining to our national security and our election process, we have a president who cozies up to putin, helsinki, north korea. at what point do people with any sense of moral compass or any knowledge of history, national security and foreign policy step up at this point?

inside the white house? >> right now the white house staff is maggie and katie rogers yesterday just keeping their heads down trying to weather this one out. they are basically -- they've been in the trenches for so long, this is normal for them. i would say in that clip we just saw, this is the president's greatest hits of the last year. a year ago was the first time he told us in an interview that he was upset about jeff sessions and it's become sort of normal now for the president of the united states to go after his own attorney general and his own justice department. he's also repeated one of the most amazing statements of his first year, which is that the obama administration was eavesdropping, bugging trump tower. so i don't know. you're right. he just repeats himself. he spins these sort of fantasies. he goes in circles. it's hard to make sense of what he just said there. other than he kind of -- he

pulls it all together in sort of this free form rambling statement and he goes in circles. i don't know what else to say. >> katty kay, the world is watching. what are they seeing? >> look, the whole past 24 hours is completely dominated news headlines. certainly in europe it took up about half of our domestic news bulletin last night. people are staggered by what they are seeing. they keep asking this question where does this actually lead? i think what jeremy was saying about trump support serious absolutely critical. we do have what is becoming a cult of personality around the president and in cuts of personality his followers believe word for word what they are being told by their leader and they will never abandon him over this. which puts the republican leadership in this very difficult position as they are constantly saying can i afford to move away from the president

when we know that his poll ratings are so high and so solid and he was right about being able to go out on to fifth avenue and shoot somebody. he got that one right. i guess the question, noah, are we now having to weigh up how severe the potential legal ramifications, not just of the cohen and manafort cases are but whatever else mueller might have, you know, if there is obstruction of justice and how severe is the underlying crime behind that of collusion and that really is going, i think, will be the only thing that pushes eventually the president away from office or republicans away from supporting him because for the moment politically he just seems so solid, doesn't he? >> the republican relationship with donald trump is transactional. if after november it doesn't look like he's the political force that we think he is at the polls, if his 37%, 40% looks like 37%, 40% to republicans and

lose the house and staring down the barrel of a rough 20 20rks the calculation would change. >> i'll say one thing. you'll be left with a house of representatives that's smaller and more loyal to trump because the moderates will be purged. they've already retired. >> i got to say, guys. i have a higher opinion of t electorate. yes, it's true that donald trump has high 80s ratings among republicans. however, throughout donald trump's presidency a majority of the american people have said that he's dishonest. if his base -- i think a lot of the people in his base, i don't know that they believe him word for word, it's just that they like the people that he's fighting against, including us, including illegal immigrants, including african-americans. they identify with the enemies he's chosen. but if donald trump was so strong politically, republicans

would not now be on track to lose house to. they are in serious political danger and they know it. >> john, just word for word as far as trump supporters believing him, the most stunning poll i ever heard is a cbs poll that said strong trump supporters, if he says something, 91% take it as the truth. if their friends and family tell them something 63% tell them. so to them donald trump's words are more believable, more truthful than their family or friends. >> that's only about a quarter of the american public. >> right. right. >> still quite a big number. >> yes, exactly. i have some thoughts on who is going run if he doesn't. our thanks to the entire "new york times" newsroom. still ahead on "morning joe" we've been talking about the new polling on bob mueller and the russia probe and new numbers on congress and who voters want to run capitol hill. we'll show you those ahead.

and bring in the second ranking senate democrat dick durbin. you're watching "morning joe". we'll be right back. you've tried moisturizer after moisturizer

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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. amid all that's going on president trump has decided to weigh into south african race politics. while evidently watching cable news last night the president tweeted at one network quote, i have asked secretary of state pompeo to closely study the south africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. south african government is now sizing land from white farmers.

the south african mail guardian this is part of a racist conspiracy theory that's long been a rallying cry among white nationalist taens roots of it can be traced back to an extremist, far-right wing group who describes itself as preparing for a coming violent race resolution to prevent a quote white genocide. the group has reportedly met with far-right groups and media contacts in the u.s. in an effort to garner support. the south african government has responded to trump's tweet quote south africa totally rejects this narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past. so he divides our country and now he's working on others. eddie, you first. >> this is consistent. look the only words we get out of donald trump's mouth about

predominantly african countries or african descendant countries is they are s-hole countries or in this case he's trafficking in conspiracy theories to in some ways feed red meat to his base. this is nonsense. it's silly. but it's consistent with the kind of cultural warrior that he is. at the same time he's doing this with regards to south african white farmers, i think two of them perhaps might have been killed in some instance with majority of folks that have been subject to any kind of violence, nonwhite farmers in this instance. he's l-shall we say, playing the card with regards to the mollie tibbetts murder. this horrific murder in iowa. he's saying that this is a result of not having the wall. here this is a morally debased man who will do anything to protect himself teen divert attention from the fact that he has been noted as a non-indicted

co-conspirator in a felony. this is how bad he is as a human being. >> it's even more peroni show us than that. here we have a case here where it's pretty evident that he has no clue what the policy is or at least he didn't have a clue what the policy was and he weighed in on i want based on a cable news segment he saw vis-a-vis tucker carlson. the president is watching fox news and decides i'll weigh into world affairs like this on twitter, that's a really odd way to conduct international diplomacy. yeah, the policy is or what tucker was talking about has roots in white nationalists online forums, basically it's a relic of the early 20th century when land was taken from black farmers, trying to reverse those wrongs. it wasn't really a move fast enough in recent years so they are trying to actually get land back to black farmers. there are debates over whether and how they are doing it.

