hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. donald trump manufactured fireworks in the oval office today. the topic, immigration and the wall as it always is when he's in political trouble. as it was after his fight with the gold-star family, after the "access hollywood" tape, came out, after a week-long fight with the widow of la david t. johnson, and after charlottesville. the president reverting to fear mongering over immigration to reassure his most ardent supporters that the most politically perilous times for him. his time the democrats pushed back and we'll get to that. we start with the story the president would like for us to ignore. the triple threats to his presidency. developments in the mueller cases against paul manafort and mike flynn. and in the mueller and new york cases against michael cohen. lawyers for paul manafort were back in court today. and while we were expecting to hear a response to the prosecution's assertion that manafort lied about his contacts with associates tied to russia

and the trump administration just this year, it seems the defense team needs a little more time. raising the question, did manafort also lie to his own lawyers? we're within 24 hours after the sentencing of michael cohen. he's implicated the president in a legal scheme to defraud voters by covering up sexual relationships just ahead of the election. the cohen sentencing document from the southern district of new york suggesting that the president may for all intents and purposes be an unindicted co-conspirator. also expected this week, the sentencing of mike flynn. robert mueller's investigation describes flynn as having provided substantial cooperation. axios describes this moment for donald trump as a reality tremor, writing, "last week's stunning court filings detonated what one official calls a reality tremor that has white house officials and key allies increasingly aware of president trump's rising legal and political vulnerability. on the outside, some hardcore trump allies who mostly accepted

his denials about robert mueller were rattled by the specificity of the friday night retchlatio s le revelations by the special counsel." here to take us through another day of fast-moving developments, former u.s. attorney joyce vance. former federal prosecutor paul butler. here at the table, "associated press" white house reporter jonathan lemire. our friend, steve schmidt is back, co-host of the podcast, "words matter." a former republican strategist. still a strategist. former republican. let's begin with nbc's julia ainsley outside the courthouse. what's the latest? >> reporter: yesterday, we'd been hearing manafort's legal team was preparing to file a response this week against those allegations on friday from mueller's team that manafort had been in breach of his plea agreement by lying about those contacts you laid out with the white house and with russia. it seems now they need until january 7th, that's what they asked for today.

the key thing that's changed in the meantime is they met with mueller's team this morning. off the record in a way that we won't see, it wasn't out in court, but they met and asked for more evidence that he lied. something happened that has now made this team want to wait into next month. they want to meet more with mueller's team to find out what they need and want to meet with their client. they haven't even said to the judge yet whether or not they disagree with the assertions from mueller's team. which means they may say, yes, he did, in fact, lie and he did, in fact, lie intentionally. what's key here is, why didn't his legal team have a ready response for this? we know mueller even said that he was planning to file this just after thanksgiving, and they now need untiljanuary 7th. maybe they need more from their client and maybe it's because the client wasn't as forthcoming as he could have been at the beginning. >> julia, can you stay up with us for a few minutes? i want to get our legal experts to weigh in on the significance. let me start with you, joyce vance. what does this sound like to you? >> it's a really interesting

development, nicolle. it's not what we expected. you could think manafort's lawyers would come into court with a defense of their client, but at the same time, i don't see how there's a lot of room here for them to be surprised. after all, the pleadings were filed a week ago. they knew that mueller's prosecutors had determined that manafort has lied. it sounds more like this period of time will allow some back and forth to see if manafort can salvage anything of his cooperation. the impact for him is he goes to jail for something like 15 years here if he doesn't cooperate. even though he's more than likely burned his ability to have really anything to offer the government as a witness. he can still act as a narrator and historian, both for trump's relationship with russians and for activity during the campaign. maybe his lawyers are looking for a way that he can still help himself out here. hard to read this one right now. >> paul butler, is it possible he's in any new trouble or under

renewed scrutiny for one of the developments that happened right before that cooperation agreement was ripped up? and that was information sharing, providing a firehose of information to donald trump's defense attorneys. is it possible that anyone wants to take a closer look and understand just what went back and forth between those two camps? and secondarily, i want you to tell me, in your assessment, is paul manafort, who's already a convicted felon, is he in this position because he's sort of corrupt at a level that no one can really get their arms around or is he incompetent as a client or both? >> you know, the second question first, the issue is whether paul manafort is more afraid of the russians and donald trump than he is of going to prison for the rest of his life because based on his violation of this cooperation agreement, which only advances the interests of donald trump, he is looking at a life sentence, where he could have gotten o much better deal. now you know, part of this is

