and again the last five days. that wraps up the hour for me. i'll see you at 9:00 p.m. eastern for the rachel maddow shadow. have a great week. "deadline: white house" with nicole wallace starts right now. it's 4:00 in new york. this is what obstruction of justice looks like. two pieces of evidence that a federal judge has ordered to be made public could impact public opinion about the obstruction of justice investigation into donald trump. that investigation looked into trump's efforts to thwart the russia probe and ended with special counsel robert mueller saying he could not exonerate the president. now a federal judge has ordered the public release of some of the evidence that robert mueller contemplated when he wrote that he could not say that the president hadn't committed crimes. that evidence includes a transcript of a phone call that stood in the center of the fbi's investigation into mt. fujichae flynn. and a phone call between john

dowd and flynn's lawyer. "the washington post" writes a federal judge on thursday ordered that prosecutors make public a transcript of a phone call that former national security adviser michael flynn tried hard to hide with a lie. his conversation with the russian ambassador in late 2016. u.s. district judge emmitt g. sullivan in washington ordered the government also to provide a public transcript of a 2017 voicemail involving flynn. in that call president trump's attorney left a message for flynn's attorney reminding him of the president's fondness for flynn at a time when flynn was considering cooperating with federal investigators. together those two pieces of evidence which may leigh lead to the release of the audio tapes of those calls could lead to the public's understanding of the 488 page mueller report which

describes how the president's most senior national security advisor discussed deals with russians he would later lie about. also a call in which the president's lawyer is probing whether flynn had implicated the president and asked for a heads up if flynn planned to do so. it's the kind of evidence behind the brazen coordinated white house and doj strategy of stonewalling congress. it's also the kind of evidence that may recast attorney general william barr's decision to exonerate donald trump as being at odds with mueller's ultimate conclusions on obstruction if mueller himself ever testifies. from last night's court filing quote the defendant, michael flynn, informed the government of multiple incidents both before and after his guilty plea where either he or his attorney received communications with persons connected with the administration or congress that could have affected his willingness to cooperate and the completeness of that cooperation. and that is where we start today

with some of our favorite reporters and friends. former u.s. attorney joyce vance is here. associated press white house reporter jonathan lemire. ashley parker white house reporter for "the washington post." and nick con if sore, reporter. what could go wrong on a friday? joyce we're going to start with you. this is two different pieces of evidence. two pieces of evidence that are eluded to in the mueller report but now we might have the kind of evidence that could crack open the public's understanding of donald trump's misconduct around the question of whether or not and how he and his legal team sought to obstruct the mueller probe. please explain both pieces for us. >> this should help the public understand how dangerous and devious attorney general barr's efforts to mischaracterize the

mueller report as essentially exonerating the president although he didn't go that far but how deviate that mischaracterization was because now we learn more evidence detailed inside the mueller report we see there was this concerted effort by the president's personal lawyers to try to get michael flynn, someone who held powerful evidence about the president, tried to get flynn not to cooperate with investigators. we have to ask ourselves as we see this story unfold why was it so important to the president that michael flynn not cooperate with prosecutors? what is still there that we don't know or that's become public in the report that we don't quite have context for. so that's what we'll look for, this story about the efforts to keep flynn from cooperating by the president's team moving forward. >> joyce, it would seem to me when the actual words of the president's lawyer are heard, we have the transcript, i'm going to read it, but it makes the

assessments given by people like jim comey that the trump team reminded him of a mob family. if you hear it but don't see it or you hear it characterized but can't decide for yourself if these people sound like a scene out of the "sopranos" you have to let people decide. here's what john dowd said to michael flynn's lawyer, a partial transcript of the voice mail that the judge ordered released, the whole transcript by may 31st. if i could do a john dowd voice i would, but i'll spare everybody on a friday. he calls flynn's lawyer and he says, it wouldn't surprise me if you'd gone on to make a deal with the government. if there's information that implicates the president then we've got a national security issue so, you know, we need some kind of heads up. just for the sake of protecting

all of our interests, if we can. remember what we've always said about the president and his feelings towards flynn. and that still remains. joyce, can we just take that apart? it wouldn't surprise me if you had gone on to make a deal with the government. he's saying we understand you may be a cooperating witness. if you have information that implicates the president, then we've got a problem. >> i heard this, i thought it was an outtake from god father 1 because that's what it sounds like. this is not government lawyers, that's important to remember. this is the government's personal lawyer trying to keep a witness from cooperating with the government. so what business does he have invoking national security. that's not in his wheel house. that's not what this call is about. it's about the president's security, the trump family security and trying to appeal to