but, you know, the adthat this is reverse racism against white farmers ignores basically a century of history. it's damaging for trump to weigh in on policy in this matter and i will note one thing. this is the first time that as president he's tweeted about africa or used the word africa in a tweet and for him to do it in this particular fashion is gross. >> predictions yesterday morning was that he would jump into the arms of fox hosts and tweet about a foreign country, trying to deflect. strangely the news headlines are so big and so serious and the facts are so strong that the deflections don't appear to be working. coming up investigators in new york subpoena michael cohen for information on its investigation into the trump fusion. we'll talk to "the washington post" reporter who won a pulitzer for his reporting on

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member of the judiciary committee senate democratic whip dick durbin of illinois. several democrats have cancelled or refused meetings with president trump's supreme court nominee while senator durbin says he will meet judge brett kavanaugh later this morning. senator, thanks for being on this morning. there's a lot going on. but you feel it's important to meet with brett kavanaugh and let things move forward? >> of course, i do. this is the seventh supreme court nominee that i will meet with. i have a lot of questions to ask of him, particularly in light of the verdicts and guilty pleas that came down last tuesday. you see brett kavanaugh as judge has some unusual positions. when president clinton was being investigated he was industry dent in pushing forward for that investigation. then he publicly came out and said that a president should not be investigated or prosecuted in office. it was an interesting theory and a change of his position, but completely relevant now in the

conversation that we're facing in light of last tuesday. >> so, what do you think of your colleagues who are trying to put this off, and say that there are bigger things going on. do you think that's fair? >> well, i do. i don't disagree with the premise here that in light of all of the intrigue and accusations that are swirling in washington, the thought that we're going to put a person on the supreme court for a lifetime appointment, who will be the swing vote for a generation or more, in a moment when we're on the threshold of a constitutional crisis, i think argues to delay this, to beyond the election at least. i'm going to meet -- go ahead. >> senator durbin it's katty kay here. on the issue of impeachment, do you feel that the events of the two day raysed the calculation of raising the issue of

impeachment is it something you would advise candidates to talk about head on. >> absolutely not. we should not be testing the waters one way or the other at this point. let's let the facts unfold in light of the mueller investigation. what both parties can do to serve the cause of justice is to make sure that bob mueller completes his investigation. if at the end of the investigation he says there's no culpability on the part of the president, sob it. however, if he reaches an opposite conclusion, we have to take it to the next step. >> senator, it's sam stein here. on this show a little while ago i asked you if the senate should delay the brett kavanaugh consideration until after mueller produces his report. at the time you did not say yes or no. you just didn't answer. i'm wonder if the past week has changed your calculation. do you feel now that kavanaugh's confirmation, consideration should not happen before the mueller report is dropped? >> i do.

i do feel that way for the reasons i mentioned earlier. this is a swing vote on the highest court of the land, a lifetime appointment. it will affect decisions when it comes to a woman's right to choose, when it comes to the pre-existing conditions of families being used against them in health insurance. it will be decided by this supreme court nominee. if there's after time when we should at least pause before we jump, this is the time. >> senator durbin, i've heard some democrats and liberal thought leaders say they believe this president over this last week has lost a lot of legitimacy and therefore his nominees are illegitimate. so if brett kavanaugh is -- senate confers legitimacy. is that how you see it or do you think these liberal thought leaders and fellow democrats have a point? >> i see it the same way.

i'm a minority in the senate. we are at the mercy of mitch mcconnell and the republican majority and there has been an abundant amount of silence from the republicans since last tuesday, an indication that they are afraid of this issue. they don't want to touch this president for fear he'll explode in their face and they are afraid to go back home and face their loyal republican primary voters and tell them what most of the people in america think that this situation is dreadful. >> i want to return to the impeachment question. with michael cohen's admission of guilt, donald trump has basically been -- he's now an unindicted co-conspirator in terms of a felony. why are we waiting for the mueller investigation? he's already in some interesting sort of way implicated in a crime. so can't we walk and chew gum at the same time? can't we have candidates talk about payment impeachment as wet

forward a agenda that's consistent with the democratic party. can't we do both as opposed to one or the other? >> off the top of my head i can't think of a more serious power in the constitution than the power of congress to remove a president. we should take it as seriously as it is written. this is something that has not been done in the history of the united states. i expect the american people think that we're going take our time and do this responsibly. let us not rush to any conclusion until this investigation is completed. >> senator, let's take a step back to the nixon days. we talked a lot on this show his core republicans were with him until the very end and then it tipped. what would you think would be the current day version of what it would take for that same tipping point as far as republicans and the current president? >> well, if you'll remember, if i remember, and if you do as well, that was after the supreme court required the disclosure of

the tapes. i believe at that moment there was a question whether or not there were 67 votes to impeach the president. several republican senators i believe they included barry goldwater went to president nixon and said to him no we can't guarantee you 33 or 34 republicans will stand by you and at that point president nixon decided he'll leave. we're a long way from that moment if we ever reach it. i wouldn't predict at this moment one way or the other. >> senator dick durbin, thank you for being on the show this morning. up next, new york investigators push forward with an investigation that's out of the reach of the president's pardoning power. that is bad news for him and his adult children. "morning joe" is coming right back. it's time for the 'biggest sale of the year'

