they're canceling flights through the summer season. southwest and american are canceling more than 200 flights a day through august. that wraps up the hour for me. thank you for watching. "deadline: white house" with nicole wallace starts right now. it's 4:00 in washington d.c. we're within about 17 hours of the release of a redacted version of the mueller report. nbc news is reporting that the president's legal team is huddling today to prepare their response for that total and complete exoneration the president celebrated a couple weeks ago. that was a joke obviously even the president's lawyers anticipated once a fuller picture was made public it would have a potentially damaging pattern of conduct from a president obstructing the special counsel investigation into the 2016 russian

interference in the election. with less than a day to go on the mueller report, all eyes on the explanation from robert mueller why he refused to exonerate president trump on obstruction and why he refused to proceed with the recommendation for prosecution. jay sekulow is spending the final hours before the report's release preparing a counter report. and trump's legal team is prepared to push back on substantive findings related to both collusion and obstruction and in line with the president's stepped up attacks against the mueller probe and the oranges of the investigation. the counter report will address so called irregularities and how it started in the first place. democrats are prepared to subpoena the unredacted version of the mueller report as early as friday. a brand new poll shows the majority of the americans didn't

buy much of donald trump's exoneration spin. nearly six in ten americans saying they believe trump tried to obstruct the russia investigation. that's where we start today with our favorite reporters and friends, ken vogel, eli stokeles, jeremy bash, elliott williams is here, and donna edwards rounds out our group. best for last, donna. let me start with you ken vogel. all eyes are on that explanation, which is expected to be included in the redacted release tomorrow of the 400-page mueller report about how robert mueller either failed to or refused to or was not able to come to any sort of verdict on the obstruction question. what sorts of -- sort of signs

are you looking for when that report first comes out in the morning around that question? >> well, first of all we're going to be looking at how much of that is redacted. that's an area i think there's potential for there to be less redaction because so much of the stuff is sort of already out there in the public and it will be using interviews that the mueller team did outside of the grand jury process with white house aides to kind of contextualize what we saw happening in real time, either real time on donald trump's twitter feed or real time in revelation sort of after the campaign related to, for instance, the response to the trump tower meeting in june of 2016. so we will both be hopefully having a lot of information to choose from. and also being able to see who was saying what, which i think will be of great interest, not just to us, the reporters, but to the man in the white house,

who is really interested in making sure that his aides around him are loyal. so i think what they are hoping is that there will be so much on other aspects of the report, from, you know, paul manafort and the investigation into him, to the pro-russian ukrainians, that the focus on obstruction will be somewhat diluted and allow for the trump folks to say no collusion, no obstruction, drive a simple message and turn it around on the investigators and say there was bias and focus on the orbegins of the reports and hope whatever the news is that comes out on the mueller report is so die fus that there's no clear message that is a bombshell that would be adverse to him. >> i'm sure, eli, that ken is spot on in terms of what the white house is hoping for. the problem with that strategy is that's all known. it is already known. and we put up that poll because the people that are going to buy

the total exoneration story have bought it. they didn't need to see the underlying evidence, the 400-page report, they heard it from the president and bought it. what the six in ten americans who didn't buy that will see is potentially politically very damaging. >> this is still a political battleground. that's where this is being fought. the president believes this is no longer an existential crisis for his presidency, they believe the top line, no collusion, no obstruction is enough to sell it to the voters and the media and democrats issuing subpoenas, people working for the special counsel -- they can portray them as on a politically motivated witch hunt. when you're dismissing the report saying you don't need to see that, you just need to see the top line. if you're going to validate mueller's conclusion it would only make sense you'd be okay with people looking at 400 pages of investigative materials how

they reached that conclusion and it's going to be not a black and white picture for people. you're right to point out that public opinion has not moved. it hasn't moved much throughout the entire presidency as much as a roller coaster as it's been. we'll have to see, but i don't know that we'll get anything tomorrow that will change public opinion. the president sees it, knows it's a huge tv event, he will be watching tv, he has a lot of attorneys in the white house and out working to insulate him politically, brief him in the white house. he's going to be sitting watching tv and getting that feel of what the media is seizing on, what the takeaways are and you'll see how upset he is by how much he tweets. >> he's going to be watching tv said no one ever about the last three presidents. let me know what we know from the summary of the report.

