white house and state defendant elise jordan and chief white house correspondent for the "new york times" peter baker. joe, it's good to have you back. >> i'll tell you what, mika comcast, it's great to be here. if you look at the "washington post" and everything else, he is on a losing streak. i'm sure michael will tell you he's probably going to be channelling yogi berra who will say "i ain't in no slump, i just ain't hitting."

the failures are out there for everybody to see. >> it's quite something. we're going to get to that in a moment. michael cohen's documents he gave lawmakers. kirstjen nielsen questioned on border security and john kelly, whether or not he intervened to get security clearances for his daughter, ivanka and son-in-law jared kushner. "the washington post" frames it as a losing streak for president trump on core promises from his 2016 campaign. "trump is losing ground on top priorities to curb illegal

immigration, cut the trade deficit and blunt north korea's threat -- setbacks that complicate his planned reelection message as a can-do president who is making historic progress. satellite images appear to show that kim is rebuilding a long range rocket site. february had the highest total number of undocumented immigrants crossing the border in 12 years, showing a failure in trump's promise to secure the border nearly 800 days into his presidency. and on wednesday the commerce department said the u.s. trade deficit in 2018 went above $891 billion in merchandise, the largest in the nation's 243-year history due in large part to trump's trade war. i don't know how he spins it,

he'll try, but it's not looking good. >> yeah. what's so fascinating about these area, about donald trump, these policy areas, we often talk about how donald trump just adopted the republican party. he just pretended to be conservative. for instance, his flip flopped on gun control. he was a very aggressive advocate of gun control for most of his life and suddenly he decided he was going to be republican and changed. he was very much a believer in choice for women on abortion. he was pro-choice all of his life. that changed. but, willie, what we have here is grand failure on the core values donald trump has always believed in. cup talk about immigration and his anti-immigrant zeal. how much it has stain donald trump this morning realizing

that barack obama fixed the problem he inherited from george w. bush and for eight years illegal border crossings went worse. barack obama made the situation better every single year. now this year of course because of drot's policies, and -- drdo trump's policies, it's getting worse year after year. here we have the largest trade deficit, the largest in american history, just like the federal debt. he promised to balance the budget. no, it's exploded to record levels. we also have the largest federal overall debt in american history. he's not just doing worse than barack obama, he's doing worse

than every american president and he's actually screwing up a border situation that barack obama's administration improved markedly and they did so while being humanitarian about it. >> first of all, joe, it's great to have you back with us at the table. thinking about you all week. to your points, all three of these areas, north korea, afraid and the border speak to donald trump's "art of the deal" falling apart. he sold himself as the master negotiator, master deal maker. he said we're going to stop getting ripped off by china. he was going to get in a room and by force of personality to get kim jong un on board and kim

jong un leaves hanoi and goes right back to expanding his nuclear site. so the beg sales pitig sales pi master negotiator has not paid off. and peter, from the point of view from the white house, do they feel they're on a losing streak? the nbc poll has him at 46% approval. >> 46% is on the high end of the band that he's been in for these two years. so in some way they're feeling up. there are what they would point to as positive indicators. the president had a number of people talk about the labor shortage saying there are not enough americans for the jobs. that's good news compared to where we were a few years ago. they'll point to not only the

rising economy, they'll point to the elimination of isis in the last few weeks and months. the president yesterday had a hostage named danny birch into the oval office who just got rescued in yemen. the draw backs and the setbacks we're talking about here, they characterize as temporary or as a result of other people's issues, particularly democrats in congress for failing to work with the president and focusing on investigations rather than progress. everybody has their own narrative. when a president gets in trouble, there's usually something they can point to but the question is whether it ultimately drags down the public view of how that president is doing. >> peter, last week we had on the republican governor of south dakota complaining about the fact that the trade warms were really damaging her farmers across the state and urging the president to bring it to a

resolution, these numbers showing a massive trade deficit, a record deficit will put pressure on the president as well, a narrative that he hates. what are the chances this will move donald trump closer to striking a deal with the chinese, a global deal -- sort of a global so to speak with china trade deal? >> the irony is his tariff war with china has depressed the chinese economy, which means that they're not buying our products nearly as much as they were. most economists say there are a variety of factors also playing into that in a are not drpt's responsibility and they say that the trade deficit is not the be all and end all measure l woor doing well as an economy. the president characterizes the trade deficit as a imagine problem so by the hen met trk, the met trk hes will set, he obviously is not succeeding

because it's higher than ever. think it does put pressure on the president to go ahead and cut a deal with the chinese. we asked the president in the oval office how the talks with going with china. he said they're moving along and he expects there to be a deal. he does seem to be moving toward resolution on perhaps some of this tariff war. >> based upon your reportings and observations covering the white house, are we on the edge or into the process here to what the president has reverted to what he's always been, a solo operator? in trump tower, with the thinning out of the white house staff, how many people surrounding the president of the united states does he listen to or are we into a process where it's only the president whose opinion and view counts and he carried forward with very little

insight from anybody else? >> it does seem he's surrounded he's days with fewer contrarian voices, fewer people who are seeking to change himself mind or give him alternate points of view or alternate hereies of the case. the people he put around him are people who will reinforce his ideas. and many of the titles have "acting" before them, which didn't give them the confidence to have somebody stand up to the president. acting means you're on the hook at all times. he says he likes that, he wants people to be more beholden to him without the kind of independent confidence, the ability to give him contrairy advice. >> so a lot has happened in the last 24 hours.

a source tells nbc news that michael cohen has provided a document that show edits to a document showing a -- changes to his statements. >> mr. trump and his lawyers edited my statement to congress about the moscow project before i gave it. >> there were changes, jay sekulow for one. >> jay sekulow said he stands by his statement that michael cohen's statement is completely false. and he came out yesterday saying

it went well and he plans to do everything he can, joe. >> emily, obviously you've been following the cohen saga as closely as anybody. donald trump spent the campaign saying he didn't know anybody in russia, he had no building kas russia, and his lawyers may have edited cohen's remarks and may have perjured themselves. >> cohen entered capitol hill yesterday with three suitcases and a big file folder. that to me was a moment that must have struck fear in president trump and his family and anyone po works in the trump

organization. i know before his public testimony he spent time digging through boxes in a storage unit to find documents that backed up some of his claims and he spent this past weekend before he went back to capitol hill yesterdaydoiyesterdayd yesterday doing some more document diving about communications he's had with various members of the administration and the kinds of changes they wanted to see made. >> you know, emily, this has been quite a personal journey for michael cohen, who has felt betrayed by donald trump and the entire trump family, felt betrayed that rudy giuliani could go from saying he was a great lawyer to one of the biggest liars ever. to those republican members of congress all calling him a liar, how can we believe a liar?

that's all we heard? how can we believe you, michael cohen, you're a lawyer. i wonder what michael cohen thinks of this poll and what republicans think of of this poll when asked who do you believe more, michael cohen or donald trump? donald trump at 35%, michael cohen, convicted perjurer, 50%. give us some insight into his thinking on the fact that by more than double digits, americans believe michael cohen far more than they believe donald trump. >> i mean, what a sad state that number is, that the american public believes someone who admitted to lying to congress more than their own president of the united states. i think that cohen felt like he went to congress and did what he needed to do. i think the fact that he brought documents with him, those suitcases this week and the documents he showed publicly last week, that is why you see

the big discrepancy. i think that cohen was ploes with that but there are still questions about his credibility. he still had to spend 16 hours in front of the house intel committee. i think he's exhausted, he's continuing to cooperate with the sdny and in less than two months he still plans to report to federal prison. any kind of relief he has about his testimony and the sort of switch in the way nat public thinks about him i think is welcome but he still is facing some very serious things in short order. >> yeah. mika, what do you think of those numbers? i must say we've known michael for quite some time. and on on a personal level i've liked michael for quite some time but didn't see to have great credibility to say the

least because his job was to lie for donald trump for decades and yet you were telling me you were surprised about the reaction you heard about michael cohen, that he was actually a sympathetic witness, the republicans made him more sympathetic, too, but are you surprised by those numbers showing that 50% believe michael cohen to only 35% believing donald trump? >> this is based on optics and i think michael cohen came up well. michael cohen admitted lying, which is something the president still hasn't done and as news outlets keep track of his lies, they happen on a daily basis. and people have seen michael cohen walking out of court for his family. you heard elijah's closing, talking about the image of him walking out of court with his daughter and michael cohen cried, wept openly. it was the only time he did.

and he comes across as credible. now, it is quite clear that he has lied, he has said he has lied, he's going to jail. given, the difference between him and the republicans, who were grilling him, asking him if he was going to enjoy going to jail, considering the president lies every day. i want to get to the pardon question. there's a whole issue about that. >> willie, take it away. >> kirstjen nielsen appeared before the homeland security committee and members of congress did not hold back when it comes to donald trump and his administration's policies, including the use of cages to hold detained migrant children. >> are we still using cages for

children? >> sir, we don't use cages for children. in the border facilities that you've been to, they were not made to detain children. as the children are processed through, they are in some parts of those facilities. >> madam, madam secretary -- >> i'm being as clear as i can, sir. >> just yes or no, are we still putting children in cages? >> to my knowledge, they never purposely put a child in a cage. >> purposefully or whatever, are we putting children in cages as of today? >> children are processed at the border facility stations that you've been at. >> and i've seen the cages. i just want you to admit that the cages exist. >> sir, they're not cages. >> what are they? >> areas of the border facility that are carved out for the safety and protection of those who remain there while they're being processed.

