staff didn't work, former political operative didn't work with reince priebus. >> trump should name trump white house chief of staff. >> it seems like that's who has been the chief of staff. >> it's the one person he is routinely happy w i said that only half-jokingly. he was frustrated with reince priebus who was the first chief of staff, frustrated with kelly, he often gets frustrated with his staff. he essentially operates as his own chief of staff, his own communications director. different times people in the white house have speculated maybe he doesn't need a chief of staff, everything else is unorthodox, why not use a new structure. >> with the democrats taking control of the house a lot of people are saying you need somebody like mark meadows as a possible chief of staff. >> thank you very much. we will see you on "morning joe" in just a bit. you can sign up for axios a.m. as signup.axios.com. >> i'm yasmin vossoughian alongside ayman mohyeldin and louis burgdorf. "morning joe" starts right now. why didn't you deny calling

the president a moron? >> you know, that's a really old question. >> do you understand that by not answering the question some people thought you were confirming the story. >> i think i've answered the question. >> you think you answered the request he? >> i've answered the question. >> did you call the president a moron? >> i'm not going to dignify the question. >> as secretary of state back in february rex tillerson was still dancing around what he really thought about donald trump. it is now ten months later and he is no longer holding back. we're going to show you what he had to say finally. plus, the president mocked barack obama for cycling through three chiefs of staff. president trump is about to get his third in just two years. that is if he can find someone who wants the job who would take the job. why the apparent front runner nick ayers turned it down. also, we knew that jared

kushner's job is to advise, we just didn't know it was to advise a saudi crown prince on pr strategy after the murder of a journalist. these are all real questions this morning, believe it or not. welcome to "morning joe." it is monday, december 10th. with us we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle along with donny deutsch and former aide to the george w. bush white house elise jordan, carol lee and former u.s. attorney and msnbc contributor joyce vance is with us as well. >> joyce, since we're talking about jared kushner i'm remind pd of what you said this weekend over a little meeting that jared had, we were all asking why bill clinton got an an airplane and sat there with loretta lynch who was in charge of the justice department who was investigating

not bill clinton but investigating his wife. this weekend we have jared kushner inviting on the acting attorney general and actually kushner himself is under investigation. i certainly hope as much attention is paid to this as was paid attention when loretta lynch got on an airplane and talked to bill clinton because this is actually even worse because you've got the attacking -- well, the acting attorney general who has attacked the probe and actually a man who is being probed right now by mueller. >> yeah, it's actually entirely different situations. lynch's meeting with president clinton on the tarmac came near the end of that investigation whereas kushner who is clearly in the lens right now with no decisions made invited the acting attorney general to join him on marine one. there should be outrage and uproar and a call for the acting

attorney general to recuse from further participation in the investigation. >> yeah. >> mika, no doubt. that's what happened with loretta lynch. that's what should happen today with the acting attorney general. >> on so many levels they just -- they don't care. >> well, that's why the press has to care. again, the attention that everybody including us put on the loretta lynch/bill clinton meeting needs to be focused on this meeting. why did jared kushner take the person who is running the justice department on marine one when he's part of that -- when actually he is a target in that investigation? >> facts and the questions is what we stick to, and we've got the most recent court filings by the special counsel's office and they are raising new questions about the trump campaign and russia. as the president himself denies any wrongdoing. here are some of the key take a ways that we've learned so far, in those documents filed on

friday prosecutors say trump directed illegal hush money to two women with whom he had alleged sexual relationships before running for president. filings allege that trump was involved in discussions about a trump property in moscow during the presidential campaign. prosecutors also said an unnamed russian offered michael cohen political synergy between russia and the trump campaign back in november of 2015. the documents claim cohen, president trump's former lawyer, was in contact with people connected to the white house and circulated his response to congressional inquiries. prosecutors also allege that former trump campaign chair paul manafort has been in communication with a senior administration official through february of 2018, along with other contacts with administration officials, and had lied about it.

amid these new filings and accusations from prosecutors president trump continues to deny any wrongdoing and insists there was no collusion with russia. >> sir, did you direct michael cohen to commit any violations of law? >> no. no. no. >> on the mueller situation, we're very happy with what we are reading because there was no collusion whatsoever. there never has been. the last thing i want is help from russia on a campaign, but as far as the report that we see according to everybody i've spoken to, i have not read it, there's absolutely no collusion, which is very important. >> the last thing he wanted was contact with the russians, help from the russians. the "washington post" this weekend counting at least 14 encounters between russians and his campaign. this does not happen in american

campaigns unless it is a campaign run by donald trump, his children and his associates. joyce, i want to go back to, actually, the hush money for a second. andrew mccarthy wrote a column for fox news suggesting that donald trump was going to be indict indicted, he would likely be indicted by the southern district of new york and with apologies to rand paul, he made a couple basic statements, which is, number one, it is a felony to direct others to make illegal campaign contributions. yes, that's basic. i'm not sure what banana republic rand paul wants to live in where you ignore he will niece if politics serves you, but that's what rand paul is talking like right now. so we know that's a felony. number two, also, we look at the inte intent, and i know that you prosecutors have always looked

at the actions of a defendant or a possible defendant to determine criminal intent. well, donald trump pain takenly trying to cover up those illegal and miss directed payments. finally, they were relevant. these were not clerical errors, it was relevant. in fact, you could make the argument that donald trump would never have been president if the scandalous stories about stormy daniels and his playboy bunny trists had gone public. i'm not sure how to describe that. but it does look like he's going to be indicted at least by the southern district of new york. >> you know, it's really hard work being a prosecutor for the exact reason that you identify here, sometimes crimes look so obvious and so apparent to the public. prosecutors have to go back and do the painstaking work of

ensuring that they can prove with evidence that will be admissible in a courtroom all the elements of that crime beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury. so for the campaign finance violations the sticking point is the level of knowledge, it's a heightened level of knowledge here. there will have to be proof that the president specifically knew he was violating campaign finance law. it looks like that evidence is available and david pecker who is the head of ami during much of this time is cooperating with the government and likely can shed light on what the president knew and why they acted the way that they did, but this, i think, is a problem that's just increasing for the president because it's not just campaign finance, there could be bank fraud or other fraud sorts of violations that go along with this and then as you point out, the obstruction, the ongoing cover up will ensnare him at the end as well. >> so, donny, just, you know,

knowing donald and knowing branding, i feel like donald is sort of lost in this parallel universe that used to work when what he said 100 times could finally become partially maybe what people thought, and now he's in washington with a special counsel breathing down his throat and he thinks he can say no collusion and that means no collusion. it might be a different reality but do you think donald is still trying to brand this? >> obviously he is and it's kind of laughable and pathetic at this point. >> well, the other option is that he's lost his mind or he's completely -- completely -- what's the word for stupid that's more polite? >> i think it's a little bit of both. we've talked ad nauseam on this show about this. this is a man who has lived his entire life without checks and balances is and living in a town that was built on checks and balances and madisonian

principles. i think we're going to see up close and personal a guy, a man, a president completely unravel. we have a guy who at best is not playing with a full deck and now is under a pressure he's never seen his entire life and it's just the beginning. this is not going to end two years from now and this is throughout the rest of his life every u.s. attorney, the southern district, u.s. attorneys in virginia are going to be picking at this man and his empire. this is a man who came in and said, i'm bigger than the house, i'm bigger than the intelligence community, bigger than checks and balances, bigger than the. you dishl community, bigger than the free press and he is going to pay for that the rest of his life. this is just the beginning. trump tower is just the beginning. forget the stormy daniels -- not forget the stormy daniels and karen mcdougal stuff, it's obviously a felony, where it's going to crash and burn is on the entire trump organization, which is built as a criminal enterprise, built with russia money laundering. this is just the tip of the iceberg. >> elise, i would put this

question on the table for all of us, i mean all of us, the extended audience out there to think about. has this president so numbed up that we don't react to this epic weekend of a president of the united states being involved in directing a conspiracy, involved in felonious lying, has this constant repetitive behavior so numbed us to outrage. >> i think everyone is numb because of the constant incoming of information and deeds committed by donald trump that are just so outrageous that you're just -- we are all desensitized to it at this point just because we are so used to the ridiculousness, the lawlessness, the flauting of

norms and flauting of rules of law. i've seen when you talk to strong trump supporters around the country and he has branded this as a witch-hunt, he is able to say the media is against me, i'm your man. so with this strongest supporters, yes, they probably -- you know, it's not really going to impact their belief in donald trump. >> well, you know, nixon had his strongest supporters at the end and the constant screeching, the fact that he has spent the past several years attacking movie stars, attacking cable news hosts, attacking things that didn't matter, now when he starts attacking robert mueller, now when he starts attacking these investigations, everybody has heard it before. the shock isn't there. i do actually think the numbness goes to donald trump's tweets now.

donald trump's statements. donald trump's outrageous remarks. people are starting to tune him out and starting to look at the facts. carol lee, things have changed pretty dramatically. i expect nick ayers a year ago would have decided to be chief of staff. now you have donald trump who wants a new chief of staff. >> who would want that? >> he's seen how that story ends. he also knows where donald trump is at this place in the presidency and yesterday said, thanks, but no thanks. so you've been following this very close ly. what's it look like? what did the departure, the decision to get rid of john kelly look like? what did nick ayers refusal to take the job look like and what will next week look like without a chief of staff? >> you've hitten on an important point which is it's increasingly difficult for this president to try to find people who want to

work with him. as you said, you know, who would want the chief of staff job? this have' seen reince priebus get chewed up and spit out, john kelly get chewed up and spit out and you're heading into a point in the presidency where the house democrats are going to rain down a bunch of investigations on this white house that's not prepared for that and you have a president who is increasingly in a really bad mood, frankly. so, you know, by all of our reporting and other reporting showed that the white house was ready to name rick ayers -- nick ayers, excuse me, as the next chief of staff and that kind of unraveled in recent days where you saw, you know, there was some white house staff who didn't want him to be chief of staff, they felt he was too young, there was nick ayers, you know, taking -- wanting to just do it in an interim capacity and the president said, no, he wanted somebody long term. what our reporting shows is there is no plan b, as is often the case in this white house.