flynn in a way they think will work. but they know at this point the game is just about over. >> let me bring this into focus as well. remember what we've always said about the president and his feelings towards flynn, and that still remains. what does that mean? what do feelings have to do with anything, joyce? >> i'd be proud to present that evidence to the jury as part of an obstruction case. first there's this notion, remember what the president has conversations between the president and mike flynn on multiple occasions. did the president tell him he would protect him for instance if he didn't testify. it's incumbent upon us to find out what the answer to that question is. so this the president has good feelings about you, i think we sometimes get hung up as lawyers on the trying to prove facts beyond a reasonable doubt but

there's no reason to read this other than i'll take care of you and maybe pardon you if you get in trouble if you stay on my side of the line. >> we know a trump lawyer raised the prospects of pardons for flynn and manafort. it would appear that revelations like this and a judge ordering that this be made public explains the doj white house strategy, but it doesn't explain what was behind mueller's ultimate decision to leave this to barr, except, of course, that wasn't mueller's decision, that maybe leaving the obstruction probe unresolved was the end of the mueller probe? no? >> it's such a difficult question. we don't know what was animating bob mueller's decision at that point in time. it seems like it would have been so easy for him to go a little bit further. so at some point in time we will have to hear mueller and perhaps others from his team testify. it seems like it would be a good idea for congress to put on a

panel of people so we could hear views from the team as to how these decisions were made. but it's really difficult, i think, to explain to people who have not been prosecutors inside of doj to explain how carefully we make these decisions, how hesitant we are to go too far. how strongly we try to protect legal norms. and in the era of trump where the white house is blurring away all of the legal norms it can push through as quickly as it can, that seems antiquated and outdated but it's part of the respect for the rule of law and the care we take with preserving the system that seems so quaint these days. >> the other piece of evidence is a transcript that will be made public at the end of may of the call behind flynn's original lie. it was a call between michael flynn and russian ambassador, sergey kislyak, in which sanctions were discussed and i believe a vote with israel was another, president obama was still in office.

it was a call, not really extraordinary in too many regards. there's often contacts, questions about whether it violated the logan act, i guess. but it was something that flynn lied about. do you think we'll learn why he lied? >> i hope so. it goes back to this issue of if collusion is a dead letter from a criminal conspiracy perspective, it's not from a perspective or impeachment perspective. the more we understand, the more questions there are. why so many contacts with russians and why the drive to keep them secret, lie about them, hide from them, this from a president who's been screaming no collusion over and over again for two years. and yet they have had a scorched earth strategy to lie and deceive and cover up these contacts all along. and the question is why. >> you said the most interest thing i heard all week? >> really. >> the collusion question as a criminal conspiracy, it's asked and answered in robert mueller's

question. but do you believe it's still an open and political foreign policy question? >> i do. i think people have a right to evaluate all of these contacts and decisions. it couldn't be a criminal conspiracy perhaps but it's still strange and people are right to inspect those contacts and decision points and working together with the russians on different issues to evaluate if if it was inappropriate and improper. the important thing is the line can't be that it's illegal and if it's not illegal it's great. some things are terrible and still legal. we've lost sight of this idea and i think the trump white house has pushed it, if it's not illegal, it's totally awesome and we should all do it. we'd be stupid not to do it. >> your baby isn't old enough to be a batman fan but the theme song is everything is awesome. that's the theme song of the white house counsel office.

not only are we stonewalling, everything here is awesome. robert mueller found 140 contacts between trump and his associates and russians. and i have the sense the lawyers are overresponding in a way that looks so suspicious they are emboldening and incentivizing an impeachment process. >> what's so striking is, to the everything is awesome point, the white house and the president himself are unabashed at publicly coming out and saying, wouldn't you have done this too? and the answer in a lot of instances, no. another campaign, candidate would not have done this. but the president often says this, it's messaging to his supporters, wouldn't you have taken loopholes too if you could get your goods made cheaply in dh china? wouldn't you have found loopholes to pay no taxes if you could, it's smart business. >> no. everyone doesn't make everything in china and everyone doesn't cheat on their taxes. >> that's correct. but what's so striking, the

