option we could consider. if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. >> that is the voice and the face of robert mueller summing up two years in about 20 seconds. good morning, welcome to "morning joe." it's thursday, may 30th. i'm willie geist, joe and mika are off this morning, off on a long planned belated honeymoon. they will be on the show next week from normandy, france, for the 70th anniversary of d-day. this morning we have with us mike barnicle, former aide to the george w. bush white house and state departments elise jordan. white house reporter for the associated press jonathan lemire. former chief of staff at the cia and department of defense, now than nbc news national security analyst jeremy bash, former u.s. attorney for the northern district of alabama, joyce vance andn

nbc news and msnbc contributor and co-author of the fourth coming book "songs of america." >> john, we were just talking about your book with tim mcgraw that also comes with a world tour where you will be singing backup for tim mcgraw. we are excited to to see you across the country, jon. >> you should see me with a tambourine with the brooks brothers suit. it's a fantastic combination. it's unique. >> there actually is a tour you can find out about. let's get to the big show ahead including an exclusive interview here this morning with andrew mccabe the former acting fbi director who the president access of treason. plus former acting solicitor general kneel katyal who literally wrote the rules for the special counsel. we will talk to steve bullock of montana and rob reiner with a first look at his new project on the russia probe.

let's hear more now from the special counsel robert mueller who yesterday stepped away from what appears to be his final job in law enforcement, ending a long career in public service that includes combat duty in the u.s. marine corps, multiple postings as a federal prosecutor and the second longest tenured fbi director in history. he used his last day in office to break his two years of silence, making his first comments since his may 2017 appointment to lead the russia investigation. the special counsel cited the constitution, all be suggesting its now up to congress and not to the department of justice to hold the president accountable. he gave voice to the written findings and decision-making in his report after more than two months of spin from attorney general william barr, president trump and from the white house. >> we investigated efforts to obstruct the investigation. the matters we investigated were of paramount importance. it was critical for us to obtain

full and accurate information from every person we questioned. when a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of their government's effort to find the truth and hold wrong doers accountable. the department's written opinion explaining the policy makes several important points that further informed our handling of the obstruction investigation. the opinion says that the constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing. the report describes the results and analysis of our obstruction of justice investigation involving the president. as set forth in the report, after that investigation if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.

under long standing department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. that is unconstitutional. even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that, too, is prohibited. the special counsel's office is part of the department of justice and by regulation it was bound by that department policy. charging the president with a crime was, therefore, not an option we could consider. >> all right. joyce vance, let's give you first crack at this as a former federal prosecutor. what did you hear in the language of robert mueller who effectively said i could not indict a sitting united states president but here is all the evidence that suggests someone else could in a political setting, namely congress? >> mueller is all about process and all about fair process. that's what i heard yesterday. this was a man who said here is

my body of work, almost 500 pages of evidence. i'm not in a position to indict. i think mueller is clearly telling us that if he had had the ability to issue an indictment on obstruction, he would have, but instead he's saying congress, here, it's up to you now. and at the end of his statement we're left with this feeling, why couldn't the public have heard mueller's words first? why did we have to hear from an attorney general who misrepresented the report when mueller's words yesterday would have more than done the job? >> a lot of people wondering that, joyce. i'm curious what you made of mueller's language yesterday when he said it was unconstitutional for him. it was a department of justice guideline effectively that said he can't indict a sitting united states president, but he used the term unconstitutional. what did you think about that? >> this is the legal wonky stuff and it might be a little bit early in the morning, but i will try to make it simple. >> go for it. >> the olc memo that we have all heard about, the memo that says that you can't indict a sitting

president, is construing the constitution. so when mueller says it was unconstitutional, he is talking about that analysis, but there is a little bit of subtlety here. they issued that second release, the joint statement between the attorney general and mueller yesterday, to clarify that mueller hadn't gone quite that far down the road and he wasn't saying that the olc memo prevented him from indicting the president, he was just saying given the legal construct in which he operated it wasn't appropriate for him to even go down that road. so as opposed to volume one of the phillip mena where thmuelle talk about don jr. and decide under the federal rules of prosecution no indictment was warranted, this he didn't even get that war in volume two. it was congress' job from the get-go. >> joyce, bob mueller, true to form was very sparse in his approach, direct in his

