>> reporter: thank you, friend. >> that wraps up this hour for me. thank you for watching. "deadline white house" with nicolle wallace starts right now. hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. if he wanted to end the russia investigation, this was a diabolical way to do it. the self-proclaimed law and order president has effectively brought the wheels of justice to a grinding halt with his self-created, self-perpetrated government shutdown. the fbi agents association announcing if a 72-page report today that, "the shutdown has eliminated any ability to operate." that's according to one agent and that, "the u.s. attorney's office is unable to issue grand jury subpoenas for financial institutions." that's according to another. the shutdown having real-world consequences. while the president possibly living in a parallel universe declares by fiat that he's delivering the state of the union address next tuesday in congress, or perhaps at another venue. the senior administration official telling nbc news that

white house speech writers are hard at work on separate passages that could lend themselves to a speech in a different venue, and for a different audience that members of congress. but we start, we start with that report from the fbi agents. donald trump has the entire federal government shut down over border security, but it turns out his shutdown may be the graver threat to our security. the report details the damage being done to the nation's premier law enforcement agency, as the shutdown enters its second month. one agent writes, "i have been working a long-term ms-13 investigation for over three years. since the shutdown, i've not had a spanish speaker in the division. we have several spanish-speaking inform ma informants. we're only able to communicate using a three-way call with ali ali ali alinguist in another division." "not being able to pay confidential human sources risks losing them and information they

provide forever. it's not a switch we can turn on and off." another, "on the child exploitation side, as an undercover employee, i've had to put pervs on stand yn by. this puts children in jeopardy." finally, put simply "the fear is our enemies know they can run freely." joining fr ining us from "the n times," peter baker. former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence, frank figliuzzi. jeremy bash. at the table, elise jordan, former aide in the george w. bush white house and state department. euge euge eugene. i have to start with you, frank figliuzzi. i read this report with my eyes rolling back in my head and my stomach sinking. take us through all the -- i talked to a former senior law enforcement official who said forget about drug cases. they're done. you can't prosecute them or investigate them without money.

and on the counterintel side, i assume a lot of informants rely on the financial piece of that partnership. >> you know, nicolle, i'll never forget as a very young supervisor at headquarters getting called up to the assistant director's office and it was a very sensitive clo closed-door meeting about the case. i turn around to walk out, i see a sign posted on the back of his office door, i'll never forget it. it said "america is at peace because the fbi is at war." and that was the mentality then and it's the mentality now. american people need to understand the fbi goes to battle on our streets every single day. if you think this means nothing to you, understand that the gang that's preventing you from sending your kids to the local playground because it's too dangerous, the guy selling crack at the end of the street that makes you feel unsafe to go by, none of that's getting done on the fbi side. sexual predators, crimes against children, kidnapping and let's

talk about the global impact in terms of counterterrorism. all of this being curtailed. it's the fbi's job to counter the greatest threats facing america, but now what's possible is the greatest threat of all is coming from the oval office. and our president. it's an insider threat. there's real impact to this. if you're not buying into this concept of, hey, no federal employee needs to treat their job as an entitlement, i don't care if people aren't putting food on their table, let's go with that. put that aside and let's look at the impact on you and your neighborhood and your town, village, and city, and understand that this is already being felt on the streets of your neighborhood. >> jeremy, i don't think we can underscore enough that the biggest section in this fbi report, and i suggest everybody take a look at it. i would love to know if the white house looked at it. i'd love to know if the

president read this report and read these words directly from the fbi agents. i'd like to know if the law and order president understands just how badly he's weakened the nation's top cops. but i'd like you to explain how counterintel works, in terms of this relationship that we have with informants. they're not necessarily good guys as depicted in movies. sometimes they're making a tough choice. right? between helping the united states of america and, perhaps, working against the united states of america. that relationship depends on continuity. we need to be reliable partners and we need to be able to pay for their services. is that right? >> that's right. each and every day, the counterintelligence professionals at cia and at the department of defense work hand in hand with our colleagues at the fbi, and they rely on the fbi. so when you pull out the capability of the fbi from the national security apparatus, you're not just hurting the federal bureau of investigation. you're not just hurting those specific cases. you're also hurting all of the