so they're back to the drawing board and there is a number of names, some of which are familiar, you know, and some of which are new like matt whitaker, for instance, who may be in the running for the job, but it's going to be really hard to fill this position after seeing what happened to the president's first two chiefs of staff. >> trump always talked about my generals, he would call them my generals and it was so important to him to hire generals. you have a piece on nbcnews.com about how the generals are doing. how are they doing? >> that's a great question. yeah, my colleagues and i we wrote a story about how when trump came in he had this fascination with generals, he said they are out of central casting, these are the guys you would put in the movie if he was going to make one. he picked a number of generals for really top positions. you have these generals who have stellar military careers who then get diminished working for president trump. the president once reality sets

in and that these generals he would like to cast in the movie aren't going to do everything he wants them to do and say yes to everything that he wants, you know, he sours on them. we've seen whether it's michael flynn or general mcmaster, his national security adviser and john kelly and even james mattis his still defense secretary but we've seen him and the president be at odds and most recently the president rejected mattis' advice on who to name as the next chairman of the joint chiefs and caught him off guard with that announcement over the weekend. so, you know, the president had this idea or he liked the idea of these generals, these tough guys that he thought would work for him and then he didn't so much like the reality. >> of course, carol, you bring up the point of the president ignoring james mattis' suggestions and then catching him off guard. that's why who the next chief of staff is just isn't going to matter because he doesn't follow anybody's advice.

that's really been, joyce vance, the biggest problem with the trump administration. i remember asking him in the middle of the campaign who do you talk to, you know, after yet another explosion and another undisciplined ranting on his part, i said who do you talk to? who comes in that you can talk to and talk you down before you make these statements? he said, well, i just -- i talk to myself. i know you are not going to like the answer, but i talk to myself. i said, you're right, i don't like the answer. that is a terrible answer. that is the wrong answer. which leads us to, joyce, the biggest problem any new chief of staff or this administration is going to face, they are about to go to legal war with robert mueller in a very intense back and forth and the president is unarmed because the president has refused to put together a

competent group of attorneys and he's also failed to do what any attorney knows is the client's greatest failing, he's refused to tell his attorneys the truth. he has refused to let his attorneys in on what prosecutors are going to find. so how does any chief of staff, how does any white house lawyer stop donald trump from being indicted and possibly going down, because they have a client who just, first of all, refuses to hire competent attorneys and secondly, refuses to tell the attorneys he has the truth. >> at this point in an investigation that will come from both the legal front and from capitol hill, you would expect trump and his legal team to be very disciplined, very focused, and here they are, as you say, not even with a complete war room ready to deal with these issues, not with an

identified chief of staff who can interface with white house counsel and ensure smooth management of everything. the irony here, joe, might be that what ultimately insulates the president from indictment is not his legal team, not his willingness to be forthcoming and make a full confession, but rather this long standing doj policy that says you should not indict a sitting president for a lot of credential reasons that have to do with good government. that doesn't prevent prosecutors in the southern district of new york from preparing an indictment that they clearly have in the works that would come into place as soon as he were to leave office which will inevitably happen at some point in time, but this white house is not organized, is not staffed at a level that will permit it to effectively deal with the challenges that will come at it now from multiple places. >> but, joyce, of course, that is just guidance from the justice department. that is a standing question that the supreme court of the united states would have to answer, and

i still, again -- you and i both know if somebody brought this up in constitutional law class, you would have a constitutional law professor who would say, okay, well, what if the president shoots somebody on fifth avenue and kills them, are you not going to allow -- allow the president to be indicted for murder that day? i just -- you take that to its conclusion and i'm not so sure that the justice department guidance will be followed by the supreme court. >> you know, it's a huge internal debate that's going on right now and the first person that has to make that call would be rod rosenstein or matt whitaker or whoever is in charge of pros could you testify decision-making in this investigation. that person would have to say i understand that the office of legal counsel has this long standing policy, but we are going to set it aside. normally there wouldn't be a great case for doing that because there would be a political check on an out of

control president through impeachment, through accountability up on capitol hill. that doesn't seem to be a possibility in our current political environment. so the question, joe, that i'm starting to focus on is this notion of when you have a president who wins the white house through fraud that occurs during the election, should he still be insulated from prosecution? because if that's true, then your best defense is a corrupt politician is winning and if you win you can no longer be prosecuted, at least for a while. but it's a difficult constitutional question that we will have to work through. >> fascinating. joyce vance, thank you so much. carol lee, thank you for your reporting. still ahead on "morning joe," axios takes us through what we learned from the special counsel's filings. plus, new reporting details what might be the breaking point for some republican senators when it comes to the russia probe. but first, bill karins with a check on the severe weather hitting many big cities.

bill? >> amazing snowstorm, mika. really an overachieve in some spots. with he saw richmond, virginia, with a foot of snow, it just doesn't happen that often. we have a quarter of a million people still without power in virginia and areas of north carolina. upstate south carolina in greenville had significant snow. this is what it looked like yesterday and it's still snowing in a few spots there in south carolina and even this evening after the sun sets, columbia could get sleet and snow mixed in. roanoke 15 inches, raleigh about 7, charlotte you had a lot of ice, a lot of downed trees and still a lot of power outages. as i mentioned it's still nasty throughout the area, big cities are above freezing so hopefully as the plows go by, the salt goes down we can get the roads improved. i'm sure there's dozens and hundreds and thousands of school cancellations throughout this region. today it will get up into the mid 30s. we will melt some snow on some of the main roads, tonight it will drop into the 20s, black

ice come tomorrow morning. this week ahead we do not have any more winter weather and everyone who has suffered through you a cold november and december for the eastern half of the country i'm happy to report the next storm is a rainstorm and with it will come warmer air. looking at a pretty mild week overall, a nice thaw after a chilly start to our winter season. new york city one of those spots that dodged the snow along with our friends in the northeast but it is plenty cold and that continues this morning. you're watching "morning joe." (chime)

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this is moving day with the best in-home wifi experience and millions of wifi hotspots to help you stay connected. and this is moving day with reliable service appointments in a two-hour window so you're up and running in no time. show me decorating shows. this is staying connected with xfinity to make moving... simple. easy. awesome. stay connected while you move with the best wifi experience and two-hour appointment windows. click, call or visit a store today. former treasury official and "morning joe" economic analyst steve rattner, also co-founder and ceo of axios jim vandehei. jim, your one big thing this morning is what we know about trump russia and i actually read your newsletter yesterday morning, as i always do, of

course, there are three things that my ten-year-old son and i do every sunday morning, we read your axios list and of course we go to church, and then we throw the ball around talking about the axios list because -- but yesterday was amazing and i actually did a thread where i actually quoted several of your take a ways. it was so effective that actually wikileaks came back and attacked me for making these, what they claim, false claims when, in fact, it looks like everything you guys nailed down about what we know so far is pretty damning for the president. >> amazing. >> we talk in anticipation with what mueller will have in his report and what i was trying to point out is just what you know is extraordinarily damning. like we now know that more than a half dozen people around trump had contacts with the russians. it wasn't just a half dozen

people, you are talking about his eldest son, his campaign manager, his lawyer and closest business confidant, flynn who was easily his top adviser throughout that campaign. so in all of these people had these meetings enthusiastically, most of them then lied about it and now we know that there was business dealings, negotiations going on between cohen and the kugss for a property in moscow that even after that these contacts continued, that the u.s. intelligence apparatus came to a unanimous conclusion, everyone except for trump said undoubtedly the russians were trying to influence the u.s. election, even after that you stale had a lot of contacts between russia and this administration, including jared kushner, at least having conversations about creating a secret back channel during the transition with the russians. then it continued even into the white house. so had we not had the drip,

drip, drip offer the last two years and you read all of that in a story you would say that is arguably the most consequential story in modern presidential history because you have to go back to who is russia? it's an enemy of the united states. go back to 2012, mitt romney, the number one geopolitical threat to the united states of america is russia and every single republican enthusiastically agreed with that. and that's what's so striking about what we already know from mueller and what we know is he knows a lot more than what we just laid out there. you read the indictments, the parts that aren't redacted and you know he has lots more, lots more people who are cooperating, lots more information about those contacts. what we don't know is did trump -- how involved was he? and the one thing i will say, i don't know how involved he was, what he knew. i will say that in the campaign through this day he knows everything that's going on. he's always hyper involved, especially with all those individuals. so the idea that all of these

people are operating on their own unbeknownst to him in a totally clean way, that's the bar that he's going to have to clear and i think that's why you see a lot of republicans over this week and even the ones who love him most saying, oh, boy. >> yeah. you know, the president's strange tweets over the past several days, joe, suggest a lot of different things. i think he said something about a counter report to the mueller probe. how can you make a counter report or even allude to one unless you know that it's really, really bad? >> he's talking about a counter report. you really can't make a counter report until you actually know what's in the initial report. but it does suggest how desperate he is. there is not a counter report. rudy giuliani late at night when he's talking to reporters admits there is not a counter report out there. >> but he's insinuating it's terrible what they have, maybe what they've indicated to him, maybe the questions they have sent are so damning that he wants to provide a counter

report. >> why are we even reading his tweets? why are we taking his tweets seriously? they're jokes, donny deutsch. my gosh, i will tell you what else is a joke, the suggestion that donald trump's son-in-law or donald trump's oldest son or anybody related to donald trump or working with donald trump would do anything during the 2016 campaign without getting donald trump's signoff is an absolute joke and whoever suggests that is either wholly ignorant about how that campaign ran from day one or they're just liars. there is no third choice there. >> joe, two points, one to the tweets, it's interesting, his tweets six months or a year ago they would come out and the response was anger and this is a strong man, you're fearful and

outraged. now it's pathetic. it's benign. it's almost -- go sit in the corner, grandpa. go play with your little phone and we will get back to you. to your point, joe, you have 100% right, if anybody has ever been up to the trump office, it's small, the offices are right next to each other. i was in a family business, i worked with my dad, i worked for my dad for a number of years, with he would speak 20, 30, 40, 50 times a day and my dad was not an authoritative type of boss. his children were not just children, they were employees to him. there's nothing they did without either trying to curry favor or without his absolute direction. that was not a mom and pop show, that was a one-man pop show. so to your point, joe, it is absurd, it is beyond the possibility that any of these people whether it was michael cohen, whether it was his children, any of the other people in the inner circle were acting not only without him knowing but with his complete direction. that is the way that man worked. that is the way that company was

run. imagine -- if you are sitting at home right now, look at the room next to you because that's where his children were and that's where his confidants were. >> they were right there. again, anybody that ever saw the interaction between them during the campaign, after the campaign or, as you said, before the campaign when everybody worked at trump tower, they understood those children did exactly what they were told by their father as it pertained to business, as it pertained to politics, as it pertained to anything. the thought, steve rattner, that don jr. was going to go off on his own and take a meeting with russians or that jared kushner was somehow going to do something without donald trump knowing, laughable, a joke. they all were sort of in fear of the guy and i never once saw anybody talk back to him, never once saw anybody do anything but say yes, sir, never once saw anybody do anything except what