about a search for truth. not just about a criminal conviction. and so mueller has very important questions that he wants manafort to answer honestly because it's about our national security. including whether he met with julian assange. including whether the trump administration offered him some kind of pardon. and so, nicolle, yes, he could be in more trouble if there's been talk between him and the president or senior officials and the president about how answered equestions in a way tht would help the president respond to mueller's questions. >> joyce, let me ask you to pick up on that. is there -- it feels like it's always a mistake, there's sometimes a temptation to pull paul manafort aside and talk about collusion and obstruction separate from manafort. well, he wasn't there that long, well, what got turned over and investigated was a well-known sort of an inside secret in d.c. that manafort did a dirty book

of business, but it seems like if the mueller probe and based on the interest in corsi and the ongoing interest in stone and the fact there are rumblings out there about jared and junior, that he's focused on witnesses that can speak to the collusion case. is manafort still useful on the collusion question? >> manafort could be very useful. he's sort of like forrest gump. he pops up in a lot of different times and places. pops up in ukraine. pops up with different people that are interesting to mueller in this investigation. and so he could explain a lot of people, a lot of relationships. he could confirm a lot of information being given by other witnesses. and even though he wasn't around by the time the republican party came together at the convention, he can still talk a little bit about the lead-in and the relationships. but i think paul hits the high note here, which is whether or not pardon -- a pardon was being dangled to paul manafort in exchange for his continued loyalty to the president.

if i'm bob mueller, that's one of the key questions i need to have an answer to because if the president was corruptly trying to intimidate a witness, or keep him from testifying in any way interrupt the process of having a fair investigation, that's really job number one as a federal prosecutor for you to run that to the ground. >> julia ainsley, is there any -- go ahead, paul. i saw you try to jump in. >> very quickly on the collusion point, remember, mueller said that manafort was a lot more helpful than the federal prosecutors in new york thought. so mueller thought manafort provided substantial assistance, and, particularly, he talks about manafort's constant communications with kimilnik, he's got these ties to rush is a. the interesting part about that part of the sentencing memo, it's all redacted. we know manafort offered mueller substantial assistance with regard to collusion. we just don't know what he said.

>> julia, this is what i wanted to ask you to jump in on. we're covering these intertwining, intersecting legal paths of mike flynn who will be sentenced who was described as we said at the top of having provided substantial cooperation. the sentencing this week also of michael cohen. flynn, who lied about -- to the fbi -- about his conversations with sergey kislyak, the russian ambassador, cohen who lied to congress about meetings with russians well after the point where donald trump had become the nominee of his party to get that trump tower moscow off the ground. is there anything happening in the manafort proceedings that you can detect that intersect with either the legal paths of either of those two men? >> reporter: so, yeah, what i kept thinking about, nicolle, is how this legal team doesn't just base their strategy on these witnesses. especially witnesses that have been known to lie. they're smarter than that. they get a lot of evidence. i think that's what spooked manafort's legal team today.

we saw andrew weissman for the mueller team, he's a man who brought down enron, knows how to work with cooperating witnesses and get them to flip. this legal team also knows how to get the evidence to back that up. it could be manafort's team thought they had an easily legal defense saying none of this was intentional. something in this meeting today showed they had extra evidence that was going to make that defense very difficult and that's something to remember as we look at these sentencing hearings and the rest of these courtroom appearances that we'll see later this week, that this isn't a prosecution that rests on shaky witnesses. they have the documents to back this up and show when someone's lying and show when someone's telling the truth and that, obviously, spells danger for the president's legal team, especially as individual 1, the president, is being named in these filings that we saw last week. >> julia's analysis brings me right back to the day that manafort was charged. and they called it a paper indictment. that the case was so solid on paper that they didn't need much else. it feels like the walls are

closing in in terms of the fact pattern that mueller has established. >> well, i think we're sitting here, nicolle, and we're talking about the proposition of paul manafort of spending the rest of his life in prison, unless, of course, he has reason to believe that he'll never serve really a day in prison because he'll be pardoned by the president of the united states. and we just don't know. what we do know is if we look at the long arc of this story from the day the special counsel was appointed, and the white house and the white house officials and the president went out there and asserted there was no collusion of any type, no one talked to any russian ever, we now see how far this story has evolved in the trajectory in which it's evolved. what we do know for sure is paul manafort is functionally a russian agent. he worked for the russian federation. vladimir putin was his pay master. he was the chairman of the president's campaign. we know this maria butina was a russian spy.

