hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. as a crowd of thousands full of children gathered on the south lawn of the white house for the 141st annual easter egg roll, the war within donald trump's mind over the russia investigation raged on. trump telling reporters gathered to cover the holiday event that no one on his staff ignores his orders and he's not the tinyiest bit angst about getting impeached. >> are you worried your staff is ignoring your orders like the mueller report portrays? >> no one ignores my order. >> are you worried about impeachment? >> as is often the case with trump, the facts tell a different story. the president and his former white house counsel, don mcghan are locked in a nasty back and

forth over mcgahn's testimony. don mcghan e midtermimerging as guardrail to trump and star witness to mueller. mcghan was cited in the mueller report more than 100 times. the white house staffers bracing for retribution from the president. some of the witnesses named in the report that have quit the white house, but rely on mr. trump fear his ire. they're calling to seek clues about mr. trump's state of mind. mcghan was targeted by the president's lawyer, rudy giuliani in a round of sunday appearances, including this one on "meet the press." >> why is he so angry at bob mueller, don mcghan? >> because they tried to frame

him. >> what about the russias? they're the ones that created the impression -- >> why wouldn't you be angry with someone who accused you of a crime. >> don mcghan saved him, he didn't carry out obstruction and saved him. >> he had a perfect right to fire mueller. >> in this every man for himself post, mcghan's lawyer issuing a rare statement which included a not so subtle dig on rudy giuliani's grasp on reality. it's a mystery why rudy giuliani feels the need to relitigate incidents the attorney general and deputy attorney general have conclude were not obstruction but they were accurately described in the report. don nonetheless appreciates the president gave him the opportunity to serve as white house council and assist him with his signature accomplishments. that's where we start with our favorite friends, phil rucker,

chuck rosenberg, aaron blake. with us at the table, careen john pierre, and jonathan lemire. let me start with you phil rucker. this weekend was remarkable only if you haven't been following trump the last two to three years. he wins and goes on the attack to make sure that even he knows that he didn't win at all. >> nicole, it was a happy easter down in mar-a-lago. the president was so focussed on this mueller report and privately he was really upset and pointing his ire at don mcghan, the white house counsel because he shows up in those footnotes again and again and again, revealing some very damaging scenes to mueller and the investigators. but it's important to remember why mcghan cooperated so fully with the special counsel and why so many of the other white house officials cooperated.

that's because of a decision that trump and his lawyers made at the outset of this investigation to fully cooperate. it was president trump who waived executive privilege to allow his white house aides to sit for interviews and become witnesses to sit for the special counsel at a decision made at the urging of ty cobb and john dowd, who felt if these other witnesses were to cooperate they could get away without having the president sit for an interview. >> chuck rosenberg, that's the legal reason. but the human reason is because donald trump acted obstructionny, ten times and robert mueller told us about it with the witnesses corroborating the bad behavior. let me read from the report, the president of the united states hasn't done it was reported this weekend. from the report, this is mcghan's recollection was the president directed him to tell

rosenste rosenstein, deputy attorney general not only that conflicts exexisted but mueller had to go. in response to that request mcghan decided to quit because he didn't want to participate in events he described akin to the saturday night massacre. he said the president had asked him to do crazy s, and informed priebus and bannon that he was leaving. answer two questions for me, why wasn't this obstruction-y enough, if you're trying to fire the person investigating you because you are afraid that your crimes or misconduct will be discovered by the investigator, isn't that the essence of obstruction of justice? >> absolutely. it's obstruction-y enough, nicole, we know because we talked about this a lot, you don't have to complete the crime of obstruction in order to be culpable of it.