attorney general barr said the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question op obstruction and leaves unresolved what the special counsel views as difficult issues of law and fact concerning whether the president's actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction. so it doesn't say there's evidence on both sides of the obstruction question. it sounds like there's evidence of conduct -- the defense can't be that he did it outloud and then the insulation be he did it outloud. their defense is he did it out loud, barr said we know much of it but on the other side of it will be question of law. what will that look like? >> this is the pre-game huddle, first of all, nicole. put our hands in the middle and affirm a couple things. let's avoid frames like bombshell, what's new. i knew that already that can't be reported because that was reported by the daily beast 16 weeks ago. we have to zoom back and look at what's happening at this moment

in our democracy. special counsel is going to be issuing a report on the conduct of a presidential campaign, a candidate and a president ultimately that amounts to a heap of shameful, unpatriotic and unethical conduct where the president sought russian interference, received russian interferen interference, benefitted from russian interference and rewarded russian interference. whether the special counsel decided that don junior didn't have the mental capacity -- i use that term specifically -- because he didn't have the intent -- whatever the basis for saying a crime wasn't committed is important to know. it doesn't fundamentally change us arriving at this moment. where for two years the country has had to under go this trauma, i think a trauma, of a president who has done this with the knowledge that the russians could have leverage over american foreign policy. >> let's slow down. i want to bring ken vogel in, because i think he used the word

bombshell because i said what are you going to look for, ken, when this first comes out. that's right. you and your colleagues and "the washington post" and you and your colleagues and -- every news organization has covered this in terms of trying to explain to our viewers and your readers what is new but you put a wiser and saner frame around this. people talk about the politics of impeachment before we've even seen it. will there be any effort to put politics aside for a minute, do you think, jeremy, and say what are we looking at? what is this picture? we cover this as this binary thing, mueller looked at whether there was whiting coordination and conspiracy with russia. john brennan testified that whitingly or unwittingly, the russians were all over the campaign. we've gone so far in terms of parsing this out, but the big picture disturbing on every

level. >> this begins and ends as a national security question. at the beginning, at the e. it's a question of what leverage does a foreign adversary power potentially have over the american president, american presidency and american foreign policy. i think we'll learn some of that tomorrow. whether or not the president gets a temporary bump or downgrade in the polls is irrelevant to our national interest. the broader question is how can america stay strong, stay safe, prevent it from happening again and how do the american people and congress hold an administration accountable for what it did to allow russia to have leverage over us. >> ken vogel let me bring you back in on this broader question of what tomorrow is and what we'll learn tomorrow that we haven't seen in the 22 months that robert mueller has been functioning prett pretty opaque

way? >> i agree the broader picture is this is a historical document that sort of puts all these things together, perhaps in a way we haven't seen before. although it's important to point out that the redactions could potentially minimize or reduce the impact of the sweep of the report, and so when i'm talking about a bombshell, i'm talking about something that comes out of it that could really drive news coverage and get under the president's skin in a way that wouldn't necessarily be the case if it was the big take away ultimately was this is a troubling pattern here, a lot of which we already knew but put it together and it says something about the way that russia intervened in our election and something about the current administration and the president and his mindset and the way that his team works. all those things i think are important, but again, the way that our news cycle functions

and the way that so much of this has been covered without a real big shiny object that emerges as the thing or maybe even a few things can you see how this might get lost in a battle of finger pointing and sort of framing and that's certainly the goal of trump and the trump lawyers. >> the view from the democrats, it seems to be, nancy pelosi has taken impeachment off the table but i reminded someone what my eight years in in the bush administration were liked. i turned over all my e-mails four times. emmet flood was the white house lawyer for a couple of those, the later ones where i had left. but there's a lot between answering some of these questions that ken and jeremy and eli are talking about and impeaching the president. >> as one of the attorneys who worked on the -- >> you read my e-mails? >> i read your e-mails and i

apologize. here's the thing. in a functioning, working democracy we should have separation of powers, it's a co-equal branch of government and it made us all better. the whole concept of presidential harassment it's a disgrace and a way of undermining congress' role and ability and vital function in our government of stamping out waste and fraud and abuse and making sure our government is working better. something i may have said on your show before is my former boss, sally yates, we welcome congressional oversight because it helps us do our jobs better as the united states department of justice. >> what do they do tomorrow? what do the democrats do tomorrow? >> we'll see what's in the report. remember it's not just in the democrats, congress voted 420-0 to see the full report. not just the report, the report and the findings that sort of led to the conclusions.