and so when we look at it all, it's very worrisome if you're sitting there at the white house and you look at the rashness of thetweets, look at the increasingly erratic behavior. it's like any animal that's cornered, it starts to lash out and strike out and i think that's the type of behavior we're seeing in the oval office. >> i'm going to thank you, julia ainsley, for getting us started in your great reporting. please jump back on if anything develops. i want to bring in from capitol hill democratic congressman eric swalwell. i got a ton of questions for you. let me first get your reaction to the day's developments. . >> well, thank you, nicolle. i think also we will soon be in a position to understand who that senior administration official was that paul manafort was in communication with to breach that plea agreement because the concern we have around here, while the pardon power does seem nearly absolute, it's not an absolute immunity for someone from being charged for obstruction of justice.

if the paul manafort team was communicating with the trump administration about a pardon, i think anyone involved in that could be on the hook for obstruction of justice. >> let me get your thoughts, too, on the intersection of these three men. we've got mike flynn who faces sentencing this week. michael cohen who in his charging -- or sentencing document implicates the president in an effort to defraud voters. campaign finance violations at best. at best. what do you make of the fact that all of this is coming to a head and in the public view this week? >> well, first, i would say, come clean and you come out okay. if you continue to lie, deny, tamper, obstruct, and prevent investigators from getting to the truth, you could spend the rest of your life in prison. now, as many have said, i don't think the word that paul manafort fears that starts with "p" and ends with "n" is prison, i think it's probably "putin" or "poison" so who knows whether that is a motivating factor for

him. i think we now have the clearest picture yet that donald trump, his campaign, his family, and his businesses, did all they could to work with the russians to also do business in it russia and 16 of them when confronted about it all lied. >> let me ask you about the case out of the southern district of new york. a trump ally said to me over the weekend that there's nothing that prevents prosecutors from the sdny from sending their findings to you. to the house judiciary committee or the house intel committee. >> yeah. >> what would you do with those findings? >> i would use it as propensity evidence. in the law, you can use prior bad acts to inform an investigation into what somebody may do in the future. i don't think those acts on their own is where we should spend our time and energy, but i think if the president was willing to act as such a shadowy operator to pay off two women, i think that probably tells us he was willing to act in such shadowy ways with the saudis, with the russians, with the chinese, and that's where it

really affects americans at home. if he's making foreign policy and domestic policy decisions based on his financial interests, that should be our priority. >> congressman, i interviewed former fbi director comey -- >> i saw that. >> -- on sunday night. and he's something. and he -- he's so forthcoming now. you know, as a former -- you have the security of saying, i don't know any more, i don't have my clearances. the one place he clammed up is when i asked him if sally yates came up to capitol hill and testified that mike flynn, it wasn't just that he had lied about his contacts with sergey kislyak to the vice president and caused the vice president to then misrepresent or lie to the public. it was that he represented a threat for blackmail. he could be blackmailed by the russians because he was telling a lie and the russians knew the truth. so i asked if the president wasn't a similar threat to this country. that he's been telling a lie about trump tower moscow. we now know that conversations went on at the highest levels of the russian government. well into the summer of 2016.

would the president also be at risk of blackmail? >> yes, and that risk, i think, will be further -- or understanding what that risk is will be further understood in a new congress. i believe bob mueller is probably sticking narrowly to his mandate and that he's not looking at a potential russian money laundering through the trump organization. we don't have to stay within that mandate. we actually will be able to, and ranking member schiff has talked about this, investigate deutsche bank, look at the president's tax returns, his financial records, to see if. his interests over decades to do business with the russians and the russians' efforts to do business with him has materialized to a president being compromised. >> congressman eric swalwell, it's never boring. your job is about to get even more unboring. thank you for spending time with us. >> thanks. >> we're grateful. joyce, let me get your reaction to what the congressman just said. >> i think it's a great division of labor because all along, this has been about bob mueller tracking down criminal charges.

congress engaging in oversight and trying to fix whatever it was that won't wrong in the last elections. protect us going forward and engage in oversight of the president. so it sounds good from that point of view, but nicolle, i'm still not certain that mueller isn't forced at some point to circle back to the president's financial dealings, you know, donald trump's so-called red line that mueller couldn't cross because it may be that the origin of his relationship with some of these russians who cropped up during the election has to do with business deals starting as far back as 2003 or when he was over doing miss universe in 2013. >> paul butler, same question to you. >> you know, nicolle, the congressman said something that was actually extraordinary. he said, yes, the department of justice has said that the president of the united states is guilty of two felonies, but that's not his most serious criminal exposure. he has more exposure possibly in collusion and i think that

you're right, from the flynn investigation, from paul manafort and from michael cohen, we're seeing that there's not a bright line at all between the president's financial dealings and his political dealings, and, again, if he's lying, and the russians know about it, the president of the united states is compromised by a foreign hostile nation. >> it's an extraordinary commentary that this is undeniably where we are. that it is -- we now know that they lied about conversations with the russians, about building trump tower moscow. it is not a debatable -- it is not a mystery. that is a fact. we know that. cohen has pleaded guilty to that. to lying to congress about that. how does donald trump swindle so many republicans? >> right. the idea of putting forth the idea that it was a bad-faith election, that cohens and others subverted democracy to get donald trump to president. to this point republicans have