white house will -- this isn't a private line. this is a public thing the president will say proudly. it may embolden people to go back and investigate but may cause some of his hard core supporters to say if the russians came to me with op on my opponent i would have been silly not to consider it as well. >> last week, rudy giuliani was going to go to ukraine -- >> i remember. >> he was going. and then a few hours later he stopped. there was degrees of how inappropriate that was -- >> why did he stop? >> he stopped because there was push back. >> because it's not normal! >> of course, it's not. and republicans chimed in as well, which may have played a role why he didn't do it. up to that point he was justifying why wouldn't we go? why wouldn't we go to the investigation? some miegtd smight say it's improper but not illegal. so it's in this administration's

playbook. if they can get away with it, why not try. >> they may have escaped the narrow criminal conspiracy question robert mueller was asking, but it's not clear they've escaped impeachment and the justice department had an expectation that there was a plausible scenario where impeachment proceedings would commence and that would be the scenario they'd have to turnover underlying evidence and make witnesses available. >> the fixation has been on the obstruction part of it, obviously the phone calls, is an overlooked incident in the mueller report. the collusion question still remains as a political animating force, too. >> foreign policy. >> that's right. other foreign capitals will look at this and say there wasn't a critical conspiracy but this is still strange. why was he doing putin's bidding? why were people lying about every contact with the russians? how is it impacting foreign policy and how we should treat the united states and its allies. that's part of it too.

even if the criminal danger has passed, there's still a lot of political worry for the white house. >> joyce, it's also obvious that the mueller question does not feel, from the perspective of the white house, like something that's been put to rest. the president was clearly triggered this morning, spewing away lunacy from his twitter feed and this specter of robert mueller simply testifying to the facts of the mueller report, reading parts that haven't -- i mean, this is in focus because a federal judge ordered the release of documents cited in the mueller report. we've now been talking about these documents for almost 24 hours. if every obstruction flash point were brought into focus like this for 24 hours, the political dynamic could change dramatically for this white house. >> it really could. if we ever get to the point where there are witnesses testifying up on the house side and where documents are turned over so that congress can begin to take a look at them, they could be very dangerous for the president or at least how quickly he goes to the

mattresses on twitter suggests that. and that i think explains this white house's strategy of fighting every subpoena, fighting every effort for disclosure. we may not know the problems the president has with disclosure are, but it seems clear where they're financial, contact with russia problems, and his administration are so rife with corruption they can't with stand the microscope of public scrutiny. >> the president tweeted this morning that someone should have warned him about mike flynn. i think the list of people who did is longer than the list of people who didn't. this is the president's tweet, it now seems general flynn was under investigation long before it was common knowledge, it would have been impossible for me to know this -- i'm not going to read the rest. chris christie told him and lost his job as head of the transition, he writes about that in his book. president obama told him. joe biden was in the office when that happened. i think plenty of people warned

him about mike flynn. sally yates walked over and told don mcghan, we can watch that again. >> we felt like it was critical to get this information to the white house because -- in part because the vice president was unknowingly making false statements to the public and because we believed that general flynn was compromised with respect to the russians. >> so general flynn was like the bad boyfriend. literally everybody warned him about and he dated him anyway. >> which is what happens with the bad boyfriend. >> always, literally. >> it's one of the many, many mysteries of trump. why was he so drawn to have this guy in his cabinet and give him so much power? i've heard versions and theories about it, look they shared views on islam. >> there are plenty other lunatics that share those views.

>> he was rejected by obama, which is a plus in trump's mind and everybody was telling him not to do it. we know this president likes zigging when everyone is telling him to zag. i've heard all the theories advanced. >> there is information that flynn was encouraged by people close to the president and congress, any theories on who in congress was telling flynn not to cooperate. >> there are theories that it would probably be irresponsible to share with no reporting. but to me that was one of the most intriguing lines in the report. it was already in the mueller report, we knew about the phone call, but this was the first time if i remember correctly, you had any inclination anyone on capitol hill was involved in that, and that to me is fascinating. >> it connects a dot for me, again we don't know who it was, and it isn't revealed who it is. there was a multiprong effort from the president and there was