so republicans ought to be eager to see -- >> republicans ought to do a lot of things. >> they ought to do a lot of things. i hope we're still in a functioning democracy but so many norms are violated and it. it gets back to jeremy's point. it's comeri or no crime, collus, quote/unquote, even though collusion doesn't appear in the federal criminal code, and is the president mad or not. what we need to be assessing is were there violations of the public trust by a presidential campaign or by a president of the united states. that is the cancer that we need to at least understand what went on. we know there was an intent to obstruct. you can't criminally charge it, but that's the important question here. and that's getting lost in this collusion or no collusion

dichotomy or binary is the word you used. >> yeah. >> it's more than that. it's was there misconduct? i think that question has been answered already. >> donna, i have posited the opposite to lots of people. this is a pure political win for trump, polls are unchanged, he would have said that no matter what, and if the opposite had been true, if mueller found he participated in a criminal conspiracy with the russian and he obstructed justice, i'm not sure we'd be having a different discussion. jim comey and nancy pelosi said impeachment is off the table. the president's base would believe what he wants them to believe. he's programmed them for so many months to believe the whole thing was a witch hunt. where do we go after tomorrow? >> the 60% of people who want to

see the report, tracks the 60% disapproval of the president. so we know that this is pretty flat lined. but i think -- i thought this was never a question just of criminality because even impeachment isn't just about criminality. it's about norms of behavior and it's about a violation of the public trust. all of those things to be sure. so i think even for democrats tomorrow, one, digest the report, but keep in mind this is a big piece of the puzzle that's added to that, the subpoenas that's ongoing, the oversight that's ongoing. that isn't going to change. i think if anything, there's that narrow slice of the e leg or t electorate that wants to see a conclusion. but the base, those numbers aren't going to change. if you look at conspiracy, one of the things we might learn in the report is that even if it didn't rise to the level of a criminal conspiracy, it was

really bad stuff going on. even if it doesn't rise to the level of obstruction, we're not clear about that even yet but there was bad stuff going on that is not presidential, that is not democratic and those are all things that are important to know in any investigations that are going forward. >> i want to ask you about william barr. because so far all we know about this report, it would allow the president to brand total and complete exoneration was the barr summary report. rachel maddow covered this last night and we're getting to it after her, of course. on friday the 13th, october 1989, the same day as black friday market crash, news leaked of a memo by william barr. members of the congress asked to see the full legal opinion, he refused but said he would provide an account that summarized the principle conclusions. when the opinion was made public it was clear that barr's summary failed to close the opinion's

principle conclusions. are we see ago replay of that? >> we are. now we know that barr has a 30-year track record with a 19-page memo recently reinforcing that. and i think it raises some serious questions about whether barr can be an effective arby or the arbitor of what appears. i think we'll end up seeing the report. >> there's a legal analysis here, that it doesn't lend itself to a cliff notes version. every time i hear summary, i want to put air quotes around it because it's not. when the supreme court quotes cases they quote paragraphs and paragraphs of text because you have to have the underlying analysis -- when do you these four page summaries of 300 page

documents you're going to run into trouble that the attorney general got himself in over the last couple weeks that we've seen. >> it was fewer than 100 words in that four page summary. >> ken i thought i heard you jump in, i want your thoughts on this and i want to ask you another question among barr. he has at best has a grave reputation problem among the 60%. put the mueller report aside, and hope springs eternal that we'll see more than we think tomorrow, but there's that conspiracy rabbit hole of spies in the campaign and whatnot without being prepared to share with congress the evidence by embracing the president's hard line immigration policies he made clear ask and you shall receive. this president wanted a roy