language, yet one thing reson e resonated above all else to some people and i'm wondering what your view on this was. his basic premise he start and at the beginning is read the report, russia has attacked us. we are concentrating on the legal aspects of what he said about conspiracy and obstruction, but the russia emphasis, i think it really stood out to a lot of people. >> you know, this was the primary subject of the indictments that the mueller team released. we have these two large indictments of russia. if there was a headline for the mueller report it would say russia engaged in a sustained cyber attack against our elections, and that point is all too often lost in the dialogue about the president, but my take away in that regard is really how shocking it is that we have a president who is so afraid of this investigation, so scared of its shadow that he has never come out and been the leader

that the country needed in these times that said we have going to have an all of government effort to fight back against russia. there is no doubt that russia attacked our elections. the president has always been so concerned about the validity of the 2016 election that he's unwilling to protect the future. >> jeremy bash, robert mueller clearly wanted to underline again from the get-go of that eight-minute statement yesterday that this is a serious attack by russia, an attack that continues now. he also said, jeremy, quote, if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that. what did you make of that formulation? what was he trying to tell us there? >> well, it's a very odd legal formulation, willie, it's kind of basically inserting his only mindset into the narrative of the report, but i think the head line is he was saying, look, i found ten instances in which the president engaged in wrongful conduct to obstruct the investigation. now, as to whether or not that constituted a chargeable offense, i could not make that

determination because of our constitution, and there's only one branch of government, only one institution in our society that can make that determination and that's the house of representatives under article 1 of the constitution that states that the house shall have the sole power of impeachment. i think really it's a green light to congressional leaders to not simply to have an impeachment vote, that's not i think what we're talking about, but to make that determination that bob mueller was unconstitutionally -- was constitutionally unable to make. >> we will get to that side of the politics of it, some democrats leapt in yesterday to the impeachment conversation, others, namely nancy pelosi, saying still let's pump the brakes a little bit. jon, earlier this month you reported this for the ap, quote, after barr skipped out on a congressional appearance last week attention immediately turned to the possibility of mueller testifying and trump was watching. the president stewed for days about the prospect of the media coverage that would be given to

mueller, a man trump believes has been unfairly line niced across cable news and the front pages of the nation's leading newspapers for two years according to three white house officials and republicans close to the white house. trump feared a repeat but bigger of the february testimony of his former lawyer and testimony michael cohen which dominated news coverage and each overshadowed a into you can clear summit with north korean leader kim jong-un. trump feared americans would be captivated by seeing and hearing mueller. yesterday we got a taste of that. of course, so what has been -- we saw the public tweets, the reaction from sarah sanders outside the white house yesterday saying case closed, robert mueller has finished his job, it's time to move on, but what are they really feeling inside the white house? >> the white house was given a heads up the night before that mueller would be given a statement but they weren't apprised of what the contents would be. the president as he often starts his mornings stayed in the white house residence yesterday and watched on television just like americans around the nation to

see what mueller would say. mueller to finally break his silence after two years, his first public comments on camera since this investigation began. the take a ways from our reporting were a few. the president's tweet came not even a half hour later suggesting that there was insufficient evidence was his phrase to charge a crime. now, insufficient evidence is a long way from total exoneration, which is what the president had been saying for weeks and weeks sense the mueller report was released, he was saying, falsely, that mueller himself had suggested there was nothing for obstruction of justice and correctly that there was no criminal -- in terms of a conspiracy to collude with russia. what followed was a coordinated rollout from press secretary sanders, from the vice president, from the rnc, from the trump campaign. statement after statement after statement that suggested two things, one, that, again, claiming not entirely correctly, that mueller suggested there was no evidence here, there was no way to charge the president, but also secondly that on this

talking point, that mueller was closing up shop, that he was retiring, that he was moving on and, therefore, america should, too. of course, that is missing, so much of this seemed like this was mueller handed the baton to congress to see what was next. people around the president are anxiously watching to see what is the next step by congress. pelosi is holding back impeachment talk, but think about just after hearing bob mueller speak for eight minutes how that galvanized democrats to talk impeachment, double down on investigations. if mueller was to go to congress, he clearly suggested yesterday he doesn't want to do, he doesn't want to have to testify and if he did he would just reiterate findings from the report. even that, even if he just -- one person close to the president put to me yesterday even if mueller read from the report for a couple hours americans would be captivated and it would be tagging to this president. >> that's why i quite frankly think it's sanctimonious of robert mueller to basically say i'm not going to testify or, you