obstruction requires an endeavor. so asking someone to destroy records or request another person lie is obstruction of justice, even if they don't carry out that order. so, you know, rudy giuliani in a shocking development is wrong again. mcghan didn't save the president from committing obstruction of justice. mcghan saved the president from completing the crime of obstruction of justice. but an endeavor is sufficient. so it's absolutely obstruction. frankly, the mueller report lays out a compelling case for obstruction. not just that instant, but many more. asking people to lie and directing firings and asking for the unrecusal of other officials. so it's adaming report. >> let me ask you something, i think the rest of us have a clear understanding of how don mcghan functioned inside the white house, but none of us

understand how don mcghan functioned as essentially an informant for robert mueller. >> mcghan was cited many times in the report and spent as we know 30 hours with investiga investigators. i was thinking about this. the president historically used his lawyers to commit crimes, roy cohn, michael cohen, the president sees lawyers as a conduit to criminal conduct. maybe not surprising that he would turn to don mcghan, his lawyer, in order to carry out these obstructive requests. except mcghan isn't roy cohn or michael cohen. he seems to be a standup guy. he was around this president when a lot of it was unfolding. not surprising the president would try to use him to carry out these acts of obstruction and i guess the nice part of the story is mcghan didn't do it. kept faithful notes and told investigators the truth when asked.

>> i wanted to whip around but i'm going to stay with you chuck because you opened up an area that i don't know we spent enough time drilling down into. you said donald trump used his lawyers to commit crimes. a close trump ally and another witness in the mueller probe said to me, that donald trump's impulsivity will lead him to commit criminal acts over and over and over again. that will be the story of the trump presidency. let me read you one more section and just lay over your analysis over this flash point. this is from the mueller report. substantial evidence indicates by june 17, 2017, the president knew his conduct was under investigation by a federal prosecutor who could present any evidence of federal crimes to a grand jury. mcghan explicitly warned the president his biggest exposure was not his act of firing comey but his other contacts and calls and his ask regarding flynn. can you explain that to us?

again, explain how, i think a lot of people, now that they're processing and taking in the mueller report. i've read the obstruction report. have a hard time understanding how it was neither an exoneration nor a recommendation to prosecute the president for obstruction. >> sure. great question. so in order to obstruct something, there has to be a something to obstruct. in this case it has to be an official proceeding. mueller's appointed on may 17th, so certainly by june 17th, as the report makes clear -- by the way, you can read it for yourself, anybody can read it in volume two pages 77 to 90. trump clearly knew that there was an ongoing investigation and he clearly acted to interfere with it. so why can't that be charged as obstruction. well, because department of justice policy precludes bringing charges against a sitting president. i think that policy, nicole, is really important for another reason. i think it also acted to preclude the mueller team from recommending charges against the

sitting president. if you can't charge a sitting president because that brings a stigma and burden to the presidency, pursuant to policy then it makes sense that recommending charges would have the same effect. you have to separate what he did, which is commit a crime, an obstruction of justice, from what he can be charged with, which is right now nothing. he's a sitting president and so he can't be charged. >> aaron blake, you wrote about don mcghan. let me put up a graphic for our viewers. if you're in the car i'll walk you through it. don mcghan is cited 157 times. michael cohen, 136 times. michael flynn 87 times. hope hicks 73 times. and reince priebus 66 times. the people that told the story that rudy giuliani was railing against, that the president was railing against, are some of the president's closest aides. don mcghan, michael cohen, michael flynn, hope hicks and

reince priebus. they're our for that ray or thes. >> it's remarkable. this is what i was looking forward to in the report is we have seen so many of the stories told by presumably a lot of these same people, a albeit anonymously through newspapers that a lot of people in the country that are on the president's side don't believe. what we have in in this case is a circumstance in which those people were brought in by mueller's team, compelled to tell the truth, and recorded for posterity. these are things on the record as having been determined by law enforcement. i think it's interesting that don mcghan is such a central character here. i'm not going to be the first person to say that serving in the white house is sometimes a thankless job, but if there's one person in the white house who got something out of serving there, don mcghan might be that person. they got tons of judges confirmed, federal society type judges, that was a huge initiative for him. so for him to ultimately be the guy who is drawing the

