parker. matt miller, jonathan lemire, steve israel, that does it for our hour. "mtp daily" starts right now. hi, chuck. >> so, nicolle, just ponder this for a minute, is the bob woodward book a one-day story? >> let me tell you something. you know, i have to tell you i'm up here in jeans and flip-flops because i thought we were going to be watching the kavanaugh questioning so i hope you're more prepared than i was. >> barely, but we're all in -- i'm not going to say we're in shorts and a t-shirt, i'm just saying you'll be glad to know what hugh hewitt is wearing. if it's wednesday, it takes a lot for us to say these days. but an extraordinary thing just happened.

good evening, i'm chuck todd here in washington. welcome to "mtp daily." we begin tonight with breaking news. an unprecedented op-ed from an unnamed current trump administration official in "the new york times" of all places. this official, who "the times" says is a senior person in the administration says, quote, i am part of the resistance inside the trump administration. the author goes on to say the dilemma which the president does not fully grasp is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. i would know, i am one of them. this person flat-out says the president has no guiding moral principles, and this official raises serious questions about president trump's fitness for office. this senior official wrote that, quote, given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th amendment, which could start a complex

process for removing the president. but no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. so we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until, one way or another, it's over. this of course comes at president trump is already on the defensive, ahead of an upcoming book by bob woodward about his chaotic white house. that seems to, you guessed it, question his fitness for office. while the president tried multiple times today to discredit the woodward book. >> the book is a work of fiction. if you look back at woodward's past, he had the same problem with other presidents. he likes to get publicity, sell some books. >> bob woodward's track record, he had the same problem with obama. he had the same problem with president obama. he had a tremendous problem with president bush. every time he wrote a book, they were complaining about it. they were complaining about the lack of accuracy. and i understand him and that's what he does and i fully understood that before. in the end, i'm very happy with

the way it turned out because i think the book has been totally discredited. >> so, it's the biggest game of who done it since the era of deep throat. i got my panel here right now. we're going to check in with the white house in a second. obviously our white house reporters are scrambling to try to figure out the who done it there, but i've got shane harris here of "the washington post," i have that publication correct. ruth marcus, and of course hugh hewitt of the salem radio network. >> who also works for "the washington post," just saying. >> some sort of deep state here. >> a little competitive today. >> hugh hewitt, of everybody here, you've worked in a white house. >> right. >> you worked in an administration. there is somebody, and this person speaks as if this is not some midlevel nsc staffer. this feels like somebody who may have a west wing address, not just an eeob address. the difference is working actually in the white house versus working in the big

building next door, which is you might as well be working 20 blocks away. >> ruth mentioned earlier in the green room, there are always tells in the op-ed. the tell here is the discussion of 25th amendment. the only time i talked about it was in the reagan white house when associate counsel, john roberts had to write the 25th amendment memo on how to put president reagan under. it's a very complicated piece of work. if anyone is talking about the 25th amendment they actually have experience. >> you think it's a lawyer? don mcgahn in the blue room. copy of the constitution. >> ruth and shane, what struck me -- so many things struck about the op-ed. but the person quotes another colleague. and that to me is sort of -- well, first of all, if you're trying to stay anonymous, that's not the easiest way to stay anonymous because suddenly your conspiracy has just added a person. i wonder how well this person's anonymity is going to hold? >> i wonder about that too.

we were just talking about whether you can in the modern age, where you can do text analysis of people's writings, whether you can actually really -- remember joe klein and bill clinton and the anonymous book. >> and that was the '90s before we had this little -- we had the inner tubes and algorithms. >> whether you can maintain your anonymity. we're all conflicted here, right? a piece of you desperately wants to figure out who it is and a piece of you thinks that would be very dangerous. >> and this author's identity i have no doubt will be revealed, the only question is how quickly. i think it's going to come out. >> you mean like deep throat in 40 years? >> this feels like -- i'm with you, this feels like this isn't going to hold for very long. and we're going to know who this is. but the question then becomes when this person's identity is revealed, is it someone very close to the president or someone far removed. the closer it is, the more credibility it has. >> let's get over to kristen welker. i guess this is just another day

of the week for this white house. but i've got to think this one makes them long for the days of dealing with the woodward book, and that was just an hour ago. >> reporter: well, that's right. and, chuck, the day started with them trying to dismiss it, laugh it off. of course kind of tough to do because their boss, the president, was on twitter early this morning slamming the woodward book and of course hallie jackson was in the room with him asking him questions over and over again about the woodward book. you heard him try to dismiss it. just to give you a sense of what unfolded here in the moments after that op-ed came out, my colleague, peter alexander, ran up, had it in his hands and handed it to a senior administration official that hadn't seen it yet. that precipitated a long line of officials going into and out of sarah sanders' office. i was up there. at last check when i spoke to sarah sanders, she said no response yet. they're trying to get something out to the press.