largely stood by the president. now, we've done this reporting in the last few days of the "a.p.," we wrote about it today, the idea that some cracks are starting to show. certainly not -- we don't want to overstate this, people are not running away from the president. they still largely stand by him, realize how popular he is with the republican base, with the actual voters. but we saw rubio, senator rubio, senator thune, over the last couple days sort of speak to the seriousness of these campaign finance violations. and suggesting there could be more and that this needs -- mueller needs to finish his job. you know, that flies in the face of what the president, of course, is saying. his team, which is really downplaying that. suggesting that mueller has come up empty with collusion. you know, we can dispute that conclusion. but the idea that they settled for campaign finance, and that will go over the heads of the american voters. mueller is not done yet. they, of course, keep saying the idea that he should be wrapped up soon. president has given his answers. they're pushing for that. but it's suggesting to a political vulnerability this president has not had before. these mounting legal threats combined with sort of disarray in the west wing. he still doesn't have a chief of

staff, after his choice walked away over the weekend. you know, the signs that the economy might be slowing down in relation because of the trade war that he commenced. the democrats are now just a few weeks away from taking control of the house in which they will wield both the power of the subpoena and the threat of impeachment. so there is a sense among republicans that this is maybe not the inflection point yet, but it could be on the horizon where the bottom may really fall out for donald trump. >> absolutely. look, we're at this moment in time right now where we have enough information to sit and wonder, might this be the greatest crime in american history? the subversion of an american election by a foreign power, colluding with, in conspiracy with, the president's campaign. it's extraordinary to consider it. this is what george washington warned the country about in his farewell address. the father of the country, when it was time for him to say

good-bye, this is what he warned about. and it's extraordinary to consider at this moment in time, as we get ready to see a new democratic congress begin its oversight of this administration as all of the details are filled in to ponder what may have happened here. it is an extraordinary moment. i suspect that's coming in the history of our constitutional republic. >> all right. paul butler, joyce vance, thank you for spending more time with us than i think you counted on. we're grateful. after the break, what nancy pelosi accurately described as a manhood thing for donald trump, the president today announced he would proudly shut down the government over his manhood, or the wall. we'll take you inside that extraordinary oval office photo op turned sparring match when we come back. and the white house job in search of a sucker. donald trump was rebuffed by a 36-year-old political consultant who didn't want the job of white house chief of staff. question now, who will take it? new reporting on the president's lack of a plan "b." stay with us. george woke up in. but he has plans today.

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i will just say this, you want to know if it was more productive behind the scenes. i hear some of the reporters saying, well, fox reporters saying, why did we not want transparency in this discussion? we don't want to contradict the president when he was putting forth figures that had no reality to them. no basis in fact. we had to, if we are going to proceed in all of this, have evidence-based factual, truthful information about what works and what doesn't. i didn't want to in front of those people say you don't know what you're talking about. >> hm. you just did. nancy pelosi may have also

bottom lined today's spebl spec the oval office better than anyone else will as the day and night go on. she described the meeting she and chuck schumer had with the president as having more to do with the president's manhood than the country. "the new york times" reporting, "after she returned to capitol hill, miss pelosi said that for trump the wall was like a manhood thing for him. as if manhood could ever be associated with him." here's just a bit of the blustery back and forth. >> and that you should not have a trump shutdown. you'll have the -- >> did you say trump -- >> you have the white house, you have the senate, you have the house of representatives. >> nancy, i need ten votes from chuck. >> let me say something here. >> let me just say one thing. the fact is, you do not have the votes in the house. >> nancy, i do. you can't have very good border security without the wall. no. >> that's absolutely not true. that is a political promise. border security is a way to effectively honor our responsibility -- >> and the experts say you can do border security without a wall, which is wasteful and

doesn't solve the problem. >> but it totally solves the problem. >> i cannot take this -- >> it's very important. >> unfortunately, this has spiraled downward. >> nancy is in a situation where it's not easy for her to talk right now. i understand that. i fully understand that. we're going to have a good discussion and going to see what happens. we have to have border security. >> mr. president, please don't characterize the strength that i bring to this meeting as the leader of the house democrats who just won a big victory. >> elections have consequences, mr. president. >> let me just say -- >> and that's why the country's doing so well. >> but the president is representing -- his cards over there are not factual. >> you keep talking about it. >> the last time, chuck, you shut it down. >> no, no, no. >> then you opened it -- >> 20 times. >> i don't want to do what you did. >> 20 times you have called for i will shut down the government if i don't get my wall. >> if we don't get what we want, whether through you, a military, through anything you want to call, i will shut down the government. >> okay.