for the first two years that devin nunes controlled that house intel committee, he declassified the fisa applications over the objection of the fbi. it brings into -- we'll talk about this more, but why is the attorney general saying there hasn't been investigation, devin nunes spent two years in collusion with the white house investigating and trying to real undermine the fbi and the original russia investigation. >> sure. there have been a number of examples. even chairman burr at times -- >> back channel to mcgahn. >> helping to the white house to get them ahead on the probes to try to slow them down at the most generous reading of that. i think these are questions that will hopefully be answered in the weeks to come. this is a story with a lot of tentacles and it's still sprawling. the president's affection for flynn is well known. the theories you purported are right but also flynn was there day after day on the campaign

trail and his traveling companion, the president grew found of him. and flynn was the one who led the first lock her up chant at the convention in cleveland that summer. >> all this information came out in the case of flynn's sentencing. after the break, president trump turns up the volume that he was spied on, something his hand picked fbi director said he has seen no evidence of. also ahead, buttigieg on pence's support for homophobic policy. donald trump the slat designer in chief, yep that's real. all those stories coming up. ief real all those stories coming up. namaste? namaste right here on the couch. but then anne laid on a serta perfect sleeper. and realized her life was only just... sorta comfortable. where have you been all my life?

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attorney general william barr was asked this morning on fox about his multiple investigations into the origins of the russia investigation, his answer so perplexing we don't want to air it without a disclaimer. what you're about to here from the sitting attorney general about a foreign adversary invading our democracy is not answer. >> i've found the answers have been inadequate. and found some of the explanations i've gotten don't hang together. so in a sense i have more questions today than when i started. we should be worried about whether government officials abused their power and put their thumb on the scale. i'm not saying that happened, but i'm saying that we have to look at that.

>> pretty serious concerns raised publicly about career law enforcement officials that work for you without offering any evidence especially since trump's own fbi director doesn't seem to share those concerns. >> do you have any evidence that any illegal surveillance into the campaigns or individuals associated with the campaigns by the fbi occurred? >> i don't think i personally have any evidence of that sort. >> so given the choice between wray's evidence, which relies on evidence and barr's, which barr describes as being based not on any evidence just a feeling, a hunch, president trump tweeted my campaign for president trump was conclusively spied on. nothing like this has ever happened in american politics. a really bad situation. treason means long jail sentences and this was treason.

joyce and the table are back. joyce? >> absolutely incredible. barr has done nothing but damage his credibility with law enforcement, with career prosecutors from the moment he took this job and these comments this morning are so dangerous. for him to criticize people who go to work every day and do their job for the american people as this attorney general well knows before you can get fisa coverage on a u.s. person you have to have probable cause to believe that they're acting as an agent of a foreign government and you have to take that information to a federal judge on the fisa court and get them to sign off on it. it's not like spying, which is illegal conduct. that's why it's illegal to spy on american citizens because we have protections for citizens. and the attorney general manages to conveniently overlook the facts that every professional knows about how this process works so he can scatter red meat at the president. >> it seems barr is dangerous

not done, he said in a committee and in the interview with fox news that he has no evidence but he thinks something bad happens. that seems like the most dangerous -- at least donald trump makes it up. no one thinks he has any evidence. >> it is dangerous. and the attorney general knows that the inspector general and inspector generals are neutral, apolitical parties not appointed for any one particular administration their run often exceeds and cuts across multiple administrations. so these are the neutrals in the world of the executive branch. the inspector general is looking at all of these questions. there's no need for barr to pick it up independently and toss around these sort of baseless accusations. but as you say he's always very careful to not close over the line into perjury territory, which i think in many ways tells us just how dangerous the conduct he's engaging is for the

american people. >> i think barr is the most dangerous person working for the donald trump. he has donald trump's world views but he oversees the justice department. >> we have a story now about the relationship between trump and barr, and a telling moment that appeared to me was when the president declared his -- issued his veto when congress tried to stop his national emergency in marg march. he appeared with law enforcement officials and barr stepped forward and said you have the legal authority to do this and he added, it's for the national good you're doing it. it's imperative. that caught the president's attention saying he was going to be more than the attorney general, he was going to step up and be donald trump's president, that's what the president told people around him. and we've seen time and again him going above and beyond to have the president's back. including the press conference