donald trump told them exactly, you know -- he would tell them exactly what to do and this he would do it. there was no sneaking anything past him. >> no i think what donny said about the way the trump organization ran is exactly right. donald trump we know is a micromanager, he needs to know everything that's going on, wants to know everything that's going on, and we even have, at least at the moment, circumstantial evidence of this, for example, there were the calls from donald trump jr.'s cellphone to a blocked number before and after the july 16th meeting. maybe we will find out, maybe mueller can find out exactly who those calls were to, but i think we all have our suspicions. it was the not so elliptical fairly clear remarks that trump made on the campaign trail after that meeting before the wikileaks leak occurred that suggested he knew something. there's evidence all over the place that you getted he knew this. the question is what's going to come of it? is it going to be enough for mueller to put together into a package that will start to turn the tide among republicans who

so far have been quite steadfast in at least their professed open-mindedness on this issue, but certainly not turned against trump. >> steve, let's talk about -- let's move from russia and the mueller probe to what's happening in the southern district of new york. that prosecution that's ongoing, as well as the investigation that is ongoing as well. we talked before about andy mccarthy, suggesting on fox news that donald trump is going to get indicted. you see his very clear statement, which is also the law of the land, the federal law, which is if you direct somebody to make an illegal campaign contribution, that is a felony, even in the state of kentucky, rand paul, that is a federal felony. then you take it the next step and see how much -- i will read what andy mccarthy said, as

we've just seen it is a felony to cause another person to make an illegal contribution. a federal felony. and then, of course, you look at the painstaking way donald trump went -- how far out of his way donald trump went to hide those illegal campaign contributions and to direct them. it shows his intent. and then i want to get to the third point here which is it wasn't just a clerical error. this actually was an extraordinarily important illegal act which actually may have swayed the election, most likely swayed the election because you were following the campaign closely, obviously with the clinton campaign. what would the impact have been if a porn star and a playboy bunny had come out that last week and talked about their affairs with donald trump in 2006 right after he was married and when his wife was pregnant? >> well, i think we all know

what the impact of what would have been on the election, which was ultimately decided by a relatively small number, 74,000 votes or whatever in a few upper midwest states, certainly something like this could have easily made the difference. look, i think what's going to be interesting to see is what other evidence the sdny has on this. their language in the filings on friday was incredibly stark and definitive and clear that suggested that they have more than simply michael cohen said this happened so trump can say that happened and we get into a he said, he said kind of situation. what's going to be needed here given trump's base and the push back from trump's megaphone is going to be clear and unequivocal proof. then the next question which i heard you discussing earlier is should trump get indicted or not? we all know the issues around that, there's statutes of limitations issues. there seems to be, i think, an opening to indict a sitting president that does not seem to be against the law, whether you prosecute him or not is another question. then you get to the mega

question of does this rise to the level of being an impeachable offense and a lot of people would obviously feel it does, there are others who feel that we should have an incredibly high standard for impeachment, that we should not be getting rid of presidents lightly, even ones who have broken the law and that those can be two somewhat separate issues. >> you know, the important thing to remember, mika, as we're talking about whether you can indict a president or not is what joyce vance just said. if the indictment pertains to illegal activities that got you elected president of the united states or may have not you elected president of the united states, then the supreme court has to look at that differently because if you are willing to say that a president cannot be indicted and that president is president only because of illegal activities -- >> right. >> -- then suddenly you really do, rand paul -- this is where the banana republic part comes in. then it becomes is banana

republic where somebody committing illegal acts say i can do whatever i want to do, i can commit whatever felonies i want to commit as long as i get elected president of the united states they cannot indict me. that is not an american principle. mika, the american principle is, no man is above the law. no woman is above the law. that's why i believe this supreme court if faced with this question, i think they are going to be faced with this question, ultimately will have to decide what this president has to be indicted because of the connection with the crimes which actually helped him get elected. >> and or mueller could be providing congress with a clear roadmap toward impeachment. jim vandehei, thank you very much. still ahead, it's been almost two years since president trump was sworn into office and so far he's coming up short on two of his biggest economic goals. steve rattner has some charts on that coming up on "morning joe." >> we should not have special

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it was challenging for me coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented exxonmobil corporation to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn't like to read, doesn't read briefing reports. we did not have a common value system. when the president would say, well, here is what i want to do, and here is how i want to do it, and i would have to say to him, well, mr. president, i understand what you want to do, but you can't do it that way, it violates the law, it violates a treaty, you know, he got really frustrated. i didn't know how to conduct my affairs with him any other way than in a very straightforward fashion and i think he grew tired of me being the guy every day that told him you can't do that. >> you know, elise jordan, first of all, he called rex tillerson

lazy as hell and stupid and all of these other things. as somebody from mississippi, and i, of course, am from alabama, georgia, mississippi, northwest florida, you name it, i can't help but notice that he calls people from the south who work for him stupid and lazy. he said that about jeff sessions, talked about his dumb southern accent. he's doing the same thing here with rex tillerson. the man -- it's almost as if the man does not think much of people from the south. >> i know, it's sad that donald trump seems to want to talk that way about some of his strongest supporters because he has a chip on his shoulder about southerners and that's unfortunate. this, i think, what rex tillerson said and some of rex tillerson's reported comments throughout his tenure as secretary of state, i think quite frankly should be a bigger story. rex tillerson said in that

interview that donald trump wanted to break the law. the secretary of state is talking about the president he served under and is saying that donald trump actively sought to break the united states laws. it was reported that right after rex tillerson came into office and he was in the oval in february donald trump had just been inaugurated, that donald trump was speaking to him about the foreign corrupt practices act and why couldn't we get rid of it. and rex tillerson had to explain, well, that exists to actually help americans and to help american businesses abroad. we need to keep those laws in place. but why was donald trump so fascinated with breaking laws as president? >> i'm just kind of hurt because i thought dumb as a rock was mine. that's what he said about me. >> he did, because you are from southern poland, so it always goes --

>> i was dumb as a rock and now he's using it on rex. >> it always goes back to the south, you are from southern poland. >> mike barnicle, let's follow up on what elise said. why was it that donald trump was always so obsessed on breaking laws, doing things that -- doing things that -- whatever he could to push the boundaries to try to get away with things, why wasn't he more obsessed on actually learning -- learning what he needed to know to be an effective commander in chief, to be an effective president? because we hear rex tillerson's complaint repeated time and time again, he would never read, he would never study. when james mattis or rex tillerson tried to explain to him why the world worked the way it did, if it didn't line up exactly with what he believed he would get angry. >> joe, we are in a unique position in american history. we have a commander in chief, and i put that in air quotes, who has never been told no, who

has never listened to advice or counsel from anyone smarter than him because in his own mind already no people smarter than him. he has been allowed to engage in this behavior for behavior for professional life, never having to report to a board of directors. never having to report to anyone. so now he is totally, you know, without shackles, without boundaries. and it's caught up to us. and this country is now in the middle of a situation where we have a president, as steve pointed out, as you pointed out, he could be indicted today if he were not president of the united states. >> he may still be indicted. by the way speak of indictment, i said last block the supreme court would determine that they had to indict donald trump. that's not the supreme court's job. let me phrase that more carefully. what i mean to say is that if given this case and if they have to make the decision, they may

determine that they have no choice if this crime could have possibly led to the presidency where they had to allow the indictment and move forward and, again, i think that's the legal question of 2019. >> they have to look at the crime itself since the issue of whether or not he can be indicted is a question. colluding with the enemy and lying about it? i'm thinking, we'll see what category that ends up but i put a big question mark on that. i wouldn't be confident if i were individual one. coming up, we'll talk to "new york times" reporter peter baker about his new piece on how prosecutors have effectively accused the president of defrauding voters. plus we'll talk to the democrat who has withdrawn his concession in that north carolina congressional race that's been plagued by kwuaccusations of fr.

"morning joe" will be back in a minute.

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president trump just tweeted, so let me read it to for you as it is written. democrats can't find a smocking gun tying the trump campaign to russia after james comey's testimony. no smocking gun. no collusion. at fox news that's because there was no collusion. dems go to a simple private transaction, call it a campaign contribution. smocking. >> donny deutsch we see what's happening. the president is making a terrible mistake by thinking that collusion part of this, the conspiracy part of this, regarding russia will not come out later, so he watches our show. we're talking about, obviously, we're talking about the southern district of new york, and what he calls a simple transaction but that simple transaction of paying hush money or directing

others to illegally pay hush money to porn stars and playboy bunnies -- it's an in kind campaign contribution. he thinks somehow that this is much ado about nothing. but can you tell he feels the walls coming in and he knows that question of whether he can be indicted for this illegal in kind contribution or not is going to be shaping his presidency in the coming months. >> he's probably watching now as he's eating his count chocula. these tweets will become more and more imbecilic. less and less sense. he'll talk to his 30%. take to the streets they are trying to get rid of your president. you'll see unhinged like we've never seen before. he feels it. you can see he feels it. it's pathetic. none of us got angry at that. we all chuckled under our brett when we saw that.

>> who can't spell "smoking" twice. >> the bigger problem instead of his grammar, instead of us being editors, the bigger problem is that he's only seen the southern district of new york and their plans as they are being revealed. he still has no idea what's in store on the russian side of this investigation. mueller still hasn't shown a lot of his cards. we still have not seen exactly what's in store for roger stone. we still don't know what's in store for jared kushner. we still aren't exactly sure if don jr. will be indicted. there's still a lot to come in that investigation. >> coming up one top democrat raises the possibility of impeachment while another raises the prospect of jail time. we'll discuss the legal exposure facing the president right now. "morning joe" back in two minutes.