cohen, he wanted an assault that devin nunes has been doing in congress. does william barr walk in without a chink in his armor? >> i think he has a target on his back from democrats. and the first wave i think of oversight or democratic reaction will focus on the content of the report and figuring out if there's anything there that is deeply problematic for the president or fuels ongoing lines of oversight then we'll see if there's not or if the redactions are so extensive as to limit the ability to interpret and draw any real conclusions, then we'll see a push to get more of the report and then i think we'll see some real scrutiny of barr, whether his characterization in this summary matches up with the findings. whether they think -- whether it appears as if he put his thumb on the scale to weight it one way or another in that summary or in the redactions.

and then we'll see it move onto the already existing and percolating concerns about his claims of spying, because that's sort of the next front here. the trump team is going to be trying to turn this around using their counterreport to push a narrative that calls into question the very origins or oranges as you said of the investigation -- >> i didn't say it. the president said it. >> right. and i think that barr -- you know, barr sort of gave them fodder for that. he played into this narrative saying there was spying, and that's something that the trump folks want to push. i think he's given democrats a lot of reason to be skeptical of his ability to be an honest broker in this. >> jeremy? >> can i address the issue of the attorney general addressing lawful surveillance as spying. he knows better. he told me so. in 2007, 2008, he was lobbying

congress, we were engaged in a rewrite of the fisa legislation, and he was saying directing to engage in surveillance should be immune. and we had many conversations, this was predicated, this was lawful, approved. there was a distinction between lawful and authorized service and unlawful and unauthorized surveillance. he knows better than to say in front of congress what they did was spying. >> i think so much of what we're going to see, it's all in the eye of the beholder, donald trump is not the root of this, but he's come about and taken hold because of the tribalism, the division and he's accentu e accentuataccentuat accentuated it and made it worse. so his goal is to get everyone to see everything through a partisan lens. he has a cabinet, that's the price of doing business and working in the donald trump cabinet is complete sub serve

yens to a man, not the balance of powers. that's what we're talking about around this table, something all americans need to process and understand before they look at everything through a tribal and as the president wants them to do, did my team win because it's bigger than that. after the break, attorney general william barr's embrace of donald trump as we've been talking about extends beyond putting his finger on the scale of the mueller probe. barr announcing he'll hold asylum seekers in jail indefinitely. ahead, trump triggered like a jealous high school boyfriend, he's been stomping his feet for 24 hours about bernie sanders appearing on his channel, fox news. and elizabeth warren is cashing in on her wonkiness. how her campaign is turning progressive policies into big dollars. all those stories coming up. dollars. all those stories coming up. .

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that protects what's important. and reaches everywhere. this is beyond wifi. this is xfi. simple, easy, awesome. news. senior justice department official just confirming something to us, that donald trump announced in a radio interview a little bit ago that attorney general barr will give a press conference tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m. around the same time we expect the mueller report to come out. eugene robinson is joining our conversation. this was not planned late last night. this was possibly being batted around. this seems to me, and we don't have it reported out yet, to be

a move that the president -- if he's going to announce it himself in an interview, will help shape the coverage of the mueller report. >> yes. he wants to shape the coverage, he wants as said to make it a partisan issue and he wants to get out in front of it, if possible. >> it's no longer the mueller report. it's now the two guys, barr and rosenstein who i'm told will join him who put their finger on the scale spinning the decision they made when they made the decision about obstruction which mueller wouldn't do the mueller report. it's no longer the release of the mueller report. >> we'll have to see how much of the evidence about obstruction gets past the redactions. most of it should. it's not grand jury stuff it happened on television, on twitter. it happened -- you don't need a grand jury to see the obstruction. and so that's one of the first things i'm going to look for is

the weight -- is there a preponderance of the evidence on one side or the other -- >> what do you need barr and rosenstein for if that's all that you're looking through? what's that move? >> i don't know. >> ken vogel jump in here. it seems like an extraordinary development to have an attorney general who wasn't there for the duration of the mueller investigation, his deputy rod rosenstein will join him we understand, but if the whole point was to take the sacred undertaking, the mueller report and release it as unredacted as they could, it seems to stomp all over as not shaping that report, its end, its release, its spin, its perception to present it yourselves, no? >> it's also puzzling tactically. we heard what bill barr has to say about this. it was his summary, the sort of