president's ire, maybe the guy who said some of the most damning things about the president, he had every incentive to read the best into the president's actions here because he had a lot on the line when it came to the president being a successful president. the fact that he chose to block the president from doing these things, chose to memorialize them because he was troubled by the request, i think that speaks volumes about what the people behind the scenes thought about what the president was trying to do. >> phil rucker, i think you and ashley parker wrote about the pressure cooker that was the trump white house maybe around the times the interviews were under way. i thought that was the president was about to blow. but you read the mueller report and it's clear the whole place was about to blow. it's written the way you gifted writers write about the white house. mcghan drives into the white house, he has his resignation, he packs up his things, his

chief of staff is going to quit alongside him. how much more did you learn in reading this account of mcghan's dual existence walking that tight rope? >> we certainly learned new details, new dialogue, new elements to the scenes of what played out inside the white house. but the culture that mueller depicted, the culture of dishonesty, paranoia, chaos, ineptitude, distunysfunctiodysf what we were documenting week after week of this presidency. and every time we wrote a story saying it's chaotic in there or the president is raging or the president is like a pressure cooker. i can't tell you how many times the white house staff would call and say that's not true, there's no chaos here, the president is calm. the day robert mueller was appointed special counsel the white house aides were telling us the president is calm, he's handling this sob erly and he knows he's going to be vindicated and not worried about the investigation.

lo and behold, he's saying this is the end of my presidency, i'm f'ed, according to robert mueller's investigation. >> it also speaks to the need for your newspaper and our network to expand the style guide of language to cover donald trump. we knew he was crass. any of us who covered the "access hollywood" tape had to figure out how to say grab them in the bleep. but there is a lewdness, a crassness revealed in the report. >> yes. one of donald trump's favorite word is the f word. it predates the presidency and lives on during the presidency. you don't hear him in his public comments him curse often, he's quite disciplined to not using that language on the stump. although occasionally he will let that slip. when he's not on camera, not performing for an audience, he can be crass, incredibly crude

and incredibly direct with his staff dressing them down when he feels it's necessary. >> let me show you chairman nadler from the weekend on the topics of don mcghan and impeachment. >> we have to hear from mueller, we have to hear from other people, like don mcghan who we're going to call. we have to get the entire report, including the redacted materials so we can evaluate it and so the american people can know what's going on and can make judgments. >> do you think this is impeachable? >> yeah, i do. i do think that this -- if proven, if proven, which hasn't been proven yet, some of this -- if proven some of this would be impeachable, yes. obstruction of justice, if proven would be impeachable. >> you're going to go about to see if you can prove it? >> we're going to see where the facts lead us. >> following the facts is something that the trump white house is allergic to.

again, this is something my colleague rachel maddow says, i don't watch what they say, watch what they do. >> as a representative of the a.p. i can talk about the curse and style guide. i can make the pitch to the powers that be. >> do we need to re-examine it to cover trump? >> we do. in terms of what happened today, the trump organization filed a lawsuit against elijah cummings trying to stop their efforts to investigate the financial dealings of the president. their argument is it's a fishing expedition, it's too wide a question. so that process will be delayed for quite some time. but it shows how the white house is going to combat what the democrats are trying to do now they control the house of representatives. they're stalling on giving answers for security cloorearan, how the jared kushner and ivanka

trump get the clearances? the white house is pushing pause on that. tomorrow is the deadline to turn over the president's tax returns to congress. don't hold your breath, probably not going to happen tomorrow. this is how they're going to do. they're going to fight, stall, an obfuscate. and what we saw as always, rudy giuliani on the sunday shows acting as a human smoke screen. you played the clip it wouldn't be wrong to get information from russia. that's a directive, according to our reporting, that comes from the top. the mueller report we talked about the objection-y parts of it. yes, he did not conclude obstruction. the president could have walked away, he can't do that. he is fuming about don mcghan, sends rudy giuliani to the sunday shows to defend what happened because they cannot ever admit a mistake. they can never let a slight go by and it relitigates the same