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released the teaser trailer for trump end game. federal prosecutors said friday michael cohen committed two election related crimes at the direction of a person identified as individual one. now we don't know for sure who individual one is, but let's just say things are getting tense right now over at individual one tower. trump tweeted with no context or explanation totally clears the president. thank you. if every single person you hire gets indicted the odds are you had something to do with it. i mean if all of santa's elves and reindeer got busted by the feds you wouldn't expect santa to tweet totally clear for christmas. no you wouldn't. welcome back to "morning joe". it's monday, december 109. donny deutsch, mike barn cal, elise jordan is with us. joining the conversation is host of kasiedc, kasie hunt is with

us. peter baker and former justice department spokesman now an msnbc justice and security analyst matt miller. matt, you just tweeted your first take on the president's tweet this morning about michael cohen's payoffs, writing quote, i don't think his lawyers will want him offering this public defense of the daniels-mcdougal payment. he'll talk himself right out of the defense that he didn't know it was a crime and that's kind of a smocking gun in itself is it not? >> a little bit. look the one thing the president had going for him, obviously we saw the prosecutors in the southern district of new york friday claim that he directed michael cohen to commit a crime. i think the best legal defense he would have had to that allegation is that there's a very high bar for campaign finance crimes. you have to know it's a crime. a higher bar than exists for

most crimes in federal statute. his best defense would have been to say look i was advised to do this by my attorney. michael cohen is my long time counsel. it may be illegal to make this kind of campaign finance donation illegally, i didn't know it was a crime. i had no intent to act a crime. instead of taking that defense, establishing new facts it was always intended to be a private transaction. i think that's a bit of a mistake for him. it's why his tweets, you know, are so careless and reckless and once again i think may find him putting himself in further legal jeopardy. >> and he does it -- steve rattner, such a crazy tweet trying to assign blame, trying to push it off as something that it wasn't. but, steve, you've run quite a few fundraisers, you and maureen have and you understand just how careful you have to be. i want to explain it to voters.

in northwest florida, i know you've had no fish fries in your 5th avenue apartment but in northwest florida if somebody gave you a fish fry as a fundraiser, if somebody bought ribs or made ribs themselves, you had to meticulously detail every cent that was spent and then the candidate had to meticulously report it and if you didn't that was a campaign finance violation and there was never a question, steve, in my mind and i'm sure many candidates have been very clear with you and your lawyers have been very clear with you, if you covered that up, and you know you're covering up a campaign violation, that's extraordinarily terrible behavior. it's a crime. and we're not talking about fried mullet, we're talking

about $150,000 payment to porn stars in the final days of a campaign which they tried to cover up. that seems to be far, far more serious and would that not be in a candidate's mind seen as illegal behavior? >> you know, look both on the donor side and on the campaign side, there's incredible compliance requirements, incredible compliance efforts to go on. identify seen people make a contribution act suddenly that was over the limit, that the campaign keeps their records, they sends back texas sees. when we do fundraisers we have to be very careful both what we contribute and everybody else contribute complies with the various limits. we have to keep track of our expenses. when we have our lunch for hillary clinton in 2016 we can't spend more than $2,000 or we have to document that. all of that is right. there was a case, you'll remember the facts better than i was very recently, d'souza in

new york making illegal contribution, a relatively small amount a couple of thousand dollars he was convicted of a felony and later ironically pardoned by trump. this is serious business. the amounts we're talking about, certainly doing it to influence an athletic, not accidentally making an illegal contribution or trying to influence an election is a level of campaign finance violation i don't think i've seen in my 25 years of being involved in campaign finance. >> no. it has all the markings of being not only an illegal, illegal campaign contribution, but also you have a candidate who knows it's an illegal campaign contribution because donald trump went to such great lengths to hide it through third parties, and then, peter baker, let's go to you on this one

because you've written about this this weekend. those actions were taken according to the southern district of new york to defraud voters, to keep information away from voters in the closing days and weeks of the campaign. what does that mean? >> right. that's exactly right. the campaign finance law is about transparency as much as it is about limits. it's about saying where money is going to and what the purpose is. in this case the purpose of this money was to prevent these two women from telling their stories. now be that as it may be, those stories may or may not be true. the president denies it. at the end of this campaign when he was already damaged by tack sees hollywood tape would have been a political liability. prosecutors are saying, what they said in their documents that they filed on friday michael cohen, in effect, they are saying the president of the united states was doing was trying to shape the election, influence the election in a way

that he knew would have substantial effect. now this is not just a bookkeeping error on the part of a campaign finance. that happens and the president is right when he says on twitter that, you know, a lot of campaign finance violations are dealt with through civil means and a fine as opposed to some sort of a criminal case. in this case there's a criminal case because michael cohen pleaded guilty to this and about to be sentenced for it. that's a crime in a court of law. what the prosecutor said complicit in this crime is donald trump. that may mean he doesn't get charged, in a different case if he were. not the president of the united states, if you read a document like we read on friday the person who directed may face criminal liability. the argument he didn't know it was a crime is a pretty good defense but he may be undercutting it. >> mika, what's so important is the intent behind these payments. like, for instance, if it's a

clerical error, i'm sure almost every presidential campaign, every large senatorial campaign will make clerical errors and there will be clean up later and they have to pay a fine. that happens all the time. this goes, though, to intent. the president knew what he was doing was defrauding the voters. the president knew, so he tried to get it done in both cases through third parties. michael cohen knew what he was doing was illegal. that's why he's pled guilty and will be spending a lot of time in jail because he knew it was illegal and he was acting on the direction of the republican nominee for president who had already been damaged by the "access hollywood" tape and knew that revelations about porn stars or playboy bunnies would finish his campaign off for good. >> so, we also have nick confessore with us. it's hard not to mock the misspellings in his latest tweets but i'm looking at them.

i mean they are crazy. they are hedging. they are blaming. i mean the potential trouble that members of this administration are in, the people who already have been indicted, the president himself are at the highest level of the worst potential for this country's national security and also this president's legal future, and the tone of these tweets show a man sitting in front of a television unraveling. >> well, mika, look, it's important in that tweet he now calls it a simple private transaction. of course it's a transaction he denied knowing about in past months. we've gone from a transaction that didn't happen to a transaction that wasn't important. but in terms of the seriousness, mika, this kind of transaction and what happened with cohen and stormy daniels, was, in fact what our country's finance laws were laid down after watergate to prevent, this kind of off the books transaction to aid a campaign and people forget that

watergate was basically a campaign finance scandal in its substance. the same way al capone was in jail for tax evasion it's possible for a president to go down over a campaign finance violation. think about other allegations has taken down a huge part of the inner circle he had when he entered washington. this is a very big deal. and the list of people who have been caught up in it is huge. it ranks as a major scandal in american history. >> so, given that thought to major political scandal in american history as nick just pointed out, over the weekend the reactions to the sentencing memos that have been released have been fairly predictable. rand paul saying, you know, not much there. but beneath the surface level, do you get any sense from your

reporting that there is angst and growing trepidation among the republicans? >> i think there absolutely is angst among republicans. i think that's been there kind of all along. it's more muted and more out front at varying times. i would say now it's further out than perhaps at any other point in the course of this. i think even jerrold nadler saying this could potentially lead to impeachment is a remarkable benchmark because democrats in the leadership have been very careful to say that they don't want to go down that road until, you know, we know everything that mueller will come forward with and i think what you heard from them over the weekend is an acknowledgement that this is a step that's significantly worse than what we had seen before and that could ultimately change the tone of the overall conversation. but, i do think and, you know, we've said this over and over

and over again over the course of the past two years, our question will mainstream republicans be ready to break publicly with this president because that's what it's going to take for there to be any political sustainable impeachment proceedings. that's what democrats are waiting for. i'm not sure the served there yet that anyone is willing to take that public step yet. we'll see. >> i completely agree with you that nobody is going to be ready on the republican side yet to do that. matthew miller, let's move from the southern district of new york prosecution of michael cohen and quite possibly and indictment of the president of the united states to the other side of the investigation, the mueller investigation into russia, the president, of course, prematurely declaring that nothing has been found on him when, in fact, if you look at the axios thread this weekend and you look at david rothkoff's

thread this weekend on what we already know about russia, in normal times with a bipartisan congress, those two tweets right there would lay out grounds for removal of office of any president, democratic, republican or independent. what we know now, and we only are seeing, you know, just dimly through darkened glass right now. >> deradako redactd documents. >> it's hard to ignore russia when robert mueller releases his final report. >> what we've known for some time about the president's actions on the campaign trail, the actions of his associates and not just what we found out through mueller's investigations in sentencing memos, but his

public actions. calling on the russians to hack his opponent's emails. what we know about how he's attempted to obstruct justice. we'll find out more when mueller finishes his investigation. i think to kind of bring these two threads together, one of the things -- the president will have to deal with squarely at some point, the sdny investigation started as part of the mueller probe and referred off to the southern district of new york. they accused the president of committing a crime. i think if he wasn't the president of the united states he would be getting ready to be indicted or deep in plea negotiations. i suspect the same is true from the obstruction of justice angle. we don't know about the russia side at least with direct criminality for the fortunate. we would be looking at getting ready for an indictment there. if they have concluded that the president has committed a crime, we're there with the southern district of new york and

probably will thereabout with mueller and they can't indict him because of doj policy. i don't see how you don't end up with some kind of a report or referral from the southern district of new york. these two threads started with mueller took off to the southern district of new york. it converged again and ends up in some kind of referral to congress. they can't sit and wait for the president to leave office, hope he's not re-elected. >> peter baker, sitting there in your post, we're not in a crisis that's approaching, we're deep in the middle of a crisis both the country as well as the trump white house. what's the status of his legal team in terms of coping with this crisis? >> well, that's a great question. he has a new white house counsel just starting. he has, obviously, rudy giuliani, jay sekulow and a few

others. it's not a team that s-you know, i think built for a long term kind of battle with congress which you're about to have as the democrats take over house to. remember, when they take over the house, the committee chairman has subpoena power. subpoenas will be flying fast and furious towards this administration. what you've seen in the past with a white house that faced a hostile oppositional congress is bulking up of the legal staff to get ready for that. the white house is planning to do that but has not yet done that. they will be surprised at just how intense and furious this will be. remember the democrats have been on the outs in the last two years, very frustrated, aggravated that in their view president trump and his administration has been able to get away with so many thing they would like to investigate. there will be a pent up desire to start pulling people in for hearings and requesting documents and so forth. that's going big, big deal.