so they're scrambling. they're trying to figure this out as well, chuck. no indication as to whether the president has been briefed on this. he's about to hold an event with sheriffs. in fact i'm told he just entered and so we'll try to get more questions to him about all of this. but this is unprecedented, as you say, the fact we have someone inside sounding the alarm like that. that's what it is, someone sounding the alarm. >> the call is coming from inside the house. by the way, i should make a point, no press briefing today, no press briefing yesterday. how many -- are we up to -- how many press briefings have we had in the last six weeks? >> we haven't had one in two weeks and we had less this summer. i think then it's typical, for the record. so it's becoming sort of the diminishing press briefing. now, they would argue, hey, look, you had four different chances to ask the president questions today. that is true, and we'll take it. but of course -- >> shouted questions, yeah. >> exactly, exactly. shouted questions, not in that format of sitting down with

sarah sanders, being able to ask her questions, follow-ups in that seating, which of course there isn't a whole lot of background noise which makes it so critical. but this is a week that started out with its focus on kavanaugh, the midterms, really going on the offense and here they are on defense yet again. it gets to this crux, chuck, the bottom line what's in this op-ed hits to the heart of what's in the woodward book, which is there are people here trying to protect the country from this president, chuck. >> kristen welker, you've got to go. go do more reporting, but i beg you to come back before the 6:00 hour and we'll figure that out. >> reporter: i will. >> go figure out what more you can learn. i have to say that last point there, ruth, which is it's sort of -- combined with the woodward book, i think it's setting off the debate. i thought brit hume tweeted about. this the message to never

trumpers, has it been better to be in there and stop him and to be a prevent defense, if you will, or not? and i think this debate is getting resparked up. does the woodward book prove that actually the guardrails are a good thing and they can hold? or is it proving that this is too much to take? >> well, i guess we didn't assassinate assad, right? so no assassinations yet. so maybe some guardrails are holding. i want to back it up a little bit, though. i think the fact of this alongside the woodward book is really telling in the sense that we know what the president is going to say. he dismissed the woodward book as fiction. he's going to call this fake news. he's going to rail about anonymous sources and tell us ha, ha, ha, that you shouldn't rely on anonymous sources and we're going to have a realistic journalistic debate. >> so that is a separate conversation. >> but the fact of the matter is that each of these books, for all its flaws, the michael wolff book for all its flaws, the

omarosa book, the reporting that shane and his colleagues do and you and your colleagues do every single day to talk about dysfunction in the white house, they are all -- if it's fiction, everybody is telling the same story. that suggests to me it's not fiction. >> all these people have done a great job. but if you just follow shane and carol lee on twitter, you didn't need to read these books. >> we're telling the story in realtime. >> hugh, there's an interesting quote from ben sasse on your show today and i feel that it gets at this larger theme that's developing right now. take a listen. >> i'm not trying to beat up on the president here, but the truth is, you build a team by building a cause that's bigger than yourself. and right now, so much of what comes out of the white house is just trying to figure out how to divide americans. >> hang on, hugh. the president is speaking. >> in terms of getting things passed and getting things through, an article was just

printed, just came out a few minutes ago, trump breaks the record for budget gridlock wins. scores big win. so for 20 years it's a 20-year record. a 20-year record, they call it the fouled-up budget gridlock. scores big win. here's your thing. so this just came out. so in 20 years, it hasn't been like it is now. we broke it. that's just really positive stuff. and then in addition to that, point after point after point, if you look, almost 4 million jobs created since the election. more americans now employed than ever recorded in our history. so we have more people working today than at any point ever in our history. we've created 400,000

manufacturing jobs. manufacturing jobs are growing at the fastest pace in more than 30 years. economic growth last quarter was 4.2%. as you people know, it was headed down big and it was a low number, very low number. it would have been in my opinion it would have been less than zero. it was heading to negative numbers. new employment claims recently hit a -- think of that, the unemployment picture in the country is the best it's been in 49 years. african-american unemployment lowest in the history of our country. asian american unemployment lowest in the history of our country. hispanic american unemployment lowest in the history of our country. i mean i'm just looking at these, just point after point. under my administration, veterans unemployment reached its lowest in many, many years.

let's see, almost 3.9 million americans have been lifted off food stamps just since my election. then you go into all of the benefits that we got from the tax cuts. all of you people benefited tremendously from the tax cuts. we go into right to try. right to try is where you have the right if a person is terminally ill, you have a right to go and try and see whether or not a drug that's not approved yet can be used and utilized. they didn't allow that. point after point, getting rid of the individual mandate, the most unpopular thing there is in obamacare. coming up with new health care plans. we've never had a period, even if you look at the olympics, got the olympics. the world cup just got -- you just saw them, they were in my office, got the world cup. nobody has -- and we have started the wall. nobody has ever done in less

than a two-year period what we've done. so when you tell me about some anonymous source within the administration probably who's failing and probably here for all the wrong reasons, now, "the new york times" is failing. if i weren't here, i believe "the new york times" probably wouldn't even exist. and someday -- and someday when i'm not president, which hopefully will be in about six and a half years from now, "the new york times" and cnn and all of these phony media outlets will be out of business, folks. they'll be out of business because they'll be nothing to write and nothing of interest. so nobody has done what this administration has done. i agree, it's different from an agenda which is much different than ours and it's certainly not your agenda, that i can tell you. it's about open borders, it's about letting people flee into our country, it's about a

disaster and crime for our country. so they don't like donald trump and i don't like them because they're very dishonest people. remember this also about "the new york times." when i won, they were forced to apologize to their subscribers. they wrote a letter of apology. it was the first time anybody has ever done it, because they covered the election incorrectly. so if the failing "new york times" has an anonymous editorial, can you believe it, anonymous, meaning gutless, a gutless editorial. we're doing a great job. the poll numbers are through the roof. our poll numbers are great. and guess what, nobody is going to come close to beating me in 2020 because of what we've done. we've done more than anybody ever thought possible and it's not even two years, so thank you very much. >> now, this happened quickly.