fair enough. we dis agragree. >> i am proud to shut down the government for border security, chuck. >> i got to see pence again. he's in there like, am i going to have the tuna plate or the grilled chicken -- can we put pence back up? put pence back up. unbelievable. tuna, grilled cheese? what is -- >> the stillness, it's extraordinary. >> leave that up for the rest of the show. that pence is incredible. >> they're making, you know, they're redoing all these movies from when we were kids. i'm thinking if "weekend at bernie's can the ", that is your guy. >> i was riveted the first time i saw this. the second time i didn't hear anything. i was staring at pence the whole time. joining our conversation, "washington post" bureau chief phil rucker. at the table, elise jordan, former aide in the george w. bush white house and state department. sto steve's co-host on "words matter." and zerlina maxwell. phil rucker, what's going on with pence?

>> well, he was observing, nicolle. he actually -- the vice president actually went to the capitol afterwards and told republican senators that the trump you see at the rallies is the same trump you saw there in that meeting. and, you know, he didn't have anything to say. he didn't even jump in when schumer was making fun of trump for bragging about winning indiana which is such a solidly republican state. pence's home state. >> that is great. let me see that. this is a little bit of trash talking from chuck schumer. >> we gained in the senate. nancy, we've gained in the senate. excuse me. did we win the senate? we won the senate. >> when the president brags that he won north dakota and indiana, he's in real trouble. >> there it was, phil, you ask and we delivered. phil, that was the sound bite you're talking about. >> oh. >> pence and his stoic face. >> yeah, he did. he certainly did. i think for trump that whole meeting was sort of a reminder or an introduction, rather, of what divided government is going

to be like. and pelosi and schumer -- pelosi, at least, is coming in there speaking on behalf of the majority in the house. she has an actual constituency and power and is showing that she's willing to confront the president, to call him out on falsehoods, to push back on him and to be an adversary that he's not had in his two years as president so far. >> i think that's exactly right. i think she -- you know, we talk a lot about the year of the woman. this is the year of the woman as a toe-to-toe political combatant to donald trump, something he has not had yet. >> right, he hates it when women have any type of power that could match his in terms of this specific negotiation. she's right, he does not have the votes, and you know who knows he doesn't have the votes? speaker nancy pelosi. or soon to be speaker nancy pelosi because she knows how to whip votes. that's really her area of expertise. and so she's saying that with authority. she's not going to say that in front of the camera unless she's absolutely certain. i think that what it demonstrated is she understands the game she is playing, and

he's playing the game that was pre november the 6th. >> does she ever understand the ga game she is playing? this is what she said when she got back to capitol hill. "this had more to do with his manhood, like a manhood thing for him, as if manhood could ever be associated with him." she's learned how to sort of stay on the high road but talk to him in language he understands. that's a barb that will be answered. >> yes, it will. i don't know that i'd necessarily think it's helpful to moving -- >> to who, though? >> -- anything forward. democrats can choose to go down this path where they're fighting trump on his terms, and they're playing at his level, but i don't even necessarily think that's what democrats want because they see how counterproductive -- >> some do. >> some do. there's a radicalization that's happened on the left, too. >> i think this is -- >> because trump has r radicalized -- >> she went in there as a fact checker, she went in there as the leader of her party. she went in there as a legislator. she insulted him in a way that

he has and will insult her. >> i wish she'd brought up the children who have been separated and are still separated and permanently orphaned by the trump administration instead of engaging in this back and forth with donald trump who is just going to lie, and he's going to keep lying and you're arguing with someone who's just spouting nonsense to her facts, which i do agree that facts matter, but i don't know what's productive in this situation when you have someone who is a consistent liar. >> it also, this certainly was a remarkable bit of theater in the oval office, one the press originally was not going to see. they opened it up to the pool a few minutes beforehand, they had to run them. . schumer and pelosi made points they wanted to but the president kind of played to his base as well. there was a moment where he, yes, as you mentioned earlier in the show, when he's in a moment of crisis, he wants to change the subject back to immigration. i think particularly where he does seem so vulnerable the last couple weeks, he wanted to remind his base of the core of his campaign. >> no doubt about that. >> that's what -- >> phil rucker, he woke up this morning, i think he had a half a