>> so what did you do? i understand it's complicated, we have a big bureaucratic system, when you saw those pictures of babies in cages, what did you do? what did you do? d to scream bloody murder up the chain to the president, to say i cannot represent an agency that is forcing its border patrol to do this? what did you do? >> i went to the border, i spoke to the men and women there, i looked at the facilities myself, i talked to hhs and visited the and then i worked with the northern triangle in mexico to stop the phenomenon to stabilize those areas so the children and families are not traveling here. >> when you officially began family separation in spring 2018, were you aware of research showing it causes trauma that

can do immediate and long-term damage to children's health. >> the information i was aware of was that the trauma was for part of the journey? >> are you aware the traumatic effects doesn't go away, even if child is reunited with their family. >> no. >> were aware of research prior to instituting the policy of family separation? >> there is no policy of family separation. >> will therethere's a lot to d through. it wasses police italy said the zero tolerance was a deterrent. secretary nielsen has a problem, though, when she says there were no cages.

reporters saw the cages, our reporters saw the cages, members of congress saw the cages. i think we have other photographs, too. chain linked fence with a roof on it and they're locked inside. i don't know how else to describe that. >> it gives me the chills to think about we're actually at the point as a nation, as a society, where we have congressional members asking the secretary of home land security are these cages like we put our dogs in outside? and which i would argue sometimes those cages are inhumane for animals and we're arguing over our children being subject to these conditions. and you hear secretary nielsen, representative underwood questioning her with the long-term psychological impact of this policy and the trauma it causes on children and i wonder what kind of human wreckage we are going to have to deal with in the years and decades to come

because of this administration's cruel and inhumane policy. >> mika, how remarkable you had the secretary of homeland security, could not call a cage a cage. a cage is still a cage. give credit to those freshman lawmakers that were questioning her, they did everything right that when republicans when they were questioning michael cohen did wrong. it was very impressive, want it? >> it was. i thought we saw the star freshmen women performing yesterday, doing their duty, their service to this country, asking measured questions, not making a show of themselves, asking question and showing the answers that were being made available to them, which said more than anything we could ever understand about what's going on here. let's bring in national political reporter for nbc news carol lee. you were covering john kelly,

who is speaking down south i believe at duke. we'll get to that. but he i believe secretary nielsen worked for him and he brought her to the trump administration. what more can you tell us about her qualifications for the job as homeland security secretary or the dynamics there. how did this happen? >> well, basically secretary nielsen and john kelly were very close. she was his chief of staff when she was the homeland security secretary and she came over, she was his top deputy at the white house. frankly, her relationship with president trump was fraught from the start because the president felt like john kelly had manipulated the process to choose his successor. he was very irritated learning she had worked for the george w.

bush administration. he's spent the first year berating her. and with the departure of john kelly, the relationship with the president seems to have staeblized and that's in no small part because of her testimony yesterday where she's gone al in on drft's immigration policy. >> donald trump is waking up this morning to the number of losing streaks that he currently is juggle, the fact that barack obama did better for donald trump in eight years in stopping border crossings. weep have a 12-your spike that's higher than at any time during barack obama as administration. any chance he's going to turn his fire on kirstjen nielsen and

start blaming her for that? have you heard any rumblings of that? >> it's a great question, joe. what we've seen in the past is any time the president's bobsed into a corner and feels like he's not getting implementedi a implementedin -- implemented in a way he doesn't agree with, there's this history there where he's very frustrated with her and he's wanted to get rid of her at various tiemgs. can envision a situation where this continues to be the case and him if not feeling look this policy and is not getting the credit he deserves, he could absolutely take it out on her. >> we'll get to your report on

john kelly in just a bit. kirstjen nielsen, i remember her testimony when she defended this policy as a deterrent and i don't know any way to say it, she's become the face of administration -- she is dealing with that involves skills and humanity. and she acted like a hapless, hopeless robot. there are a lot of failed cabinet secretaries in the trump administration but secretary nielsen's incompetence is having a direct impact on the most vulnerable -- children. when she says they don't use cages, look at these pictures. she's defying the obvious in the most trump-like way. do you see those cages?

they have roofs on them. the people are locked in there. children, too. the situation is shameful. and it just seems like she lacks the ability to care about the border crisis in a real way. the border crisis caused by this white house. i'm just praying public pressure will force her to chang course, maybe have her do her best and save these children from further heartbreak and suffering because that what is happening and that's not who we are. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. >> what is a chain linked fence enclosed to a chamber on a con veet into represent to you? is that a cage? >> it's a detention spaces that existed for decades. >> does it difficult cages that

you when you let them stay outside? is it different? >> yes. >> in what sense? >> it's larger, it pro describeds facilities, it has room to sit, to stand, to lay down. o sit, to stand, to lay down webut some of us turn outhose dreams...... into action...

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and have professional monitoring backing you up with xfinity home. demo in an xfinity store, call, or go online today. let's go to carol in north carolina. general kelly getting questions on a lot of subjects, including areas where he may have disagreed with the president on imt grags. >> ye -- immigration. >> reporter: yeah, that's right, willie. he disagreed with the president on a number of things, including sending troops to the border, including the travel ban thing when that was implemented, it was not done in a way that followed any sort of process and showed that the white house had a staff that was very

inexperienced, and he talked about child separation and what was interesting about that is he blamed attorney general jeff sessions and said he caught them by surprise, which obviously was contradicted by what kirstjen nielsen said yesterday in her testimony that, she had spoke with then attorney general sessions about that policy beforehand. he said a number of things and some of them were about his time at the white house and kind of working for the president. he wouldn't come out and take a direct swipe at president trump butch he sa but he said had hillary clinton called him to take these jobs, he would have served in her administration. he was making clear he wasn't necessarily a trump loyalist. and the main question was about security clearances for jared kushner and ivanka trump and whether the president intervened to make that happen.

who wouldn't answer the question of whether he had written the memo, he said even if he did have those discussions with the president, that would be privileged and that he couldn't talk about security clearances. his first foray to the public was cautious. >> kelly was asked about people coming up to the southern border, says he's full of criminal. here's what john kelly said yesterday, that are overwhelmingly not criminals, they're people coming up here for economic purposes, i don't blame them for that. that's general kelly talking about the president's characterization of migrants coming up from the southern border. it's funny, there's this dynamic where people get out of the white house and weep start to get little leaks or in this case a speech or q & a about the way they felt when they were insigned the white house.

how much tension was there between john kelly and the president of the united states on the question of immigration and clearly the president's view prevailed? >> he's the president, that's how it works. general kelly is springy strong and hardlined on immigration issues. but even he thought as indicated with last night's session at duke university, that in some cases the white house is going too far in mischaracterizing things. that's very telling. when people do come out of the white house, they tend to open up about disputes and disagreements that happened while they were there. if people look john kelly are all gone, are the people coming in behind them going to offer the president any contrarian views or not? is he hearing from any voices other than ones that reflect his own point of view in any president of course wants people around him or her who share

their larger values or philosophies but you also want someone who is able to, say mr., this is not the right idea. there are better ways to do it and the yes is whether he's getting that kind of advice. >> still ahead, democrats are divided from latest remarks that have many perceived as anti-semitic. we're going to discuss that ahead on "mornings joe." t ahead on "mornings joe." naysayer said no one would subscribe to a car the way they subscribe to movies. we don't follow the naysayers. ♪ ♪ it can cause damage to the enamel..

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the house vote to condemn anti-semitism has been postponed to next week. some democrats privately vented to speaker nancy pelosi's leadership team about the response to omar's comments. hayes also reportedly called out pelosi for doing little to

inform democrats before a vote is scheduled. pelosi left the room saying to hayes, if you're not going to listen to me, i'm done talking. some called the comments offensive and potentially dangerous, while some called omar's comments dangerous. this is complicated, joe. >> no, i don't believe it's complicated at all. representative omar repeatedly talks in tropes. and another who speaks one

anti-semitic trope to another and doesn't even hide his anti-semitic rhetoric. that's how she feels so we should let her continue to do that, of course i would say questioning jews' loyalty to america and suggesting they can't be loyal to america and israel at the same time or that someone like me who is pro israeli cannot be loyal to america while also being loyal to israel in believing that a strong israel is good for the middle east? i mean, by the way, even while i'm disagreeing profoundly with

benjamin netanyahu's leadership there. so much it's very offensive. unless this party wants to dissolve into a left-leaning version of the party of steve king's and the party of david duke's, they need to call her out any time this anti-smiemiti trope is trotted out and if that means condemning those statements every day, they should do it. republicans won't do it. when republicans sent out saying don't let tom steyer and others take over the government -- we

don't have to listen to nancy pelosi, we don't need to listen to steny hoyer. we're here, we're freshmen, and if she wants to engage in anti-semitic tropes every single day, well, that's how she feels so who are we to say? mike, these democrats are going down a very dangerous path. if they want to see how it ends, they need to look at jeremy corbin's leadership in the u.k. and might as well just put a trump 2020 bumper sticker on the back of their cars because they're reelecting him. >> joe, there's a certain percentage of the newly elected democratic congress who are injecting healthy fear of 2020 of not winning the white house because they are -- it still

remains a fact that the large part of this country, democrats and republicans, live in the middle so to speak ideologically. and, peter baker, the roots of the democratic party, nancy pelosi's leadership in the house, she's very skillful, she's a veteran and yet there's trouble there. the left is now going against the middle in some version of the democrat being caucus reports that you hear. >> that's exactly right. i think this has sort of swamped the agenda the democrats wanted to focus on. they had legislation on gun control, voting rights, the war on yemen, meant to show they had larger priorities than just going offer trump but the omar controversy has forced them to confront dark issues and difficult questions in there on ranges in a way the republicans have been on defense of in the last few years.

it's certainly not what nancy pelosi second and hasn't yet figured out dealing with it. >> and, mika, this really isn't about ideology. anti-semitism knows no boundary, whether it's happening on the united states and europe or on the far right in nero nazi meetings. this is an ongoing challenge. and nancy pelosi is exactly right to try to call it out. and, by the way, this whole thing about, hey, we're just going to condemn everybody for all their hate speech, now that doesn't work. if you're responding to continued anti-semitic tropes, then condemning people that commit a laundry list of hate crimes doesn't count. you have to focus on the

anti-semitic tropes. it will make the democratic caucus stronger, it there, i believe, hope flich, hope flip stop democratic freshmen and freshmen from committing anti-submit being tropes on an almost daily basis. and it will undercut donald trump's presidency. they need to do that for not on the good of and there's a lot of learning on the job, which is fine but you need to know what you know and know what you don't know. i would argue there's a little bit of a learning curve here. mike. >> this idea that some people because they're jewish have more of an allegiance to israel that

is deeply offensive. i'm for a united ireland but america is my country, not ireland. >> we'll have much more at the top of the hour. also, democrats just won the house in november. now party leaders are taking steps to cement their chaurnlt in 2020. we'll have more ahead on "morning joe." orning joe." ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ you know, i used to be good at this.