yes, you did see that uncomfortable moment of him there bashing the press and the law enforcement guys clapping for that. i'm going to set that aside. we do have the very top of the president's remarks. we missed those. obviously everything is moving quickly here. this is where he addressed the op-ed specifically right at the top of that event. here we go. >> when i was running, i think number one on our list was law enforcement, taking care of law enforcement, working with law enforcement, and really we have to create guidelines and principles for the incredible job you've done. and you've done an amazing job. and i will tell you a lot of times you're scorned and you're looked at by the media, because the media is very dishonest, much of it in this country. very, very dishonest. and the job that you've done in light of all of the things that you have to go through, i guess a little bit like me also, but i will say that you have been

really outstanding, incredible people. >> so that was him doing a media bash thing first, and i think we have now how he addressed the specifics of the article. here it is. >> somebody in what i call the failing "new york times" talking about he's part of the resistance within the trump administration. you know, the dishonest media, because you people deal with it as well as i do, but it's really a disgrace. i will say this. nobody has done what this administration has done in terms of getting things passed and getting things through. a article was just printed, just came out a few minutes ago. >> all right. and you saw the rest of that. so we've shown you everything from the president. hugh hewitt, i started with a ben sasse bite. i actually want to replay the ben sasse bite because that

event only underscores his analysis. take a listen. >> i'm not trying to beat up on the president here, but the truth is, you build a team by building a cause that's bigger than yourself. and right now, so much of what comes out of the white house is just trying to figure out how to divide americans. >> mike drop. >> well, it is proof positive when you get law enforcement to clap against the media, that is not useful. i am confused by this entire day. i began by playing on the radio show -- >> it's not just today. we're all confused. i hear you, man. >> the whole bob woodward, donald trump, kellyanne conway tape. he's in control, he's calm, he's pushing back, he's making points. it's a measured -- it's got nothing to do with the chaos that we have seen for the rest of the day. so whoever wrote this did not advance the cause of reducing chaos. and ben sasse also in that interview pointed out the senate is in chaos.

the only thing that isn't in chaos is the supreme court and judge kavanaugh said he wants to be a part of the team of nine. it's the last working institution in the country. >> but ben sasse says we've politicized the courts because of a second branch of government, which i thought was spot on. >> to your point here, it didn't do anything to stop the chaos by writing this. this reads like somebody who wants to start a confrontation, who is calling out to the public and i think calling out to the second branch of congress, right, and saying this is what i am seeing. it comes on the heels of what bob woodward saw and all of the things that we've reported. this is someone who said they talked about invoking the 25th amendment to remove the president. this is an author i think saying do something. >> okay. where is the person who is willing to put his or her reputation and name on the line and resign and say, you know what, this is not okay. this is not normal. this is not good. this is what's happening. you people need to know it.

you asked about guardrails earlier. i have been an arguer in favor of the guardrails are working and i am increasingly worried that they're not. i ha i am increasingly of the belief that everybody with a reputation to protect or shreds of a reputation to protect should get the heck out of the house. >> let me push back on this idea of whether it should be right for the person to sign their name. isn't this op-ed getting more attention because it does not? >> well, it depends who it is. >> no, but that's -- >> the guessing game will keep it alive. >> a, it's the guessing game which is maybe to shane's point, part of the point which is to force everybody to have this conversation. >> well, this conversation ought constitutionally to begin in the house of representatives. every democrat is running away from impeachment, but in fact if you're talking about the 25th amendment seriously, you ought to be demanding they put forward articles of impeachment, period, ending of story.

>> we might not be in an impeachment situation or 25th amendment situation to be in a serious situation where people should, my argument is, have the guts to come forward and say what you believe with your name attached. >> kristen welker is back after that. okay. so the president is trying to address it. it was sort of a predictable pushback by him going after the medium rather than the substance of the piece. do you get a sense behind the scenes that they are just feeling their way around on this? >> reporter: i absolutely do, chuck. i think that was true of the woodward book as well, which is so stunning, because they knew it was coming out. this was the program -- the president counterprogramming at his best. this is what he knows how to do. he whips out another article that talks about the jobs number. of course that's his go-to talking point. but i thought the optics were pretty striking. he sort of walked away from his event. he was isolated there with the reporters in full sort of fire and fury mode punching back at

the question that was asked by peter alexander about this op-ed. so what happens? what is the messaging going to look like tomorrow? my anticipation is that we're going to see a lot more tweets. again, i just go back to this point. when this first broke, we went up to the senior officials here to try to get some type of reaction, and they were just processing this in realtime. so that is the response of a president who is really responding in realtime almost, chuck. i mean the article just came out a short time ago. so i don't think they have a communication strategy at this point. moving forward will they get one by tomorrow? again, my bet is on the fact that we're going to see more tweets. but this, again, i think fuels what has been a discord and a chaos here in the white house and raising questions about whether we're going to see more high-level departures here. >> kristen welker, thank you. joining me on the phone is mark lotter. he works on the political side