that he repeated no collusion half a dozen times, right from the president's script. yes, barr is someone who at least at this point seems willing to trade the credibility he earned in his previous decades in government in order to curry favor with donald trump. >> ashley, you read the mueller report, the second volume and don mcghan just emerges as, if nothing else, deeply conflicted. loyal to the institution of the office of white house counsel, to the office and the prerogatives of the office of the presidency, but really a human -- a gargoyle is the wrong description, a human railroad track over which the president rain his locomotive all day every day in an effort to obstruct justice and don mcghan saying no a handful of times is probably the only reason robert mueller didn't come down on the other side of the obstruction question. what has replaced don mcghan? >> in that report the thing that is so striking is that there are

people who are constantly saving the president from himself. frankly, in an effort to save themselves they inadvertently -- >> if you think the president is committing obstruction of justice and you stay and help him, you too are legally exposed for committing -- you're part of a conspire to obstruct justice. it's not all benevolent. >> right. it's 100% self-interested but it had the affect of saving the president. so there's the irony some of the people the president is most furious at he should be thanking them. a lot of these people there have been replaced by people whose world view, like barr, is very much in line with the president, even with his new acting chief of staff, it's a trumpian world view, pushing that line in terms of public relations, let trump do what he wants, and if there were ever a moment with less

people to temper him, that's now. the president on foreign policy said i'm tempering some of these hard liners. so it's a role reversal when the president is the voice of moderation. >> your paper reported last monday about a third investigation into the origins of the russia investigation so there is the investigation that devin nunes ran for the two years he ran for the house intel committee, there's the huber investigation, which has been looking at this for a couple years. there's the ig investigation and now the third, the derm investigation. all three work for william barr how does he not have any information about the origins of the russia probe? >> he seems to be acting on an instinct in a strange way for the ag, who knows all these things about the things he cares about. the important thing to watch is the tweet from the president we showed earlier, i was conclusively spied upon.

he's basically interfering with the investigations in front of us saying this happened, this is what i expect these things to find. this is where i want it to go. i think that's a very dangerous -- >> calling it treason and calling for long jail sentences. >> if you're barr and your job is to keep an open mind and look at this and the president said this is what i know happened and this is what i want to have happen. this is going to call the question what the end point is for barr and what he does with any findings he ends up with. >> joyce in my curiosity about rod rosenstein, how did rod rosenstein become the guy whose signature is on those fisa applications, who pushed back against the president's allies in congress for his entire two year tenure to a guy on the way out slimes and smears jim comey, quotes donald trump about the rule of law and walks out all in with donald j. trump? >> what is it that jim comey said in his op-ed for the times

about eating people's souls a bite at a time. i think what rod rosenstein will say when he writes the history of this era is he made those legal decisions straight up the middle based on the law and the facts that's why he signed off on the fisas, that's why he selected bob mueller to be the special counsel for this investigation. but at some point something happened and a man who spent a lot of time thinking, writing about the rule of law decided that donald trump per son fied the rule of law, that's tough to understand. >> joyce vance thank you for spending time with us. after the break, mayor pete versus vice president pence, round two. that's next. round two. that's next.

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it's been a big misunderstanding here. >> yeah. >> we knew you were ease dropping. we're not gay, not that there's anything wrong with that.

>> absolutely. >> i have many gay friends. >> my father's gay. >> we thought of that clip today when we heard this from the president. >> we've got the town hall with pete buttigieg. >> boot-edge. >> putting aside policy disagreements don't you think it's great to see that you've got a guy there on the stage with his husband and it's normal -- >> i think it's absolutely fine. i do. >> isn't it a sign of great progress in the country that that's just -- >> yeah, i think it's great. i think that's something that perhaps some people will have a problem with, i have no problem with it whatsoever. i think it's good. >> trump getting ahead of mayor pete's town hall on fox this weekend where he'll face questions on his war of words with the vice president. and he got practice with that

this morning with hue hewitt. do you really think mike pence is homophobic? >> i don't know what's in his heart, he's always been polite to me in person. if you're in public office and you advance homophobic policies on some level it doesn't matter whether you do that out of political calculation or sincere belief. the problem is it's hurting other people. joining our conversation former chief of staff ron klain and with us on set reverend al sharpton. we cover pete buttigieg because he does interesting things. and that was interesting. going on hugh hewitt's radio show and standing firm on vice president pence's positions and advancing homophobic policies, and even sort of the president weighing in -- i don't know who the interview was with -- but