activity that the cia, the defense department, and other agencies rely upon from their colleagues in federal law enforcement. and just to put a fine point on it, if you are running a case in counterintelligence or counterespionage or even the context of a drug case, and your responsibility is to show up, run a human source, or participate as an undercover asset, and actually make a purchase, make a buy, funnel money to a potential target of an investigation, and you don't show up with that money because the federal government's shut down and there's no appropriation, you're a suspect. the fact that you're suspect means that in some ways, the target of the investigation may realize an undercover investigation is under way. what, you just forgot to pay the money the same day that the federal government shut down? it's too obvious. it's too overt. it's very bad tradecraft and very endangering to our own assets. >> and frank figliuzzi, this is something all americans can understand. the agents who contributed to this report came from field

autopsiy offices all over the country. they wrote about something as simple as not being able to pay for an informant's phone card. the idea we would burn a source, burn a line of information on the counterintel side, or the counterterrorist side, over a phone card that we can no longer pay for, seems to be a stain on american credibility. would you agree with that assessment and would you put the blame squarely on the president? >> so, first, not only our allies are looking at this saying, what gives with this? and i'm sure they're feeling for our intelligence community, but i'm even far more concerned about our adversaries looking at this. there are champagne corks being popped back in the kremlin right now because they couldn't have engineered a better scenario than a demoralized fbi that can't pay its bills, can't pay informants and, yes, the leadership is responsible for this. the leader responsible for this is the guy who said he owns this

and he'll take -- he'll take it on the chin for the shutdown and that's donald trump. so that's a reflection of the degree to which our president is putting self-interest over national interest. the thing that worries me the most, if i had to point to one thing, in terms of impact, nicolle,li nicolle, linguists who sit and translate wiretaps, eavsdropping in counterterrorism cases. what is not being listened to today? what is being put on the shelf today that will have to be listened to after the government re-opens? what are we missing in terms of a secret code or a plan being discussed to hit some city in the united states? that's why number-one concern. >> jeremy bash, i spoke to a former senior national security official today who said that his concern for all of donald trump's chaos creation, for all of his misguided pronouncements, for all the suspicions around all the conduct and secrecy around his contacts and

communications with russia and russians, nothing really -- there hasn't been a 9/11, there hasn't been a terrorist attack on his watch and the real fear in the national security establishment is what happens then. are you -- would you guess that the national security folks who are still inside the pentagon and inside the cia and perhaps even inside the national security council are watching this president who seems to not be sweating -- he's sweating his poll numbers, sweating his wall. he doesn't seem to be sweating the impact the shutdown has on the fbi or the cia or on the kind of operations you and frank are talking about. what do you think they're experiencing on day 32? >> no, first of all, it's worse than that. this entire shutdown has been conducted in the name, supposedly, of national security. remember the national security crisis at the border that the president presented to the american people, and, in fact, as most national security professionals have now come forward and made clear, the real national security crisis is the

fact that the fbi isn't getting paid. the fact the tsa isn't getting paid. that aviation security has been compromised. that professionals of the department of homeland security, the coast guard, are being asked to engage in garage sales to pay their mortgage, to pay their rent. that is the true national security emergency. to your point about whether or not the president could handle a real crisis, one of the historians on this network was pointing out yesterday, a point i think really is worth emphasizing, which is even in the dark days of the nixon era when he was as beleaguered as they come, and he was facing certain impeachment, that fall in october of 1973 when watergate was heating up, there was a crisis in the middle east. israel was invaded by arab nations surrounding it, and the united states had to come to israel's assistance. i shudder to think if there's a true crisis that presents itself to the oval office or national security council at this moment. >> peter baker, the white house's attention today not on any of these issues, not as far as we know on this fbi report, not on the kinds of things jeremy or frank are talking about but on the details and the

logistics and the walkthrough and the theatrics and the script for the state of the union. >> well, yes, and that may be paving the way for at least a temporary cease-fire in the shutdown. just before the show went on the air, the senate leaders, chuck schumer and mitch mcconnell, announced that they have a plan to put two bills on the floor. the first of which will be the president's bill which democrats have already declared dead on arrival. the one that would fund his wall with only temporary protections for some of these younger immigrants. then they're going to put on the floor a bill that would push off this debate until february 8th and re-open the government in the meantime. that looks like it could actually pass, and if that's the case, then we could see a sort of, at least a temporary lull so the president could, in fact, come to the hill next yeweek, ge his state of the union address, and negotiators might have time so sit down and talk through the border wall whithout the kind o impact you've been focusing on rightly in this segment.