dozen tweets about the wall along with his witch hunt and diary of the twitter feed fingers. what do you make of sort of turning this meeting -- i mean, i think pelosi's most sort of finger on the mark in the oval office, the comments about his manhood she made when she got back to capitol hill, were about the downward spiral. he's now turned any sort of meeting with legislators in either party into the same sort of debasement of the office that he brings to everything else he touches. >> yeah, and, you know, pelosi was effective in a couple areas. she not only -- and schumer as well -- extracted from trump that line about how he would take personal responsibility for any government shutdown that comes later this month. she figured out a way to needle him and provoke him. she talked about the economy becoming soft. about the layoffs and the market being a little jittery which really made trump perk up. and early on in that meeting, she branded the shutdown, the trump shutdown, which if you notice trump was like, trump, did you say trump? he did not like that she branded it that way, but she sort of

figured him out a little bit and i think this is a sign of what might be coming in the months ahead. whether it works or not, who knows, but it certainly is a new and more aggressive strategy by the democrats on the hill. >> couple observations, both for pelosi and schumer, they're chess players sitting across from a checkers player. so everything that they needed politically to prevail in the fight, they put on the table today, from branding this the trump shutdown, from trump owning the shutdown, but i think most importantly is leader pelosi said at the beginning that she didn't want to contradict the president to his face in the oval office, and i guess the question i would ask is, well, why not? after two years of nonstop lying, nonsense, more lying, why not at long last? if the president is going to try to produce a show in the oval office, to be packaged, pulled apart, for the propaganda effort that will commence this evening

on fox, why not? >> right. >> and so when donald trump is sitting there and the leader -- >> just to be fair, she did say the facts on his cards were wrong. she pushed back. i take your point. she announced at the end she didn't want to embarrass -- >> i'm saying, schumer is saying, hey, indiana north dakota. why not say you deployed the united states military to the border for a publicity stunt? hey, mr. president, we're all old enough to remember, wasn't it mexico going to pay for the wall? why have you failed to deliver on that promise? you shouldn't be asking us for any money. can you imagine, though, this is the nonsense that must go on behind closed doors when he sits with leaders from other nations. can you imagine him sitting across from the president of china? >> no. >> from vladimir putin? from the british prime minister, from the canadian prime minister? what a fool they must think he is sitting across from them. when you see the bluster, the

acting, the ignorance, the casual lying, all of it on full display for the american people? remember, it's not just the investigations, it's not just that the economy is showing signs of cratering. it's that he sees the walls closing in on all of it and increasingly, he has no place to run. he is fighting out of a very small diminishing corner with this type of stunt today. >> and what's pence doing? >> well, listen, i -- i say -- >> it's incredible. look at that. look at that. i'm sorry, i know we need to get to commercial. look at this. look at him. >> if you sit like that on a commercial airliner, what will happen is all the flight attendants will have a meeting up front to decide which one is going to check his pulse. it is extraordinary. >> it looks like he's at a strip club. he's horrified. he's just, like -- >> i want whatever he's taken. that's some kind of zen. >> what's amazing is he can keep

his entire body so perfectly still. we see slight movement in the head. >> incredible. phil rucker, did he say anything? did he say anything? >> incredible posture. >> there's nothing, nicolle, that we saw that pence said. i think he wanted to let the president speak for himself. >> i can see why. all right. when we come back, it used to be a job that catapulted anyone who held it to instant washington royalty. now the white house is ready to hang a help-wanted sign. we'll take you inside the sad, sad search for donald trump's next grown-up. - [narrator] the typical vacuum head has its limitations,

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the president's absolutely correct when he says there are people vying for it, there are people under consideration, and it's a personal decision for the president. and we know that -- and whoever it is, i will support him. >> whoever becomes the next white house chief of staff, it will be because a 36-year-old turned down the job, it will be because a four-star general couldn't forge a stable relationship with the country's chief officer and because a career republican political operative couldn't figure out

how to operate the executive office. after being stood up by a 36-year-old political consultant, nick ayers, for the top job in his oval office, trump is still head hunting today. as the "washington post" reports, "there was no plan "b," trump now scrambling to find someone for arguably the most punishing position, but in this white house, a dent of disorder ruled by an impulsive president and especially thankless job." the latest names emerging, the most prominent trump loyalists in d.c., chairman of the house freedom caucus, mark meadows. acting attorney general matt whitaker. even a blast from the past in trump's orbit, former new jersey governor chris christie among others. phil, jonathan, elise, zerlina, still here. you've done reporting on this. what's going on? how did they ruin the chief of staff job? >> the president has been diminishing it as soon as he took office. reince priebus had little control in the west wing. john kelly did for a short time in terms of the process. >> before his kids killed him. >> right. exactly right. he ran afoul of some very powerful trump relatives and the