thing as they fight and fight going forward. >> i think on solid ground, in terms of pursuing the facts -- i watched closely what chairman nadler said. i think speaker nancy pelosi's warning was we don't race towards impeachment as the means but if you pursue a fact finding effort as the means and the end leads you there, that's out of our hands. how do you evaluate chairman nadler there. >> i thought the most striking part was when chuck asked about pee impeachment and he paused and said yes. as we know, nadler is meticulous. i thought yes, you know you have ground to stand on, and he needs to put mcghan and other key witnesses. mcghan was at the center of trump's obstructing. you cannot let that go.

they have to do their constitutional duty to get to the bottom of it. i'm at the place let's move with the impeachment proceedings. i think it's time. you cannot come away from reading 448 pages of mueller's report and not say oh my god we need to move forward here. >> phil rucker, what about the optics of seeing don mcghan, the president's former white house counsel and if you read the obstruction report you know what the words would be that would come out of his mouth but it's different to see that on television, the president a tv producer at heart in his own mind. is there anything about the staffers describing in this report in live hearings on capitol hill? >> it'll be different to see this play out live in full unedited on capitol hill. it's one thing for them to sit for these lengthy interviews and mueller and his team sort of, you know, picked and choosed, which elements of those interviews to include.

which pieces of the dialogue to put in the narrative of that report. if mcghan sat for 30 hours he had more to say than what we read in the mueller report. but if he's testifying on capitol hill for six hours, seven hours, eight hours, a lot is going to come out of his mouth. and he'll be asked a lot of questions from lawmakers that could cover the gamut when it comes to politically embarrassing things about the president. the questions would not necessarily be limited to the facts of the episodes under review by the special counsel's team. an open testimony like this is much more treacherous i think for the former white house officials and no doubt they're going to try to avoid having to do that. >> thank you for spending time with us, and your great reporting over the weekend. >> thank you. after the break, rudy giuliani says there's nothing wrong with the u.s. presidential campaign taking information from russians. we'll dive into the signals sent to russia as trump celebrates

the mueller report. also ahead, we're going to need a bigger boat for the lies cataloged in the mueller report. we hone in on two whoppers told by top aides. and as elizabeth warren becomes the first candidate to talk impeachment. all those stories coming up. stay with us. l those stories co. stay with us my time is thin, but so is my lawn. now there's scotts thick'r lawn 3-in-1 solution. with a soil improver! seed! and fertilizer to feed!

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you inspired us to create internet that puts you in charge. that handles anything. that protects what's important. and reaches everywhere. this is beyond wifi. this is xfi. simple, easy, awesome. there's nothing wrong with taking information from russians. >> there's nothing wrong -- >> it depends on where it came from. it depends on where it came from. you're assuming the giving of information was a campaign

contribution. read the report claiarefully, i says we can't conclude that. >> you would have accepted information from russians against the candidate if you were running in the presidential election? >> i probably wouldn't. i wasn't asked. i would have advised out of excess of caution, don't do it. >> watch out for what he says. his statement causing alarm throughout the national security community. the chairman of the house intelligence committee saying, quote, it's not okay to seek russian help in your campaign. it's not okay to use materials they stole from your opponent or to make it part of your campaign strategy. sadly my gop colleagues think that's okay. joining us is rick wilson. here's what i don't understand. it's so off-trump brand to not be big enough or strong enough or powerful enough to win

without russia. why let your guy go out and say it's okay to take help from vladimir putin? >> this amazing change of standards, donald trump could eat a live baby on the white house lawn and say obama wouldn't eat a live baby. >> at least that's strong. >> donald trump, the thing he hates in this report most of all, is there's this asterisks behind his name for all time now. the russians were the hidden hand behind his campaign. rudy giuliani just admitted it. they teased for months that he won because he went to wisconsin. also he won because he had help from vladimir putin's little helpers. >> from the mueller report, quote, the investigation established that the russian government perceived it would benefit from a trump presidency -- boy did that -- and worked to secure that outcome and that the campaign suspected it would benefit