on the offsite of the white house. he is a former special assistant in the trump administration, in the trump white house. mark, thank you for doing this. you're joining us on the phone, i appreciate it, last minute. let me ask you straightforward, what's your initial reaction to this? this is perhaps a colleague of yours? perhaps somebody that shared the same title as you, not some midlevel staffer. what's just your gut reaction? >> thanks for having me, chuck. i, like many people, just finished reading it just moments ago for the first time. and it concerns me for a couple of reasons. first off, we don't know the rank and the title and the position that this person holds. and while -- and i'll include myself in this as well. while my position sounds -- you know, when i was in the white house, special assistant to the president sounds very senior. there are a lot of meetings that took place at a lot higher

levels than i was. and so we don't have that context to be able to fill out how this person might think. and to the point, i think, that was being made a little bit earlier, i do think it's a little concerning that we do have someone that is unnamed, that is making these kinds of allegations, if they are so concerned about the white house, the presidency, that they would make these charges yet not so much that they were willing to risk their own job for it by putting their name next to it or stepping down. i think that there's a bit of a credibility issue there. >> so you would urge this person to resign, go public and resign immediately. if this is how you feel, if this is what it is, that would be your advice for this former colleague of yours? >> well, first off, i think it puts you in a very difficult position when if you are working still in that administration and you are working with my former colleagues, they don't know who you are and so it creates a level of mistrust that we don't

know that this person, whatever role, whatever position, whatever duties they may have, are they in fact going to be carrying those out to advance the causes of the administration or are they now going to be working on some counterprogramming on -- or running resistance against the administration's goal? there needs to be a bond between those teams. that's regardless of politics. white house staff are often very close because of the stress, the hours they put in, the sacrifices they make, and when you start catearing at those levels of trust, it tears those bonds apart and it will impact the administration's trying to get things done. >> it's true, it's hard to imagine this doesn't create some sort of paranoia on a lot of levels. marc, let me ask you this, and maybe you don't want to say, but do you recall conversations like this in the halls of the white

house? >> no. i can tell you, and that's without a doubt. i can tell you there were serious policy debates. i think one of the things that i took in the very first glance reading of this op-ed was what we see every day is that the president is willing to challenge orthodoxy, whether it be republican orthodoxy about free trade and tariffs, to achieve what he believes is the right move long term. that can definitely rub people the wrong way. and the president does surround himself with people who disagree. he had a very well-known high profile democrat in gary cohn, not saying gary cohn was part of this, in the white house arguing against other people who brought a different perspective to things. and that's something that he has often done is making folks defend their position, pitting different positions against each other so you can reach the right conclusion. i can see how that can rub some people the wrong way. we've seen that just using the

tariffs debate or also using the debate about how we are dealing with some of our allies, whether it's in trade issues or in nato and their support with nato. that can rub some of the more orthodox, traditional, mainstream thinkers in these areas the wrong way. >> marc, so what are you -- are you trying to argue that possibly the president sort of knee-jerk reactions at times to things, that his staff took him too seriously maybe? is that the -- i'm trying to understand. that they misinterpreted some of his rants or something? >> well, no, i think there are a lot of people who think that when a republican is elected president, or a democrat is elected president in a given situation, that there are going to be certain long-held beliefs that will carry forward through that administration and policies. this is a president who has

basically said if i believe we are getting unfair trade deals, and we have been getting them for years and many presidents from both parties have complained about it, i will talk about tariffs. i will use something that goes against republican orthodoxy to achieve my policy goal. for those who have made careers or have long lists of experiences, you know, supporting no tariffs or lower tariffs, that can rub people and create a tension between them that they're just not on board with and i think that's where people have got to understand can you serve? can you remember he's the man that was elected. >> marc lotter, is this what needs to happen here, john kelly has to have a staff meeting or the president has to have a staff meeting and say, okay, in or out. you don't like me, get out. is that what needs to happen? >> i don't know if it will be a staff meeting or something as broad as that, but i think, you know, there are probably some folks in there that need to ask themselves questions. they need to know whether they

can serve the administration and they need to make that decision for themselves but they also need to know that if you're staying, you are committed to the goals of this administration and this president. by releasing these things, you're creating more of that division that you say you're seeking to undo. >> marc lotter, i'm going to let you go. really appreciate you taking the time. as my people say here, you're a mench, so thank you, sir. >> thank you, chuck. >> much appreciate it. i want to go back to the white house, guys. it's an extraordinary statement, you all have read it, i've passed it around. i think this is a statement from the press secretary regarding the anonymous "new york times" op-ed. i promise you i have a feeling i know who dictated this statement but let me read it from the top. nearly 62 million people voted for donald j. trump earning him thicket 306 lorl votes. none of them voted for the

failing "the new york times." we are surpri-- this is a new l the so-called paper of record and it should issue an apology just as it did after the election for its disastrous coverage of the trump campaign. this is another example of the liberal media's concerted effort to discredit the president. it goes on but i think you get the gist. kristen welker, i think i know -- i think all of us know this president well enough to know this isn't sarah sanders' words because i notice we don't see her name here. it's a statement from the press secretary, but -- >> reporter: and we know he likes to talk about his -- the election results. i mean that's the top of the statement. and so of course you have to think of the president himself having potentially dictated this, chuck, there's no doubt about that. but look, i think that you have in this statement something that echos what we just heard from president trump himself. and in terms of the broader issue, i want to go back to a point you just asked marc lotter, did he ever hear these