know, obviously he will if he is forced to do so, but it's not really his choice to make. why are so many government officials these days telling us when and where they will be accountable to the american public. robert mueller has served the country honorably but the american taxpayers at the end of the day paid his salary and saying to go to the report, that's like a book author, can you imagine how publishers would respond if you say like, oh, i'm not going to go promote my book, just read the book and you will learn what it's all about. it doesn't work that way anymore. he is up in this information landscape of asymmetric warfare when you have a white house that's lying constantly and he's saying, well, read the 500 pages. it just doesn't -- what is his duty as a public servant to get facts to the public. >> so mueller needs a book tour. >> he will go on tour with tim mcgraw. that brings us to jon meacham. robert mueller showed no appetite to be in the middle of

the fight any long. he said my report is my testimony, this office is closed, i'm resigning from the department of justice. as elise said that may not be his choice if he's subpoenaed, but he hopes to walk away from this and let congress and the white house duke it out. >> i mean, it was barnicle -- i think will particularly appreciate this. yesterday's lead wrote itself, the old contrasting scenes. you had bob mueller at the justice department in his suit speaking the language of elliott ness and due process and the constitution to a fault as joyce was saying, and then you cut to down the street at pennsylvania avenue, the president of the united states is tweeting. there you had this clash. it was in some ways an establishment versus the insurgent president that in a way -- i hesitate to use the word establishment because it's just the rule of law.

bob mueller was doing what he was asked to do as elise says we can argue about that, but essentially his message was i wrote this report, i undertook this task, i wish you would read it. i do think the biggest headline was that wonderful double negative, you know, if we thought he had not committed a crime we would have said so, which is wonderfully -- you know, if you saw that sentence as an editor you would fix it. it's a little too convoluted, but that right there is the point. trump says a person is innocent, mueller says if we thought he had committed -- i can't even say it. if we thought he had -- i can't even quote it. which sort of proves my point. it's an unfair fight in this political atmosphere and, you know, much to willie's joy i often bring up the 1860s.

this one is -- yesterday to me felt a lot like the mccarthy era where joe mccarthy was making headlines by making charges, by grabbing attention and having a core of the people just with him no matter what. director mueller felt like, you know, an attempt for the joseph welch moment of have you no decency, sir, but without that drama. so to me the big issue and, again, i think the thing that we are going to talk about and have to deal with for a long, long time is yesterday was another example of the triumph of passion and tribalism over reason and fact. mueller was speaking the language of reason and fact, trump was speaking the language of tribalism and ideology, and guess who is going to win that fight in this climate, it's going to be trump, but that's to me the test of citizenship is to actually do what mueller said

and take a look at this report. >> you know, joyce, as usual, dr. meachum raises some legitimate and pertinent point especially about bob mueller's use of language yesterday, sometimes convoluted, the double negative and stuff like that, but in terms of his use of language, one thing stood out to a lot of people. when he was talking about obtaining full and accurate information from every person in terms of conspiracy and collusion and obstruction, and then he said following that, when a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of their government's effort to find the truth and hold wrong doers accountable. he didn't say if a subject of an investigation, he said when. that's particularly striking. >> it's very striking. mueller is extraordinarily careful about the language he used in this statement, unlike

most of his public appearances, he simply read from a script yesterday, which tells us that those were very informed differences. and he could have been talking generically out in the ether about obstruction cases, but he didn't. he made it very concrete, very personal to this president, who is, after all, the only subject that they appear to have considered for obstruction, and he used the language when, meaning that in his sense there were cases in this investigation where prosecutors did not get evidence that they would expect to. and the report gives us some detail there, so i will add on to mueller's pitch, everybody should read the book in this case, but even if all you read is the summary in volume one, you see that there were instances where prosecutors couldn't get access to witnesses because they used the fifth amendment privilege to avoid testifying. they are entitled to do that, fair enough. other witnesses mueller says lied. other witnesses used apps to

delete information that should have been available to investigators and other information was harbored offshore and was beyond their reach. so mueller although he did make this finding that he does not indict on a conspiracy charge is very careful both yesterday and in the report to say that they were seriously hampered in their efforts to obtain evidence. that's what we call obstruction. >> although robert mueller said he believes attorney general william barr acted in good faith, he did say that yesterday, by first only releasing an interpretation of the report, mueller's words about the investigation, its findings and even his disagreements with how the justice department rolled them out, those stood in stark contrast with the attorney general's views. >> reports have emerged recently, general, that members of the special counsel's team are frustrated at some level with the limited information included in your march 24th letter. do you know what they're referencing with that? >> no, i don't.