electorally from information stolen and released through russian efforts. chuck rosenberg when andrew mccabe said, on this show, that a full field counterintelligence investigation was opened into donald trump after the firing of jim comey, nobody thought that a full field counterintelligence investigation was going to end in a criminal indictment. counterintelligence investigations don't end that way, right? >> they usually don't. >> couldn't this be the conclusion of the national security questions raised by donald trump's, until now, mistimi mysterious contacts with so many russians. >> let's put aside whether a crime was committed and ask whether or not we have a significant risk from ongoing russian activities directed against our country and our electoral process. yes, right. they started this in 2014.

they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. there are dozens of contacts between russians and trump campaign officials. whether or not that constitutes a crime, it certainly constitutes an operation by a foreign hostile power directed against us. now here's the other problem with that, nicole. in order to address that threat, in order to address the threat to our electoral process, you need leadership from the top. you need someone to say this is wrong and we're not going to let it happen, and i'm going to do everything in my power to make sure it never happens again. and guess what's missing, that leadership. i think rudy giuliani is dead wrong about whether or not it could be a crime. the mueller team did not recommend one here, so be it. i read the report and i understand their conclusions. but there is a continuing counterintelligence threat. >> right. setting aside the part whether it's a crime or not. there are two other issues.

first of all there's the moral issue. is this something that americans want to see, their president or someone running for president do, except information from any foreign power particularly an adversarial one. we're still waiting for president trump to denounce what russia did in 2016. >> who's winning? give me the numbers, it's not happening. >> it's not going to happen. it still has not happened but it's not perhaps russia will be emboldened to do it again but what's stopping china or saudi arabia. >> do we think that they stopped? why do we say again? >> no. >> they air hannity clips on russian state media. >> they tried in 2018, not as robust as 2016 but still efforts there. the government did point those efforts out. every reason to believe the efforts will accelerate going forward into 2020. they'll try to put their thumb on the scale again. and who's to say other countries

won't try too. >> it's one of the most alarming developments, not just that they still, even at the end of this, can't make it about anything other than themselves but they can't walk and chew gum. we didn't commit any crimes but now it's credible weer going to look at the russia findings now. >> donald trump knows in his heart of hearts that he's been able to detonate one lie after another and get away with it. he's trying to make it about the revenge play. we're going to investigate the investigators, don't look here at russia that's getting everything they wanted from what they did in 2016. they want to divide our country, make us distrust one another. and they have somebody in the white house that won't come out and put russia on blast. he won't do it because he knows

he owes them a debt. >> mitt romney put out a statement, i'm sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection from the highest office in the land, including the president, i am also apalled that fellow citizens working in a campaign for president welcomed help from russia. i scoured the internet to see if any republicans followed suit. i didn't find anything. are you picking up anything from republicans that share mitt romney's outrage or disgust? >> i haven't seen it thus far. i think that's an apt commentary on where we're at at this moment in time. throughout this investigation we have seen the likes of rudy giuliani move the goal post ever so slightly. the president moving the goal post with his public rhetoric. taking away our capacity to be shocked by the things that we're

seeing. it's kind of a gradual moving towards this end point. and so now we have a report that does suggest the trump campaign was interested in information that the russians were peddling and they're arguing that that's okay. i think if we brought this back even two years, even just one year, and you have asked republican senators how they would react to something like that, would they speak out if the report was going to show something like that, just on a moral level, not even talking about the legality of it. i think you would have seen a much stronger reaction to this. but these republican senators, republican congressman have been in a lot of ways scared off of saying anything critical of the president because they worry what it's going to look like in a couple weeks, a couple months when the republican party base has moved on from their position on that issue and the acceptability of russians sharing information with the u.s. presidential campaign i think is the epitome of that movement. >> i think with rudy giuliani