import and value added of releasing the report is going to be the contents of the report. which is going to be some 400 pages worth of evidence collected by mueller. so unless there's something very specific that they're trying to get out in front of, it would seem this type of thing would be better suited to after people have a chance to process it and then maybe we see criticism of how could you conclude that there was no evidence for obstruction or not sufficient evidence for obstruction to bring a charge when we see x, y and z from the report and then have the administration or the attorney general rod rosensteor attorney general come out and said here's why we think this was the right call. it's tough for me to see what they're going to get out of this unless again there's something very specific they're trying to diminish the impact of. >> i think what's -- the issue

is not whether there's sufficient evidence to bring a charge. remember, with respect to obstruction, e we're talking about the president using his office to do something that on the one side is within his authority, fire the fbi director, complain about the government. on the other side looks like a classic effort to undermine, obstruct an investigation where he's the subject of the investigation. we largely know the facts we'll learn more tomorrow. it's a core question of law. i think what's problematic about barr's summary he said 48 hours after getting the facts i'll tell you what the law is. the law is the same law i explained in my 19-page audition memo. under the constitution the president cannot do anything illegal because he's president. i don't know any constitutional scholar or lawyer that views the presidency that way. under that theory, there's no way a president can engage in any illegal conduct, and, of course, that's not our system. >> it's extraordinary, though, this announcement made by donald

trump in a radio interview that the country's attorney general will present the 22-month-long mueller investigation to the country. it's just an extraordinary leap into not just the president's political and legal prerogatives, i guess a leap barr has already made. but to be a shill that dan coats refused to be, jim comey refused to be. to be part of the partisan cadill clacking class. mike pompeo becomes the first cabinet secretary to plunge into the deep end of trump's conspiracy pool. >> right. if you want the public to take this report seriously and believe that the justice department is credible, you would probably think twice about putting the head of the justice department out on tv to do spin for you. we don't know if that's what he's going to do, maybe he has something important to say,

maybe they'll take questions and the white house would say only the ag could come out and answer questions and this is anything other than transparency, we're trying to answer questions and help you. that's what they're going to say. they are going to fight over this political narrative because that's the way the president views this above all else. he's not worried about constitutional questions, separation of powers. he wants loyalty, he wanted a roy kohn, he believes barr is that roy kohn, and he believes sending him out like this helps the president. >> we have not confirmed whether trump asked the attorney general to do this or the attorney general offered to do this. we're joined right now from just outside the department of justice where all the action is nbc news national security reporter, julia ainsley, she broke this news for our network. so attorney general barr will take the podium at 9:30 tomorrow morning with outgoing deputy attorney general rod rosenstein standing by his side. any reporting on how that came

to be? >> reporter: so we know that the -- that the president let the cat out of the bag in his radio interview today. i don't think they were planning on telling us that today. there's never a dull moment at this justice department. right now officials are not saying this report will be out at the time that barr takes the stage. they say we'll be able to ask questions, so one would infer we'll have a report to ask questions about. they're not saying that. i pressed on whether or not congress would have the report by the time barr takes the stage and they would not answer that question. the big thing i think everyone is asking here is is this press conference a way for barr to get ahead of anything we might find in the report and put a spin on it, a spin favorable to the president before the public has had a chance to digest this report. that's the main thing that people are asking at this point, as well as when will we see this report and how much time will we have before this press

conference, if at all? >> what's the possible motive, say this is barr's idea. barr testified two days on capitol hill, barr has told us everything that we know about the mueller report. is it a sign of anxiety? is it a sign of overcompensation for all the reporting on how potentially politically damaging that obstruction report could be? what is the motive behind barr's decision to go out and try to sell or present the mueller report tomorrow? >> reporter: nicole, i don't want to get into his intent, i don't know it and i'm sure you have a lot of smart analysts who can divide that up. i will say based on the surface of it, barr will have to answer questions about how this looks. he's already had a chance to put his own spin on this report when he did his summary and his bottom line conclusions and he's been to the hill and said he would not answer any more questions until after the report was released, which gave the appearance he wanted transparency and wanted the public to have a chance to