types of conversations when he was at the white house. the reality is whether it's the woodward book or this "new york times" op-ed, both bombshells, they echo and sort of add more context to so much of the reporting that we've been doing along the way, chuck. this is not isolated in essence. this builds upon what we have been reporting on, whether it be that john kelly called the president an idiot, that's something that we reported several months ago, or former secretary of state referring to him as a moron. all of that sort of speaking to what officials here have described as dysfunction. so their strategy clearly is to remind folks of the president's election results and then to attack the media. i think that's going to be their strategy moving forward. but it doesn't get away from the fact that these headlines are not an anomaly. >> nox they', they're not. anyway, kristen, thank you. guys, you haven't had a chance to talk. i'm going to shut up, shane. >> one thing that strikes me we're having this conversation

about, why doesn't somebody stand up, say who they are and resign. the author of this piece actually has an answer to that, which is they have decided basically to stay and fight, right? they're staying, they want to act as the guardrails. the author says they even believe in the administration's policy. >> a lot of the policies on national security -- >> so they're making the case we are here to serve and want to do this. that leads to a second problem, though, which is that we don't have governments run by self-appointed guardrails. so this person describes and in his words -- >> or her. >> well, i think the tweet from the "the times" may be complying it's a he but a two-track presidency. somebody explain to me what a two-track presidency is. we elect a president and whether you like donald trump or not, he is the elected president. now what we have from bob woodward's reporting and this op-ed, a group of people who have anointed themselves to make decisions about how the government is supposed to be run. you may like how those decisions turn out, but that is not how

this government is supposed to work. >> that's a fair point. we have a u.s. constitution for a reason. >> and there's another important point here. marc lotter did an impressive job of trying to make it appear as if, well, this just describes a situation like abe hraham linn and team of rivals where you have a -- >> it's probably what you'd be stuck having to say and that is the best attribute of the president's in that he doesn't mind having people in the room that disagree with him. >> but the point is not that the president has advisers that disagree, the point is that this op-ed and other renditions that we have had of this presidency throughout its course describes an erratic president who does not know his mind from day to day and changes on a whim and can't be -- >> either an impeachable offense or 25th amendment triggering, i don't think it is. >> i didn't say it was.

i don't think an erratic president is an impeachable offense. >> hold an election. no, no, no, and i say this. don't the november midterms in some ways, isn't this going to be the voters' opportunity to make a case? and if somehow, i believe this, i think it's the senate that sends -- that if the democrats win the senate, republicans have to look in the mirror and say there's only one reason that happened. donald j. trump. >> but if republicans win the senate, people have to say this dysfunction is producing extraordinary economic and judicial change. >> and the people are saying, look, we know it's chaotic but we're saying we'll tolerate the chaos. i think, shane, the november midterms, we keep raising the stakes. i feel like joe pesci in "my cousin vinny" what else do you want to pile onto this, midterms. but we're piling a lot on these midterms. >> for a long time it's all been about the midterms to be

instructive about where it goes next. my god, could the stakes be any higher. i wonder if things like the woodward book and this op-ed clarify people's thinking. we are 60 days out from the elections we are entering into the sprinting -- sprint. so these things matter. >> i think that we shouldn't overestimate the number of people whose minds are up for grabs here. there are a lot of people who think that -- i'm not necessarily among them that we've been in 25th amendment territory for a long time. there are a lot of people who will listen to the president and say gutless "new york times" out to get him, fake news, don't believe it. so there's a very small segment of people who if they're going to be moved by this, they have already been pretty wobbly. >> what happens to everyone who watched the circus in the senate yesterday? so the chaos is not just limited to the white house. it was a circus. the demonstrators -- >> it's a broken branch of government over there. >> it is. and so they might just say, the

voters just might say to hell with all -- the 1% of america that watches cable news loves this. 98% watched "hard knocks" last night and think the browns will win eight games. >> i just want to know if they're going to cover against the steelers. let me bring in michael beschloss because this is we think historically unprecedented but that's why we have a presidential historian. michael beschloss, we think this is unprecedented. i guess you could say there were times during wilson's illness that maybe staffers piped up, perhaps. i'm trying to think of other times where you might have had something like this. i don't know. michael, you're the expert here. tell us -- >> yeah, chuck, if we're straining for some kind of a parallel, in the last week the richard nixon, people around nixon were worried about how he might behave if he were pushed to the brink of resignation. james schlessinger, the secretary of defense, told

people in the pentagon if you get a message from nixon for something like putting tanks around the white house or using the 101st airborne or using the military to somehow keep himself in office, they were really talking this way, schlessinger says disregard that order unless it is countersigned by me. at the time henry kissinger, the secretary of state, was privately saying al hague, the white house chief of staff, was holding the country together and he, kissinger, was holding the world together. but that's not at this level, chuck. i've never seen anything like this in modern presidential history. if you think about it, someone who is in place in a high position in the trump administration saying the president is unstable to the level possibly of the 25th amendment. the president is amoral, that's the word that was used. has weird views on russians and dictators and tariffs, is a dangerous man who has to be restrained. plus the writer is saying there