i suspect that they probably wanted, you know, more put out. >> at one point in time i requested that certain portions of the report be released. >> the deputy attorney general and i concluded that the evidence developed by the special counsel is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense. >> the constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing. >> so jeremy bash, just in reading that statement yesterday robert mueller, although he may not have intended it, maybe he did, was undercutting a lot of the interpretation that was provided by the attorney general a couple months ago? i think he intended it very clearly, willie. i mean, the report came out on april 18th. bob mueller six weeks later is standing in front fortunate podium principally to do two things, number one is to push back on the president's nare of it that there is nothing to see here with respect to the russian attack. bob mueller is saying there's

very much something to see here and, mr. president, you welcoming it or at least at the very least not condemning it is very dangerous to america. second is i think he's making a clear statement to the attorney general that your characterization of my conclusions was manifestly misleading, it was inappropriate, it did a disservice to the work of the special counsel's office did and it fundamentally was unjust. so for bob mueller to stand there and say it's unconstitutional for us to make a determination and then for bill barr to say i made the determination, there is not sufficient evidence i think is, again, a clear invitation by bob mueller to say, congress, do your job. >> joyce vance, where did you hear contrast between what robert mueller said in those eight minutes yesterday and what bill barr has been saying over the course of three months about mueller's investigation? >> seems to me that the biggest contradiction is the attorney general's insistence that mueller could have made what the attorney general calls a binary

decision, either indict or don't indict. the attorney general always seemed to think that that was a possibility for mueller. mueller, on the other hand, is relatively clear, we did not have that option, it would have been unconstitutional for us to pass on whether or not a sitting president deserved indictment and we've done our work, we've collected our investigation for people who may come later or for congress, but we couldn't make that binary call that the attorney general has repeatedly handed us for failing to make. >> joyce vance, always great to have your point of view, especially on mornings like this. thanks so much. still ahead on "morning joe," some stunning new reporting about the backdrop to president trump's visit with american troops in japan. the white house reportedly wanted the u.s. navy to move the war ship named after john mccain and to get it out of sight ahead of the president's visit. sailors who wore caps bearing the destroyer's name were given the day off. our pentagon correspondent hans

nichols joins us straight ahead. first bill karins has a check of the morning's forecast after days of severe weather across the country. >> it's going to be another dangerous day in the northeast, especially later this evening at the evening commute. let's recap yesterday, 14 days in a row with tornadoes and a lot of those have been tornado outbreaks. this one was in canton, texas, and that's a stove pipe tornado right there. thankfully we didn't have any fatalities. it was a scary scene, though, this was not too far to the northeast of the downtown dallas area. so let's get into the maps and this is a really -- just been an incredible may. this shows you all the tornado reports this may. we've only had three days this month without tornadoes being reported. a lot of it has been right in tornado alley and a bunch up through the ohio valley. yesterday, by the way, we had 24 tornado reports, a bunch in iowa and those are the strong ones that were there outside of the dallas area. today severe weather threat in two spots, one will be in western texas, a lot of large hail reports should come in late tonight, 27 million people at risk. but it's this area here from

west virginia all the way through pennsylvania. this will be three days in a row getting hit with storms, maybe isolated tornadoes in maryland, we have to watch careful three from d.c. to baltimore to philadelphia to new york. again, the timing is the evening commute, anywhere between 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. and because we have had so much rain, 25 million people at risk in these same areas here including much of the areas of the new york city region of flash flooding. we can't can a much a break. today should be the last day we will see of all of the tornadoes. after this we will focus on the horrific river flooding on the illinois river, mississippi river and also the arkansas river near tulsa to ft. smith. new york city is one of the spots that's been hit multiple times with stompls, nothing too severe, today should be similar but the afternoon commute will be slow. airports will be major delays. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. matters. introducing the all-new 2019 ford ranger, it's the right gear. with a terrain management system for... this.

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white house on a sunny day in washington. the people inside that building wanted the united states navy to move the war ship "u.s.s. john s. mccain" out of sight ahead of president trump's visit to japan. that's according to an email reviewed by the wall street news. in a may 15th email sent to u.s. navy and air force officials it outlined plans for trump's arrival for conversations had between the white house military office and the seventh fleet of the u.s. navy which included the instruction that the u.s.s. john mccain needs to be out of sight. photos showed a tarp hung over the ship's name ahead of president trump's visit. sailors were directed to remove any coverings from the ship that bore its name. later a tarp was removed and a barge was moved closer to the ship and sailors who wear caps bearing its name were given the day off. that's according to people familiar with the matter.