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joining us now, senior political correspondent for the washington "examiner" david drucker. also nbc news national political reporter heidi pryzbyla. let's start with you, heidi. what you have learned? >> in an exclusive interview

with nbc sherry bustos told us their 2020 campaign starts today. they're making a major multi-million dollar investment to put the largest number of organizers ever on ground, 60 grass roots organizers. why? because they acknowledge in their interview that their majority is fragile. republicans only need 18 seats to win back the house. just for perspective, you've already got 31 democrats sitting in trump disabilitietric distri. of thos distrie districts, 16 o many won by very small margins. some of the proposals like the green new deal and haealth care for all is being seen as

socialism. in 2018 they pushed into areas that are off target like texas, like arizona and then finally, willie, they tell me that these organizers are going to pick um on a successful strategy from 2018, which is what they call republican accountability. what is that? that was some of these mass of prote -- massive protests you saw outside the offices of darrell issa where he sat in a seat and chose not to run and was taken over eventually by a democrat. >> david drucker and republicans are starting to think about 2024 despite the fact i think it was ooe prime minister mcmillan or wilson who said a week is a life time in politics. here we're talking about 2024. independent just curious if your thought is, for instance, mean

t -- maintaining her loyalty to donald trump and is she preparing for 2024 but getting ready for 2020 in case something happens in the next two years? >> according to people i've talked to, 2020 is not something she's looking into and it would be ridiculous to start talking about a 2024 election. but the president has taken the party in such a different direction and sidelined conservatives that it's very relevant to talk about what this generation is doing and house of representatives they're planning for a post-trump world. there's a big divide in the

republican party. some people look at someone like nikki haley, who, as you mentioned, has done a great job of straddling that divide and being critical of trump where it's warranted and yet they wonder when a nikki haley speak to the kind of primary voter that is happy with president trump and excited with president trump. in other words, does the trump populism last beyond trump. >> she is a traditional conservative though, right? >> she is. but if you watched her even before the trump strags, he shas been macking it critical to talk about his policies but not making it too much about his behavior. and that's the divide a lot of these traditional conservatives are trying to straddle. additionally, i think a lot of republicans don't yet know or don't yet really believe that trump has fundamentally changed the party.

even if he wins reelection in 2020, which you'd think would sort of cement the direction of the party and cement his impact on it. >> heidi pryzbyla and david drucker, thank you both for your reporting this morning. coming up, the trump friendly drudge report, with the headline "swamped." we'll discuss the losing streak that even trump al loose cannot support. and plus and end up parsing words over the definition of a cage. "morning joe" is back in a moment. cage "morning joe" is back in a moment build attendance for an event. help people find their way. fastsigns designed new directional signage. and got them back on track. get started at fastsigns.com.

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we're going to win. we're going to win so much. we're going to win with our military. we're going to win on trade, we're going to win at the border. we're going to win so much, you're going to get so sick and tired of winning. you're going to come to me and say, please, we can't win anymore. you've heard this one, right? you can't win, please, mr. president, we beg you, sir, we don't want to win anymore. it's too much. it's not fair to everybody else. and i'm going to say i'm sorry, but we're going to keep winning, winning, winning.

>> you know, mika, he was right in one thing that he said, if you look at his long list of losses, people may say, please, please, we can't win anymore. it's stunning he's on this losing streak. winning is a habit but so is losing. right now donald trump and his administration appear to be in that nasty habit of losing and losing on the things that are most important to him. >> but he frames it as winning and just that's the struggle here. as "the washington post" points out this morning, he's not winning on the border, as he defines it. he's not winning on the budget and he's not winning on north korea in any way and the evidence and the facts show

that. welcome back to "morning joe." it is thursday march 7th. still with joe, it's good to have you back, willie and me. we have mike barnicle, former aide to the george w. bush white house and state departments ele elise jordan, eugene scott and politics ed for "the daily beast" sam stein. >> willie, why don't we go through the list and for the kids at home, if you want to take it to the bus stop while you're talking about some "fortnite" tricks, this is going to be bigger. donald trump promised he was going to lower the trade

deficit, that we were going to get rid of the trade deficit. the highest trade deficit ever. donald trump promised he's going to balance the budget. he's added a trillion dollars to the national debt. we have the highest national debt ever. donald trump promised even lower border crossings and yet he's actually done worse than any president in the past 12 years since the middle of george w. bush's administration. he's created a crisis at the bor border. his policies have created a panic and created a crisis at the border so we now have the highest undocumented immigrants crossing the border in a dozen years, which means that barack obama humanely, humanely did a better job over histire eight years than donald trump is

doing. and north korea, the president says peace is at hand but like neville chamberlain he gets home and finds out he's been lied to. where do we begin? he's failing at those things most important to him. >> he said at his cpac conference "i inherited a mess and i'm still trying to fix it." it doesn't include the problem of coming home from the summit, come back with knowing and showing kim jong un reach building the rocket facilities. it doesn't explain putting 800,000 federal employees out of

work, it doesn't include racking up the greatest national debt. you're more than halfway through your first term, how much longer, peter baker, can the president of the united states blame the previous president for his own problems? >> oh, i think we got a couple more years of that but you also have the democrats in congress, you have the deep state, the media, the fake news, media and plenty of other targets that he can sit there and blame for things that go wrong. that will resonate with a certain number of people who support him, who are happy to see the system fighting against him. when he succeeds, they give him credit and when they don't succeed, they say it's because his adversaries are bad to him. for the moment the economy is

good. people are able to find jobs. here's the warning sign, though. the last economic growth number for the final quarter of last year began to go down. so the overall year was about 3% growth, that's good, but if the trend was going down at the end of last year, probably down at the beginning of this year because of that government shutdown, is that the beginning of something or a temporary blip? if it starts to go down in a meaningful way in an election year, that's when he's in trouble. >> all right. michael cohen was back on capitol hill yesterday, he's offering more documents. there was also talk about possible pardon that michael cohen might have been -- what's the story with the pardon issue that is going on per it atainin michael cohen, emily? >> it is complicated and there is a set of conflicting facts. this is the problem with those in trump's orbit.

little things trickle out and there are lots of people who are not the most honest brokers around the president. they lie to protect themselves, part it have of it is to protec president or to bolster those who perceive -- the reporting has been over the last couple of days that perhaps a pardon was dangled to him by lawyers representing president trump and that he perhaps asked his own lawyer to inquire about a pardon. so much i think the way that michael cohen said it in the open hearing under oath was that he himself did not ask for a pardon and that may be true, but as we dig deeper into the reporting here, this is a very consequential issue here. if the president's lawyers did

in fact dangle a pardon in front of michael cohen, it's hard to see that as anything other than an attempt to obstruct the truth from investigators who we know now were investigating criminal conduct by cohen. if cohen was perhaps to the letter honest in front of congress last week but if people perceive him as not being fulsome and fully transparent about his conversation about a pardon that, could also be damaging. >> the stories add mystique, drama, but with michael cohen it's the facts that we're interested in. what did he hand over or what is he saying he will hand over that could be factual evidence? >> i don't know that there is documented evidence related to a pardon. i know that he has been speaking about this with the southern district of new york. it was reported in "the new york times" yesterday that there was an e-mail handed over between a lawyer who never actually

represented cohen but was interested in representing him who had a relationship with rudy giuliani, the president's personal attorney and the letter was oblique and the language was nebulous, unspecific and oblique. part of the reason why cohen's testimony last week was so believable and we see that now in the poll numbers was because he had documents to back it up. if there aren't a tremendous amount of documents that are clearly stating in either direction what happened here, it's hard to know who is going to be telling the truth and that's the problem with trump world. it's just hard to know who is telling the truth at any given moment. >> thank you so much for being with us. as we discuss michael cohen, this quinnipiac poll pol that came out really is enlightening,

especially when you look at the republican efforts who tried to smear his name and call him a liar and ignore all charges against donald trump and say we can't defend donald trump. so since we can't defend donald trump, we'll just attack michael cohen and call him a liar. well, that didn't work. the quinnipiac poll shows 50% of americans believe moen and his testimony, only 35% believe donald trump in the matters involving conflicts between what he's saying and what michael cohen's saying. very bad news for the white house. >> it is. and, mike barnicle, you have a man who is facing three years in jail. he'll be checking in to jail soon. he's pretty much lost everything and has been caught lying. and admits it. i think his testimony seemed credible and people felt something when they watched him. that doesn't mean anything. it's what me brought to the

table, the checks, now these documents he said he worked with trump's lawyers on, editing his initial testimony. those could be carried through as something that could hurt this president. >> there's no doubt about that but the poll numbers where more people believe or 60% believe that the president committed crimes prior to pursuing the presidency and a healthy percentage believe he has committed crimes after pursuing the presidency. i think within of the most disturbing things, mika, is you wonder what's going outin on out in the country. largely it seems to be these numbers doesn't shock people, they don't disturb people that much. basically how about a second cup of coffee after they hear the numbers. it's pretty disturbing. >> i'd point out that the 35% in the poll that believed drpt over

michael cohen, that's pretty consistent with the 35, 36, 37% that donald trump never loses no matter what happens in a given news cycle. so it mirrors very closely the disapproval and approval ratings throughout the entirety of the trump presidency. >> so, mike, we're going to talk about what happened to the house in a minute but the story just broke on the "new york times" about joe biden that i wanted to talk to you and peter baker about. joe biden is preparing for a run in 2020. his staff people are reaching out to get all the advisers, to get the team they need together to run. and he seems to be inching forward towards making that decision and yet if you read the new york ci the "new york times" article, there's as many questions raised by joe biden about whether he's going to run, the big question

that donald trump will not stop at anything to destroy someone and he says he doesn't want to run a fool's errand and is questioning his place in this new democratic party. any insight there are a lot of potential candidates on the sideline waiting for him to make his decision. >> i think the last 10% i think has less to do with some of the things that have been publicly, fear of his family being involved, given from unfair lirr at any moment in time. i think that's less of a hesitant factor for the vice

president than internally in the democratic party. if and when he does announce for the presidency, how many in the pool for president and how many democrats currently elected around the country and sitting in the house of representatives specifically attack joe biden as sort of being the conservative right-wing democrat. that's not who he is. he will have to go through that trial by fire if he announces because in a will almost certainly happen given what's happened in recent headlines, joe, in the house of representatives. >> so it's just the nature of the beast unfortunately where we sit in the media culture in 2019 going into this 2020 election. you know, if somebody on the the far right makes a lot of noise, then we're going to report on steve king and it's the same thing on the left.