is a group around the president who is doing exactly that. we have never seen anything remotely like this. >> it is, i'm just sort of -- i hear you describe this, michael. would you describe it in sort of -- when i hear you, i hear it in historical terms. hugh, it's sort of hard to put this in perspective in the moment that we're in right now. >> i'm fairly close to nixon as i am, and michael knows this very well. i spent a lot of time with president nixon in his retirement in san clemente and new york. we're not anywhere close to watergate land. i listened to the woodward trump tape. and his personality is a feature, not a bug. many, many americans are comfortable with that. conrad black has written a book about him. he uses the term, i don't like it, truthful hyperbole but if you put a real estate developer in the white house, you get a real estate developer in the white house. i worked for a lot of them. a lot of them are just like this. >> so i would like to say that his personality may be a feature for a lot of people, it may be a

bug for being president. i am flashing on jeb bush's warning that he was a chaos candidate and he was going to be a chaos president. >> i say this to poor jeb. we all mocked him for that line because it just was weird at the time. it is the most precient analysis from that era. it's never felt like anything other than chaotic. >> hugh, i'm sorry, i do not think a chaos presidency is healthy for the country. whether or not you agree with its goals, whether or not you're happy with its economic performance or the judges that it's getting confirmed. >> i don't think it's very good for the beltway, but the results of the last two -- i know you said country but i will say beltway because the constitution is working. the president is not a king, he is not an authoritarian. he cannot aspire to be an authoritarian. he only gets to do what he's allowed to do and he has a team around him that is making it work. >> but this author is describing a team around him that is keeping him from acting like a tie ranting, that is keeping him from ordering the assassinations

of world leaders, that is keeping him from -- >> the bob woodward book. >> keeping him from starting world war iii. yes, there are people perhaps executing his policies, but the description is also a group of people keeping us from going over the edge of the cliff. >> and by the way, this is a week that has featured presidential tweets about how it's outrageous for his justice department to bring serious cases of corruption against members of his party because it might cause him a problem. that is not okay. >> no, it's not. that's very troubling. >> michael, let me get you back in here for one more bite at this apple, which is how is -- how would history judge a decision where if somehow the entity of the government -- at the end of the day we have never -- the entity of government has never removed a president, okay. >> right.

>> they resigned. it never got to that point. i look at how we would judge other democracies when we see a president removed. the most recent example in a semi-democracy was egypt in some form. how do you think history would treat this era if the government entities, the constitution, was used to remove a president. >> if we're talking about the 25th amendment? >> or there's -- obvious lly -- >> or impeachment or conviction. >> where the voters aren't having the say, the institutions are making this decision. >> they would say, chuck, that the system worked. you know, that's the reason we have those things. that's the reason we have impeachment and it's also why we have a 25th amendment, which only came up by 1967 because people worried about a situation exactly like this. and the congress made it specifically difficult. as you know, you want to throw a president out by the 25th amendment, you're going to have to get two-thirds of the house,

two-thirds of the senate. not going to be easy if the president is saying i'm fine, i shouldn't be removed. >> that's well put, that it was -- that we have high -- we have high bars for this. >> absolutely. >> and with the 25th amendment we really were talking about physical disability. >> that was at the point we didn't have a vice president. it was that moment everybody was worried and lbj and there was no vice president too. >> and that's been used twice, we know how it works for anesthesia. >> so getting rid of a president for being kind of emotionally erratic and volatile would be very, very big -- >> actually if i might interrupt for a second. 1987, howard baker became white house chief of staff. there were rumors that ronald reagan was not what he was mentally. baker took those seriously enough that he had some of his close trusted aides sit in on meetings with ronald reagan and observe him closely to see whether there was any truth to the worry that the president might not be functioning 100%. he quickly concluded that there

was no ground to feel that way, but they were talking 25th amendment. >> but isn't it, michael, a question for you because you brought up the impeachment. in federalist 69, if the congress thinks this is really a crisis, it ought to move articles of impeachment. democrats ought to stand up. we're not talking about people resigning from the administration. democrats are not running or impeachment but running for impeachment. i can't think we're in a crisis when no one introduces articles of impeachment. >> how would you 69 this, michael? >> we're in deep weirdness. >> we are in deep weirdness, but our institutions aren't sure how to respond to it. we're having a very semi normal confirmation hearing going on across town, but it's for an appointment of a president that a lot of people are right now having concerns about. how do you square "the new york times" anonymous op-ed with the president's ability to appoint supreme court justices? >> the difference is that, for

instance, with richard nixon what really made him begin to decline and endanger his impeachment and removal was not when the democratic opposition came out for impeachment removal but when members of his own party did. in early 1974 you had people like ed brook, james buckley, the conservative senator from new york, others one by one said that richard nixon can no longer serve. he has to be removed either through impeachment or resignation. contrast that with nowadays how many republican senators, for instance, have come out and said this is a president of our party who cannot function. >> that's a fair point, michael. shane, that's why i go back to the end of the day, the voters have to have a say in this. i think the midterms -- look, i think -- i think at the end of the day, elected republicans are not going to change their view publicly until they feel pain politically. and losing the senate would be real pain because they don't expect it. >> yeah, the year plus now of

crisis or weirdness that we have been in, i have always believed the ultimate answer always comes down to republicans in congress and if they lose and the political balance has changed, support for this president is going to change along with it. >> so election night if four republicans -- we're up to 55 republicans in the senate because bill nelson has lost to rick scott and heidi heitkamp has lost, do you sit back and say -- >> i think it changes the equation. okay, voters, it's 2020. you got an issue with this president, go to the ballot box. no, i'm with you, hugh. i think if you have a split decision, even if it's 60 house seats for the democrats, but they hold that senate -- >> we don't live in a parliamentary system. >> we don't. >> this is a case where the voters are sending a message, right, in some ways his base isn't ready -- if they lose the senate, his base has given up on him. that's the takeaway. >> and in all those races, this conversation with brett kavanaugh today, which i think has a high viewership, has been