meanwhile, "the new york times" reports, quote, mccain's sailors were not invited to hear trump speak aboard the wasp while sailors from other war ships at the base were. that according to two navy sailors who spoke on the condition of anonymity. in a statement this morning acting defense secretary pat shanahan said, quote, i never authorized any action around the movement or activity regarding that ship, furthermore i would never dishonor the memory of a great american patriot like senator mccain. i would never disrespect the young men and women who crew that ship. for his part president trump tweeted that he was not informed about anything having to do with the ship. naval officials insisted they did not hide or obscure the ship saying in part the picture of the tarp was from friday and it was taken down on saturday. all ships remained in normal configuration during the president's visit. joining at the u.s. nbc news pentagon correspondent hans nichols.

conflicting accounts of what happened and when it happened. what are you hearing about this story? >> reporter: let's start off with the denial, some of them which you did, namely the president saying he didn't know anything about this, patrick shanahan saying he didn't know anything about this. what seems to have happened here and what doesn't seem to be in doubt is there was an email sent on may 15th from the white house to the navy trying to get the "u.s.s. john mccain" out of view. how high up the campaign of command that went should be the focus of our reporting and who knew and more importantly, willie, why they did this because it speaks to something that happens a lot at the pentagon where the pentagon tries to anticipate where this president is going to be either by providing him options or doing something optically, something that they think this president will like. one of the many ironies in this story is that it was the former senator john mccain, the late senator john mccain who was perhaps the harshest critic of patrick shanahan the acting secretary of defense. remember they had that feisty exchange when shanahan first had

his confirmation hearings. so there's a lot to sort out here, but it does look like the pentagon was trying to anticipate what the white house wanted and, as you mentioned, nbc has not confirmed that initial email but there was an initial email from someone in the white house thinking that their boss president donald trump might be upset by the mere name of mccain. >> that's the point right there, isn't it, jeremy bash, that whether or not the president of the united states knew about this, whether or not the defense secretary, the acting defense secretary knew about this, inside the white house they were already thinking we don't want to make this president mad by even seeing the name of john mccain, of his father the vietnam era admiral and his grandfather the world war ii admiral for whom the ship is named. >> willie, i worked inside the pentagon, i worked for a secretary of defense, i worked with white houses when there were presidential visits or vice presidentel visits. this is disgusting. this is an abomination. that the white house would direct the pentagon and

apparently some people within the navy or department of defense complied with certain aspects of it to give sailors the day off. those sailors don't choose which ship they serve on, they are over there on a naval base in japan serving our nation with bravery, with courage, on the front lines. they were told to not show up at their jobs because part of their uniform says john mccain, to indulge a political insecurity of the president because he can't handle seeing the name of a war hero. i mean, this is disgusting and honestly, willie, heads have to roll over this and inspectors general should review this and congress should be all over this issue. >> you know, elise, jeremy was just so on point there. the idea that the white house staff is sending emails because they are afraid of the rage, the temper of the president of the united states over seeing the name john mccain. i mean, what else can you say?

>> it speaks to the command climate within this white house and i don't want to let the white house completely off here because there is email traffic from the white house military officer to the seventh fleet where this request was included at the bottom of the email. so a huge event jeremy was just discussing, the pentagon will do anything that a white house asks. they will try to move mountains. in this case they tried to move a war ship, but it wasn't quite feasible, i guess it's not just like moving your powerboat to another, you know, dock. >> no. >> but it blows my mind that within the white house this percolated as an idea that probably not only touched the white house military office, you know, the white house com's office, the office concerned with visuals, you are looking in advance and how they're planning out what the president is going to see and do and this

definitely came under the microscope of many individuals in a normal white house, that is. maybe in a trump white house it's completely different. >> that ship couldn't be removed because it was under repair after sustaining damage in recent months. it also speaks to, yes, the culture this president has instilled in this white house where aides around him are so concerned about skrup setting him. we know senior white house officials have been instructed not to bring up the russia probe around him, to not talk about russian election interference for fear of what reaction it might provoke in this president. forover on mccain, this is someone he has always feuded with, one-sided feud in some ways. one of his first campaign events was when he said he preferred soldiers who weren't captured. we know that he never forgave him from the deciding vote that submarined the healthcare proposal in his first year in office. that mccain on the senate floor put his thumb down and ended what was at that point the signature white house