talking about the progress that's been made. he's forcing some interesting conversations. >> i think he does, i think he forces very interesting conversations and challenging ones. when i took him to harlem, it was to say even in the middle of the african-american community, which does have a lot of people that are homophobic, who wanted to say he's a major candidate openly gay, and he should be giving the hearing and respect like anyone else and people came out and rallied around that. he's raising an important issue in terms of opening that door to where americans have to deal with openly gay candidates for the highest office in the land should not be in any way judged any different than anyone else. it's one thing to say it, it's another when you have someone as intelligent, as clear on the policies and who has seemingly picked up the steam that he has as a live candidate. i think he's done that. >> he's struggling with

african-american voter, do you think it's around a set of policies, name id or what you just described as -- >> i think it's all of the above. a lot of it is name id, they don't know him, have experiences with him. but i'd be lying if i said there are some in parts of the black community that are still homophobic, which why i wanted to take the position i did. and everyone should. you have to remember when president obama came out with same-sex marriage there was a lot of pushback. in 2003 when i said i was getting ready to run and was for same-sex marriage i had ministers saying to me, you can't come to my church until this cools off. let's not be dishonest, we have to in every community deal with it and deal with it we must. and mayor pete is doing that. >> you cannot win the democratic nomination without support from

african-american women for sure and without doing better among african-american men than your opponents. is that insurmountable? >> no. the more we come out with it, the more you make it clear you can't have civil rights for anybody unless you have for everybody and if you have bias for anybody you justify the bias against you. the thing i said in churches, when you raise the question to black women voters, is every gay person has a mother. you're talking about your child, your niece, your nephew, so let's get over playing games with this, this is life whether you agree with it or not, and things in your life that are natural to you that people don't agree with. >> ron klain, i want your thoughts on this. jump in. >> i'm a hooser, grew up in indiana. when mike pence was there it was

a state known for the most harsh antiabortion and lgbt laws in the country. the star ran a front page editorial attacking governor pence telling him he needed to change his position and get the laws repealed. when mayor pete is talking about this, it's not abstract or a one off. it's a system attic effort that mike pence as governor of indiana to pass these incredibly harsh laws. there's a lot of history here, a lot of sad reality here, and it's good to hear mayor pete speaking about that and talking about that. >> you slip me into my former brain as an operative. i wonder if there's talk among operatives to really paint trump and pence as the extremists that at a policy level they clearly are. we've been having a debate this week about abortion. you're right about mike pence's

record, it was part of what attracted donald trump to him in that vp race for better or worse, i would say for worse. is there talk, is there a strategic value to take some of these i think really scary for all women moves in state legislatures around reproductive freedoms -- is buttigieg onto something by coming back to vice president pence's extremism. >> i think he is. one thing donald trump got away with in 2016 was having this urban image as a new yorker while he was saying he was going to punish women for getting abortions and would appoint a supreme court to overturn roe v. wade. i think he was able to have it in both ways in 2016. i think maybe suburban people said donald trump won't do that, he was playing for the christian conservative vote. it's imperative that the democrats running for president

in 2020 hold donald trump accountable for this big move to the right. what we're seeing in the states, alabama, ohio, and these other states right now, is the direct result of donald trump saying we should punish women, and of donald trump saying we will rever reverse roe versus wade and putting two justices on the supreme court to do that, and the democrats have to do better than they did in 2016 at putting it at trump's feet. breaking news in the fight for donald trump's tax returns is next. fight for donald trump's tax returns is next. [ alarm beeping ]

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we have some breaking news this hour that's setting the stage for a potentially historic court fight over the president's tax returns. treasury secretary steve mnuchin told the house ways and means committee he's refusing to comply with a subpoena for six years of the president's tax

returns that were due tonight. and now they're priming for a court battle that could be as early as next week. this is the strategy to give them nothing. >> on every front to give them nothing from the white house on the president, the russia probe, give them nothing. they're saying if you want this stuff impeach him. that's your only recourse. the argument in the letter doesn't matter. they'll come up with words and arguments but it's basically nothing at all unless you want to impeach us. >> i worked in a white house that was investigated all the time we produced documents to avoid this. this could be a scenario of be careful what you wish for. >> maybe. it's an open question. so far it has been a pretty politically successful strategy for this white house. they are absolutely giving up nothing. there's a calculation that court battles take a long time and may not be adjudicated until after