>> peter, what are you hearing is motivating the white house? it's my understanding that it's his poll numbers and the fact that he's being blamed that are sort of getting -- getting under his skin. a lot more than the human calamity of the shutdown. >> well, one of the things that's really interesting about this shutdown, of course, it's not a complete government shutdown as we've had at times in the past. because it's a partial shutdown, about a quarter of the government, we haven't seen as early as we have in the past some of the impacts you were describing and this report talks about. so for a lot of americans, the government shutdown was an abstraction at first. as each day goes by, you see more and more of the consequences of it. i think that's something the president hasn't focused on really. you haven't heard him talk about it. he hasn't really expressed the empathy people would like him to express both for the workers not being paid, 8 uh-h00,000 of thed american people whose services aren't being provided either because of fbi, you know, restricting their ability to take action or other agencies that aren't able to fulfill their duties. >> eugene, you write today in an

amazing piece, "trump made federal workers and other citizens who depend on government services into sacrificial lambs whose blood is an offering to the trumpist base. negotiations about a solution are at a standstill because trump's self-proclaimed negotiation prowess comes down to taunts and tweets. the next time you take a flight, hope the agents who inspected passengers' luggage and the traffic controllers who guide pilots through the sky are thinking about their work. not worrying about how to make ends meet." >> yeah, the comment really is about gratuitous cruelty and that's a theme that has run through this administration from day one to today. right? it's t-- he goes out of his way to be cruel to people. the family separations. the way he dismantled the -- or tried to dismantle the affordable care act simply because it was named after president obama. with absolutely no consideration, no thought, as to what it was doing to people.

to innocent people who were caught in the sort of crossfire. and he just doesn't care about that. as we've talked about before, the president doesn't have the empathy gene. he just doesn't do empathy. and so when he hears what frank and jeremy were saying, which was harrowing, about the fbi and its constricted ability to do its job, i can imagine president trump sitting there and saying, good, that will show him, because the fbi's bad, remember? the fbi opened investigations of him and how, you know, they can't do that to him. he'll show them. so he's probably saying that's a good thing. rather than -- i mean, it's shocking, but that's where we are. >> he doesn't have an empathy gene, but the vast majority of americans do, and i wonder, elise, what you think the impact is of interviews like this. >> putting cancer in your budget

is unexpected, but we just have to deal with it, so this is where we are right now, and with no end in sight, this is like the most horrible experience ever. can't negotiate with my chemo. that has to happen. it's chemo or the rent. chemo wins. >> so donald trump's legacy, or chemo or rent? >> diabetics who can't afford their insulin shots. this is the donald trump lack of empathy we see every day and on day 32, i think it's important to remember what donald trump said back in december when he met with nancy pelosi and chuck schumer. he said, i will shut down the government, i am proud to shut down the government. he said he was going to own the shutdown and that's starting to show up in polling and he does own the shutdown and he should because you can see that this is an exercise in ego much more than a president concerned with

national security because he's fighting for a border wall. instead, we're sacrificing investigations against ms-13, which he has claimed is a huge threat, because of his own ego. >> but if mitch mcconnell is now, as peter baker said, ready to bring to the floor a bill that puts it all off to february 8th, not that that's a long time away, right, that's only a couple weeks, but if -- if he's ready to do that, that tells me that mcconnell's view of this situation has shifted now and he's probably hearing from republican senators who are saying, look, this thing has got to end. >> right. because they used to watch the news and have a conscience. unclear if they still do. frank figliuzzi, i want to ask you a question. i'm not a conspiracy theorist, yet. i wonder if you think shoutting down the government, having the fbi investigations, prosecutors, inability to get anything in front of a grand jury, the

ability to function, if you think it isn't just a sad casualty but maybe something donald trump isn't really bothered by. >> gosh, i, you know, if it weren't for this president, i'd say let's not engage in conspiracy theories but nothing surprises me anymore, nicolle. there's been much discussion about even a larger potential agenda, which is that he wants the government to shut down. that he wants to come in and save the day and take control as only a dictator-type leader could take control. and so he's never liked all of this bureaucracy. he's never liked the agencies and institutions of government. so he's, at a minimum, he's not feeling any sense of loss here, but at a maximum, on its worst-case conspiracy theorist scenario, he might literally be trying to create a situation where only he can swoop in, save the day, pick and choose the agencies he wants to be funded or not, and declare some type of