digest it. now it's seeming he'll give very little time for any digestion of the report. so timing is interesting but the intent i'll leave to others. >> i think the doj should put out the report unredacted. we don't need any more press conferences, summaries, spin, we need to see the words of the report. we need to see the work of special counsel, period. i wouldn't be surprised to learn that the president directed him or suggested to him that he have a press conference. it's very trumpian, get out ahead of it, tell your story so we can have the story and claim no collusion, exoneration, i'm good, let's go. >> it fits within the pattern of trump wanting all the people in his administration on television. that's the medium he communicates through, how he makes personnel decisions.

he's hired how many people from fox news. we don't know but all the pieces fit together, they see it as a tv story. >> and he went on the radio to tease tomorrow's episode. >> that should be the first question barr gets at that press conference tomorrow. it's untenable that not only do you have the attorney general but you have rod rosenstein, who actually is part of the investigation, answering questions about that investigation. we need to see the full, unredacted report, and this ups the ante for special counsel mueller to appear before congress so that he can testify about his own report instead of having it spun by the white house. >> the press decision here is so extraordinarily fraught. i spent some time, you can argue whether or not i was good at it or not, the president i worked for didn't have an approval rating that suggested i was. but when i wanted to present something as more credible than i was, i would have the person

with more credibility do it. the person between barr and mueller with more credibility is mueller. so mueller didn't want to stand there, just putting out the papers and going up to your office was the better strategic communications decision. >> rights. when will we hear from mueller, by the way? i think that's an excellent point. there's going to be chunks of this that are redacted. we're all going to wonder what's in that. so the release tomorrow, i hope answers a lot of questions, but it won't answer all our questions. and there will be a lot of questions that only robert mueller can answer. only the full report can answer. if we're not going to get the full report publicly, i think there's going to be a push, at least in the house, to get mueller to testify. >> another way to get some answers is to have the underlying investigative material. the fbi 302s, the witness statements, the testimony, the documents, totally given over to congress and ultimately made

public as it was in previous special counsel investigations. >> as it -- let's look at what the justice department -- having been a staffer, they're making extraordinarily polarizing decisions on the eve of presenting material that everyone across the divide of the trump question is eager to see and consume. they're making extraordinarily weighted decisions. they have a history there, where we know it's been reported, they're running from the ghost of james comey. they felt like with hillary clinton, he announced no charges and then put out all the evidence you're talking about. they seem to be heading down a path where they're not even going to arrive at comey's uncelebrated status. there was no decision on obstruction. they did not decide to exonerate him or charge him. they're going out to sell something and there's no

indication or reporting that tomorrow they'll release an unredacted version of the mueller report or the underlying evidence. >> even in the james comey investigation of the hillary clinton email matter, all of that underlying matter went running up to the hill as soon as jim jordan and the house republicans asked for it. so they have to live up to that precedent, they can't say we can't turn over the underlying material. what basis can they say no? >> do you think barr is going to stand there, release the mueller report and announce an investigation into the origins? >> i think so. that would take the problematic role the attorney general is playing three steps further. >> i think if the democrats were suspicion of barr after his two days of testimony, the fact that he's the one that tomorrow is going to almost like -- i don't know. i don't know the role if the report was all done by mueller, he's put his finger on the scale on the obstruction decision.

what's the role other than passing out -- what is the attorney general's role tomorrow. >> i can elit will you i think members of congress, the public will have further reason to question his impartiality. >> and what about rod rosenstein, who signed the fisa warrants, that are now under scrutiny, who was a witness in the investigation, the person that appointed mueller himself, is he there as a human shield? >> i think that's how they want to use him. but what he would say if we injected him with truth serum is the original investigation was well predicated. the applications were based on evidence. there was a high standard to meet. the court had to find from the life tenured article three that there was sufficient evidence to open this investigation. that all the investigative tools that fbi and doj used were appropriate and that the investigation revealed important things that congress and the american people now know about russian interference.