about can a president be indicted, can a president be called -- trying to push him on roe v. wade, chevron doctrine. i think the voters in middle america like judge kavanaugh. i think they like what they see and that will play out. it's a very high-end nonchaotic -- >> i don't know. i don't think anybody knows who this guy is. his numbers are so low, positive and negative. >> i'm talking about people who watch today. >> i know, i hear you. >> the chevron doctrine crowd. >> kristen welker is still with us. kristen, i've got to check in. i mean i just feel like every 10 minutes something could change out of that press office. is it -- you know, how's reaction now? >> well, chuck, look, i think that they continue to sort of absorb the remarkable events that we've all been witnessing and reacting to in realtime. there's not been any fresh reaction since that statement went out from press secretary sarah sanders, which again very

much echoed what we heard from the president touting the jobs numbers, touting his election. but i think they're still trying to figure out what their strategy is going to be moving forward. and again, i go back to this, they were caught flat footed by the revelations in the woodward book. they weren't expecting all of the quotes from some of the top officials, which woodward attributes to a number of sources. he says he spoke to a number of senior administration officials, past and present. has hundreds of hours of interviews. and so i think they're still trying to figure out how to respond to that and compound that with this op-ed. they're certainly scrambling. one official started the day by telling me, look, we're just laughing all of this off. and i said, well, your boss isn't, and i think that's the challenge for officials here. how do they respond when the president is growing increasingly infuriated by all of this, chuck. >> that's a fair point, kristen welker. thank you very much.

let's talk about one thing that i punted, essentially about this point in the conversation. the media ethics decision here, right? "the new york times," this is -- this is on one hand it's a bombshell op-ed. on the other hand, they have made a decision -- they know the identity and they're not revealing the identity. well, carl bernstein and bob woodward held their secret for 30 years. ruth, you've seen -- do you think you would have done -- made the same decision? you're a deputy -- deputy editorial page of "the washington post." you could have had this op-ed perhaps too. >> i oversee the op-ed page. so if that had come to us, which it did not, we would have had a very serious conversation about that decision. i don't want to be the kind of media judge of my esteemed colleagues in new york. i will say that it has not been our practice to do anonymous op-eds. for the reason that kind of goes

along the lines of what i was saying earlier, that if you are making an argument, you should have the wherewithal and the belief in putting your name to that argument. at the same time, i completely -- you know, i can't say whether we would have done it or not, so i don't want to sound churlish. and it is -- using anonymous is a very important tool in the toolbox for my colleagues in the newsroom. so not judging. >> shane, you and i have had a back and forth about the issue of access journalism and sort of -- this is an interesting test case of access journalism. like "the times" wants access to this op-ed. the price of it is anonymity. it's a tough decision. i'm with ruth, i'm not sure, you know, if i were offered to interview this person, put him in a black curtain, voice change, i don't know. >> yeah, it's a very tough call. i recognize i am on the news

side where we have that tool available to us. let's be honest, it's not one that we really relish using, certainly on national security journalism, it's indispensable but i think most of us would like to get people to get people on the record, and we do press for that. it goes back to the question of who is the author. if you're trying to determine whether or not this is really important, that has to go into the calculation of whether you grant the anonymity. if it is somebody at a very senior level, somebody who works for the president or high up in the vice president's office or somewhere very high in the management as opposed to a deputy assistant secretary level maybe you make that call and say, look, this is a name that everyone knows, we're going to shield that. >> and that is something, i will have a bigger problem with the "times" decision here if it's a mid to low-level person. >> it's poison. >> i will be shocked, honestly. >> i do think that -- >> because we all know that when you give somebody anonymity, when you give somebody anonymity about this, you are putting your own credibility on the line.

>> it better be fairly high. if it's mid to low level it becomes then all of a sudden it looks like the "times" was trying to stir the pot? >> the president will be empowered. anonymity is poison, especially online. some have stepped forward to say over the years, of course the nixon -- had great trouble with the final days. >> we pushed back at the time at woodward books. >> they say he does his homework and knows how to report. shane made this point, i'm not sure, you'll have to tell me, ruth, whether op-ed editors have the same -- do they have the same antenna for just straight b.s. from someone who -- >> that's what they pay me the big bucks to do. >> james bennett, you and i both know him well, i've known him for a long time, he was the editor of the atlantic when i worked at the national journal,

that dude is high ethics journalist. >> he knows what he did. >> this is a -- this is just like ruth, was a practicing journalist for a long time before he became an editor. >> they might even tell them, hey, in this case, it's coming. >> you have to tell the publisher. >> i can only speak to our organization, certainly i would not make that decision on my own. i would make it with editorial page editor fred hyatt. where it would go from there i don't know. it would be very unlikely to tell the news side. >> let me ask you this. you have an op-ed that you know is making news, and you've had kw quite a few of them. >> yes, thank you. >> do you go to marty barron -- >> no. >> marty goes oh, look, we've got news in our own paper. >> we try to let both our pr operation know to get it out