what we saw yesterday was stunning because there was a message that was actually being sent to russia, which is by the way, in 2020, if the you want to interfere again, go ahead and do so. and that is kind of where we are with this president. so giuliani goes out and they're not acting like the president has been exonerated. they're doubling down, admitting things, saying it's okay and saying lies upon lies upon lies. that's how donald trump kind of runs his life. he doesn't own up to anything, he scapegoats people and then he lies. that is the thing, when russia looks at us right now they're probably laughing. they're laughing because everything they did in 2016 worked. and donald trump benefitted from it. >> i want to give you the last word but i want you to answer this for me, chuck. i think most people read this seeing how close they came. obviously donald trump thought this was a close call or he wouldn't have been totally be witched, excuse the pun. if you wanted this help, does

the mueller report give you a road map for escaping criminality next time? don't get involved in the hack? >> it is great value in being unwitting. it's interesting. in the criminal law, you can participate actively and knowingly. there's also something that we call willful blindness. another theory of criminal liability. if you're willfully blind, you avert your eyes, turn your head from what you should know and see, then you can be culpable for the criminal conduct that went on sort of right underneath your nose. they're just shy of that in many cases. but what trump has going for him is that he's the president of the united states. so by policy right now he's above the law. it seems to me that at least they were willfully blind. is it a road map, i'll tell you what, it sure looks like one in some respects. as long as you accept stuff without asking that last

question, as long as you avert your eyes to underlying criminal conduct it seems to be the way to go. >> scary thought. chuck rosenberg thank you as always for spending time to us. after the break, lying liars and the lies they told. the white house notorious in its contempt for truth now forced to reckon what the mueller reports for the world to see. what the for the world to see if your moderate to severe ulcerative colitis or crohn's symptoms... are holding you back...

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it's an administration that spoke about alternative facts just two days after its inauguration to explain sean spicer's inexplicable tantrums about trump's crowd size. it's an administration that saw half a dozen people charged with lying to investigators during the special counsel probe. yet reading through mueller's

report it's astounding how pervasive the lies around the president and the staff are. here's one example about white house press secretary sarah huckabee-sanders just days after the president fired fbi director john kel james comey. when a reporter indicated that the vast majority of fbi agents supported comey, sanders said look we've heard from countless members of the fbi that say very different things. she said the president said she did a good job. sanders told this office, the special counsel office, that her reference to hearing from, quote, countless members of the fbi was a, quote, slip of the tongue. she also recalled that her statement in a separate press interview that rank and file fbi agents had lost confidence in comey was a comment she made, quote, in the heat of the moment that was not founded on anything. aaron and the table are back. i've read this section four or

five times. i remember when she said it. thinking that, a white house press secretary, unless they came to the white house from law enforcement or doj wouldn't have access to countless fbi agents, and they would have zero access to rank and file. there's no appropriate contact between a political appointee who works in the west wing and rank and file fbi agents, none, except the one that investigates you. so i remember thinking it was a lie at the time. still to see it called out in the mueller report as a lie jolted me. >> you're an elite group of people that stood behind that podium and you knew lying to the media was lying to the american people and you were considerate and thoughtful in the things you said because you had to be. she is reckless because of the culture that the president created there. the institution is the shadow of a man, a great quote, she's in

the shadow of trump and she's willing and comfortable telling lies. i'm sure she's uncomfortable for that having to be in the report. it's diminished the credibility and the trust of the white house at every level. no one tells the truth, including the boss. >> we set out a policy for this program for this hour never to air a clip of sarah huckabee-sanders because she debases that podium and i spent time there to be triggered by kellyanne conway, sarah sanders, their deputies, anyone that debases that building. when they're on the road and they do it, it is what it is. but when i see them on "air force one" or the south lawn or the podium, kellyanne and her constant fox appearances, there is something so repulsive about being tax-pare funded government employees, who if the country is attacked by anthrax or terrorists have to go tell the