so this investigation contributed a lot to our public understanding and public knowledge. >> ken vogel your colleagues have done some extraordinary reporting on cross fire hurricane, i think it's what the investigation into the trump campaign in the summer of 2016 was called there internally, inside the fbi. any theories or any sense that this is sort of a live and active issue inside doj or law enforcement to re-examine the early stages of that investigation? >> i mean, barr has admitted as much in his congressional testimony, that he would be open to doing such an investigation. and we heard trump more than express openness, actually urge, say this needs to -- the justice department needs to get to the bottom of this so something like this never happens to another president again. i was actually thinking when julia first broke the news about this press conference confirming that it would be tomorrow that wouldn't it be something if barr were to announce such an

investigation. i have to think, though, that that would be a bridge too far. especially with rod rosenstein standing right there, who, as you mentioned, was pivotal in some of the early decisions that led to the investigation. it would be incredible political theatrics so you don't want to necessarily put it past trump who has a tendency to want such theatrics, but i think it would really undermine the rollout of the report and open up all these questions a new before people have a chance to digest or start to digest some of the report. maybe we could see perhaps some logistical announcements like the closing down of the report, how much it cost, or summing up the report to show it was thorough and the investigation was thorough. i could see something like that. but again you don't want to put it past the administration that it would be something completely

unexpected, including possibly announcing an investigation into the origins, or oranges depending on your perspective of the report. >> to quote the president. you predicted it would be a bridge too far. we'll invite you back tomorrow if we find out we're wrong. we're going to sneak in a break. don't go anywhere, we're not. we'll be right back. nywhere, wet we'll be right back. tched. i switched to chevy. i switched to chevy. we switched to chevy. we switched for value. for family. for power. it was time to upgrade. i switched from ram to chevy. see why people are switching to chevy. we love our chevy. i love my malibu. my colorado. my camaro. my traverse. why did we switch? just look at it. ♪

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shortly contributing to the president's effort or desire for a p.r. blitz there's brand new reporting in the "new york times" that confirms a statistic that has to drive him mad, quote, mr. trump is the only president in the history of gallup polling to never earn the support of a majority of americans even for a single day of his term. his approval rating has stayed within a 10 point ban of 35 to

45% throughout his presidency. one reason behind that is his stance on immigration, which separates children from parents and puts children in cages. but it doesn't come between the president and his attorney general. last night attorney general barr said asylum seekers should not be released on bond until their cases are heard. while barr has the right to overturn decisions of immigration judges this reverses a 2005 board of immigration appeals case, an attorney for the aclu has said his organization and others are preparing to sue the trump administration. >> it's just astounding. i mean, the -- when -- when historians look back on this administration, i think immigration may well be topic a, and the -- the gratuitous cruelty that is being shown to would be migrants is so

un-american, so appalling that i think, you know, that'll be part of the judgment about donald trump. it's a -- it's a sad, disgraceful episode. >> as with the mueller report being about our nation's security, not about criminality or not criminality. the immigration policies are to me the stories that -- we try to cover them every day, julia ainsley is still with us, she does extraordinary reporting, as does jacob soboroff. >> he's fabulous. >> there are human victims. some of what trump does falls in the category of stupid human tricks. these are human beings whether it's dumping immigrants into sanctuary cities or jailing asylum seekers indefinitely, something courts have rejected,

to have in william barr an accomplice is astounding. >> on monday, the pull litzer prize went the journey that the thousands of asylum seekers have taken. and they are harrowing, harrowing pictures. you get a sense of the desperation. and what comes through was the desire of people for what everyone wants, for a chance, for security, for help. people desperately in need. and not once has this president expressed an iota of sympathy or compassion for these people, not once. it's all punitive. it's all we're full. we don't want you. go away. it's just -- it's extraordinary. he can't even feign compassion.