president, himself, began to chafe against the restraints kelly put on the office. the two of them, their relationship barely exists at this point. the president wanted nick ayers. that was his choice. there wasn't a choice "b" as we've been reporting. despite his bluster on twitter, there are a number of people, perhaps ten people who want this job, they've had really hard time finding someone to take the position. as soon as a name enters the short list, that person usually scrambles off it. congressman meadows is someone who yesterday expressed some interest which makes him an outlier here. the president, though, has said today in that oval office spray that we saw with chuck and nancy that this would be something that he was in no rush to fill, it could be a matter of days or weeks and had kellyanne conway say today in that interview that chief john kelly could stay in the position until after the new year. >> phil rucker, you and your colleagues have had some incredible reporting on what really used to be the most important selection any president makes. his white house chief of staff. and you've got this great headline "there was no plan "b."

take us inside what you guys are reporting. >> well, what john said is correct. there was no plan "b." nick ayers left trump at the altar. he's scrambling to try to come up with a replacements candidate. there's no obvious consensus pick. the president spent much of yesterday calling friends, family members, aides, advisers, throwing out names sort of in a crowd-sourcing effort to hear what people thought of all of these various candidates, and, you know, i talked to a number of people in the orbit over the last 24 hours, and they say this is anybody's game. like if you want to be chief of staff, now's your chance, just go grab it. it's a total free for all. and, you know, it's also becoming a bit of a running joke. >> yeah. >> one republican close to the white house said, why does he need a chief of staff, it's such a well-oiled machine. they're making fun of the president's phrase. but it's a problem for trump, and i think he'll probably try to fix it here in the next few days. >> phil rucker, two follow-up questions. one, i want to know why nick ayers, a 36-year-old former

political consultant would say no. he's the current chief of staff to the vice president. can you confirm for me, i believe multiple news organizations reported reince priebus, the first chief of staff, and chief of staff kelly both became witnesses in the mueller probe. >> i -- i'm not sure that we have solid reporting on kelly, but certainly reince priebus has been a websiitness in the muell probe. i think whoever the third chief of staff is would potentially be a witness if there are future developments, if, for example, trump tries to obstruct justice again in front of a chief of staff. that could become a problem. and it's something that the potential candidates for the job are thinking about. do i need a personal lawyer? am i getting into a big mess here? but nick ayers, his stated reason for not doing the job is he's got three young triplets. he wants -- his family wants to move back to georgia which is his home state, to get out of washington. and he's made a commitment to his family to do that and was not willing to serve the full two years that trump has expected of his next chief of

staff. >> let's just blow this up. you don't have to commit to two years. . you probably just have to commit to stay longer than two weeks. >> it's extraordinary. 36-year-old young man turning down the position of white house chief of staff. proving, and i know nick ayers, i like nick ayers, but proving that the question about who the smartest person in the white house has now been answered. nick ayers. i'm listening to phil's reporting, i just picture trump saying, busey, get me gary busey. lil john. throwing out the characters from the "the apprentice" episodes. the chief of staff to the president of the united states is a cabinet rank position. it's often been described as the second most powerful position in the government of the united states, and he can't fill it. let me tell you why. because he's a liar. because he's mean. because he's cruel. because he's incompetent. and there are criminal investigations closing in on

everybody around the oval office. nobody trusts anybody and the person who would take the job is consigning themselves to millions of dollars of legal fees, maybe a prison term, but certainly, professional disrepute, they'll never work again. and so that's the real-world reaction to everybody, right, that wants to go into the white house. this is the markets speaking. this is the contempt with which people in washington, people all over the country, who run normal businesses, who conduct themselves with some sense of proprie propriety, this is their verdict on the trump administration. every single person considering this job knows it. they may be in a reality distortion field inside that white house. they may like flying on that plan plane. but every single one of them is aware of the disrepute that will

come with associating themselves that closely with this president. what has always been true with donald trump, you go into business with this guy, you get screwed. everybody is finding this out. michael cohen, michael flynn, all of them by the end of the day will understand this central rule about doing business with trump. >> i've been thinking all along that it might end up being one of the children, ivanka trump, chief of staff, jared kushner, or stephen miller who still seems to have a good relationship with the president because of all of his rhetoric on immigration. i think stephen miller, if i'm not mistaken, was in the room today. >> he was. >> during that meeting. and so those are terrifying facts. right? steve is right, we can't find somebody competent because of the president's incompetence. that's a national security issue. it always has been, and it still will be going forward. >> yeah, ivanka trump and jared kushner were very much pushing nick ayers for this position. they really had a fight, they had a bad -- very contentious