2020 and if you scacare about t election, which is what everyone cares about, kicks that issue down the road. in a way they're daring as nick said the democrats to impeach them. you're seeing the democrats starting to go down that road. nancy pelosi is being very deft about that, but there's a world that democrats are talking about impeachment not as a political strategy but as a document gathering starategic because they're able to get documents and witness testimony in a way they can't. >> but donald trump is always the bully on the playground who says get me if you can, and when you get him he cries like no, no, no. i think it's a taunt but if they call his bluff, i don't think he's going to enjoy being impeached. >> i don't think he's going to enjoy it. but i think you have to look at, aside from the whole bully kind of persona that he projects, he knows what's in the documents. it may be very well -- >> that's true. >> -- he's saying i lose more

fighting -- i lose less fighting than if they get the documents, because he knows what we all don't know and he knows what could hurt him. and that's what i think the democrats ought to be ought to you really can't afford for us to get the document because maybe there's some interesting reasons why only one bank would lend you money and why you had to make certain decisions. i think what they're not doing is pinning the tail on the donkey here saying, why don't you want to give us the documents, mr. trump? you want to talk about everything else, you tweet in the middle of the night, you call tv shows, why are you hiding this? and that's what i think would get under his skin. >> russia, are you listening? wait until you hear what donald trump has planned for his big, beautiful, slats. slats. slats

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♪ "washington post" out with just some extraordinary reporting on how donald trump is micromanaging his border wall's design. the slats should be painted flat black, a dark hue that would absorb heat in the summer making the metal too hot for climbers to scale. they were topped with a rounded cylinder to prevent climbing but

the president doesn't like the way it looks. trump told one group of aides that the points would cut the hands as climbers and function as a more functional deterrent. >> if any kind wrote that, they would be sent to the school shrink. >> this is a president -- this goes to his -- two things, what it shows his attention to detail on issues that he cares about and there's not a wide range of issues he cares about. you hear of aides gaming, they're going to come in and doing a policy briefing and they have charts and pictures and then you take something like this, and he wants to micromanage every detail down to the shade of the paint and the shape of the spike. and it gets to his base turnout strategy and his real views on immigration. he feels this very strongly, for him to say i would the slats to burn people, i want the spikes to impale.

there's that push and pull, is he going to go with the kushner plan, the stephen miller plan. if he ever has to make a choice, it's going to be that tough hard line choice. >> we know he wants to burn and impale people. >> look, he is cruel, but he's also completely incomeent. if you want to control immigration, then pass immigration reform and work on the issues in central and south america. pl if the president wants to wake up the secretary of homeland security at 6:00 in the morning with phone calls he ought to be calling her and asking why children are in cages and not debating which shade of black he's going to paint his wall. >> i think it's exactly right.

first of all, it's about immigration. this is his number one principle. whether it's the wall, whether it was the color of the fabric, or the fourth of july celebration this summer in washington. >> he also is an optics man. he wants to send the hard messages not enough that i'm hard on it. >> we have to sneak in a break. i'll be right back. k in a break i'll be right back i wanted to help protect myself. my doctor recommended eliquis. eliquis is proven to treat and help prevent another dvt or pe blood clot... almost 98 percent of patients on eliquis didn't experience another. ...and eliquis has significantly less major bleeding than the standard treatment. eliquis is fda approved and has both. don't stop eliquis unless your doctor tells you to. eliquis can cause serious and in rare cases fatal bleeding. don't take eliquis if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. if you had a spinal injection while on eliquis call your doctor right away if you have tingling, numbness, or muscle weakness.

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or if anyone in your house needs or recently had a vaccine. alert your doctor of new or worsening problems, including headaches, seizures, confusion and vision problems. these may be signs of a rare, potentially fatal brain condition. some serious allergic reactions and lung inflammation can occur. talk to your doctor today, and learn how janssen can help you explore cost support options. remission can start with stelara®. thanks to ron, jonathan, the rev, ashley and nick and for all of you for watching. hi, chuck. happy friday. >> happy friday. it is a happy one. thank you. spying and treason. president trump says the russia investigation was illegal. now the attorney general is ramping up his investigating. plus the trump campaign gets some bad news on the 2020 front from fox news and speaking of 2020, we got the only candidate to win