he just doesn't have it in him. it's extraordinary. >> and that's the president's role which has been on display since he started running for president. came down the casey latescalato announced mexicans were murderers and rapists. william barr, is it a surprising turn for you. he served in george h.w. bush's presidency, george w. bush described asylum seekers like the one mr. barr wants to see jailed indefinitely as people coming here as an act of love for their families. it's an extraordinary turn from the republican party that william barr served when he served several republican presidents ago. >> i think you know this, there are democrats, there are republicans, there are people who disagree with each other on policy but at the end of the day they try to respect the bounds of law. and what's concerning and it ties to this immigration issue and the russia investigation issue, here we have a president who according to some senior

national security officials i've spoken to in recent weeks, the president said do it, i know it's illegal, i'll pardon you. that's the way he operates. >> break the law. >> and i will pardon you. >> because i'm above the law. >> that's right. his view is essentially that of an authoritarian regime, a dictatorship. there should be no checks and balances, there should be no constraints because i was elected president. i think it's the job of officials who are sworn to uphold the constitution, particularly in the department of justice, particularly in the office of the attorney general to push back against that. >> when the founders were drafting the constitution and talking about the impeachment clause and talking about impeachment, that situation is something they discussed. what if a president abused his pardon power to pardon officials after ordering them to do something illegal, just extraordinary. >> let me bring into this conversation chuck rosenberg who knows a lot about everything we're talking about. chuck rosenberg, we've been covering the breaking news that

william barr, the country's attorney general, will take to the podium and presenti to the country and the world the mueller report, the redacted version of the mueller report. why would the attorney general do something like that in your view, chuck? >> it makes some sense to me, nicolle, because the last couple of outings for him have not gone that well. when he released his four-page letter of principal conclusions, people jumped on him because it paid scant attention to the details of the mueller report and seemed to reach a conclusion at odds with what little we know about mueller's findings. and then when he announced he was going to release the report just before a holiday weekend, people jumped on him for that too. so i don't really blame him for trying to shape this message a bit because the message shaping so far hasn't been very good. >> chuck, do you think that another effort to spin this in the president's favor after already putting his finger on the scale in terms of rendering

a judgment on that obstruction investigation that mueller refused to render is something that the president is seeking or has at least expressed happiness with? >> well, you know, great question. i am troubled by what i've seen. i start off by telling everybody i thought barr was a principled institutionalist and the data coming in over the transom sort of undercuts that notion. so i'm really wondering tomorrow whether we see the barr i expected we would see all along or the barr that seems to be playing a song that the president loves to hum. and so i don't really know what to expect anymore. there's a lot of discordant data about bill barr in my view. you know this, nicolle, it's really hard sometimes when you form an opinion about someone or something to receive data in a neutral way so that you change your opinion.

we all have confirmation bias and tend to filter data into buckets of existing beliefs. so i'm hoping to see the old barr because the new barr has been disappointing to me. >> so this might dispoint you even more. i heard that he's interested in seeing the president succeed. that might be one of the mindsets between the spying on the president's campaign. he didn't pose a question as we have around this table, we have been cautious as there's a lot we don't know. and we also, having never been a spy, i know it's not spying when america does it, it's called authorized surveillance. surely william barr knows that yet he said spying did occur. this is his first public appearance after accusing american law enforcement and intelligence agencies of spying on president trump's campaign. >> i'd love to see him walk back that term.

that is an awful way to characterize what men and women in our intelligence community and law enforcement communities do. as you said, it's court-authorized surveillance. let's be clear, we do not spy on americans. we obtain court authorized surveillance. whether or not this president succeeds, i don't know. frankly as an american i want all my presidents to succeed. some i favor over others but i always want my president to succeed. i just don't want my attorney general mischaracterizing the work of law enforcement. that was deeply hurtful and also deeply perplexing to me. i don't get it. he's a careful guy and a smart guy so he has to know the implications of using that word. at first i thought it might be reckless, nicolle, at first i thought it was an accident. more and more i'm coming to believe it was purposeful. >> it just raises the stakes for tomorrow morning. we're so grateful to have you help us set that table, chuck

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it's an achy breaky sort of day. thanks for bearing with us. my thanks to eli, to jeremy, to eugene, to donna and to julia ainsley. and thank you so much for watching. "mtp daily" with my friend chuck todd starts right now. hi, chuck. >> happy hump day, nicolle. quite a little extra breaking news alert we got from the potus. if it's wednesday, all eyes are on thursday.