it will define the next few months and perhaps the next two years. >> steve rattner i want to talk to you about markets over the past week. it was a heck of a ride. very unstable, the markets are down quite a bit. i'm curious, those investors that had always somehow figured out and put in their minds donald trump's instability, they had already sort of weighed that into their investments. i'm wondering if we're beyond that now with the mueller investigation, with the mid-terms turning out the way they did, is there a deep sense of unease in the markets and should we expect a lot more volatility moving forward? >> i any there's a deep sense of unease in the market but i don't think it's at least related to what's going on in washington and in the sdny and all things we've been talking about. if those things were to

penetrate the market consciousness, deep near to some sort of constitutional crisis yes it would have an effect. what's driving the market now is a couple of things. perception that global growth is slowing and part of that does relate to trump's trade policies and the impact it's created and uncertainty it's created for business and for everybody around where trade is going. that certainly had an effect. rising interest rates in the u.s. have had an effect and that, again, you can attribute somewhat to trump because of the fiscal policy, the deficits we're running widow put upward pressure on interest rates. also look most importantly probably the sugar high of trump's tax policies have worn off. we got this one time bump in corporate profit, one time income tax cut. when you look at everybody's forecast for growth, the economist's forecast for growth next year it's not 4%, it's not 3%, it's 2%. that's what's likely to happen. all of that has the market thinking that values were being

pushed and time for some correction. and the volatility this past week almost directly attribute to the trump-china situation where every time they came out of a meeting you had one report and then another report and markets had no idea what was going on and markets hate that kind of uncertainty. >> thank you for being on this morning. still ahead on "morning joe" -- >> just take a look, all you have to do is go around, take a look what's happened over the years. you'll see. there are a lot of people, a lot of people, in my opinion and based on proof that try and get in illegally and actually vote illegally. we just want to let them know that there will be prosecutions at the highest level. >> republicans issued many, many warnings about voter fraud ahead of the mid-terms but we're not hearing so much from them today. >> wait. why is that? marco rubio said that the

florida race was being stolen by democrats in broward county. is he talking about the voter fraud -- i'm sure he is that's happening in north carolina, right? >> no. it surely looks like a crooked election in north carolina. it's a big issue there. >> wait the republicans aren't talking about -- >> crickets. >> -- possible stolen election. >> no. >> that's shock. >> we'll talk to the democrat in that race next on "morning joe". - [narrator] the typical vacuum head has its limitations,

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unstopand it's strengthenedting place, the by xfi pods,gateway. which plug in to extend the wifi even farther, past anything that stands in its way. ...well almost anything. leave no room behind with xfi pods. simple. easy. awesome. click or visit a retail store today. proof of illegal activity on either side to such a level that it could have changed the outcome of the election then i would wholeheartedly support a new election to ensure all voters have confidence in the results. as we move towards resolution i look forward to participating in a transparent, factual and fair

process. the republican candidate, the center of the election scandal in north carolina says he would wholeheartedly support a new election if the investigation shows proof of voter fraud. the district 9 congressional race has been royaled by allegations that republican mark rice' campaign may have benefitted from a fraudulent collection of mail in ballots. joining us now is the democratic contender in that disputed race dna mckra dan mccready. kasie hunt is with us. she has the first question. >> you withdrew your concession in this race late last week. i'm wondering what your plans look like in the event that do you have to run another special election here for this seat and also if you've gotten any indication that that's the direction that the board of elections may be heading?

>> we're gearing up right now in case we do have a special election. this is in the hands of the north carolina state board of athletics that's launched an investigation. a week or so ago they made an unprecedented move to -- they decided in a 9-0 bipartisan decision to refuse to certify the results of this election based on the fraud and tier regularities and the illegal activity that are there. so we're gearing up to be in this fight. ultimately this is in the decision of the board of elections. >> let's go to elise jordan. elise, in this race, the data is fairly indisputable. it's staggering how these numbers pile up in different areas. >> that's what i want to ask dan about. so you, with this race and can you kind of talks through your thought process as you decided to, you know, to say like i'm not going to concede this. >> you know, i was in

disneyworld a couple of weeks ago with my four little kids and my wife laura. we thought this election was over after having run a very long campaign, about a year and a half long campaign. we were surprised as anyone to see the board of elections refuse to certify these results and then day-by-day more evidence roll in, more affidavits roll in about actual fraud and criminal activity. the amazing thing is my opponent, mark harris, went out and hired a known criminal under investigation for absentee ballot fraud to manage his absentee ballot program. this was someone who was, is a shady character when bladen county. someone who the incumbent sat down and decided not to hire. this goes to the top of mark harris' campaign. other than that statement you read written by his lawyers he's

refused to answer a single question about anything that's happened in the last week. >> obviously, north carolina has been the site of a huge partisan fight over voter rules and restrictions and i wonder after watching this play out if you think that the party in isn't pushing these restrictions, you know has any responsibility figure out what went wrong here and, second, i wonder if you think that there should be a new law or a new kind of proof to prevent this kind of fraud in the future in north carolina? >> well, the responsibility lies with mark harris. you know, this went to the top of his campaign. it's not acceptable to the people of north carolina who had their votes taken from them. you know, your vote is your voice. people had that taken from them and they are demanding he end his silence and he answer questions about what happened. this is not a partisan thing.

this is not about republicans and democrats. it's not even about one election. really this is about our fundamental american rights. i started my career overseas where i served in the marine corps. i could never have imagined i would come back home to north carolina and see our very right to vote under attack. you know, our very democracy under attack. this is much bigger than one election. this goes to what our country is all about, what our democracy is all about. it's so important that mark harris end his silence. >> for people around the country watching this place explain how the alleged fraud worked. >> well my opponent, mark harris, hired a criminal who is under investigation for absentee ballot fraud in bladen county to run his absentee ballot program. his name is mccray dallas. he hired people to go to voter stores to tamper with their

ballots. it appears in many cases people's ballots were thrown in the trash can. some people had ballots come to their doors that they didn't request. there's an affidavit saying that this operation may have extended over multiple counties that mccray dallas may have had 80 people working for him. there's also an affidavit suggesting that even the bladen county board of athletics may have leaked early vote information to people who weren't supposed to see it. that's information that's strategic to a campaign that determines or is an important factor in how a candidate spend resources, all that sort of thing. it really doesn't look good and it goes to the very top of mark harris' campaign. >> dan mccready, thank you very much for being on the show. we'll be following this story closely. thank you. >> good to be on. >> still ahead, jared kushner is reportedly doing double did you

tir tir -- duty, advising his father-in-law and the saudi crown prince after the khashoggi murder. >> not just after the khashoggi murder but about the khashoggi murder and how to get past the khashoggi murder. >> we'll explain it all or at least try ahead on "morning joe". ♪ the greatest wish of all... is one that brings us together. the lincoln wish list event is here. sign and drive off in a new lincoln with $0 down, $0 due at signing, and a complimentary first month's payment. only at your lincoln dealer.

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>> robert lighthizer. now to this explosive report from the "new york times," detailing the close and personal relationship that has blossomed between the president's son-in-law and senior adviser jared kushner and saudi arabian crown prince mohammad bin salman who the cia has assessed was responsible for the murder of jamal khashoggi. that relationship reportedly began soon after the 2016 election, and became more significant in the early days of the trump administration. during that time kushner and mbs routinely held private informal conversations via either text messages or phone calls which led to the chief of staff

reimposing long standing procedures requiring that national security council staff members participate in all calls with foreign leaders. however, those informal chats reportedly continued to take place according to three former white house officials and two others briefed by the saudi royal court and by now the two were on a first name basis calling each other jared and mohammad. those exchanges continued even after khashoggi's killing on october 2nd, with kushner becoming mbs' most important defender inside the white house in the face of worldwide condemnation and the cia's assessment, reportedly giving advice to the crown prince on how to weather the storm, urging him to resolve regional conflicts and avoid further embarrassment. jared kushner's lack of political and diplomatic experience, the exchanges could

have made him susceptible to be manipulated by the saudi, three former senior american officials told the "new york times". one former white house official ceded out there was a risk that the saudis were playing him. a white house spokesman told the "times" in part quote that jared has always meticulously followed proelts a protocols and guidelines. >> i'm not sure that's the case. you had jared kushner going over and spending a weekend with mbs the week before he conducted his riyadh perch. you almost get the sense that mbs has played jared kushner so he can get away with the purge and get away with the murder of khashoggi. how extraordinary that a "washington post" columnist is

murdered. the cia determines that it's mbs who is responsible for the murder. and you have an adviser to the president of the united states and a relative of the president of the united states giving him advice right after the murder -- >> on how to weather the storm. >> on how to get away with it. >> it's right that we focus on the murder of khashoggi but it's also important to note that kushner has helped the saudis bypass our foreign policy establishment and reshape our entire policy in the gulf. this extraordinary story should really change our understanding of how we view the jared kushner and mbs relationship. it's often talked about these are two crown princes but, in fact, it looks like the saudis had sized him up as a mark and looked at him and saw a guy with no experience in the region, was transactional, had a shallow understanding of the history of the saudis and they wooed him with the precise purpose and knowledge that woe be wooable and he could be a fulcrum for

them in the white house and he has been. this is what people were afraid of when he was given a broad and vague portfolio policy in the white house. when you put somebody in a job like that who doesn't have the experience, depth or knowledge. >> i always say when it comes to presidents past, look at their past if you want to figure out what type of president they will be. trump has also chased money. look at the money, follow the money, not political, but the personal money, the russians have funded him through the years. the saudis have funded him through the years. now you have jared kushner, the same thing. his family going around the region trying to keep 666 afloat, their financial empire afloat and whether it's his sister selling access to china or his family running around the

middle east trying to raise money for project, here we have the same thing, a like father-in-law, like son-in-law. >> i find him the most reprehensible. follow the money. very interesting. you mention 666 and for months and months it was talked about how under water that was, how that was bringing down the kushner empire. then all of a sudden read he was bought out of it. where are the saudis in all of this. when the trumps and kushners show up at the white house the tendency of every president is how can we kind of help the world. what are we doing here for everybody else. this family looks inward. everything that jared kushner is doing, i believe, since he showed up there is setting him and his family up for their future enterprises. when you go out to raise money, a hedge fund, that's the first place you go. there's only so many places you go to raise money. so i firmly believe and i would love a real deep dive into 666

that everything that jared kushner was doing was not for peace in the middle east but to set up the kushner family to be kept in the riches. let's think again that this man was by every part of communication mbs killed, masterminded and killed a u.s. journalist and he's advising him how to get out of that. does treason come in to that at all? >> joe, after what donny was pointing out, i was told by three separate intelligence officials in this country that the story of young jared kushner is a tale of arrogance and naivete that will be quite damaging. >> no question that this is beyond bad and i have horrible concerns about jared and ivanka and their presence in that white

house. but to donny's question, why wouldn't that be treason? i don't know. we'll continue to follow it. up next the president's tariffs are already taking a toll on consumers and the markets. now they are hindering job creation. and what about those manufacturing jobs that he promised? steve rattner has his charts next. here we go.