national emergency. we're facing a national emergency, but the emergency is in the oval office. >> and welcome to 2019, folks. after the break, rudy cracks up. this time, it's in an interview with "the new yorker," just before hopping in the shower. it's an interview you have to hear to believe. and today's making russia great again headlines. a putin crony gets rich on sanctions relief. guess who helped make it happen? the trump administration. and a new book describes trump as bored by policy talk, rude to paul ryan, and unpresidential behind the scenes. amazing what passes as a te tell-all these days. we'll tell you about all those stories. stay with us. julie! hey... guess what day it is?? ah come on, i know you can hear me. mike mike mike...mike what day is it mike? ha ha! leslie, guess what today is? it's hump day. whoot whoot! ronny, how happy are folks who save hundreds of dollars switching to geico? i'd say happier than a camel on wednesday.

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oops, he did it again. rudy giuliani, pig pen from charlie brown, traveling in a swirl of dust and dirt he constantly kicks up about questions of the president and his legal liabilities. first it was the hush money scheme that rudy let slip out. now it's donald trump's discussions about trump tower moscow. giuliani on day three of his cleanup tour today telling "the new yorker," "i am afraid it will be on my grave stone. rudy giuliani: he lied for trump." just might be. giuliani working to undo the damage from his revelations sunday that donald trump's tal s s about building trump tower moscow went on through election day. he trotted out a new new line in that "new yorker" interview entitled "even if he did do it, it wouldn't be a crime." we knew we'd get here. the president's own attorney saying not that trump didn't pub luckily lie for months about his relationship with russia but even if he did, so what, it

isn't a crime. i'm guessing the pardon defense will come next. rudy is in hot water in the west wing today over his erratic performances over the last 72 hours on television. "the new york times" reports, "several people close to mr. trump have grown exasperated with mr. giuliani's public appearances and increasing prosecutors' anger with the president and potentially creating a misimpression about the trump tower project moscow." the president's son resorted to the low-level coffee boy defense. you may remember that from the george papadopoulos and paul manafort smear campaigns after they were indicted. junior saying, cohen wasn't our deal guy. >> the reality is this wasn't a deal, you know, we don't know the developer. we don't know the site. we don't know the -- anything about it. ultimately, it was michael cohen essentially trying to get a deal done. you know, he was there for a long time. he wasn't exactly a deal guy. didn't bring too many to the table. i don't think anyone took it all that seriously. that's the reality of what went on. >> but he was your deal guy.

joining our conversation, tim o'brien, "bloomberg" opinion executive editor. peter baker, some great reporting, i think, for your colleague, maggie haberman there about a few people being exasperated. i want to know why there are only a few. >> well, that's a great question, in that sense. i think you -- rudy giuliani was not picked to be the lawyer in the grand jury room or to negotiate with the special counsel. he was picked to be -- >> i can see why. >> -- the public face. here's the thing. you picked him to be the public face of the president to be out there pushing against the special counsel. he succeeded to some extent in pounding away at the special counsel's conduct and reassuring the base that the president hasn't done anything wrong, but his statements at times have been so all over the map, as you see in this, what you've just shown, that it's caused great exasperation on the part of people who are trying to defend the president inside his team. they worry that this is only making things worse, not better. >> tim, you're right, he's

making things worse, not better. i think ma they benefit from, though, we cover this like etch-a-sketch. we don't always lay down the marker of just how much this deviates from the original story, but the original story is i have no business in russia, i never sought any business in russia, not seeking business in russia. all bold-faced lies. all of them. those were all lies told over and over again by the president while at that time, whether donald trump junior thinks that he was a good deal guy or a bad guy, michael cohen was their deal guy, and he was pursuing a deal and briefing the family ten times, i believe, about trump tower moscow. >> well, during the campaign, the president was saying that he thought he might weaken nato, if he came into office. he was saying he might lift sanctions on russia if he came into office. and rudy's extended this timeline into all of those -- into the same period when trump was saying those things. so he's created a host of new problems for trump. you know, rudy hasn't been, you know, unhinged lately. he's been unhinged almost the entire time he's been a