there, and, you know, probably not in that order. the news side, i had a piece about the trump administration -- trump white house requiring people to sign on disclosure agreements. i felt a little competitive with my former colleagues. the minute that posted, i said i have something coming that could be newsworthy, i let everybody know. that's the price of -- we call it the separation of church and state, i would be really surprised if james brought in dean beck, the editor on that. >> you were saying -- predicting how the president was going to do this. the president has tweeted simply failing "new york times." he is going to try to make the "times" the story in this. >> understand, if this person who wrote this is not a senior person, or is carrying out a vendetta against someone whose job he or she wants this will deeply injure the reputation, not just of the "new york times," but everyone. that's why the stakes are high. >> it becomes the deep state

like reenforcement tool to the president if it turns out to be something not what it appears. >> you can have a journalism on ethics debate there, but i think chuck and i are both saying that we have extreme respect for james bennett, the editor. >> yeah, i can't -- like i said, i think he's a man of high integrity. i've got to imagine this. michael beshlos, on the media aspect here, it seems like every sort of presidential moment that's aweed in american history, has a challenge for the press of that time. this feels a similar moment. >> no, i think that's exactly right, and the press is the only business that's protected in the constitution very much the idea the founders that they would save the country if necessary. and one other thing, chuck, if i could bring this sort of full circle, we were talking a few moments ago about the fact that this all -- what is being written about in this op-ed

piece, could those kind of tendencies with donald trump could lead to impeachment, conceively conviction and removal, and also very serious legal trouble for him. i have to come back to the fact that donald trump has nominated for the supreme court, maybe just about the person, you know, of those he was considering with the most extreme views about a president should be shielded from being investigated and subpoenaed while in office. and just this very morning it now seems about four days ago judge kavanaugh was asked do you think a president should be subpoenaed in office? he refused to answer. he said that was hypothetical. >> it's a fair point there. michael, always helpful on unprecedented moments like this. hey, i guess you have even more to write about these days. so michael beschloss thank you. >> thanks. >> shane, i come back, do you think we'll see this anonymous

person testify on capitol hill in the next three years? >> i mean, if they're -- >> is this john dean? >> if they're identified and i'm just making a bet here, i feel like the name is just going to come out. the reporting around the white house right now is strong enough you're going to get a short list pretty quickly. >> i mean, if this person is like -- how do you not call hearings now and say, okay -- >> this is somebody who according to his firsthand account is witness to extremely troubling things that any congressional investigation, certainly any committee of impeachment would want to know about, again if democrats take one of the chambers you can bet that if this person is identified he'd be very high on a witness list. again it does raise this question of why not come out publicly reveal who you are? i wonder if we're inching towards that? when the woodward excerpts came out this week, i thought, great that they talked to woodward, it's a fantastic way to corral this journalism and reporting. how much more powerful would it be if jim mattis came out and

said them publicly. >> so i've been arguing that, for that, and i think at this point the likelihood of that is way less because it hasn't happened. i'm more doubtful than you are that we're going to know the identity of this person. you know, any time within, you know, think about it, the 30 years it took us, right, to find out that mark felt was deep throat. >> why the timing today? we have the brett kavanaugh as the headline. is someone attempting to derail brett kavanaugh, for whatever reason, why would you release this today? >> it's funny you say that. i agree. i have a question about timing. is it, woodward gave them a spine? is it that? i don't know, you're right, is it somebody that wants to derail kavanaugh. >> doesn't sound like somebody who wants to derail. it sounds like a true believer. >> the whole point, i do think it's a fair point, if it's woodward that motivated, then

katy bar the door, you're going to have more and more doing this. is it a vendetta? i don't know. >> do you think it was written in the last 24 hours? it could have been weeks in the making. >> you'd need more vetting than that, from my point of view, from the logistics of this. >> you would assume this is a week-long project, at minimum? how much would you vet this. >> i would vet it a whole lot. >> even if you immediately knew the person, a pretty high level person. >> if it was john kelly calling me and telling me -- >> anonymous op-ed, how quickly? >> i could act pretty quickly. >> the person is high enough that you know, oh, wow, this is credible, i've -- you know -- >> yeah. but you also have -- you have to run sort of your internal processes as well. a 24-hour turnaround from woodward, just 24 hours ago, by the way, would be awfully quick. >> and let me go back to something about something that a

pollster said to us very quietly that july actually was a horrendous month for republicans, and then august wasn't a great month for house republicans because trump kept disrupting the messaging. first week of september, not a good time to be a house republican because trump keeps interrupting the messaging. >> a mercurial president means a mercurial eight weeks ahead of us or six weeks ahead. >> good luck planning a campaign. >> a virginia congressman put on the ballot, removed from the ballot. >> handed the democrats a house seat. >> might be enough. >> i don't even know where to begin, how to wrap this day up. but it did begin with the kavanaugh hearings, and woodward came out with a book. >> and michael capuano. >> and delaware senate, carper

ain't sleeping well tonight. i've got to let you guys go. hand the baton off here in a minute. big thanks to shane, ruth, hugh, michael beschloss. we'll be back with more tomorrow. that breaking news coverage continues. "the beat" with ari melber, you were like me, two hours ago, thinking you were about to d dissect, blummenthal versus -- >> speak with me for a minute, as a student of washington, to use your political the saur us. dan rather says ca boom, i've never seen anything like this anonymous op-ed. beschl