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numbers and see how he's done against two big promises. one to restore manufacturing and two address our growing trade deficit. if you start with manufacturing, what you can see since trump arrived in office manufacturing jobs have grown but manufacturing share as a percentage of total jobs has remained essentially flat. so the notion that manufacturing is going to come back as some major factor, larger factor in our economy is wrong. our share of manufacturing jobs remains below where it was in the obama years and obviously remains way below where it was back, going back over the last ten xx years. there's no enormous sign of improvement there. if you turn to his tariffs and his desire to restore iron and steel to their place in america you can see sort of a similar picture that jobs in the aluminum and steel production industry has essentially been flat. little hard to see on this small line. it just flattened out since

trump put his tariffs in place on aluminum and steel and again you can see there are fewer jobs in aluminum and steel than there were during the obama years, if you'll accept that expression and there are certain way less than there were going back to the early 2000s. no real sign of any significant improvement in the aluminum and steel. last period of the puzzle of trump's major goals, of course, was to address the trade deficit and we had new numbers late last week that basically said that trade deficit has hit a ten year high and this is $55 billion for a single month so you can do the math and you get close to 60 billion all told. roughly have is china. in anticipation of the tariffs china has cut their purchases of our soybeans which is one of our major exports to china by half. and we have actually stepped up our imports from china in anticipation of those tariffs. so the trade deficit rather than

getting better is, in fact, deteriorating over the two years of the trump presidency. >> all right. so this is not a very good review of the president's accomplishments in office as it pertains to the economy. is steve missing something? are there some positive developments prompted by the trump administration that is going to create jobs and make america great again, because i'm not seeing it. >> look at the economy. best we've seen in decades and certainly our unemployment rate is the best it's been in 50 years. there are some really good things that are happening in our economy. the tax cuts that we passed last year are still having lasting effect. when people do their taxes this week, not only have they seen it in their paychecks from month to month, but they're going to see it when they file their taxes. >> the tax cuts, who are the tax cuts helping? >> the middle class. if you talk to people in my

district, a very blue collar district, it's helped a lot of people. >> what's the difference? how much money are they going to save, make, get back with president trump's tax cuts? which as we know help the rich and his friend that he told in mar-a-lago after he passed them he went down and said i made you all a lot of money. is the president wrong about that? >> i think it certainly helped the business community. no. that's the misconception of this whole thing. if you talk to people in california, the biggest challenge was those top 1% that actually had deductions taken away. the middle class, about $2100 per family of four. >> $2100 per family of four? >> yes. >> i'm not sure that's the right number. >> in a district like mine, it is. >> the average across the country is more like $800. >> i'm just sayings that little

awkward because it just feels a little bit like putting lipstick on a pig, honestly. these tax cuts help the rich. >> well, it certainly has helped to spur our business. we've seen our stock market 401(k)'s retirement accounts all moving in the right direction. we can do a better job on trade. a community like mine, california in particular, the trade challenges we've got to continue to address which is why i want to see the usmca taken up improving upon nafta that will help us to have more trade here in north america. we've got to fix things with china. that affects my district in a big way. >> we've seen that this president has driven up the deficit extraordinarily and he's reportedly said it doesn't matter because he won't be here when the deficits really kick in. the question i have for you as a

blue dog is, how do you make the case to other democrats that they should pay the price for the president's mess on fiscal policy and make sacrifices to repair the damage the last president did or the current president did? >> the debt is an incredibly important issue. it's incredibly irresponsible of the president to say that it doesn't matter because he won't be here when it comes time to pay the bills. unfortunately all our constituents will be on the hook for the debt racked up. what i find with the president's economic plan is it's incoherent. not only have we blown a hole in the debt, we're not actually receiving the goals that he set out to do. this huge tax cut that was supposed to bring companies home, they are finding that they're not going to come home to operate behind tariff walls. so you're seeing companies manufacturing shutter, not actually grow here in the united states. while in addition, the tariffs are essentially a tax on

consumption. people in my district, whether it's small businesses or consumers, are finding these economic policies are having a significantly negative impact on their lives as they face what is essentially a regressive tax on consumer products. >> congressman denham, it's kasie hunt. i want to pick back up on what you were just talking about with the tax cut. if the tax cut is good for your district and isn't why you lost your election, why did you lose? >> the earlier segment you talked about ballot harvesting. ballot harvesting is legal now in california. when you can find 250,000 ballots after election day, you can move a lot of seats. >> are you implying that the results of your election are invalid? >> no. it's legal in california. if california is going to win republican seats back, republicans had better figure out how to ballot harvest as they have in other states.

>> your loss had nothing to do with president trump in your view? it had to do with this, quote, unquote, ballot harvesting? >> if you look at my numbers, the president was up by eight points. >> is the first item going to be impeachment? >> the first item is actually going to be about cleaning up congress and passing reforms to campaign finance to restore the american people's faith in this institution. >> congressman jeff denham thank you very much. and congresswoman stephanie mur v murphy thank you for being on this morning. still ahead, federal prosecutors implicate the

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the president a moron? >> that's a really old question. >> do you understand that by not answering the question, some people thought you were confirming the story. >> i think i've answered the question. >> you think you answered the question? >> i've answered the question. >> did you call the president a moron? >> i'm not going to dignify the question. >> has secretary of state back in february, rex tillerson was still dancing around what he really thought about donald trump. it is now ten months later and he is no longer holding back. we're going to show you what he had to say finally. plus, the president mocked barack obama for cycling through three chiefs of staff. president trump is about to get his third in just two years. that is if he can find someone who wants the job who would take the job. why the apparent front-runner nick ayers turned it down.

also, we knew that jared kushner's job is to advice. we just don't it was to advise a saudi crown prince on pr strategy after the murder of a journalist. these are all real questions this morning, believe it or not. welcome to "morning joe." with us we have mike barnicle along with donnie deutsche and former aide to the george h.w. bush white house and state department elise jordan. carol lee and joyce vance is with us as well. >> joyce vance, since we're talking about jared kushner, i'm reminded of what you said this weekend over a little meeting that jared had. we were all freaking out. everybody was rightly asking why bill clinton got on an airplane and sat there with loretta lynch, who was in charge of the justice department, who was investigating not bill clinton but investigating his wife.

this past weekend we have jared kushner actually inviting on the acting attorney general and actually kushner himself is under investigation. i certainly hope as much attention is paid to this as was paid attention during loretta lynch getting on an airplane and talking to bill clinton. because this is actually even worse, because you've got the attacking -- well, the acting attorney general who has attacked the probe and actually a man who is being probed right now by mueller. >> yeah. it's actually entirely different situations. lynch's i think just random meeting with president clinton on the tarmac came at this end of this investigation, whereas kushner who's clearly in the lens right now with no decisions made invited the acting attorney general to join him on marine one.

there should be outrage, uproar and a call for the acting attorney general to recuse from further participation in the investigation. >> yeah. >> no doubt. that's what happened with loretta lynch. that's what should happen today with the acting attorney general. >> on so many levels, they just don't care. >> that's why the press has to care. again, the attention that everybody including us put on the loretta lynch/bill clinton meeting needs to be focused on this meeting. why did jared kushner take the person who is running the justice department on marine one when he's a target in that investigation? >> facts and the questions is what we stick to. we've got the most recent court filings by the special counsel's office and they are raising new questions about the trump campaign and russia. as the president himself denies any wrongdoing. here are some of the key take-aways that we've learned so far. in those documents filed on

friday, prosecutors say trump directed illegal hush money to two women with whom he had alleged sexual relationships before running for president. the filings allege that trump was involved in discussions about a trump property in moscow during the presidential campaign. prosecutors said an unnamed russian offered michael cohen political synergy between russia and the trump campaign back in november of 2015. the documents claim cohen, president trump's former lawyer, was in contact with people connected to the white house and circulated his response to congressional inquiries. prosecutors also allege that former trump campaign chair paul manafort has been in communication with a senior administration official through february of 2018 along with other contacts with administration officials and had lied about it.

amid these new filings and accusations from prosecutors, president trump continues to deny any wrongdoing and insists there was no collusion with russia. >> sir, did you direct michael cohen to commit any violations of law. >> no, no, no. on the mueller situation, we're very happy with what we are reading, because there was no collusion whatsoever. there never has been. the last thing i want is help from russia on a campaign. but as far as the report that we see according to everybody i've spoken to -- i have not read it -- there's absolutely no collusion, which is very important. >> the last thing he wanted was contact with the russians, help from the russians. the "washington post" this weekend counting at least 14 encounters between russians and his campaign. this does not happen in american

campaigns unless it is a campaign run by donald trump, his children and his associates. i want to go back to actually the hush money for a second. andrew mccarthy wrote a column for fox news suggesting that donald trump was going to be indicted. he would likely be indicted by the southern district of new york. and with apologies to rand paul, he made a couple of basic statements. number one, it is a felony to direct others to make illegal campaign contributions. yes. that's basic. i'm not sure what banana republic ranld parepub l republic rand paul wants to live in where you ignore felonies if politic serves you. we know that's a felony. number two, also we look at the intent. i know that you prosecutors have

always looked at the actions of a defendant or a possible defendant to determine criminal intent. well, donald trump painstakingly tried to cover up those illegal payments, those misdirected payments. finally, they were relevant. these were not clerical errors. it was relevant. in fact, you could make the argument that donald trump would never have been president if the scandalous stories about stormy daniels and his playboy bunny trysts had gone public the last weeks of the campaign. i'm not exactly sure how to describe that. but it does look like he's going to be indicted at least by the southern district of new york. >> you know, it's really hard work being a prosecutor for the exact reason that you identify here. sometimes crimes look so obvious and so apparent to the public. prosecutors have to go back and

do the painstaking work of ensuring they can prove with evidence that will be admissible in a courtroom all the elements of that crime beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury. so for the campaign finance violations, the sticking point is the level of knowledge. it's a heightened level of knowledge here. there will have to be proof that the president specifically knew he was violating campaign finance law. it looks like that evidence is available. and david pecker, who is the head of ami during much of this time, is cooperating with the government and likely can shed light on what the president knew and why they acted the way they did. this is a problem that's just increasing for the president, because it's not just campaign finance. there could be bank fraud or other sorts of violations that go along with this. as you point out, the obstruction, the ongoing coverup will ensnare him at the end as well. >> donnie, just knowing donald

and knowing branding, i feel like donald is sort of lost in this parallel universe when it used do work that he said 100 times could become partially maybe what people thought. now he's in washington with a special counsel breathing down his throat and he thinks he can say no collusion and that means no collusion. it might be a different reality, but do you think donald is still trying to brand this? >> obviously he is. it's kind of laughable and pathetic at this point. >> the other option is that he's lost his mind or he's completely, completely -- what's the word for stupid that's more flig polite? >> i think it's a little bit of both. we've talked ad nauseam that this is a man who's lived his entire life without any checks and balances and he's living in a town now that is built on checks and balances. i think we're going to see up

close and personal a guy, a man, a president completely unravel. we have a guy who at best is not playing with a full deck and now is under a pressure he's never seen in his entire life. and it's just the beginning. this is not going to end two years from now. throughout the rest of his life, every u.s. attorney, the southern district, u.s. attorneys in virginia are going to be picking at this man and his empire. this is a man who came in and said, i'm bigger than the house, i'm bigger than the intelligence community, i'm bigger than the judicial community, i'm bigger than free press. he is going to pay for that the rest of his life. this is just the beginning. trump tower is just the beginning. forget the stormy daniels stuff and the karen mcdougal stuff. it's obviously a felony. where it's going to crash and burn is on the entire trump organization which is built as a criminal enterprise which is built with russian money laundering. this is just the tip of the

iceberg. john kelly is tout as chief of staff and so is the leader contender to replace him. he doesn't want it. carol lee takes us through all the options. you're watching "morning joe." and just like you, the further into winter we go, the heavier i get. and while your pants struggle to support the heavier you, your roof struggles to support the heavier me. crash! and your cut-rate insurance might not pay for this. so get allstate, you could save money and be better protected from mayhem like me. mayhem is everywhere. so get an allstate agent. are you in good hands? you're in the business of helping people. we're in the business of helping you. business loans for eligible card members