spokesman for trump and he was a weird public presence for years prior. this is the same guy who told his wife he was going to divorce her in a press conference, the same guy that gave one of the most over the top convention speeches during the republican convention in 2016. and whether he's serving as trump's lawyer or a spokesman, he has to be deeply familiar with the fact pattern, the chronology, what trump does and doesn't know. he's the one who said michael cohen's tapes would exonerate the president. he was incredibly wrong. he's a guy who's flip-flopped back and forth whether or not there was collusion. you have him talking about the trump moscow deal. when donald trump junior goes on tv saying this was lightweight antics essentially and michael cohen wasn't our deal guy, michael cohen was engaged with felix sater on negotiations with this. felix sater had an office in trump tower two floors beneath the president. he routinely debriefed ivanka and donald on all the deals that

trump was doing with bayrak and in russia. this wasn't just a lighthearted thing. the trump organization was deeply involved in this transaction. >> i think ivanka actually suggested the name of a star architect. >> that's true. >> for the project. at one point. >> so it's a family -- family operation. >> family operation. >> jeremy bash, i want to ask you something. it's not just -- donald junior was disparaging michael cohen as a deal maker. i've got no opinion on that. what we know is like mike flynn, like jeff sessions, like george papadopoulos, he lied about his conversations about doing business in -- it's not that they took place, it's not that they briefed the family, it's not that they were negotiating a real estate deal throughout the presidential campaign, and if you believe rudy, never know if we should or shouldn't, through election day. it's that he lied about it. what is all the lying about? why is this lie something that rudy giuliani is now on his third day of trying to shove back into the toothpaste tube? >> yeah, i think this frame that

you see being advanced by don junior in that interview, well, and also by rudy giuliani, which is there's nothing to see her, oh, by the way, even if you're looking at it, it's not illegal, kind of puts the entire frame upsidedown because this is both a national security investigation and a criminal investigation. and in some ways, for my money, nicolle, the national security investigation is far more important. that really goes to the heart of our national interests and yoin ha when you have an adversary nation having financial and potentially political leverage over a potential president of the united states, nothing could be more important. the fact, whether or not a crime was committed by the president negotiating trump tower moscow up until he was elected, that's besides the point. to do so is unpatriotic. to do so is shameful. to do is downright dangerous. for some reason, rudy giuliani, don junior and all the apologists around the president don't seem to get that. >> frank figliuzzi, i want to read you something about rudy giuliani said in "the new

yorker" sbrinterview out today. "because i have been through all the tapes, i have been through all the texts, i have been through all the e-mails and i knew none existed. reporter: wait, what tapes have you gone through? rudy: i shouldn't have said tapes." frank? >> he shouldn't say anything at this point. he's gone through things that don't -- he's gone through things that don't exist. he is really the worst enemy of the president, and we're in an upsidedown world, nicolle, where the prosecutor in the case, the special counsel, issues a press release to say that an allegation of crime against the president is not accurate from buzzfeed, and the president's defense counsel goes on television to incriminate his client. so that's the world we're living in. i keep coming back to what's already been said is why all the lying about russia? and nicolle, i am left now with only one conclusion, that the news on russia, the truth about russia, is so bad that no one

can afford to let it leak out. we have too many people covering up the same thing over and over again and the only conclusion i have is that it's about as bad as it can be. >> so what would that be? let me just press you, and would that be a bribe, would that be sanctions relief in exchange for a plot of land that don june year sa junior said we don't have a plot of land, don't have a developer. doesn't mean it wasn't promised. what could it be? >> i think it's worse that than. i -- listen, i'm developing a real sense here that there is now knowledge within the trump circle that the russians did assist with in a successful way the winning of the presidency. i am increasingly convinced that this is what people are trying to cover. >> frank, you can't leave me there. tell me what pointing you in that direction.

>> so, if we look at -- i'm particularly focused on paul manafort, right, and his -- his incredible reticence and reluctance to fully cooperate. mike flynn and the judge saying you're not there yet, i'm not ready to accept the -- to handle sentencing yet, the trump family members, cohen saying they're getting briefed. the polling data going from manafort to russia. all of this points to knowledge, in my mind, that the russians were -- it was understood that the russians were assisting the campaign, and that they did so in such a way -- remember, we have over two dozen russians indicted already between hacking and social media propaganda in support of the campaign. we have vladimir putin saying in helsinki to a reporter's question, did you tell your government to put their full force and support behind candidate trump? answer, yes.