if representative omar continues making kmnts that are perceived as anty semitic smears, we'd cover thattin stead of the freshman who did such a my point being all the attention always runs to the extreme and all the urgency and the innocent is that democrats prefer a moderate tend in. i wonder if joe is too busy reading headlines and not looking at the poll numbers. democrats within i wonder how much is different by the underlying concern for democrat,

that and obviously there's an argument that someone who straddles in the middle in and don't know if that helps for a primary. you talk about a potential biden run and they note, one, he's historically had a lot of difficulty raising money. and, two, he has a can be problem at being because you can point to votes, you can countin some of by you're really doesn't fit in with the current zeit geist of democrats. he will start outname and he'll will have to answer for a lot of

the legislation that he authored pack in time to see how he maneuvers through that very tricky terrain. >> it is tricky terrain i will just say with joe biden's past voting record. what i said about any problems that elizabeth warren may have had regarding her heritage, voters are looking to the future. they're a lot more concerned with what you're going to do in the future than what you did in the past. you know, i talk about representative omar and the controversy brewing right now over her continued use of anti-semitic tropes and, yes, that's my opinion and i think it's most people's opinion that they are in fact anti-semitic tropes, but jonathan wrote pa new column for "new york magazine" writing can -- it's

become a kind of totem of eye doo has pro deuce an outbreak of ant oo semitism the democratic party is for and it's been a depressingly illuminating experience. the democrats are a multi-culture party that's built a strong. as well as the majority. those high standards can only exist if they are maintained. willie, i thought it was poignant that this column was actually posted before democrats were pressured to postpone their

resolution condemning it eke to me at least, disturbing. we see anti-muslims comments all the time and we condemn them and have long condemned them, as have most person outside of the washington ruling class of the so you would think there you would also think they wanted to and victimize themselves with all of these anti-muslim and anti-jewish tropes and get out there and make a strong statement on anti-semitism.

>> i think because of the pattern of comments from congresswoman omar, it's not that hard to say we have to put a stop to this. we have to put a resolution together that condemns andy semitism. congresswoman omar is a smart, accomplished 38-year-old i believe woman who is sort of being infant alliesed. she knows she's a smart woman. she knows what who and eugene you are righting about this this morning. it what about a picture in west virginia in a showed a picture of congresswoman that was horrible should be what about the president teaking side which

most people agree, should be -- they have seen data and surveys showing significant groups within the democrat being party or at least the left actually do have some concerns about mrk's foreign policy with israel. there was a poll this fall in "the economist" that showed that several voting block affiliated with the democratic party have been increasingly critical of israel and have expressed concern about the relationship between mrk's government and the israeli government, including women and millennials and people of color. so there really is a desire to swu in the it was and that your

having a hard time all of has to interests and this want to we still know that more and 70% of jewish americans back the democratic party in 2016 and while some have come out and supported her and joosh vk so that the way the democratic party is responding to omar is appropriate. >> you know, sam, it to, that run as as in my political roar

and in moo is that every bit as offensive as saying that i can't believe the united states has asp there is an ant oo submit being undertone to that if democrats aren't skillful enough to attack yu yu without say if -- that supports israel welfare reform, then they doesn't too service to it nn. >> this is o obviously a have tricky, you're it's been difficult to engage in from a reporting stand point and a kmn

and whether she intentionally go did at any time it has been offensive and it been the hard to watch the difficulties, they may not understand how much jewish lip rals and that might not be racenating to to u.s.-are hgs the so so the have to be a

about the understand but it permeates our politics in ways that people don't totally appreciate. . ed this but woo have to step back and realize a huge policy that drf and he pushed it aid made it into law -- >> sam, but we understand that! around the country everybody as talked about that. >> why ehall and so think for a lot season oo.

>> i have to tell you here, those muslim bans were made twice. >> the origin of the bans -- >> they were overturned republic peatedly. what's in a? >> yes, you're right about that but still, you can acknowledge that literal eed around a lit e little -- >> so what does that -- what does that have to dida, a frsh man but when they go low, we go high and show americans there is a different between when kp the degree to which w internalized

and high and we haven't -- >> it created a law basically. >> but, sam, we have not embraced anti-muslim bigotry. in fact, it is call ot the because of donald trump globe and hit attitudes toward fwlon white been star familiar will bass maybe willie, i'm missing something oo about it is can con

don mcgahn not on just in past wook jim jordan. yes, they and put an. "mccarthy said look at these jews with their ju, money trying to find a or whether it left wing or right wing or people in the middle. this is not hard be it. >> there caucus and they walked out of there without a roos and it seems to a lot of us that it will if can can can if could

could that showed come wong owe marv and then you can con don mcgahn raesism when you see it. >> i want to get back to sam on this. is tro proo and wool get back to on this and tun this conversation. but woo need to got to this next story and our next guess. >> in a thoor s skt kirstjen nielsen over of whenever illegal immigration it and i question had had her about the tanand the straugts's practice.

>> to my knowledge, cpp never prettyly -- private -- >> they're not koch. >> -- if we two gangs, we separate them into separate areas into that facility. if we have a father and son, we go through -- >> no, no, we're not going to go through the semantics. you dids too. all have you had to to so johnson nt now, democratic congresswoman lauren underwood of illinois. thanks so much for being on. this was so frustrating to watch. did we learn anything that would give you and the rest of the

committee a great are understanding of the administration's policy? >> well, what's clear to me coming out of the hearing yesterday is secretary nielsen was unle to be candid and up front about what's going on at the border. she wanted to debate what's a cage. it's clear from the imaging coming out of these facilities that learn was unwill go psychological trauma the churn under go when we started we have evidence that suggest these are long-term health impacts that these children now favorite on us now. the the i fear what we don't

know of what's going at the bored are and these facilities. did she ever share with you the numbers of chrn separated from their families and the number of children in custody at this time? >> no, i haven't received any of the numbers. >> so she didn't even come with the numbers? i mean, this question has been asked from this government time and time given, how many times he's such stch so she and she downprovide any from her folder. >> the number of children being separated, the number of folks being detained at the bore are. in it's critically important. >> joe. >> i don't think woman, what was so impressive about your lie

lien instead political attacks, you you'llly talked about the fat high sky trysts and or medical community but also you worked at h.h.s. before coming to congress. >> that's right. i believe in data driven, evidence-based policy making. i would suggest the incumbent pact faj tahjing and and so coming out of the hearing yesterday, we still don't know what she knew before implementing the policy or if they were just so negligent to consider the impact on the children and their families moving forward. but either way i'm uncomfortable. >> i don't think wong to you

just tell because you know it and some policies makers obviously know it, but could you just tell our viewers briefly what are those long-term impact for the children? >> we know they are at risk for physical illness like cans are and chronic disease. even if the children are later reon itsed w parents, this idea of toxic stretch and the trauma they've undergone in their time in detention and federal custody will have long sweeping chronic and cumulative impact on their his. we want to make sure there is a plan in place to take care of these children that we can forward plan. congresswoman be the day before the harring where secretary

niels i don't know a forced the month of february, near liver doubling year over year from february. was it your impression despite that statistic that secretary nielsen believes that their deterrent policies, such as they call them, are actually working? >> well, i have to say that secretary nielsen was very clearly sticking to her script. her script of talking points acknowledging that there was a need for this type of extreme action that doesn't reflect american values. and so this late-breaking data unfortunately was not backed up by the date that she provided in her testimony. >> congresswoman lauren underwood, where does this go from here? what do you plan to do with what you learned and didn't learn yesterday? >> it's our responsibility of providing oversight over the

department of homeland security to be sure the resources that congress is authorizing are being used to truly strengthen our border security to protect the american people. coming out of this hearing, i do believe there are many doubts about secretary nielsen's ability to implement this policy consistent with american values and utilizing these resources as well. we're going to continue to dig into the facts and hold her accountable. >> congresswoman, thank you. let's go to msnbc contributor victoria defrancesca-desoto. and "border hustle one family's

treacherous trip through the migrant's smuggling industry" by jay root. >> you have a story that represents clearly most of the people trying to escape where they live in honduras, guatemala. tell us who these people are and tell us their story. >> we hear a lot about caravans. they're not tracked in donald trump's twitter feed. they're going deep into debt, spending everything they have and enriching an increasingly sophisticated network of coyotes, stash houses, 18-wheeler drivers and then when they do get across the border, a lot of them think they're going to be home free but then they

end up in the u.s. detention industry and that's another multi-balanced industry. one of the big ironies here is that the people that aren't allowed to work in the united states, i mean, that's the whole point of keeping them out so they're not able to work here and the economy, they end up working inside these detention facilities which then don't have to pay for janitor, they don't have to pay for cooks and that end up increasing their bottom line as well. it's a multi-million dollar industry on both sides of the border. >> what about the danger involved in these treks? >> it's very dangerous. the main family that we did profile in this piece essentially got kidnapped when they got to raynosa,ets o it's kidnapping capital of mexico.

they weren't free to go until they paid $3,000 basically and then they got the password and they were allowed to cross in this boat and they turned themselves in and they thought now we go turn ourselves in to border patrol, they had no idea they were going to get separated from each other, this father and daughter. >> victoria, the story that jay is describing is the story of a father who chose to bring along a young child on a very perilous journey. yesterday we listened to secretary nielsen condemn families that make this choice. from your vantage point as a professor of public policy in texas, how has the fundamental nature of the cross-border flows changed over the past two decades or so from primarily male, men seeking employment in the united states, to more family crossings and why are these choices being made?