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welcome back to "morning joe." we mentioned the turnover inside the west wing as president trump is on the hunt for yet another chief of staff. >> that's three. >> it's kind of -- it remind me of that scene in "the hunt for red october" where the white house chief of staff in that movie goes, wait, mr. ambassador, let me get this straight, you lost another submarine? well, the president's lost another chief of staff and he can't find a new one. but carol lee is here to tell us

about that. >> it's just increasingly difficult for this president to try to find people who want to work with him. as you said, who would want the chief of staff job? they've seen reince priebus get chewed up and spit out. they've seen john kelly get chewed up and spit out. now you're heading to a point in the presidency where the house democrats are going to rain down a bunch of investigations on this white house that's not prepared for that and you have a president who's increasingly in a really bad mood, frankly. so all of our reporting showed that the white house was ready to name nick ayers as the next chief of staff. that kind of unravelled in recent days where you saw there was some white house staff who didn't want him to be chief of staff. they felt he was too young. there was nick ayers wanting to just do it in the interim

capacity and the president said no, he wanted somebody long-term. now there's no plan b, as is often the case in this white house. so they're back to the drawing board. there's a number of names, such of which are familiar and some of which are new like matt whittaker for instance who may be in the running for the job. but it's going to be really hard to fill this position after seeing what happened to the president's first two chiefs of staff. >> trump always talked about my generals. he'd call them my generals. it was so important for him to hire generals. you have a piece on nbcnews.com about how the generals are doing. how are they doing? >> my colleagues and i wrote a story about how when trump came in, he had this fascination with generals. he said, you know, they're out of central casting, these are the guys he would put in the movie if he was going to make one. he picked a number of generals for really top positions. what we've seen is you have these generals who are stellar military careers who then get

diminished working for president trump. once reality sets in and the president realizes these generals aren't going to do everything he wants them to do and say yes to everything that he wants, you know, he sort of sours on them. we've seen whether it's michael flynn or general mcmaster and john kelly and even james mattis is still defense secretary, but we've seen him and the president be at odds. most recently the president reject eed mattis's advice and o to name as head of the joint chiefs and caught him off guard with the announcement over the weekend. the president liked the idea of these generals, these tough guys he thought would work for him, and then he didn't so much like the reality. >> of course, carol, you bring up the president of the president ignoring james mattis's suggestions and then catching him off guard.

that's why who the next chief of staff is isn't going to matter because he doesn't follow anybody's advice. that's really been, joyce vance, the biggest problem with the trump administration. they are about to go to legal war with robert mueller. so how does any chief of staff, how does any white house lawyer stop donald trump from being indicted and possibly going down, because they have a client who just, first of all, refuses to hire competent attorneys and secondly, refuses to tell the attorneys he has the truth. >> at this point in an investigation that will come from both the legal front and from capitol hill, you would expect trump and his legal team to be very disciplined, very focused, and here they are, as you say, not even with a complete war room ready to deal

with these issues, not with an identified chief of staff who can interface with white house counsel and ensure smooth management of everything. the irony here, joe, might be that what ultimately insulates the president from indictment is not his legal team, not his willingness to be forthcoming and make a full confession, but rather this long standing doj policy that says you should not indict a sitting president for a lot of credential reasons that have to do with good government. that doesn't prevent prosecutors in the southern district of new york from preparing an indictment that they clearly have in the works that would come into place as soon as he were to leave office which will inevitably happen at some point in time, but this white house is not organized, is not staffed at a level that will permit it to effectively deal with the challenges that will come at it now from multiple places. coming up, president trump

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♪ with us now, let's bring in ceo of ax i don'ios. i read your newsletter yesterday morning as i always do, of course. there are three things that my 10-year-old son and i do every sunday morning. we read your axios list and of course we go to church, and then we throw the ball around talking about the axios list. but yesterday's was amazing and i actually did a thread where i actually quoted several of your take-aways. it was so effective that actually wikileaks came back and attacked me for making these what they claimed false claims, when in fact, it looks like everything you guys nailed down

about what we know so far is pretty dammi indamning for the president. >> we sit here and talk in anticipation of what mueller will have in his report. what i was trying to point out is just what you know is extraordinarily damning. we now know that more than a half dozen people around trump had contacts with the russians. it wasn't just a half dozen people. you're talking about his eldest son, his campaign manager, his lawyer and closest business confidant. flynn, who was easily his top advisor throughout that campaign. so all of these people had these meetings enthusiastically, most of them then lied about it. now we know there was negotiations going on between cohen and the russians for a property in moscow that even after that these contacts continued, that the u.s. intelligence apparatus came to a unanimous conclusion. everyone except for trump said

undoubtedly the russians were trying to influence the u.s. election. you still had a lot of contacts between russia and that administration including jared kushner at least having conversations about creating a secret back channel during the transition with the russians. then it continued even into the white house. had we not had the drip, drip, drip over the last 20two years d you read all of that in a story, you'd say that is the most consequential story in presidential history. who is russia? it's an enemy of the united states. mitt romney, the number one geopolitical threat to the united states of america is russia. and every single republican enthusiastically agreed with that. that's what's so striking about what we already know from mueller. he knows a lot more than what we laid out there. you read the parts that aren't redacted and you know he has

lots more, lots more people who are cooperating, lots more information about those contacts. what we don't know is how involved was trump. the one thing i will say, i don't know how involved he was, what he knew. i will say that in the campaign through this day he knows thaef everything that's going on. he's always hyper involved, especially with all those individuals. the idea that all of these people are operating on their own in a totally clean way that's the bar he's going to have to clear. i think that's why you see a lot of republicans over this weekend, even the ones who love him most, saying oh boy. coming up on "morning joe" -- >> if trump wasn't the president and someone went to court in the southern district of new york, sponsored information that they directed a crime. what would happen to that person? >> that person would be in serious jeopardy of being charged. >> that is james comey's take on the special counsel's investigation.

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i wouldn't be celebrating it if i was at the white house. if you read these two documents that we got, they talked about active grand juries. i think they said manafort, for example, was in the grand jury as late as november. the southern district also talked about pending investigations that are going on that cohen's information was relevant to. so i think we're going to see more charges. >> that was national review contributing editor andrew mccarthy who is a former u.s. assistant attorney in the southern district of new york speaking on fox news over the weekend. he also wrote a column entitled "the president is in pearil of being charged."

joining us now a u.s. attorney and former aide to robert mueller chuck rosenberg. washington bureau chief for the boston herald kimberly atkins. and professor of history at tulane university walter isaacson. mike barnicle, donnie deutsche, elise jordan and nick all back with us as well. >> chuck, we want to follow up with the question of the morning posed by joyce vance in the 6:00 hour. the question is this. how does the supreme court not allow an indictment to move forward against a president of the united states if there is evidence that that president of the united states may have actually been elected to that position based on illegal activity that is at the center of the possible indictment? >> the short answer, joe, is we don't know what the supreme court could do. that question whether or not a sitting president can be charged or indicted or tried or convicted or incarcerated has never been litigated.

all the things we think we know are based on the department of justice policy, not on law. there's a big difference there. so some folks out there would like this question to be teed up and resolved by the supreme court once and for all. >> again, what would make it difficult, i believe, for the supreme court to follow those justice department guidelines and to say, well, a president can't be indicted if he's president of the united states or if she's president of the united states is here the indictments, the possible indictments from the southern district of new york would be related to matters that the president may have undertaken, illegal actions he may have undertaken to be elected president of the united states. so would the supreme court really say and send a signal to all candidates that the ends will always justify the means? do whatever you want to do to be

elected president of the united states and we don't be able to touch you while you're in office. >> that's a great question, joe. the two closest things we can draw on for some guidance here is the u.s. v nixon case in which the supreme court said that a president must give up his documents to a grand jury despite asserting executive privilege. in clinton v jones in which a sitting president, president clinton had to make himself available for a deposition in a civil case. so there is some guidance out there, but your question goes right to the heart of our electoral system and our democratic process. can a president put himself or herself in office through fraud and would the supreme court permit that to be a reason not to allow that president to be charged? again, we have to litigate it to find out what the answer to that question is. all we have right now is policy and that is, frankly, you know, not as compelling to me as a supreme court decision would be. >> all weekend we have been

reading takes on where the president finds himself, where this country finds itself regarding contacts between russia, the president's campaign, the president's family and now this southern district of new york indictment of his top lawyer. since you were around during watergate, since you saw it unfold, i'm curious your opinion. are we in a position now that we're looking at a presidential scandal that could actually be more significant than what america went through from 1972 through 1974? >> oh yeah. i mean, what's happened now is far broader and far more significant and goes to far more things, from election law violations to paying hush money to colluding. and yes, it has been clone collusion between this campaign and russia and then paying russia off in foreign policy. that horrible performance in

helsinki where the president kowtowed to the russian leader putin. likewise, you're looking at the emollients clause of the constitution where he's profiting his own companies. this is why we needed his tax returns before he was elected like every other candidate did so we could have known about these things. when you get to the question of whether he can be indicted for some of these things, i think it's pretty clear the answer is, yes, you can be indicted. it's just a request of whether the supreme court will eventually throw it out. if there's an indictment, we're going to go through a whole legal process where these things will get exposed. >> all of these questions looming over the white house, coming out day by day while the president is now searching for a new chief of staff. who would take that job in their right mind? >> i think it's tough. i think this is one of those positions that we have seen

people go into and the president has undermined them publicly and privately along the way. it's not just the chief of staff positions. we've seen him do that with cabinet members too. so this was seen as one of the top jobs that you could possibly get in chicago, in the country. and yet we have somebody who seemed perfectly qualified. nick ayers, the vice presidential chief of staff, somebody with deep political experience, which is something that the president will need heading into both a reelection season and with this mueller investigation increasingly ratcheting up. the president could use someone who could help him navigate that political tumultuous time for the next couple of years, but the person walked away. it's difficult not to see the perils that would be in that position. he would be blamed for whatever went wrong and probably not receive a lot of praise.