i believe there's knowledge of that, i believe there's great fear about the extent to which they assisted. and i think that's at the root of what people are lying about. >> jeremy bash, our viewers can't see your face, but i can. let me know what you're thinking. >> i think it's important to remember that the person who set up the trump tower new york meeting were the agalarovs, emin. they were the principal conduits to create the trump moscow tower project. when they reached out in 2016, said we want to come talk about the russian government's assistance to your campaign and the conversation ended up being about adoptions which we know is a cover word for sanctions relief, that's the direct tie between the quid pro quo. we're going to do a financial deal for you and you're going to give us sanctions relief. one thing putin wanted was sanctions relief. the one thing donald trump wanted was to make money and leverage and monetize his presidential campaign. >> dots are getting closer and closer to each other. frank figliuzzi, thank you for spending some time with us and blowing my mind. after the break, sanctions

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the trump administration taking the heat off one of putin's cronies in the latest chapter of the trump loves russia saga. a new report in "the new york times" suggests the trump administration may have downplayed how much their recent push to relax sanctions against russia may benefit oleg deripaska, an oligarch linked to both vladimir putin and paul manafort. trump's decision to relieve russian sanctions has become a political flashpoint, providing rebuke from 100 lawmakers froms colleague, ken vogel. take us through it. >> that's right. this is sproeprobably an uninte effort by the treasury department.

they were sanctions oleg deripaska who is close to putin and has been caught up in this thing to begin with. what they didn't realize when they did it was how sanctioning his companies would blow back in europe. european nations were alarmed by the impact this was go iing to have on their employees, up to 75,000 people in europe's aluminum industry suddenly looked like their jobs were in jeopardy, got on the case of the administration, wait a second, you've gone too far. the treasury department said, okay, look, fine. we'll pull back on the companies if oleg deripaska reduces his ownership stake so he'll remain sanctioned but not the companies and that way it won't have this unintended impact in europe. the problem is in the course of doing it, they've created a benefit for deripska in terms of forgiving some debt and allowing him basically to still control these companies in a shadow way. the problem with russian companies, as i learned when i lived there for four years is, the ownership structure is never as clear as you think it is, never what you imagine it might be and there's always some sort of shadow gain going on behind the scenes. >> i mean, elise, peter lays it

out perfectly, and if the economic impact of a policy or of concern, the government wouldn't be shut down, 3 it, going on 33 days. the common thread isn't we're worried about the global economy. trump doesn't worry about the european economy. the thread that runs through everything is this is another policy that benefits the trump/putin alliance. >> well, and specifically, oleg deripaska surfaces who got the polling data -- >> where's waldo? >> who got the information at the madrid meeting? who did it ultimately go along to? it went along to oleg deripaska. paul manafort was reportedly in debt for a lot of money to oleg deripaska, and so you have a key figure who is also -- he's the beneficiary of these sanctions being loosened. >> tim, this does seem like such a trumpian kind of rundown. you know, we start with the, you know, fbi is shuttered and can't

prosecute crimes, we move on to rudy's mayhem and mess, rudy is crazy like a fox, we're on to another putin ally benefitting with, you know, a cash infusion, basically, based on u.s. policy that was opposed by republicans in congress. >> and essentially getting treated with kid gloves in the end. when they first impose the sanctions on deripska, it was meant to be a signal that the white house despite trump's comments to the contrary was willing to be tough with russia. and, you know, to reinforce what elise said, let's remember who oleg deripaska is. he's not just another industrialist. he oversees one of the largest a aluminum companies in the world. it was built through a very messy fight with organized crime figures in siberia. he emerged from that victorious. ends up being one of the oligarchs in russia closest to the kremlin. ole ga oligarchs who got kicked out of russia were either jewish,

opposed to footen e ed to puti. they're saying we're reducing deripska's stake in the company so he won't retain control. it's going to be hard for mnuchin and the treasury department to enforce this. as peter said, russian companies are a spider's web of different shareholding alliances. one of the shareholders in rusal, to whom deripska is giving his shares, is a state-owned bank essentially controlled by putin. >> eugene, let me u-- this is from peter baker's great reporting about really how the president parts with the rest of the administration when it comes to russians. sanctions are one of them. on sanctions, the administration publicly supported sanctions against russia. donald trump opposed several rounds of sanctions, resisted the bill, and i believe the administration's been slow to enforce them, if ever. on meddling, the trump administration was for bringing charges against russia, continued election meddling. robert mueller has charged 13 russians. trump publicly muddies the water on meddling. fails to empower agencies to