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investigation into the trump foundation. it comes after cohen's attorney claimed his client had information that federal and state investigators would like to know. the attorney general of new york is currently suing the trump foundation claiming donald trump illegally used his foundation to settle legal disputes, help his campaign for president, and pay for personal and business expenses. when the lawsuit was announced in june the president vowed not to settle the case. the current investigation is being conducted by new york's tax department, and could be referred to the attorney general for prosecution. it's important to note that the president does not have the power to pardon in state cases. joining us now, investigative reporter for "the washington post" and msnbc contributor, david fahrenthold. you have new reporting on michael cohen, using the president's secrets as leverage including personally calling the

new york tax department to see how he could help their probe into trump foundation. what's he doing here. is this ultimately trying to save himself in some way? >> a good question. i think right now immediately he's trying to raise his profile as somebody who knows a lot about donald trump because michael cohen has a go fun me set up to get people to contribute to his legal expenses. he's trying to demonstrate his value to a variety of legal probes not just to the investigators but also to the public. that's part of this. but also, actually, the thing about michael cohen, donald trump had blurred the lines between his company and his family, his company and his charities, his company and his campaign. michael cohen played this unusual role where he was on either side of those blurred lines. he had a little piece of the trump empire as it co-mingled. michael cohen didn't have a formal role in the trump foundation but it's possible knees how it worked. >> i'll tell you exactly what

michael cohen is thinking, and what he's going to be doing. i spoke to michael again yesterday. it's been reported that michael after the putin press conference in helsinki put him over the edge. now he was moving in that direction. i remember speaking to him right afterwards. this is genuine. i know i've been getting there. but seeing this, something's got to be done for our country. obviously he'll do things to protect himself. but he's pissed. as far as the foundation goes, he knows all. as far as the meeting -- with the russian collusion at the hotel, he knows all. so beyond doing what's right for him and his family, he does have it -- this is a guy who spent -- think about it. you spend your life working for somebody defending somebody and that very person you worked for not only has turned on you but you've really seen light. this is the guy i was working for? is this guy i was putting my entire life and entire trust

behind? so he's not only doing things now to protect himself -- i'm telling you there's a sense of right and wrong and sometimes you got to hit your nose against the wall. but that is what's going on there. >> donnie, there was an amazing snippet in the "wall street journal" article about this last night. and i -- i want to know if you can add to it. but essentially, what it says, it was one of the compelling reasons that michael cohen decided to take the path that he's currently on was a conversation he had with his father, who was a holocaust survivor. his father essentially said to him, i didn't survive the holocaust to have donald trump selling my name. it was a compelling moment, a rare look at the family drama that michael cohen is dealing with. can you talk about that father relationship and what that meant to him in this moment? >> he didn't tell me about the father discussion. but i will tell you about a conversation i had with him regarding his dad being a

holocaust survivor. when michael first got arrested, the amount of texts and tweets he got, you're the guy standing as they're putting jews in the oven. your dad is a holocaust survivor. you're standing by. and that shook him to his core. he's like, wait a minute, my dad is a holocaust survivor. obviously he's a bridge along the way, but when he started getting the texts -- i'm sorry, this was after charlottesville where at this point still he hadn't turned yet and it was like you're standing by and allowing this to happen. he's like, i am not standing by. i am so offended. i am so shaken to my core. so these were all pieces of the puzzle and, you know, if that conversation did happen with his father, because i know as far as his family and his children and all of us, this gets to our core. >> it very well might have. but i have a problem with someone wrapping themselves in

the holocaust to -- >> not, he was not -- >> lobbying the president and the press to pay his legal bills, threatening to at all talk to mueller -- >> you're not hearing what i'm saying is that as a jew and -- >> i have questions about that. >> he's not wrapping himself in the holocaust. as a jew and as a man, when charlottesville happen and basically people were attacking michael and just, wait a second, how can you stand by and let this -- he was deeply, deeply moved and offended as anybody would be. it's not a matter of -- >> irrelevant. >> i think the problem, donnie, and i want to get back to the reporting, the problem is that what has been revealed in the past few days, to michael cohen himself saying, pleading guilty to breaking the law repeatedly, to breaking the law for the president, so for him to, you know, all of a sudden see the light, it just is a little farfetched, i think? >> well, we look through history of people who have done wrong and they've paid the price and

you do see the light. i do think he see tess world -- >> but my point is, he knew all along that the president was crooked because he broke the law for him. why does he need to watch helsinki happen? you can just look at the financial transactions for porn stars. >> like a lot of people, they'll go, okay, the this is wrong, yeah, we're paying this woman off and that happens all the time versus a president putting our world and our country at risk with a foreign -- there are differences. we do have to draw distinctions between levels of wrong versus saying everything is wrong. that's just reality. and if i spoke to people out there, the average voter, the average person says is there a difference between trump the paying off a porn star and trump being in bed with putin so visibly? i think 90% of people would distinguish between those two, although they're both wrong. >> david, you have been reporting that michael cohen was

very concerned because his wife has joint filings with him. tell us more about that as well as any potential ties to russia. >> well, i think you've seen lanny davis, michael cohen's attorney talk in vague terms about the things michael cohen might know related to the trump campaign and russia. we don't quite know what that is yet. i haven't seen lanny davis specify what cohen knows. cohen was in a bind, beyond whatever moral things he might have been wrestling with. there was an immediate legal problem which is that the new york attorney general had gone after a taxi king of jshg, a guy who was in a taxi business with cohen. cohen may have felt the threat there. certainly he felt the threat from federal prosecutors putting him under a lot of pressure in the last few months, both pressure on his wife and pressure on him. so i think he may have felt legally like this was a time when he may have had to cut his losses.

he may not have seen a way out of this legally other than to plead guilty and affect some other investigations. >> david, thank you for your reporting. still ahead, the president was up until after 1:00 this morning the at the very least tweeting. more on the legal pressure that's keeping him up night ahead. mrus, we'll dig into the new issue of "time" magazine. bob mueller closer in. "morning joe" is coming right back. >> so i give myself an a plus. i don't think any president has ever done what i've done in this short -- we haven't even been two years, the biggest tax cuts in history, soon to be two unbelievable supreme court justices, i'm sure that justice kavanaugh will be approved. justice gorsuch has been a star. you look at all of the things we've done with regulations, the economy is the best it's ever been in history. the only thing i'm doing badly