>> right, elise. we've seen a paradigm shift. in the obama administration, we had economic migrants, young males coming over to seek work. if they were caught, they would be removed usually under expedited removals. but now we see families coming. the migration from mexico has dipped down dramatically and now you have family units who are asylum seekers and given our asylum laws, we can't do expedited removals and how our law applies to them has changed. we have this overflowing population of migrants who are stuck in detention and president trump is trying to fight the immigration as if it were 2000

or 2012 season. but this is a total sea change. if we really want to do something about immigration, we need to rethink our solution. number one, a wall is not going to do anything. it's more about figuring out do we provide other pathways for legalization through temporary work permits, do we work with mexico for third-party asylum. we need to think about the solutions for the problems we have now, not the immigration problems we had yesteryear. >> i'm so worried that the problems created by this white house have created some real human rights issues at the border. what did you think of the testimony of the homeland security secretary yesterday? >> there's a reason why they call the retaining cells in spanish what means a dog kennel. we have been putting immigrants

in these, quote unquote dog kennels for a while. it came to light when the children came over. this is not right, even if it's just single males we're putting in and weep immediate to go back and think through our migration policies and asylum policies. let's remember that we started formulating our asylum and refugee policies in response to our failures in world war ii and during the crisis in world war ii when we weren't accepting jewish refugees. we need to talk a long, hard look at ourselves, not a republican issue, not a democrat being issue but how do we treat these families. >> thank you. sam stein, a final word to you. >> just to go back to representative omar, it's a profoundly difficult issue to

discuss being it's been very disheartening to watch it unfold on twitter and now being part of it. i will say i want to clarify as a jew, i take what she says as painful and insulting. she used anti-semitic tropes. i watched people say she didn't and i think they're objectively wrong. she used word and phrases that have commonly been used to attack jewish people. the issue is incredibly complex. she's using valid points that the influence that apac has on politics and whether or not we're in a productive relationship with israel for us and for the state of israel. while it's difficult to pack this all in in a ten or 15-second sound bite -- well, actual. >> well, actually, i think it's

simple and would be simple for her to say i'm sorry, i'm sorry people are hurt by what i said. you just said you were. it's fair that she might not understand that and she might have valuable -- >> that is true but it is a complicated that demands more nuance that it is given. it's almost required that you have a larger conversation because that's what she's trying to get at. >> sam stein, thank you so much. we'll talk more about this. still ahead, congressman adam kinzinger, what he told the president yesterday in a face-to-face meeting at the white house. we'll be right back. >> if you cross the border illegally, we will prosecute you. it's that simple.

if you smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child may be separated from you as required by law. this is not a bed...

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we're working to make things simple, easy and awesome. i just wanted to funnis our conversation that weave been having with sam and others. we'll talk about it the next time he's on the show, but again, this is not complicated. sam kept saying it's complicated. this is not complicated. i can criticize germany's immigration policies without engaging in slurs. i can engage in criticism of great britain and brexit without, you know -- without attacking people personally. and so this is not complicated. if somebody in the democratic or the republican party want to criticize israel's policies and netanyahu and i certainly put me

in line to do that, then they can do that, but they can do that without questioning the loyalty to america of those who like myself support israel and israel's right to exist. and the belief that there are still people who want to drive israel into the sea. so whether the anti-semitism is coming from kevin mccarthy or whether it's coming from representative omar in a tweet those have to be condemned. people are doing a grave disservice to this debate to suggest it's somehow complicated to talk about your differences with israeli foreign policy or domestic foreign policy and that you can't do that without anti sematic smears. now to this story. aaron schock resigned ahmed a federal investigation into his high spending lifestyle.

triggered off the "washington post" spoke about his expensive office decorations, inspired by downtown abby, in 2016 a grand jury indicted schock on 24 felony counts alleging he abused his government and campaign accounts, committed wire fraud and mail fraud, falsified sec filing, stole government funds, made false statements and filed a false tax return, charges that carried years in prison. but yesterday, prosecutors dropped those charges, cutting a deal that schock must pay back back taxes to the irs, return 68,000 to his campaign fund, and have his campaign committee plead guilty to a misdemeanor count of failing to report expenses. the deal leaves schock with a clean record, and former republican congressman aaron schock joins us now.

that's quite an intro. >> it is. it's been quite a four years. >> soex pla explain to us, do ye responsibility for what went wrong in your office? >> i do and i said that four years ago. i was very focused outwardly on serving the 205 towns i represented, legislative work on capitol hill, running around the country and i should have done a better job overseeing the use of my campaign and government funds and i said then i wanted to seek restitution and making amends for whatever mistakes occurred but i also said that i was confident that neither i nor anyone on my staff committed any purposeful crimes. nobody was trying to put money in their pocket or do anything wrong and so the government started invest gaigating me foro years. when the government realized there were no crimes they branched into everything related to my life. thi

they used 30 federal agents. they flew in witnesses to testify in the grand jury, my mother, my father, all my good friends, my business soeassocia when i was 18, and it became a massive phishing expedition and when they did charge me they charged me with 24 felonies. 100 years in prison and your life immediately shrinks. people that you thought were friends aren't. your opportunities to make a living shrink and frankly in america it's not the presumption of innocence. >> i want to ask, how old were you when you were elected? >> to which office? 19 to the school board. 27 to congress. >> okay. and we have a lot of young people starting out in the midterms. i'm just wondering, what can you speak to in terms of what

happened toward what went wrong? what happened in your head? what happened that led to putting yourself in this situation? i understand you have some issues with a lot of things but about what your role or where do you think you became misguided or got caught up? >> two things. there were mistakes that i could have done better job of overseeing my office. i also think when you are the youngest member of congress as i was and you're very high profile as i was and you do things that are nontraditional, by the way, that aren't illegal. being on the cover of men's health gets you a lot of attention. being one of the first members of congress ten years ago that was on instagram gets you a lot of attention. now some of that stuff is not as sizz sizzlely. so the traditional media latched on to that. so when you're high profile, anything you do obviously

attracts more attention, and so people said oh, he's flying around on private planes. yes. but so does most of the elected leadership in congress. so when i fled to 42 congressional districts in the month of october before i resigned it was for other candidates and it was perfectly legal but some in the press corps said wait a minute, what's this young member of congress flying around to 42 congressional districts doing? >> there's some things i would do differently. maybe i shouldn't have been on the cover of men's health. but i would have would also say this, some of that allowed me to do things other members of congress couldn't do. i could meet with most ceos in american because they said that's the youngest man in congress, but the reality is if you want to make a dumpbs youif you've got to do things different. >> i could be on the cover of

men's health. new face of obesity. this is your future. so -- but let me ask you really quickly, so they dropped charges against you after you were dragged through the mud for four years. they dropped and you've taken responsibility but ted stephens was charged and really wasn't vindicated until after he died. you could say john edwards went through hell before they dropped those charges. bob mcdonald went through hell before the feds dropped charges against him as well. i think we're seeing a trend here where the feds throw everything at elected leaders. they don't have what it takes to -- to bring it to a conclusion, and then they tell them to go on their way after destroying their lives. >> right. a couple of things that i learned in this process. one, prosecutors, federal prosecutors have something that members of congress don't enjoy, not even police officers enjoy and that is absolute and complete immunity in their job. and that is why the lead

prosecutor in my case has been proven to have lied in my case before the court. and that's not my opinion. the judge found that he has lied. this was two years ago and the same prosecutor is still employed by the justice department. the same prosecutor is still prosecuting. you and i would not only not be prosecuting, would not have our jobs, we would be prosecuted by the justice department. so what is the message when they don't hold their own prosecutors to the same standards as every other american. and the second thing is the grand jury process is a black box and the prosecutor and a kroerl court reporter. the second violation that we know this slew of prosecutors did they violated my 5th amendment rights. 11 different times on 11 different days and the only reason we know that is because

one of the grand jurors broke secrecy and told his banker in my community who then told me and i told my attorney, and the -- the government tried to deny it at first, but we would have never known that had i not been a high profile person in my community and this person was shocked that the prosecutor was doing it. we need a transparency in the grand jury process. we need some sunlight in that process because that's really how you cut down on some of the things that has occurred. >> so you were indicted on 24 felonies. these are not parking tickets we're talking about and if convicted you would have gone to jail for the rest of your life and then all of a sudden the federal prosecutors drop every one of those charges after years of looking into them. were you, number one, surprised that they dropped all of them and what's your understanding of why they so quickly wiped everything off the board and let you go? >> i would argue that it wasn't so quickly. >> i mean, that day when they said to you and said forget it

all, pay the back taxes and you i walked. that happened suddenly. >> what i would say rhetorically is you don't take 24 felonies and dismiss all 24 felony if you think you can get somebody on four, five or six felonies. so it is a complete repudiation of the case that was launched against me. the first prosecutor was removed for lying. the second prosecutor was removed for violating my 5th amendment constitutional rights. this is why it's cost me over $4.5 million. right? and so i've been three sets of prosecutors before they finally say you know what, never mind. and you know, people ask me, now what? what are you going to do with the rest of your life? well, it's the first morning i've woken up today that i'm not facing 80 to 100 years in prison. am i excited about that, sure. am i bitter about what has happened to me over the last couple of years? i think any american would.