american people what to do next, they use their position to lie. >> their salaries paid for by the american people, that building as well. >> their blackberries and iphones. >> i remember the briefing where sarah made this claim, i believe our colleague asked a follow-up question, and went really? you talked to these fbi agents? >> there's no appropriate reason to have contact with the fbi. >> deflies plausibility immediately. i was there day when when sean spicer walked in and said it was the biggest inauguration, scr m screamed at us for reporting it wasn't. this is an administration that has had trouble with the truth. they are speaking not just to the media. lie to us, you lie to me, people do it all the time. but we're the representatives of the american public and the american public has the right to know what is going on with their elected officials for even on

mundanan events. but there is that day where there is that national emergency and the white house is going to need to be relied upon by the american people in a time of crisis and right now they have sowed so much doubt there are a lot of americans that won't believe what they say. >> i'm going to read one more section. mike flynn directed katy mcfarland to call "the washington post" and say there were no discussion of sanctions that occurred. mcfarland said words to the effect i want to kill the story. mcfarland made the call as flynn requested even though she knew she was provided false information and "the washington post" updated the story to say the white house denied it. flynn pleaded guilty to lying about this conversation but it didn't stop him from asking an aide to call in the lie.

i made this observation when i read this section that none of us has adjusted yet to the task of going about our business covering liars. >> i think that k.t. mcfarland example is a good one in understanding this report. there was another section where they discussed how the president tried to get her to come out and say that he had not directed michael flynn to engage in those phone calls with the russian ambassador, sergey kislyak. even though she had no way of knowing whether that was true or not. i think that's a common thread here. it's not always just the president trying to get people around him to say things that he knows aren't true or they know aren't true. a lot of times he's trying to get them to say things that they couldn't possibly know whether they're true or false, including whether he is the target of this investigation, a lot of things like that. and so, you know, i think it's really important to focus on

whether the president is fomenting this misinformation and getting people to lie to him but it's also building a narrative, according to this report, that it isn't something these people are prepared to attest to and shouldn't be relating it to the american people. in a lot of cases that's what the president wanted, internal emails, memos that have the narrative of the events that were going to reflect better on him once the memos had to be released publicly. he had a specific goal with these, sometimes it wasn't getting people to lie, sometimes it was getting them to say things they didn't know were true. >> otherwise known as a lie. aaron blake, thank for spending time with us. is the dam breaking on impeachment talk? elizabeth warren became the first on friday to call for president trump's impeachment.

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are you worried about impeachment, mr. trump? >> not even a little bit. >> not even a little tiny bit. he may not be worried about impeachment but it has become a campaign issue up there with the economy and health care. most democrats choosing to kick the can instead of giving a direct answer, as the "new york times" reports, under pinning the candidates' calculations are complete sets of short and long term incentives. some strategists and lawmakers say a failed effort would only strengthen mr. trump's election efforts. standing out in the crowd is elizabeth warren who repeated her call for impeachment this weekend. >> we cannot be an america that says it is okay for a president of the united states to try to block investigations into a

foreign attack on our country or investigations into that president's own misbehavior. so i have called on the house to initiate impeachment proceedings. >> you cannot read the report and disagree with a word that elizabeth warren just said. >> she's absolutely right. it's not about politics. i want to say that again. it is not about politics, it is about the rule of law, setting a precedent. it is about protecting our democracy. it is about doing our constitutional duty, making sure there's a check and balance on the administration. that's why in 2018 in midterm elections, that's in part why they were given the majority in the house. so we cannot walk away from this. and one more thing, nicole, there's a lot of talk about what

democrats will do, how about republicans. >> i want to stay with you. you're plugged into the grass roots of the democratic party in a way none of the rest of us is. it is only discussed as political consideration. if politics suck, and i worked for people that don't care about politics sucking, you look at approval ratings, but if the politics suck and it is the right thing to do, do the democrats have the backbone to say what you said, why is it on us to uphold the law. where is the republican party? >> let's not forget, in watergate when it came down to nixon stepping down, it was the republicans that went to the white house, knocked on his door, said it is over, dude. where is that courage? where is that courage from the republican party? where are they? what they want to do is they want to investigate the investigator, go back, go after hillary clinton and the emails. it is the most bizarre thing, all because we talk about donald