fight the threat. wray, others have testified they don't have the commands from the commander in chief to do so. pulling out of syria, trump suddenly announces troop withdrawal. in the administration, two officials resigned, secretary mattis and brett mcgerk. another contradicts his trip to the region. where are we? >> we certainly have two russia poli policies, you know, just to begin with. i mean, the administration, certainly the experienced and knowledgeable people in the administration who tend to leave, have a view of russia and what it's doing and what the united states needs to do, what sort of posture the united states needs to take regarding russia. and president trump is off on his own. and so he countermands this thought-out sort of adversarial confrontational policy and

russia pretty reliable bli, one of the few things he's reliable on from the beginning. i want the wall, i like russia. >> and "fox & friends." jeremy bash, your thoughts >> the foundational documents, the national security documents that supposedly lay out the trump doctrine talk about an era of great power rivalry in which we should be concerned about the rise of russia and russia's advanced weaponry, their efforts to dominate abroad, what they're doing in the middle east. their support for syria, ultimately iranian proxies and surrogates. yet, of course, none of that comes forth with the president's own policy with respect to russia. and he's at war not just with his own government, with his own party. his own national security establishment on this policy. and, again, it advances the primary question we have, which is why do we have the foreign policy that makes no sense? what leverage does the russian federation have over our president that's causing him to act in this fashion? >> do you think we'll ever know

the answer to thats, jeremy? >> i think we'll get a lot of information in the mueller report. i think it's also going to require strict and intense congressional oversight to really dig into it. >> all right. jeremy bash, thank you for spending so much of the hour with us. after the break, the latest white house tell-all that reveals more of the chaos inside the west wing and donald trump's idea of what counts as modern day presidential behavior. with my friends to our annual get-together, especially after being diagnosed last year with advanced non-small cell lung cancer.

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a new book out next week, which the "washington post" got an early copy of, details an administration as absolutely out of control. you don't say. written by former trump staffer, cliff sims, the "post" notes the scenes from lhis tell-all are consistent with news reporting from the time inside the white house. some of the color from the book according to the "post," "sims regularly met trump at the private elevate e the residence, accompanied him to videotapings, carrying a can of treseme

hairspray extra hold for the boss. one such taping an hour after trump tweeted he saw msnbb host micah bra micah brezinski bleeding badly from the facelift. the president sought feedback." peter, elise, tim, eugene, are still here. that was actually something that caused a rift inside the west wing, inside the white house. some of the female staffers were mortified by the president's comments and noted privately in conversations i had then that he's someone who was pretty socialized to the idea of plastic surgery. >> well, what's really interesting about this book is it's not from somebody who at least presents himself as a reborn critic of the president, a disgruntled former adviser, but somebody who still expresses, you know, some admiration of what the president

is trying to do and yet is presenting a pretty candid and sometimes quite damning portrayal of life inside this white house. nicolle, you know it better than i do what it's like for the white house when people leave and start writing tell-all books. what's striking is how many we've seen so early in this white house, and how much more, you know, castigating they really have been even than we saw in the last few administrations. >> it's such a good point, peter, but i guess what makes them less of a tell-all and more of a no, duh, is that you guys report this every day. you and your colleagues have this kind of reporting day in and day out. so have you seen anything that is really in the true vain of a tell-all that's revealing something? everything has just confirmed what we all know to be true. he tweets disgusting things about my colleague because he's disgusting. a tell-all would have been that, you know, someone in his life or a woman smacked him across the face and took his hairspray.

i mean, have you seen anything in any of these books that's actually juicy to you? >> well, the problem is we've set the bar at this point in such a way that it really takes a lot to shock us, right? >> that's true. >> because we see in real time so many things we never saw, of course, in any previous presidency, basically any 24-hour period you could pick it over the last two years. pick a 24-hour period and could probably identify one, two, three things that happened in that period that we had not seen in, you know, obama, bush, clinton, reagan, any of these other president. so when you have these books come out, the level that's required to genuinely shock you is a little higher. it is actually kind of affirming in some ways that the reporting has been correct. that, in fact, betrayal has not just been, you know, anonymous whispers. we now have authors putting their names to books saying, yes, i saw this, i was there when this happened, this is the way it worked or didn't work, as the case may be. >> and peter's point is so good, eugene, because what undergirds