and i think what you have to ask yourself is, our justice system shouldn't be is he a republican or a democrat. i got no problem with the political arena that i entered in and people writing bad things about me in the press. but when you try and take somebody's liberty away, that's a problem and i told my attorney this. i said you know what, i served in congress. some people might say congress is broken. you know what a broken justice system does? it takes people's liberty and life. those are two things our country was founded on and if we don't do something to fix our criminal justice system we should all be worried. >> what are you going to do now? >> i've actually gotten some text messages from former colleagues who said hey, come talk to us because we'd like to know what you think we should be doing to reform the system and i feel responsible to share my story and make some reform so that this doesn't happen to more people. as far as my life, i don't know. i think i'm still a young man at

37 years old, so now that i'm not a alleged felon, i think there will be more opportunities that i can explore. >> keep us posted. thank you very much for coming on this morning. >> thanks, guys. we're going to reset now for the next hour of "morning joe" which starts right now. >> homeland security investigation special agent martinez, he goes by d.j., and c.j. he said call me either one. >> marlin lockheed, the leading woman's business exec dif utive this country. >> and what we saw, what a name right now t. but what we just saw, we just left pleasure -- >> paradise. >> or paradise. >> we preesh appreciate it very >> well, good morning and welcome to "morning joe."

it is thursday, march 7th along with joe, willie and me we have nsnbc contributor mike barnicle. former aide to the george w. bush white house department elise jordan and peter baker and joe, it's good to have you back. we have a lot to get to this morning. >> well, i'll tell you what, mika, comcast, it's great to be back. you know, you have everything, i mean, i know donald trump doesn't like to talk about policy so much as he likes to talk about the news media or witch hunt, but if you look at the "washington post" and everything else, he is on a losing streak. i -- you know, i'm sure he'll try to spin it but i'm sure michael will tell you, he's probably going to be channelling yogi bear who said i ain't in no swamp, i just ain't hitting.

donald trump is not hitting in really the three key areas of his presidency right now, and the failures are out there for everybody to see. >> yeah. it's quite something. we're going to get to that in just a moment. we have so much going on. michael cohen's return to congress and the documents he reportedly gave lawmakers. homeland security secretary nielsen grueled on white house security. and kelly dodging questions about whether or not the president intervened to get security clearances for his daughter ivanka and son-in-law jared kushner and the democratic national committee barring fox news from hosting any presidential primary debates. we'll talk about that but we'll begin with what you just received to, joe. the "washington post" frames it as a losing streak for president trump on core promises from his 2016 campaign. quoting the post, trump is losing ground on top priorities

to curb illegal immigration, cut the trade deficit and blunt north korea's nuclear threats. setbacks that complicate his planned re-election message as a can do president who is making historic progress. the president came away empty handed from a second face to face summit with kim jong un and within 48 hours satellite images appeared to show that the kim regime was secretly rebuilding a long range rocket site. on tuesday, dhs announced that february had the highest total number of undocumented immigrants crossing the border in 12 years. showing a failure in trump's promise to secure the border nearly 800 days into his presidency. and on wednesday, the commerce department said the u.s. trade deficit in 2018 went above 891 billion in merchandise, the

largest in the nation's 243-year history due in large part to trump's trade war. joe, i mean, i don't know how he spins it, he'll try, but it's not looking good. >> well, yeah. and you know what's so fascinating about these areas about donald trump, these policy areas, we often talk about how donald trump just adopted the republican party. he just pretended to be conservative. he just like for instance he flip flopped on gun control. he was a very aggressive advocate of gun control for most of his life, and then suddenly he decided he was going to be republican and change. he was very much a believer in choice for women on abortion. he was pro choice all of his life. that changed. but willie, what we have here is grand failure on the core values donald trump has always believed in. you can talk about immigration and his anti immigrant zeal.

and i mean, how -- how much it has to sting donald trump this morning realizing that barack obama fixed the problem he inherited from george w. bush and for eight years illegal border crossings went down. barack obama made the situation better every single year and now this year of course, because of donald trump's policies, and perhaps maybe even the panic that it's caused, we're at a 12-year spike. you also talk about trade and we've kmentscommented here he'sa protectionist. economists have said he's out of his mind, that it's voodoo economics and yet here we have the largest trade deficit, trump's trade deficit is the largest in american history just like the federal debt. he promised to balance the budget. no, it's exploded to record levels. we also have the largest federal

overall debt in american history. this is -- he's not just doing worse than barack obama, he's doing worse than every american president and he's actually screwing up the -- a border situation that barack obama's administration improved markedly and they did so while being humanitarian about it. >> first of all, joe, it's great to have you back with us at the table. thinking about you all week. but to your point, all three of these areas that you just laid out, north korea, trade and the border, speak to donald trump's part of the deal falling apart. he sold himself during the campaign as master deal maker, master negotiator. we're going to stop getting ripped off by china. he said trade wars are good and easy to win. we see that's not happening now with $891.2 billion in trade deficit. he was just going to get in a room and by force of personality

get kim jong un to shut down his nuclear program. kim jong un leaves hanoi and goes right back to rebuilding a rocket site. at the border, the president's going to shut down the government and by force of personality force of will, he's going to get his border wall. that didn't happen as government employees sat and didn't get paid and suffered. so the big sales pitch as the master negotiator has not paid off and peter baker, i would ask you from the point of the view from the white house, do they feel they're on a losing streak? how do they feel about the way the president's performing when you look at the nbc poll has him at 46% approval? >> yeah, 46% is on the high end of the band. he's been in for these two years so in some ways they're feeling up. there are other statistics they would point to as being positive indicators, for instance the president had a number of business leaders yesterday talk about the labor shortage that the problem is no longer that there aren't enough jobs for americans but there aren't enough americans for the jobs.

that's obviously some good news compared to where we were just a few years ago. they'll point to not only the rising economy, they'll point to, you know, the elimination of isis in the last, you know, in the last you weeks and months. the president had a hostage into the oval office who just got rescued in yemen. so they'll point to those things that they consider to be signs of achievement and that the drawbacks and the setbacks that we're talking about here, you know, they always characterize as either temporary or the result of other people's issues, particularly democrats in congress for failing to work with the president and focusing on investigations rather than progress. everybody has their own narrative. when a president gets in trouble there's usually something they can point to where they feel like they're making progress, but the question is whether it ultimately drags down the public view of how that president is doing. >> well, you know, peter last week we had on the republican

governor of south dakota complaining about the trade wars were damaging her farmers across the state and urging the president to bring it to a resolution. these numbers showing a massive trade deficit, a record trade deficit, also will put pressure on the president as well. it's a narrative that he hates. what are the chances that this will move donald trump closer to striking a deal with the chinese, a global deal, sort of a global, so to speak with china, trade deal? >> yeah, the irony is that his tariff war with china has depressed the chinese economy which means they're not buying our products nearly as much as they were which means the trade deficit is going up rather than down. most economists say there are a variety of factors playing into that that are not donald trump's responsibility specifically and they also say the trade deficit is not the -- you know, the be all and end all measure of whether we're doing well as an economy, but the president has made it that. the president characterizes the trade deficit as a major problem

and so by his own metric, the metric that he himself set meaning that we need to bring that trade deficit down he obviously is not succeeding. you're right, i think it does put pressure on the president to go ahead and cut a deal with the chinese. there's talk about a summit meeting with jinping perhaps as early as this month. we asked limb him in the oval o how they're going and he said he expects there to be a deal. so he does seem to be moving toward a resolution perhaps of some of this tariff war. >> based on your reporting and your observations covering the white house, are we on the edge or are we into a process here where the president is reverted to what he has always been, a solo operator? in trump tower he ran his business, it was a family business. with the thinning out of the white house staff, how many people surrounding the president of the united states does he

listen to or are we into a process where it's only the president whose opinion and view counts and he carries for ward with very little insight from anybody else? >> it does seem he's surrounded these days with fewer contrary voices. people who are seeking to change his mind or give him alternate points of view or alternate theories of the case. more and more the people he has put in positions of power around him are people that will reenforce his ideas and many of them aren't really fully in place. they have the word acting in front of their titles and that of course doesn't lend anybody the confidence to be a more, you know, robust advisor to a president to stand up to a president where a president ought to have somebody stand up to them. acting means that you're on the hook at all times. he says he likes that. he wants people to be more, in effect, beholden to him without the kind of independent, you

know, confidence that can give them the ability to give him contrary advice. >> still ahead on "morning joe," only half of the american people believe michael cohen but that's pretty good when compared to the 35% who believe the president. we'll run through the key takeaways from cohen's testimony yesterday and the new documents he just handed over to members of congress. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. the follow up cat scan showed that it had gone to her liver. we needed a second opinion. that's when our journey began with cancer treatment centers of america. one of our questions was, how are we going to address my liver? so my doctor said i think we can do both surgeries together. i loved that. now my health is good. these people are saints. ha, they're saints. cancer treatment centers of america.