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>> well, granted, mitch mcconnell doesn't often answer questions on the go, but his silence and the silence of house speaker paul ryan hang heavy in the air. what will republicans do if the president makes a move against the special counsel? 59% of americans now back the mueller probe and that number is growing. another number on the rise, the percentage of people who think there is a strong chance the president of the united states committed a criminal or impeachable offense. and that polling is from fox news. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is thursday, august 23rd. joe has the morning off. he'll be back tomorrow. we have donnie deutsch with us along with professor at princeton university eddie junior and contributing editor of the weekly standard john pedoritz, sam stein, washington anchor for bbc world news america patti kay and editor in

chief of law fair and msnbc legal analyst benjamin willis. we begin with the very latest in president trump's former lawyer implicating him in his guilty plea yesterday. trump appeared to acknowledge his attorney's campaign finance violation. and walked it back in an interview all while maintaining it's not a crime. he blamed attorney general jeff sessions for his former lawyer's prosecution. the president tweeted michael cohen pled guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime. so then president obama had a big campaign finance violation and it was easily settled. yes, he talked about that. trump was referring to a late filing on small dollar donations by the obama campaign which resulted in a large fine given the scale of the operation, but is different than knowingly concealing campaign spending as

pleaded to by cohen.en. which is routinely prosecuted in criminal court as with the fraud case against john edwards under the obama justice department. speaking, of course, to fox news -- that's where i told you he's go -- president trump said it had nothing to do with who is leading doj. it has everything to do the with it. my first question when i heard about it was did it come out of the campaign? because that could be dicey. but that's not even a campaign violation. if you look at president obama, he had a massive campaign violation. but he had a different attorney general and they viewed it a lot differently. >> ben, try to make sense of all the things that he's piling on to this answer here. can you make a parallel between violations, the one that he's

talking about and the obama administration and the payoff to a porn star and a play boy bunny made right before the election was going into full form? well, to ask that question that way is the answer to it. so, look, the part of what the president says, the only part that's true, is that it is the case that normal campaign finance violations are handed routinely by the federal election commission as a civil matter. and there's a system like with any regulatory system of penalties and fines and those are handled as routine matters and don't invoke criminal offenses. when you engage in an elaborate scheme on the other hand to circumvent those regulatory requirements by hiding things, by paying people hush money, by

not then reporting those hush money payments as campaign contributions, you're going to invoke criminal authorities or at least you may. and that is the difference between the -- what he calls massive campaign finance problems that the obama administrators and campaign had which was some technical filing errors for which they paid a fine and a scheme to get your personal lawyer to get tabloids or other entities to pay off former mistresses or paramours before the election to keep them quiet. there's no comparison to be drawn there. >> there's none. it's flabbergasting. the entire interview, for many reasons, is actually staggering at this point. and the fact that he thinks he can push things along by mushing the truth into complete dribble, actually. he doesn't even make sense at times. donnie, i've been thinking all

day yesterday about michael cohen and all the witches that so far have been, you know, brought in by mueller, pled guilty or indicted. and i just -- if you look at what michael cohen has pled guilty to, how stupid do these people -- how stupid are these people? don't they know what is going to happen if they have committed these crimes, if they're pleading guilty to these actions, how did the they not know that they wouldn't be hauled in at this point? and the next question will be how stupid are republicans at this point to still stand by this president to stand by all of this and say nothing? look, we don't even have enough room on the screen, pleading guilty, pleading guilty, pleading guilty. how stupid are these people to think that it wouldn't end like this? >> let's unpack the stupid suitcase because there's a lot of living in there. starting with trump -- >> well, it's michael cohen i'm

really -- >> i'll get to cohen in a second. >> you're friends with him. >> i'm going to step back and get into cohen. what is amazing about that trump interview is when i first found out about this, did this come from campaign -- like there is not a tape that exists of him directing michael cohen to say, do it in cash. like when he just found out about it. like that doesn't exist. that audio doesn't exist. we haven't heard it. that's what's astounding. as far as cohen, you know, cohen was an attorney working for trump. and, you know, you're directed by your boss and it's not -- i'm not using the nuremberg explanation. but i don't think at that point you're saying to yourself, should i do this, should i not do this, you're a lawyer, you're working for -- and he has stood up and he is facing the consequences. i think i'm going to stay with the stupid place in the case of trump and the republicans and that very brave gentleman mitch mcconnell, who you are the leader of the republican party,

okay? you are the face, other than after the president, you are it. you know, you go down that totem pole and there it is. and the president's personal attorney has pleaded guilty to taking directions violating a felonius law and you have no comment. you have no comment. and, john, i don't -- we're going to stay in kind of the stupid universe. what does mitch mcconnell think when he thinks people are watching? >> i think what he thinks is they're in hell. their whole hope is just that they are productive enough and serve the interests of enough voters that they can spare themselves disaster in november. the timeline is very short here for them. it's from here until the november elections. tailwinds are looking very bad for them. if they can just focus on their work, ignore trump, get judges,

get brett kavanaugh confirmed, paul ryan then gets to retire, mitch mcconnell can say i did all this. i have nothing to do with this guy. so he doesn't want to talk about it because there is nothing in it for him in terms of this timeline from now until november to say a single word about trump, about cohen, about manafort, about mueller. he is in a lockbox. anything he says is a disaster. if he says i no longer support trump, the republican base turns on him. if he says i support trump, he sells his soul. his wife is in the cabinet. it's not good. so he just keeps his mouth shut. >> michael, mika, let me ask a stupid question since we're on the stupid line to john's point about let's do business as usual. the reality in going to that fox poll is that basically -- and this is the signature work of the trump administration so far has been the tax plan. that is 11% less popular than