trump and this loyalty to donald trump. and it is not about the country. it should not be about the party, it should be about the country. >> politics aside, is it the right thing to do, go on a fact-finding mission around the president's obstruction? >> the fact finding can be done without going to the full impeachment things. it inoculates trump. turns his base up to a billion. but what i think the smarter play is is to go through the investigative process, drag this thing through, cause the political damage that long term -- remember, we investigated 57 years during clinton. allows them to drag these people up, uncover things mueller couldn't uncover, allows them to get people on the record, to have a clearer view of what goes on inside the trump campaign, in terms of lust for russian help

and acceptance of it. it let's you go through what's their administration like, lawless, reckless, shameless in every way. the problem with impeachment, how do you get to two-thirds in the senate. otherwise, doesn't matter. he will wear it as a badger w o honor. >> if he is a tv character, his character is martyr. he doesn't need new plot lines. >> he's been running on impeachment over a year. >> i want something that results in him leaving, not everybody going we showed him and he laughs and goes off to have a steak dinner. >> mitt romney, you played a statement earlier. he said publicly, what a lot of republicans say privately but aren't saying publicly. romney, give him credit for words, didn't call for action or change, didn't call for anything to happen to the president. it is a calculation that democrats are being mindful of, speaker pelosi last hour sent a letter to members, while our

views range from proceeding to investigate the findings of the mueller report, we all agree to find the truth, differ how we get there. the next sentence, important to know the facts regarding holding the president accountable can be gained outside impeachment hearings. >> that's right. i worked for a white house under investigation 8 years, never impeached. white house staffers, documents, emails, people had lawyers. >> and to your point, certainly an investigation can be a political act. don't have to go to impeachment. this is speaker pelosi tapping brakes on impeachment talk which picked up steam the last couple days after the redacted report was released. saw nadler's comments, there are democrats that want to go down the path again. for now, speaker pelosi doesn't seem to want to. >> should the house pursue impeachment? >> i will leave that to the

house. my role is in the political process. i think the best thing to do to put an end to this kind of corruption and style of politics is relegate it to history by giving it decisive defeat at the ballot box. >> i believe there's room for that conversation. right now, what i want, i want mueller to come before testify to testify. >> this is about now continuing the investigations, about congress doing their job. mueller should come testify. >> this is not the kind of language to get them in trouble, this is no rush. i hear a lot of caution, sequencing. let's hear from mueller. now they're saying let's hear from mcgahn. i don't see a misstep yet in this effort. >> so the thing that's frustrating to me about it, i feel like there's a blurring of the lines, if you will. you can start impeachment proceedings and do everything they're talking about, bring mueller, bring barr if you want

to, bring mcgahn and get to the bottom of it, but at least you're starting the process. get the grand jury documents. >> stop the lawlessness. investigate lawlessness. >> you can walk and chew gum, you can talk about the issues, talk about -- because a lot of people aren't talking about this in the states. they want to hear about what the democrats are doing and still hold this president accountable. >> and the last thing, they're all connected. his lawlessness and his obsession at corrupting an investigation is tied to the lawlessness with which his cabinet is ignoring needs of the most innocent people. the lawlessness that perfect vads department of homeland security that's been gutted. all connected. have to sneak in the last break. don't go anywhere, i'll be right back. anywhere, i'll be right back ♪ limu emu & doug

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look what happened. we're out of time. thank you to you for watching. that does it for this hour. nicole wallace. "mtp daily" starts with steve kornacki in for chuck. >> hi, nicole. if it is monday, democrats are formulating a post mueller plan. good evening. i am steve kornacki in for chuck todd. welcome to "mtp daily." welcome to a big hour of breaking news. right now, democrats are discussing as we speak whether to