>> chuck, on the aforementioned issue of indicting the president, is there anything in the united states code that says you cannot indict a sitting president? >> great question, mike. there's nothing in the code, nothing in statute that says you can't indict a sitting president. the only thing we have are two office of legal counsel opinions. they're part of the department of justice that says for prudential reasons you wouldn't want to burden a chief executive, a president with having to fend off a criminal trial or be sentenced or incarcerated because a president couldn't execute the duties of the office conceivably behind bars. but nothing in statute, mike. >> chuck, in the seven-page mueller document, the sentencing guidelines as far as michael cohen, what did you see in the read between the lines in mueller and the way he wrote that? >> there's a lot of lines to read between. mueller specifically said that

cohen, aside from the first time they sat down with him, was helpful, was honest, was forthright and he was giving them information at the core -- that's their word, core -- of their investigation. it tells me there's a lot of stuff out there that we don't know and there's more stuff coming. prosecutors pick their words very carefully. for mueller to say that he was helpful and forthright on stuff at the core of his investigation, to me is quite telling. >> i was struck in the cohen filing last week with what seemed to be the first time that mueller has put in front of us a potential rationale from mueller's point of view for collusion. and that was the trump tower deal in moscow and the payoff in revenue that the trump organization and the president and his family could expect to make. hundreds of millions of dollars if the deal went through, a deal on a scale that dwarves any past

deal by a president who often describes himself as a billionaire but in fact isn't. i wonder what struck you in that filing in terms of the russian entanglement and the dimensions of the probe as we now understand it. >> first of all, what struck me is that over and over again the president has lied about that and over and over again the people around him have lied about that. whether there was any financial dealings with russia, whether there were any meetings, whether there was any collusion. secondly, it stiea guy whose ca is triying to get russia to hel. russia does help. he's been funded by russia. what we don't know is all of the other financial help that russia may have gave the trump organization. certainly we have this big hotel that they lied about that was being built in moscow or that trump wanted to have built in moscow.

if it were just something totally off on the side, you'd be outraged but you could sort of think, all right, maybe this will pass. but it infected, it polluted american foreign policy. it is everything that the constitution has set up to guard us against. this is what's at the core of the mueller investigation now. let's give mueller credit. i mean, he gets attacked a little bit, especially on other networks. this is a truly professional guy who's done astounding work with no leaks and has been able to week after week bring new information in a very solid way. >> chuck, back to these most recent filings, reading, one, the southern district, they talk about michael cohen as just not cooperative enough. and then robert mueller says for the scope of his investigation cohen has been cooperative. what does this mean about how

this could evolve in the southern district? >> that was a strange thing. the requirement is that you're all in or you're all out. with general flynn, we saw that he was all in and he got credit for that. with paul manafort we saw that he was all out and got nothing. it seemed to me that cohen was trying to triangulate this, that he was telling prosecutors squlajust what he thought they knew and that doesn't cut it. the mueller team said that the first time cohen came in to talk with him, he was not forthright, but he apparently got better. this is an important signal to witnesses, particularly if you're dealing in the southern district of new york. take the flynn route, not the manafort route. cohen isn't going to work either. you have to be all in. substantial assistance means you give them everything you have about everything they want and you don't play games.

still ahead on "morning joe" -- >> i'm as mad as hell and i'm not going to take this anymore! thanch . >> that may have been 42 years ago, but perhaps howard beall was right. we are as a nation still angry. but why we feel this way and how we all got so mad at one another, well, we will attempt to explain next on "morning joe." my name is elaine barber, and i'm a

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during anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. we must resist that temptation. some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference. that's just not true. >> as far as i'm concerned, anger is okay. anger and energy is what this country needs. >> anger has always been prevalent in american politics dating back to the days of this country's founding. our next guest even points out that, quote, our political system was cleverly designed to maximize the beneficial effects of anger. but these days it seems that one emotion has become so dominant in our politics and personal lives. and what can be done about it at this point.

charles dewig attempted to answer these questions in his new cover story for "the atlantic" entitled "why are we so angry."answer? >> i tried. what's interesting is anger is actually one of the most positive emotions in sort of the human vocabulary. if you look at the brains of people who are angry, they look very similar to the brains of people who are happy. one of the things we know is when you're angry, people tend to pay attention, right? it's one of the densest forms of communication. anger on its own isn't a terrible thing. moral outrage has propelled this nation to social justice since our founding. when anger becomes something else, when it becomes this desire for revenge, then it becomes corrosive. and can destroy everything. >> it's so easy to blame social media. i blame social media for a great

deal of the curiooarsenning of american politics. heck, let's go back to the 1960s and the street scenes in chicago during the democratic national convention. over the past 50, 55 years, this has been a country that has been addicted to anger when it comes to politics. >> that's right. remember, trump is not the source of the anger. he is a symptom, not the cause of the disease. the reason that's important is because if you start asking what do we know about the science of anger, where does anger come from, we learn there's a difference between anger and this desire for revenge, for vengeance, which we're experiencing right now. the difference is when people feel like their anger doesn't produce any results, that's when we stop being focused on shouting so people will listen to us and start becoming focused on beating the other guy. we don't stop until we've exacted some type of punishment.

until someone else has said look, you're right, i'm sorry, you're wrong, my bad. >> this white house, president, that's not going to happen. >> right. walter. >> i really loved your book "the power of habit." one of the things that ties those together with is when you're writing about social media and how social media by its very rhythms, by the very way it amplifies it, by the rewards that it gives. in other words, you get retweeted. it incensed the increase of anger and sort of rewards anger. is that part of the problem we're facing today? >> absolutely. it's a great question because you're exactly right, think about what would happen when you or i yell at our wives, those unfortunate circumstances when we make that bad mistake, what we're doing is trying to get a

reaction, say this is important enough to me i want you to listen. very off whten what happens is compromise. anger usually radicates it. >> it's not worth it with 11-year-olds. >> now when you post something angry online, it's not about trying to convince someone else, it's about someone, it's about letting this vitriol out and then someone else at the other end of that line says, you're an idiot, let me tell you why you're wrong. it's not about resolving a problem. it's about inflaming them. social media is terrible for this. we all know if you want an indifferent crowd to pay attention, all you have to do is shout. if you want to go viral, say something outrageous and attack someone else. you get rewarded. >> let's pull on that a lot bill

more. the level of anger. do you find it at all interesting that in most cases of mass shootings, no matter where they occur, one of the first things investigators do is go track the social media accounts of the people perpetrating these things. >> the people who make that turn, that terrible turn to violence, they aren't just angry. they're completely disspirited about the possibility of change that their anger will make a difference, right. there was a study when people get fired from factories. they found when you get fired and it feels fair, they adhere to union rules, they follow seniority, people might be upset but they don't sabotage the plant. when people are fired in a way they perceive as being unfair, that's when workers start sabotaging things, start steal

things. not just the people who are fired, the people who stay behind. we need to have a system we can believe in to feel like our anger has some productive impact. if that's not there, then we're not just angry, we are vengeful. >> we're surrounded by these structures in our lives. now they're designed to wake up and reflect our anger. social media attack ads, politics. i wonder, are there any being built on the horizon? social institutions and structures? >> we haven't seen a lot of those. there's an opportunity. it's not -- it's important to realize it's not just the politicianings. it's corporate america. there's a little bit about a researcher embedded with a debt collection agency. this debt collection agency would train its debt collectors to use anger, to get people all

riled up by yelling at them. as soon as they reach a pitch to start crumbling down because you file so good someone isn't yelling you agree to pay. the question becomes how do we reward people for not amping up our anger. it was democracy for a long time. we as voters and citizens, we have to get behind that. say look, let's have a step back and have a rational conversation. >> just look for someone who has a low number of followers or frankly at this point look for anyone who isn't in this white house. >> surprise winning author charles duhick. his cover story, the new issue of "the atlantic." we appreciate it. before we go, "time" magazine just released its short list.

for their next person of the year. the list is donald trump, separated families, vladimir putin. christine blasey ford. jamal khashoggi. the president of south korea, moon jae-in. and meghan markle. we'll find out tomorrow morning right here on "morning joe." >> if we're still talking about who changes the world for better or for worse, impacts the world more, it's donald trump and everybody else on that list is a distance second. >> final thoughts, what's the next week look like? >> it's going to be tumultuous one for the white house now that these very serious filings have come down at the end of last week. i think we're going to see the president increasingly attack

robert mueller and that investigation. he'll continue to act as his own chief of staff and communications director. and we'll see how the search, if any, to replace outgoing john kelly, shapes up. >> elise jordan, final thoughts. >> trump is having lunch with pence today so i wonder how much of an earf fuful the vice presi is going to get about his chief of staff ayers turning down the job with trump. >> yes, donny, final thoughts. >> the corporate world, when somebody loses their job, the only explanation they say is i want to spend more time with my kids. i've never heard an ambitious 36-year-old turn it down because he wants to spend time with his kids nap will show you how bad that job is. >> i keep wondering what's going on out there in the country, what people are thinking about the fact, the fact that so many people in and around donald

trump have consorted over a period of many months with enemies of the state from russia who sought to really destroy, disturb, the united states of america. >> walter isaac son what are you thinking about as we start the week? >> i was editor of time magazine, had to make the call they're making this week. laid to push back on you but i would pick robert mueller partly because he's been an enormous influence but also he's been really straight in everything that mike barnicle and others just said about increasing our awareness of the collusion with russia. i think we have a great man in that position. >> nick. >> joe, i see a quiet week ahead. i think the president will offer words of calm on twitter and point to credentials with respect to the white house chief with praise from all sides.

>> from your lips to god's ears. >> i just think all those final thoughts were smauk and hot. >> listen, "time" magazine's first man of the year, adolf hitler. it was for who influenced the world as far as good or ill. >> all right that does it for us this morning. >> thank you mika, thank you, joe. my guess, "time" magazine person is probably donald trump. we're talking about the wild west wing. sad shake-ups and yet again internal chaos. a bombshell court document have paul manafort and michael cohen in the cross hairs with the