the signature work of the obama administration which is, of course, obama care. you take the enthusiasm polls, you take optimism for the next generation which is down 11 points. that's already going in the right direction. you take the president on the water and you take -- other than the core republicans, nobody else thinks the economy is going in the right direction. so it's hard for them to run on business as usual at this point. >> look, it's -- we've got so much more to cover and so much more to get to. but i will say it is flabbergasting how stupid michael cohen and the other witches are that we have covered in this witch-hunt which i'll use the president's word. i don't get the republican party at this point because they're leaders and it's about right and wrong. it's about the fabric of this country. >> they're fought leaders. >> it's about truth. >> and they're not leaders and they're letting americans down. we move on. i want to get patti, sam, pen gentleman minute back in. you will notice that president trump has changed his original

explanation for when he knew about michael cohen arranging for payments to women. >> did you know about the $130,000 payments for stormy daniels? then why did michael cohen say this if there was no allegations? >> you'd have to ask michael cohen. michael is my attorney and you'll have to ask michael. >> do you know where he got the money to make that payment? >> no, i don't know. >> did you know about the payments? >> later on i knew. later on. >> is he lying here? yeah. again, the president just lies. michael cohen has a tape from 2016 which the president has tweeted about indicating its authenticity of the two of them discussing at least one of the payments. >> i need to open up a can company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our

friend, david, so that i'm going to do that right away. i've spoke ton allen about how to set the whole thing up with -- >> so what are we going to do? >> funding. yes. and it's all the stuff -- >> thinking about that. >> all the stuff you never know where that company is going be. correct. so i'm all over that. and i spoke to allen about it. when it comes time for the financing, which will be -- >> we'll so to pay -- >> no, no, no. i got it. >> as you just heard, the president has an explanation for the payment that he thinks makes everything okay. >> but you have to understand, what he did -- and they weren't taken out of campaign finance. that's the big thing. that is a much bigger thing. did they come out of the campaign. they came from me and i tweeted

about it. i don't know if you know, but i tweeted about the payments. >> lying again. experts say that claim doesn't work out, either, as vox writes, you can't evade campaign rules by paying for your campaign finance funds. it was during a campaign and it was to protect his campaign from knowing about his affairs with multiple women not wanting his wife to find out, not wanting americans to find out so he could win the presidency. how stupid -- let's stay on theme here. how stupid does the president think the american people are? >> well, there's so much to impact, there's so many levels of stupidity, i guess. one is what we've hit on which is that he is admitting to the campaign finance crime, essentially. correct. >> what he wanted to say was we tried -- we meant to disclose it

in the proper fashion. but, instead, he copped to doing it in the illegal form. secondly, of course, is the whole issue of the fact that he's on tape recording admitting to knowing about the payment and now says he only knew about it after the fact. he's asking us to believe up is down, that the sky is green, whatever. i'm struck by the weird -- and he said i tweeted about it, as if that absolves him of something. i have no idea what he's talking about. who cares? it doesn't matter. but i keep coming back to this one thing that is nagging me, which is that we have basically just taken it as, you know, a given and not at all the an extraordinary thing that he had an affair on his wife with a 5-month-old kid and paid hush money to cover it up.

this would have been an extraordinary scandal especially with someone with the devoted support of the ee advantage gel can community. but at this juncture, we're like, he did that and let's talk about the finance crime element of it. it just seems crazy that we're losing the moral element of it, not that i am a moral warrior, but he has a huge evangelical following which would have gone to the mat over this. >> what did the president know and when did he know it? that old expression has new legs this morning as the white house offers conflicting accounts surrounding donald trump's knowledge of payments to women. we'll talk about that. but first, here is bill carin w karins with a check on the forecast. >> we have a hurricane that's 200 miles away, hurricane lane. it's produced overnight a foot of rain on the big island of

hawaii. already a foot. there's already a highway closed and there's water over the top of a bridge. here is the storm. it's about 130 miles per hour. i'm not concerned with the winds. i really never was. i never thought we would have a lot of wind destruction through the hawaiian islands. this is all about rainfall. because the path of the storm is very slow, it did weaken and it will bring gusty winds, maybe small power outages, stuff like that. but as far as the rain goes, the whole right side rain shield goes over the big island, over m maui and continues into saturday. so i mentioned some areas here picked up 12 inches of rain. we were looking at widespread 10 to 20 inches. they have three days to go in some of those spots in hawaii. they had already picked up a foot. they're going to end up with maybe three feet. who knows. maybe somewhere in the mountainous areas, close to four feet of rain. you can picture what the major historic flooding, mud and rock slides. there's not a lot of problems throughout the lower 48.

isolated storms in south florida. this is a beautiful start to your day from the northeast all the way through the great lakes and that trend will continue. be careful in the central plains. we are going to pop some thunderstorms this afternoon with some strong gusty winds, especially in kansas and nebraska. so all eyes will be on hawaii over the next three days to see how destructive lane will be. likely a $1 billion weather disaster. new york city, all our friends on the east coast, enjoy your beautiful morning. low humidity for once. you're watching "morning joe." let's begin. yes or no? do you want the same tools and seamless experience across web and tablet? do you want $4.95 commissions for stocks, $0.50 options contracts? $1.50 futures contracts? what about a dedicated service team of trading specialists? did you say yes? good, then it's time for power e*trade. the platform, price and service that gives you the edge you need. looks like we have a couple seconds left. let's do some card twirling twirling cards e*trade.