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so a lot has happened in the past 24 hours. a source tells nbc news that michael cohen has provided lawmakers with documents that show edits to the false written statements he made to congress in 2017 about a proposed trump tower in moscow.

at that time cohen and the president's legal team had a joint defense agreement. that donald trump's legal team made changes to his statements. >> mr. trump's personal lawyers reviewed and edited my statement to congress about the timing of the moscow tower negotiations before i gave it. there were changes made, additions. jay sekulow for one. >> jay sekulow says he stands by his statement that cohen's testimony is quote, completely false. the chair of the house intel committee adam schiff says lawmakers may request more documents from cohen who in turn said he will continue to cooperate. he came out yesterday saying it went well and he plans to do everything he can, joe. >> let's bring in emily jane fox. emily, obviously you've been following the cohen saga closer

than anybody or certainly as close as anybody. yesterday a fairly significant day, because donald trump of course said the campaign saying he didn't know anybody in russia. there was nothing to do with this trump tower now we're hearing his lawyers actually may have edited cohen's remarks and actually caused him to perjure himself before congress. >> reporter: one of the most stunning images of the past week was cohen entering capitol hill yesterday with three suitcases and a big file folder. i think that that, to me, was a moment that must have struck fear in president trump and his family and anyone who works in the trump organization. i know from my reporting that before his public testimony he spent time digging through boxes in a storage unit to find documents that backed up some of his claims and he spent this past weekend before he went back to capitol hill yesterday doing

some more document diving and that is what was able to -- to allow him to bring more documents yesterday about these kinds of edits and about communication he had with lawyers representing various members of the administration about the kinds of changes that they wanted to see made. >> you know, emily, this has been quite a personal journey for michael cohen who has felt betrayed by donald trump and the entire trump family. felt betrayed that rudy giuliani could go from saying he was a great lawyer to one of the biggest liars ever. to those republican members of congress all calling him a liar. how can we believe a liar sf that's all we heard. how can we believe you, michael cohen, your lawyer? i wonder what michael cohen thinks of this poll and what donald trump think of this poll and what republicans think of

this poll when asked, who do you believe more, michael cohen or donald trump sf donald trump at 35%. michael cohen convicted perjurer, 50%. give us some insight into his thinking on the fact that by more than double digits americans believe michael cohen far more than they belief donald trump. >> i mean, what a sad state of affairs that number is that the american public believes someone who admitted to lying to congress more than their own president of the united states. i think that cohen felt like he went to congress and did what he needed to do. i think the fact that he brought documents with him, those suitcases this week and the documents that he showed publicly last week, i think that is why you see the big discrepancy and i think that cohen was pleased with that, but i think, you know, there are still questions about his credibility. he still had to spend 16 hours in front of the house intel

committee. he spent seven hours being questioned publicly and nine and a half hours the the day before in front of the senate and i think he's exhausted. he's continuing to cooperate and in less than two months he still plans to report and so any kind of relief that he has about his testimony and the sort of switch in the way that the public thinks about him, i think is welcomed, but he still is facing some very serious things in short order. >> coming up on "morning joe," what's the difference between a cage that houses migrant children at the border and a cage that houses a dog? in the words of nielsen, we'll break down the words on capitol hill next on "morning joe." hill next on "morning joe.

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[ sighing ] ♪ oh my momma she gave me ♪ these feathered breaths ♪ ♪ oh my momma check in from afar with remote access. and have professional monitoring backing you up with xfinity home. demo in an xfinity store, call, or go online today. homeland security secretary kirstjen nielsen faced a grilling by lawmakers yesterday. nielsen appeared before the homeland security committee and members of congress did not hold back when it comes to donald trump's administration's policies including the use of cages to hold detained migrant children. >> are we still using cages for children? >> sir, we don't use children

for cages. in the border facilities that you've been to, they were not made to detain children. as the children are processed through they are in subparts of those facilities. >> madam secretary -- >> i'm being as clear -- respectfully i'm answering your question. >> yes or no, are we still putting children in cages. >> to my knowledge cdp did not put a child in a cage like this. >> purposely or whatever, are we putting children in cages as of today. >> children are processed at the border facility stations that you've been at, some of -- >> and i've seen the cages. i just want you to admit that the cages exist. >> sir, they're not cages. >> what are they? >> areas of the border facility that are carved out for the safety and protection of those who remain there while they're being processed -- >> so what did you do -- i

understand it's complicated. we have a big bureaucratic system, when you saw those pictures of babies in cages, what did you do? what did you do to just scream bloody murder up the chain to the president to say, i cannot represent an agency that is forcing its border patrol to do this? what did you do? >> so i went to the border, i spoke to the men and women there, i looked at the facilities myself. i talked to hhs to understand and visited their facilities as well to understand the care that they provide to the children once they're in their custody and then i spent a tremendous amount of time working with the northern triangle in mexico to stop the phenomenon closer to the source to help stabilize those areas so that the children and families are not traveling here. >> when you began family separation in spring 2018 were you aware of research showing it causes trauma that can do both

immediate and long-term damage to children's health? >> the information that i was aware of at the time was that the trauma is part of the journey to come up to the border illegally. >> were you aware that the traumatic effects don't go away even if a child is reunited with their family? >> i understand that they are -- no. >> the american psychological association reports that family separation is on par with beating and torture in terms of its relationship to mental health. were you aware of that research prior to instituting the policy of family separation? >> we -- there is no policy of family separation. >> there's a lot to dig three right there. obviously jeff sessions when he was attorney general said the zero tolerance was meant as a deterrent because if you came to the border you might get separated from your children, you wouldn't even make that attempt to cross the border pt nielsen has a problem though when she says there were not

cages. our reporters saw the cages. member of congress saw the cages. i think we have other photographs too. chain link fence with a roof on it and they're locked inside. i don't know how else to describe that. >> it gives me the chills to think about we're actually at the point as a nation, as a society where we have congressional members asking the secretary of homeland security, are these cages like we put our dogs in outside? which i would even argue that sometimes those cages are inhumane for animals and we're arguing over our children being subject to these conditions. and then you hear secretary niels nielsen, you know, representative underwood questioning her about the long-term psychological impact of this policy, and the trauma it causes on children, and i wonder what kind of human wreckage we are going to have to deal with in the years and decades to come because of this

administration's cruel and inhumane policy. >> my god. >> and mika, how remarkable that you had the secretary of homeland security not call -- she could not call a cage a cage. a cage is still a cage and give credit to those freshmen lawmakers that were questioning her. they did everything right that republicans when they were questioning michael cohen did wrong. it was -- it was very impressive, wasn't it? >> it was. i thought we saw actually some of the star freshmen women performing yesterday doing their duty, their service to this country, asking measured questions, not making a show of themselves, asking questions and showing the answers that were being made available to them which said more than anything we could ever understand about what's going on here. coming up on "morning joe," someone who knows the immigration issue from two unique perspectives. congressman adam kinzinger

joining us on the heels of his deployment last month to the border with the air national guard. the illinois republican sat down with the president yesterday and he joins the conversation next on "morning joe." they're our parents...

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to crystal clear hd video monitoring from anywhere. gig-fueled apps that exceed expectations. comcast business. beyond fast. joining us now, a member of the house foreign affairs committee. republican congressman adam kinzinger of illinois. he's a lieutenant colonel in the air national guard and yesterday he shared his experience from his active duty deployment to the southern border last month in a meeting at the white house with president trump. joe? >> hey, congressman, great to see you. >> what's up? >> we'll get to the border in one minute but want to talk about an issue that you and i have been concerned about for some time and that is syria. it looks like the president has listened to people like you, listened to concerns about leaving syria to the russians,

the iranians and assad and isis, and it looks like we're going to keep a presence there. what can you tell us about that? >> yeah, i think that's a good thing. we have to give the president credit for i guess seeing the light on this. and the reyality is our presenc will do two things looking to guard against the resurrection of isis. there will be an isis ii or an al qaeda iii. so when you look at that what do we do now? having 400 troops on the ground will be great for intelligence gathering to be able to see first signs of the resurrection of isis or a different group but it also is a blocking position. it straddled a very important highway in order to supply its allies against israel. so this the right move to do and i commend the president for making the decision. >> it's like our presence in south korea. those troops aren't going to stop an invasion from the north but they are a trip wire.

if anything happens to those 400 troops, they can be sure that 4,000 troops will be there in a week. >> or about a million. we have a presence in eastern europe against russia. russia can overwhelm those troops probably pretty quickly but they know within a week there's going to be the full combat power of the u.s. military behind them. it also gives the president of the united states a seat at the table when negotiating the end of the syrian war. >> i like that range, anywhere from 4,000 to a million. you choose, iran, before you make your decision. it may be closer to your million than my 4,000. lit's talk about the border. you've been down there and i've got a question for you that -- that sort of is perplexing to me and that is, we've all seen the number of border incursions dropped to record lows, at least the lowest in 50 years, but now there's been a spike over the past month or two and the

largest spike in 12 years. what -- what did barack obama do that donald trump is not doing and what's caused that massive spike? >> i don't know because i mean ultimately you're going to have to ask the people that are making the journey. part of it could be if they believe that this wall is coming and the barrier is coming they may make the journey now. time to get in before that comes up. literally yesterday on different media conveyances arguing for the wall, but they're arguing saying the border crossings are at a low. now they're at a high. these things are going to cycle but it's never going to end. i'm all for comprehensive immigration reform. i think if republicans and democrats were willing to give each side a win, we could solve this whole problem. unfortunately our parties are unwilling to do that. >> good to see you. talk about what you've seen. you've been down to the border and we should point out you were

deployed to the border with the air national guard. you weren't just walking along the border. you were actually down there serving. what exactly did you see and did it change your view at all of what's happening down there? >> i went down neutral on the idea of a national emergency. i came back supporting it. this is my fourth deployment to the border. three other times were in texas under president obama. so all these democratic governors that are pulling the guard, the guard is the technology that democrats claim they want on the border. they don't want a wall, they want technology. that's what the guard does. so what i saw was a number of groups obviously crossing. you would see the coyotes which are the guides from the cartel. they would leave these groups out in the middle of nowhere if they got spooked. you would see different people, if you see ones or twos going on, they'd always drop a bundle.