relationship with john kelly. >> they made other calls to people in washington to recruit them. >> they told the president they still want to be at the center of this new recruiting pitch. they told him, hey, there are few people around him you can really trust, we'll be here to the end as family, we should have a stay in the chief of staff. >> what do you say? >> they will be there until the end. look at the decisions they've been intimately involved in and it showcases their terrible political judgment. starting with mike flynn, they advocated for mike flynn, as national security adviser. he lasted all of 23 days. then the firing of jim comey. jared kushner said, oh, everyone's going to like this, democrats will embrace this decision, too. political disaster. we're looking for nr of that if jared and ivanka play a key role. >> phil rucker, thank you for your reporting on this store and spending time with us. after the break, 44 former senators pulled the fire alarm on donald trump's gop. calling this moment an inflection point and urging senators to be steadfast and zealous guardians of democracy.

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aleve. all day strong. well, let me say this about mr. cohen, jesus loves him but everybody else thinks he's an idiot. i think most americans think he's a sleaze-oid. >> i think the democrats will do anything to hurt this president, anything. >> this is not the democrats, it's the u.s. attorney. that's what making this allegation. >> i don't care. all i can say is he's doing a good job as president. >> i don't care. jae jesus likes him. that's not even the worse of it, house majority leader kevin mccarthy had a wait, did you need to say that out loud moment, when talking about trump's payoff. >> when the president hires an attorney to solve a problem, expects him to do it in a legal

matter. and if shift is taking this beyond to go forward and say there's an impeachable defense because of a campaign finance problem, there's a lot of members of congress that would have to leave for that same place. >> god forbid. >> all of them maybe! >> how many? how many can we get? >> you used to share a party with him. speak. >> look, the hypocrisy of orrin hatch, you can look at the comments he made around bill clinton's impeachment, the hick po hypocrisy is and ybeyond the english language. yes, michael cohen is a sleaze. but he got his sleaziness where? the trump university working for the trump organization. so what's so startling and the research these 44 united states

senators have sent this extraordinary letter defending the institution, which used to be known as the world's greatest dliv rit body saying it's essential for the american democracy, you look at kennedy, you look at hatch, somewhere along the way they decide i don't want to be a senator anymore, i want to be a sycophant, so we have a republican congress up there filled lock, stock and barrel with sycophants. and incredibly as republicans today are trying to analyze, how did we lose 40 seats in the house? how is it we lost women voters? how is it we cratered in the suburbs? we need to have an autopsy. we need to study deeply how this happened. real will i? just extraordinary >> seems like it should be obvious as to why this happened, donald trump is the president and he's an out and out misogynist during the campaign and women rejected that because he continues to say things that are wildly offensive and treat nancy pelosi as he did today. i think when we watch this and we see the horror show unfolding

in realtime, as citizens it's terrifying but we also need to remember we have a role in this too. that's putting pressure on our elected officials to hold this president accountable in a moment he's completely unchecked. thankfully, we did win those seats. >> here's my question, what is in it for them? they can't all get fox contracts. >> i don't know the answer. if you look at the animal kingdom, being a lemming doesn't seem to be the first choice of animal as you watch them go over the cliff to an unhappy ending. if you watch a democratry on jonestown and you sit there and say how did that happen, why did these people do that? 20 years from now, this moment in political history as you look at the destruction of this version of the republican party that will come from this president, sitting here ten years from now, 15, why did they do that? why did they lash themselves to

the mass on this? when trump was inaugurated, there was still three political parties in washington. there was a trump party in the white house, there was a republican party in the congress and there was a democratic party, that they have so capitulated, sold out the republican party and all become willing, obedient servants and the party of trump is just an extraordinary event. >> this letter in "the washington post" from former senators is a bipartisan letter but, again, it also reinforces its former republicans speaking out against this president, no current ones. >> the only current ones are leaving office or passed away this past year. maybe mitt romney but there are very few voices in washington who are active in government that are going to challenge this president. >> sad state of affairs. to geico. this is how it made me feel. it was like that feeling when you're mowing the lawn on a sunny day... ...and without even trying, you end up with one last strip that's exactly the width of your mower. when you're done, it looks so good you post a picture on social media.

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table never looks like that. my thanks to jonathan, alease jordan, and mike schmidt. that does it for our hour. i'm nicolle wallace. we got a little silly there. "mpt daily" starts now. hi, chuck. >> i'm not sorry for the silly. it's like the curb works. also a beep could work too here. >> what was pence doing? i know the mess leaves not a lot of choices. >> you remember "mystery science theater 3000," i want the news on mute and somebody to come up with thought bubbles on pence. >> let's do it in our free time. >> that's a tv show. thank you, nicolle. if it's tuesday, the white house becomes the fight house. good evening, i'm chuck todd

here in new york. i'm not on mute.