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so you heard the audio tape that michael cohen's lawyers released, but that's not all. according to federal prosecutors who say they have more hard evidence about the payments to women. assistant u.s. attorney said the trove includes records obtain from the april series of search warrants on cohen's premises,

including hard copy documents seized electronic devices and audio recordings made by mr. cohen. along with text messages, messages sent over encrypted applications, phone records and e-mails. she said they would submit various records produced by a subpoena including records from the shell corporation cohen formed and records from the media company. this as "the wall street journal" reports that david becker, the chairman of the american media incorporated which publish tess "national enquirer" provided prosecutors with details about payments mr. cohen arranged with others including mr. trump's knowledge of the deals. the journal report which cited people close to cohen posted late last night. it preseded a twoeet from the

president. this came at 1:10 a.m. no collusion, rigged witch-hunt. catty kay, something keeping him up at night? >> yeah, it looks like it. it is not very usual for the president to be up at 1:00 tweeting. clearly he's not sleeping very well and that's not surprising because there are legal and there are political implications for him with this one. the legal implications all around the issue of campaign finance whether as "the wall street journal" reports seems to be hinting is it just the two women that we know about, karen mcdougall and stormy daniels or are there other women and in that case do we get into the realm of racketeering with multiple payoffs potentially to try and stop damaging stories against him. and then the political one and that's what's interesting interesting at the moment, the question of whether this 87% of the republican party and sam was alluding to the evangelical base

earlier, whether any of them will shift their minds when it comes to the president because of what they've heard over the course of the last 24 hours and what else is going to come out from michael cohen. our initial reporting, the number of trump supporters that we've spoken to suggests they are still rock solid behind the president. we spoke to one woman who says everybody commits some kind of finance crimes. we said, well, you know, this is the president of the united states. her response was, oh, that just makes him human. there is no point to which -- >> well, he is super human, that's for sure. >> we're going to have to watch those numbers and see whether those numbers decline because of this. come up on "morning joe," the white house is increasingly focused not on good versus bad policy, but rather what exactly is legal versus illegal. questions of criminality now dominate the national conversation all the way up to

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he makes a better deal when he uses me, like everybody else. and one of the reasons i respect paul manafort so much is he went through that trial -- you know, they make up stories. people make up stories. this whole thing about flipping, they call it, i know all about flipping for 30, 40 years i've been watching flippers. everything is wonderful and then they get ten years in jail and then they flip on whoever the next highest one is or as high as you can go. it almost ought to be outlawed. it's not fair. because if somebody is going to spend five years, like michael cohen or 15 years in jail because of a taxi cab industry because he defraut fraudded som campaign violations are considered not a big deal, frankly. but if somebody defrauded a bank and he's going to get 10 years in jail or 20 years in jail, but if you can say something bad about donald trump and you'll go down to two years or three years, which is the deal he

made, in all fairness to him, most people are going to do that. and i've seen it many times. i've had many friends involved in this stuff. >> the former head of the trump campaign was convicted on tuesday of bank and tax fraud as well as failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. the president spent part of the day yesterday railing against the outcome of manafort's trial and the jury being unable to reach a verdict on ten of the other counts against him. he wrote on twitter, a large number of counts, ten, could not even be decided in the paul manafort case. witch-hunt. but we now know that a single juror held out on convicting manafort on all 18 charges. trump added, i feel very badly for paul manafort and his wonderful family. justice took a 12-year-old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on

him and unlike cohen, he refused to break, make up stories in order to get a deal. such respect for a brave man. following the president's tweets, the white house disputed that he was planning on pardoning manafort. >> the manafort case doesn't have anything to do with the president, doesn't have anything to do with his campaign, it doesn't have anything to do with his white house. >> even if it has nothing to do with the president, he still could have the power to pardon mr. manafort. is that something he's discussing with the team, has it come up and -- >> i'm not aware of any conversations regarding that at all. other than actually when he was asked by a news outlet jerl this we earlier this week and he said he hadn't been thinking about that at all. >> one of the more useless moments of the day would be the white house press briefing every single day. so john pedorance, the xes except of potentially outlawing

manafort. >> he is, as the head of the executive branch, the highest criminal justice officer in the united states. one of the keys ways in which you uncover a criminal conspiratorial action to put pressure and give up other people who were involved in that conspiracy should be outlawed. let's think about that for a minute. that's number one. number two is what he's doing to manafort, people are always analyzing things to the godfather. but there's this moment where frankie is going to testify against the corleoni family and they go and get his brother from sicily to sit in the courtroom to shame him into not testifying because that would be dishonorable. this is trump saying to manafort, don't break. don't break. don't flip. i respect you. you're wonderful. what a great guy. love your family.

don't break. and i guess in there is the hint that he might pardon him. >> what i find amazing about trump, mr. strength and mr. bravery, he would be the first human being in history to flip to save himself. i actually believe he would send his children to jail before he would go to jail. i think he's that depraved and that empty of any moral accepts. i love that he sits there and talks about the weakness and the breaking point. stunning. coming up on "morning joe," time magazine portrays the president's position with two words. in deep. we'll look through the new issue straight ahead on ""morning joe.""

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there is no good what's happening. we'll see it through. >> i can't imagine people who are familiar with what's been going on at the white house are particularly surprised. i've been here 11 1/2 years. and this is -- i don't think i've witnessed anything like i've witnessed over the last year and a half. probably the american people haven't in modern times. >> it's not a good day for the president. i mean, you've got an accusation about his former lawyer that he did conspire to violate campaign finance laws.

i know the intricacies of campaign finance laws. but, again, the whole mueller thing was started on concerns about the trump campaign and russia. that's what i'm focused on and let's see what mueller tells us. >> some of the rank and file republican senators with their reaction yesterday to tuesday's manafort and cohen developments. in stark contrast to the silence from senate majority leader mitch mcconnell and house speaker paul ryan. and this take from house majority leader kevin mccarthy. >> let's remember what did the department of justice -- justice department say about cohen yesterday? he is somehow that has a pattern of lies and disbelief for -- dishonesty for extended period of time. in my point of view, the whole investigation was about russia collusion. this has nothing to do with it. so the president, i see nothing wrong in the extent of where

he's going right now. >> wow. wow. kevin, wow. don't you know how -- what is that? how does he not know where this is going and how this could end so very badly? take a stand, dude. donnie, eddie and noah are still with us joining the conversation we have commentary writer for the washington competitorer tom rogen, author and founder for women for women international zainab and brian bennet "time" magazine writer. closing in, the president's woes grow as top aides face justice. we'll get to that in just a second. but who wants to chime in? raise your hand. kevin mccarthy's comments just seem beyond painful. tom. >> i think the interesting thing here is that obviously he is trying to be the house speaker.