a lot of times those were drugs so drugs and human trafficking, the two main income sources for the cartel is exactly what's happening over the border and i think it's -- people may dislike donald trump but to deny that there is a problem on the border i think is doing all of us a little damage. >> you don't take the deployment of troops lightly having served in i iraq and afghanistan. i i know that general kelly yesterday was at duke university talking about where he differed from the president about the policy at the soeuthern border. >> there's a difference between troops being the national guard and troops being an active duty deployment. my guess is he's talking about the active duty. ear's what i understand. they had a flu outbreak in one of the detention facilities. active duties helped to treat the patients with the flu. things like hardening the ports

of entry which my friends on the other side of the aisle say is the ports of entry. so i think to just -- you can have an opinion against it. that is oofi that's fine. we need to analyze through through the context of what's happen. i want to fix immigration once and for all. border security is essential for that. >> elise jordan here, based on your mission you cited the levels of human trafficking and the amount of drugs coming in to the country. what has -- what is the increase? what has been the increase over the past year in the levels of human trafficking? >> well, you'll have to ask the statistical folks for that. border patrol has those numbers. all i know is what i saw. we are part of the overall operations in arizona. and i saw this happen. now, if i was there a year ago in the same capacity would i

have seen more or less? i don't know but i know it's happening and i know when you live in el salvador or the honduras and the cartel comes to you and says give us your life savings and we'll get you into the united states. they desert you and you could end up as one of the bodies found in the arizona desert. compassion is saying come to the united states, the general louse, the legal and the safe way. that's what we want to get to ultimately as a country. >> just to follow up on that, should victims of human trafficking face deportation and arrest if they report what has happened to them? >> so that's kind of a question that you're going to put me in a box to -- here's what i think. if you come to the united states illegally and you are arrested you should be deported period. now, when you talk about like a victim of human trafficking, a victim of human trafficking can be anything. it can be somebody who pays a human trafficker that pays

someone to bring them into the united states. that's almost everybody. this idea that the united states need to just -- anybody that comes here allow them into the united states, maybe i'm old school but i still believe there is a legal process to do that and that should be enforced. >> so instead of dealing with the root cause of human trafficking and human smuggling. >> that's not what i'm saying -- >> isn't that what you just said? >> no, what i'm saying is, if somebody -- i think we need to deal with, if we want to have a ten minute discussion about this i'll give you all the ideas i have. part of that is fixing the problem in central and south america and in mexico. part of that is going after the sources there. part of that is getting the message out to folks in el salvador that if you pay $6,000 to come the the united states it's not a safe journey. that's not the u.s.'s fault. that's the cartel's fault and i think all of this, both information, enforcement and everything is going to be key to this whole aspect. >> congressman adam kinzinger, thanks very much for being on this morning. now to this story.

alex trebeck has revealed that he's been diagnosed with cancer. in on online video the 78-year-old long time host of "jeopardy" announced he is battling late stage pancreatic cancer. >> normally the prognosis for this is not very encouraging, but i'm going to fight this and i'm going to keep working and with the love and support of my family and friends and with the help of your prayers also, i plan to beat the low survival rate statistics for this disease. truth told, i have to, because under the terms of my contract, i have to host "jeopardy" for three more years, so help me. keep the faith and we'll win. we'll get it done. >> trebeck says he shared his diagnosis publicly in keeping with his long time policy of being open and transparent with

"jeopardy"'s loyal fan base. the odds are very tough with pancreatic cancer but i loved his message. it was hopeful and joyful and generous. >> it was a great message, mika, and obviously this is something that's hit you personally and hit your loved ones personally and the fact that people say it's a death sentence, we shouldn't contribute to a cure for pancreatic cancer seems to me to be circular logic. we have to keep fighting. we have to keep trying. we have to get to a point where pancreatic cancer is not seen as an automatic death sentence. >> yeah, my friend tia fought so hard and she made it a few years. it was rough, but she made it and people should support the cause. up next, president trump threatens to boycott the presidential debates following a move by the dnc to steer clear of fox news during the primary

process. we'll talk about that with a former top white house staffer to president obama. alyssa mass ro mona alyssa mastromonaco, she joins the conversation next. i can't tell you who i am or what i witnessed, but i can tell you liberty mutual customized my car insurance so i only pay for what i need.

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what is the argument they are making and how does it factor in president trump's trade war. >> good morning. well hauwei is fighting back and they said what the u.s. government is doing it unconstitution. just to review, what happened was the u.s. government passed a law banning government agencies from buying telecom equipment from hauwei. and zte by the way. both chinese companies have been accused by the u.s. as stealing secrets, espionage and facing criminal charges by the department of justice and hauwei is saying you can't punish us in a law without due process. there is no official guilt by the courts. though that is going to be a tough battle because this is all in the interest of national security. how it relates to that the trade war, it is sort of a sub-plot because the back drop here is the temperature has been lowered between the united states and china on trade and reports indicate president trump really wants to make a deal and it could happen by the end of the

month. the tariff raetzs th-- the tari threaten to go on march 1st didn't go up on signs of progress by the u.s. and china. this is nor of a national security issue but no doubt it does factor in because it is part of the u.s. confrontation against china. also want to quickly mention amazon news,they have been experimenting with pop-up shots around the u.s. and it is a dud. they are closing all 87 of them by next month, that is april. the company said after review, it will focus more on groceries, book stores, and the four-star stores where they put up products with four stars on the website. they are not abandoning retail but clearly still trying to figure it out. >> cnbc sarah izen, thank you very much. and our next guest spent almost six years inside of the obama white house and said the experience of traveling the world and working on two presidential campaigns has taught her a number of valuable life lessons which she shares in

her new book. so here is the thing, notes on getting up and growing older and trusting your gut. joining us now, former assistant to president truobama and deput chief of staff at the white house from 2011 to 2014, alyssa mastromonaco. great to of you. >> thanks for having me. >> i just found out a fact, you were an unpaid volunteer for bernie sanders. >> in 1995. i was a french major with minor in japanese and i got the answer to answer foeb calls and drive bernie around burlington and i saw how government could work before the internet and social media. people called and some people's problems have been solved and it was magical to be honest. >> let's talk politics of today. you've seen a lot working in the obama white house and then watching the rest unfold

post-obama. what do you make of the dnc's decision on the debates and fox news? >> i was disappointed. i don't understand the strategy behind thinking that we're going to expand our base into the fox news audience when we really need to unite our own party and so now it is just this unnecessary controversy. president trump is tweeting about it. it is silly. >> joe? >> yeah, i'm so glad to hear you say that. i know this comes from somebody who four years ago said republicans shouldn't have a debate on msnbc. that is changed now. there are people that can i think run a very fair debate on msnbc. you could say the same thing about fox news. chris wallace and brett baer and shep smith. explain why that would be good to reach out to those that aren't democratic voters.

>> it could be good. chris wallace was my first ever interview and he was great and wonderful but all of the things to come out of the gate with, is that the one? >> yeah. >> alyssa i was -- >> go ahead. >> i was so excited to start reading this book. because it's funny. it's not about giving definitive answers about the moment in politics or the ways of the world but you share your personal experiences as a woman in politics and a working woman and an ambitious woman all of the hill airity that goes with it. >> right now everyone is so serious and so divided and everybody is sort of defined by their poll sicks. there is more that unites us. our common experiences and a lot of what i learned in public service, more so than campaigns, is that there are so many people who have all of the same

problems with all of the same funny experiences, who have split their skirt getting on marine one. you never know. >> have you done that? >> it happens. >> so what is the -- you say so here is the thing as sort of a polite way to get a conversation started. >> one of my jobs, i made a hundred decisions every day but we had to come up with ways to communicate president obama's message and policies and if you say that is a bad idea and no no no and you become the good idea goalie and people say forget it, alyssa is not -- and i would try to find a good in every point. so here is the thing. what if we did this with this instead and then people are like, oh, okay. >> that is a great technique. >> it is -- it brings people together more than sends them out of the room. >> something you talk about in the book, which i talk a lot about in know your value and my message to women is going with

your gut and would you add in real-time. >> yes. >> i think we struggle with that and you've obviously put it the in the title -- in the title and it is something you have worked on and have experiences to share. going with your gut in realtime in the moment when it really matters, how hard is that and why is that harder for women. >> because on the one hand we're often not given the benefit of the doubt. so -- >> and we feel that and we're thinking that in real-time. >> all of the time. it is in your head. and when you are given an opportunity or have a choice to make, if you don't want to do something and you're like well someone is giving me the benefit of the doubt does that mean i should just do it and take it. and so i do try to be thoughtful and take -- i usually can make most decisions in 24 hours. you feel it and you know. and so it is kind of been my way. >> i also think you have to go with your gut and push back in real-time. so here is the thing is a great way of starting that off. >> it is. and all of my brethren in the

white house, when they would hear "so here's the thing" they knew it was coming. >> it was a no but a polite no. >> with finesse. >> i'm totally using that. >> thank you. >> i'm going to read the whole thing but i got my first piece of advice. the book is "so here's the thing, notes on getting up and growing older and trusting your gut." alyssa mastromonaco. thank you. so many things to go over today in terms of final thoughts. where do you land. >> a lot of things to go over. we've talked bts losing streak that donald trump has been on and we heard from adam kinsigger and this might not have been a crisis months ago but who is a straight shooter, he's been down to the border and he said -- what he saw there was a crisis. >> he did. there are some statistics that alise brought up that might

contradict that point and he was down there in service in the air national guard as well. >> so here is the thing, i would say he used the word "problem" when he was answering the questions. but we'll leave it there. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> thank you, mika and joe. hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle, this morning all of the president's men. michael cohen back on the hill and handing over evidence against president trump in his latest congressional testimony. >> we have requested documents of mr. cohen. he has provided additional documents to the committee. >> that as paul manafort gets set to hear how long he'll be spending in prison when he heads to court today. and grilled on the hill, homeland security kirstjen nielsen is confronted by lawmakers in a contentious hearing on border security. lawmakers not holding back when it comes to the trump administration family separation