his attacks on the media is he's trying to sort of smear the coverage of himself as fake. all that comes out even from his own former staffers who as peter says are by in large still loyal to to him, all of the press coverage is true and it's sort of tone and frame and specificity. >> every bit is true. name the specific thing about trump that has been reported that has been refuted by any of these tell all books. there are a lot of tell all books because there is so much to tell. every single day there is something that you could not believe if it were happening under obama, under either bush or clinton or under anybody. yet we do become sort of numb to the cascade of outrages. we get outrage fatigue. >> do you think any of these books bother trump?

>> who knows. he probably reads them differently. >> do you think he reads them? his friends said he doesn't read. >> no, he has them read to him. to the ex-at the present time that he hears what's in them, his reaction is different. his warmed view of what makes him look tough and the way he wants to look, i guess with the hair spray and what doesn't. who seems disloyal and who doesn't. >> i'm going to give a hundred donuts a weekend to whoever writes a book that trashes him and because they know he doesn't read, he will tweet it out anyway. >> he is comfortable in his own skin. the donald trump you read about is the donald trump new yorkers have known for several decades. i don't think any of the revelations are lost on new

yorkers. the things that are interesting is what it said about the constellation of things around him. i supported the agenda and the went to the white house because i was ambitious, but i regret it. he's one of the few people to say i think i did something wrong here. the rudy giulianis and kellyanne conways of the world will say about the period in which they occupy the white house. without standing up like an adult. >> here's reporting from the book. sims recounts that former chief of staff john kelly once confided in him in a moment of exasperation. this is the worst bleep job that i had. people think i care. if it ever happened it would be the best day i had since i walked into this place. when we were covering the scandal and we had more reporting, there was a lot of feedback coming from kelly.

this was the spirit. i'm in here in this bleep hole storm and trying to make sense of all these -- i think his sentiment was a mix of nepotism from the kids and incompetence from the people that were there and corruption from the folks in the cabinet. you want to fire me? make my day. >> if you are john kelly and the three-star general and lived your entire life by the ethos of discipline and you see donald trump who literally is watching television and that's his most sustained activity every day when he is supposed to be running the country, i would say yes, it's probably fairly accurate depiction of the level of respect you have. exactly. >> we see one concrete impact. he does seem to have controlled the flow of paper and information to the president and people walking through the oval office doors in a beneficial

way. now all bets are off and you can see how crazy the tweets are getting. >> it's your beat. >> john kelly was in his own way a hostage of this administration. he was there obviously as we say a lifelong marine. he was there out of a sense of duty more than anything else. the line that he wrotes out of this is the worst f'ing job i have ever had in my life. he said that to everybody. he was very, very open about that. that colors a white house. it may not be a joy every empty, but you don't want it to be the idea of servitude either. that sends a message to the entire staff of a place that is harsh and a place that is dysfunctional and a place that people have to stay to make sure the country doesn't get worse. >> you put it better than anybody. >> up next, new details about

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here's some news you can use. last week we learned in 2014, trump's former fixer, michael cohen, rigged a poll, who does that? in trump's favor. not only did it not work, trump didn't make the list. there is this reporting in the

report. he called cnbc and threatened mr. trump would say if the news channel was ignoring the will of the people. cnbc didn't respond and mr. trump didn't sue. this is a story so full of all the idiocy in the times in which we live, we didn't want to leave it out. >> even when they try to rig a poll, they can't get it to say donald trump is a great businessman. >> it's all corrupt. >> this is before he is even declared his candidacy and they try to rig two polls. is donald trump a great businessman? they fail. he is a drudge poll that he should be one of the leading early contenders. that didn't work either. they paid for this in cash at trump tower. still didn't work. he sues them for not following through on his rigged efforts

with his poll. >> literally nothing is on the up and up. nothing. >> here has been doing this for 30 or 40 years. he is trying to get into paid sense. it's pitching for a certain kind of coverage. >> what are does that? >> that does it for our hour. "mtp daily" starts now. >> happy tuesday, nicole. if it is unique, thank you. it's f it's a day of the week and truth isn't truth, who needs retractions? welcome to "meet the press" daily. is it misinformation, disinformation and confusion. no matter what you call it, the president traffics in it. the mueller report possibly weeks away, the