so you have republicans on one side who see their political future vested still with president trump who can get out those voters, as they would perceive it. on the secondary side, though, more xherning for the president is when you have people like lindsey graham who have been, at least on foreign policy issues, pretty sympathetic to the president now taking that tenor to the side that this is not good, that this is a perhaps a new moment. there is a division in the republican party that at some point regardless of what happens with the president, and ultimately we do not know. we still do not know what will happen will have to be melded together again or the party will split. so we will see. it's very interesting. >> i think you're precisely correct and it's worth noting the venue where these comments were made, the audience to which these comments were directed, democrats have frustrated their liberal base by shying away from impeachment. we can't do this yet. we have to wait for the investigation to go through. impeachment shouldn't be on the table until we have all the facts. >> that's the correct strategy.

>> it is. but it would not be possible if democrats had a comparable entertainment complex like the republicans do, like conservatives do. they have an entertainment complex that has more authority than any republican representative in congress and that is who they're appealing to. >> it seems to me that, you know, the state of the country is such that we cannot play it safe, that the democratic party, of course, has to make its political calculations, but it seems to me as they play it safe, they're going to play it dangerously. >> let me just make the point, though, it seems to me that if donald trump has, in fact, committed a felony, and if that fact alone, before the russian -- before the mueller investigation was completed, if he has committed a felony, then, to my mind, that rises to the -- >> correct. but the messaging that is -- they need to win the house first. >> and you can make that claim as well as making the -- >> but the focus message is,

yes, there is a corrupt climate and they're going to take your health care away from you and they might take a woman's body rights away from you and there is this culture that our democracy is in play, but it's how it affects you. impeachment is an abstract political term that for the guy going to work -- look, nobody wants that to happen more than me. but as a strategist, it is not the correct play now. mika. >> zainab, jump in. >> i'm saying we have to do the right thing, not the safe thing. the right thing to do is have the due process work its way out. if we do the safe thing and we rush into conclusion, it will back fire on the democratic party also. >> whoever party wins is the american people at the question in the moment and we need to do the right thing by the american people. for me, the question, it's for someone who attacks truth so much, we need to own truth. and we need to make truth great again. we need to tell the truth and we need modeling, someone to tell

the truth out loud and full rounded truth. >> but the challenge we face, ultimately, if we're pueratriot the sense that ultimately truth is perceived subjectively. truth is truth. but it is perceived subjectively. and if we do this the wrong way -- >> tell rudy julie a annie that. >> no, no, i am saying truth is truth. but the perception matters. if this is done without due process, you lose those trump supporters who were a political constituency of -- >> let me be very clear. i'm not making an argument to rush to judgment. i'm making this argument, that if donald trump has committed a felony, that if it's the case that donald trump has colluded with the russians, then democrats in this midterm can walk and chew gum at the same time. they can say this particular president and the republican party has tried to -- they're trying to take away your health care. they're cutting taxes for the rich. you can make that argument and you can say on behalf of the

country that our democracy is in jeopardy. donnie, you said on this show over and over again, this is the vote of your lifetime. that cannot be reduced to self-interest. we have to think beyond otherwi ourselves. >> this is their job. tom, you helped work on the latest opinion piece by the washington examiner entitled character still counts. trump lies down with dogs and gets up with fleas. he must be very itchy this morning. it reads in part this, donald trump repeatedly burrowed himself into the world of pornography for extra marital sex and then he had his unethical grifter lawyer cover up for it. together with the recent conviction of trump campaign manager paul manafort and the guilty plea by deputy campaign manager rick gates, there's a clear pattern that stands regardless of any future legal

findings: donald trump laid down with dogs and has gotten fleas. manafort, gates, cohen, stormy daniels and karen mcdougall, trump knew who they all were when he got into bed with them figuratively or literally. tom, continue. >> yes. i can't take credit for that elegant writing. i think the functional point that we are making here is that if you want the chief chief executive of the united states, you have to do two things. hold yourself to the highest levels of integrity. and secondly, you should make basic political choices about who you align yourself with in the moral sense that if you go into bed, as we say, with these people, what do you expect is going to happen? i mean, with paul manafort, we knew that he was engaged basically with ukrainian organized crime figures for a long time. those are not people that the you want to be aligned with. >> i'm curious about the

christian right, actually, which the president is appealing for them. he's doing all the things that are morally appalling. we're talking about porn stars, playboy models. where is their position on that? >> i think their position, is he lirchlly, is look at the supreme court appointments in terms of look at policies on things like abortion, that they value. >> there's a yale professor coming out and talking about fa ficism. people see very much not corruption of the law, which obviously trump is doing, but corruption of traditional norms. for instance, when trump covers up that he slept with a woman, that is protecting the male as the dominant figure so that they're able to see noncorrupt by -- if you are holding on to traditional norms versus corrupting the law.

there's a corruption -- >> i know a couple of evangelicals. i understand their thinking when they say a all these behavioral, you know, problems that donald trump exhibits are subordinated to the fact that the other guys are the vanguard of cultural liberalism, that they will pursue policies, they will the degrade american morality far more so than donald trump has insofar as they will pursue it as policy. that to me is motivated reasoning, but at least it's a thought process you can get your head around. >> so morality has no role in this? >> no, morality has everything to do with it. it's the other guys are more moral than our guys. >> what if it's the case that -- i'm sorry. >> it's all right. brian bennet, senior white house correspondent for time magazine, take us inside the cover. >> so tuesday was not just a bad news cycle for the president. it was a super nova of bad news, not only did you have his former campaign chairman, paul

manafort, being convicted on eight counts, obviously you had michael cohen. and we wanted to try to capture that in this cover image. and michael cohen, what is interesting about him is not only what he pled guilty to on tuesday and said the president directed him to do in the campaign law violations, but it's what happens over the next few months. so between now and december 12th, when michael cohen will stand before a judge for a sentencing, every prosecutor working on a case that remotely touches something that michael cohen might know about, something that donald trump may have been involved in, is going to come to michael cohen and say, what do you know about this and how can you help us. and that's what provides us with a tremendous liability for president trump. >> great sense of what's on the cover of "time" magazine and what's in the magazine. this is the latest in a series

of stormy covers, all surrounding president trump and his stormy relationships and relationships with women, payoffs to women, and ultimately possibly high crimes and misdemeanors. brian bennet, thank you very much. tom roguenan, final thoughts. >> well, look, this is a pivotal moment for the united states in terms of both the future of this presidency, but also very much the future of politics as it is. the democratic base obviously divided on issues, but the republican base. that kevin mccarthy division with lindsey graham. i think that's what we look for. that's the defining factor to see how congress now responds and what mueller brings out next. all right. zainab, donny, stay with us. we'll be right back.

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joining us now, emmy-award winning and oscar nominated filmmaker steve james. a new multipart documentary series that examines racial, economic and class issues in american education. steve and his team spent a full year embedmillion a school to hear firsthand from students and teachers about their success and challenges. it's called "america to me." it premieres this sunday on stars. take a look. >> this school is crazy.

it's, like, a social experiment. it's kind of sad. some people just stay to their race and it's not because they're making a conscience decision i'm not going to talk to him because he's caucasian. they don't try with someone who can't relate to you. there's one table where it's all white kids. and there's a table where there's all black kids. ♪ first day won't sit by you >> there's a table where it's black and white kids, random like that. >> wow. looks amazing. steve james joins us now. and eddie has the first question. >> i had an opportunity to take a look at the first episode of

your documentary and it's very powerful. what we do know is there is a deep divide in the country. we're separated in our intimate spaces. that we don't live our intimate lives together outside of work and the like. and we see these tensions evidenced at the school. give me a sense of what you learned over the course of filming. all of these tensions out in the open. because it felt like everyone was trying to navigate and negotiate what seemed to be a rather forced environment. >> well, i mean, oak park as a community is incredibly diverse and liberal place, right? and so, you know, it's tough there because people say all the right things in very public ways. but in their lived experiences, it is a lot harder, like you say. so there is a lot more separation within the school. because in the tracking, you know, you have the upper level, honors and ap classes that are

overwhelmingly white. you have lower level classes that are overwhelmingly black. so the lived experience within the school doesn't promote the kind of genuine connection you'd want. in a community like oak park where white families dominate and it's 55% white families, then, you know, they really are the center of the community in terms of deciding what happens around issues involving equity. >> interesting. what's -- how do you think president trump's divisive policies being impacted in schools and particularly in schools in your experience in shooting the movie? >> divisive policies? >> well -- go ahead, sorry. >> go ahead. >> divisive policies between black and white and race and gender and immigration and all of these things. we're in a divided world right out in. how are the kid experiencing it? how are they dealing with it? >> well, think what you see with the kids we're following in the

series is they're incredibly aware and sophisticated about the world we're living in right now when it comes to issues like race and class and divisive policies. it's one of the reasons why i think there's such a tremendous swell of activism across the country and these are the kinds of kids that represent the future. their lived experiences in places like oak park, i think we have a tendency to think that kids that live in a place like that have it made if they're kids in color. one of the things i think the series really shows is that micro aggression and racism is so systemic that it seeps down deep into their lived lives both in the school and in the community. >> it's wonderful to kind of see visually the kind of structural differences that you allude to. but also the kind of ideological fissures. around the black lives matter what do you call it, i haven't been in school -- the mass meeting in the auditorium -- >> the assembly -- >> there we go. lord, i've been at princeton too

long. it isthe assembly that was only black students. tell us about that. >> this happened right before the year we began filming. it caused a real fire storm, you know, in -- not just in the community, it actually went beyond that. it's because the principal, who's black, decided to organize an assembly for just the black students at oak park, to have frank conversations about their lived experience of race. and, you know, there are a lot of liberal parents in the community that felt like, hey, why are we being excluded? you know, we're not going to solve this problem unless we come together. and kind of missed the point of why it was necessary for this assembly to happen. and then when you went on to social media and it went beyond oak park, you saw some incredibly vicious racist sort of responses in social media. i mean, 90% of them were pretty terrible i thought. >> steve james, thank you so

much. "america to me" premieres this sunday on starz. final thoughts. donny. >> the interesting news of the day was the fox interview. trump has a new strategy against collusion. which is -- well, maybe it's wrong, but you can't impeach me because i'm so good for people and the stock market. that appeals to a lot of people i know outside of his base who is, like, i just care about my pocketbook. i know he's a bad guy but -- it's a scary strategy. >> noah rothman, doesn't it seem -- you can understand strategies, you can understand the base, you can understand politics, but aren't we at a point where what we would like people to do in washington is lead and know the difference between right and wrong and be concerned about the direction of our country? >> yes. the rationale is that i can't do what's good for the country if

i'm not in office so i have to preserve my position for the good of the country. that's how you work yourself into a situation where you don't do what your conscience to do. we hear supporters saying it could be worse, it could be hillary. >> all right. thank you very much for joining us. that does it for us today. chris jansing picks up the coverage right now. >> hello there, i'm chris jansing in for stephanie ruhle. this morning, president trump on a tear, sounding off on speculation of a paul manafort pardon, the threat of impeachment and the russia investigation. while giving his administration an a-plus. >> how about with manafort? they raid his home? they go in with guns? this isn't al capone. i understood michael cohen