legislative effort to try to repeal and replace obamacare. what we have seen since is the president both after mccain got gravely ill and even after his passing continues to on the stump at official events talk about mccain and blame mccain for that. he doesn't often mention him by name, but it's very clear who he is talking about. within the west wing he still is known to curse out mccain and when others bring him up grow upset. it's that sort of belief system why the white house moved to obscure his name. >> is it the fact that anyone in the government thinks this is an appropriate use of government resources to be spending our time consumed with the president's narcissism, to be wasting our military resources on this kind of bs. it is just mind blowing. >> i'm going to come to you in a second. first, hans, you have new reporting on how yesterday unfolded with robert mueller and the white house behind you and what we might expect today from

the president. what are you hearing? >> reporter: we will get a good idea on whether or not the president thinks he won yesterday's news cycle in a few minutes when he departs. if he stops at the camera and talks to us before he heads out to the air force academy that's a sense he may want to change the narrative. yesterday two nights ago the white house got a heads up that mueller may be making a i is that. they had a general sense about what he would say, but they didn't know precisely just where mueller would come down. after all the dust has settled i think there are a couple things that are clear. number one, the white house is bracing for impeachment. there is a subtle shift in rhetoric from the white house even talking about the possibility of impeachment, saying, well, they are always prepared for t that's a subtle shift and if i was you an indication they may have been slightly rattled. at the same time when you look at where everything stands, the white house seems to be cueing on this line that nothing has really changed. as the tension between those two positions i think we are going to see potentially resolve if the president decides to speak.

there is a view inside the white house and it's pretty strong that mueller basically took himself off the table, took himself off the chess board and is no longer a threat in congressional testimony and that could be the most lasting implication of yesterday. this entire time i've been trying to get some sort of nautical pun in like jonathan lemire did with submarines, maybe i will say deep six or 66 or the arresting wire. well done, jonathan. >> i bring my a game every morning on the show. >> hans nichols we will see if the president stops and talks to you and the rest of the press core in just a little while. jon meacham let's go back to the "u.s.s. john mccain" sorry here. i guess we can add this to the list of inconceivable ideas for this president, if someone else did it would have been stunning and outrageous and it is in this case but i go he is not surprising, fair to say? >> i think so. senator mccain was bank woe's ghost for trump, he represents everything that donald trump is

not. heroic figure, sacrifice, so that's clear. the other thing that's clear is basically we now have a capital city that is trying to childproof the presidency. right? you want to take everything away, all the sharp objects, you know, everything that he might, you know run over and so, i mean, this is where we are. we thought the soviet union ended on christmas day 1991, but apparently not. apparently we just sort of airbrush out things. we cover things up that might upset dear leader. so, you know, we're going to be dealing with this for a long time. one of the things -- i know i've said this before, but that's never stopped me -- we know that the presidency has not changed donald trump. what we don't yet know is is to what extent donald trump has changed the presidency. will this kind of really totalitarian mindset infect the office going forward?

unclear. throughout our history we have had moments of chaos and then order. that's been the story. you know, nixon gives us a ford, andrew johnson gave us a grant. there have been moments of crisis and then restoration. that's what we have to hope work and work for is the latter >> meghan mccain said yesterday that president trump is threatened by the greatness of my dad's incredible life. she added nine months since he passed trump won't let him r.i.p. talking about her father, mike. >> it's the lack of character that exists in the president of the united states compared to the character that was -- that he wore each and every day for every american to see in john mccain. this story at its root is so sad because basically what jon meacham said. he has altered the presidency, the nature and definition of the presidency and what the presidency of the united states

means not only here within the united states, but around the globe. still ahead this morning, democrats are ramping up calls for impeachment, but house speaker nancy pelosi is not convinced it's the right move just yet. axios' jim vandehei joins us with his new reporting on that when "morning joe" comes right back. welcome to fowler, indiana. one of the windiest places in america. and home to three bp wind farms. in the off-chance the wind ever stops blowing here... the lights can keep on shining. thanks to our natural gas. a smart partner to renewable energy. it's always ready when needed.

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this morning we all heard a very patriotic american make his presentation. while i have the deepest respect for him and thank him and his team for presenting the presentation of facts that will further lead us to help us in the congress and in the courts. this is a very valuable contribution. i am gravely disappointed in the justice department for their attitude, their misrepresentation of the mueller report to begin with, their hiding behind something that you could never find in the constitution, that the president is above the law and their misrepresentations even under oath by the attorney general to

the congress of the united states. nothing is off the table, but we do want to make such a compelling case, such an ironclad case that even the republican senate, which at the time seems to be not an objective jury, will be convinced of the path that we have to take as a country. >> that is, of course, house speaker nancy pelosi speaking yesterday in san francisco, weighing this on robert mueller's remarks while speaking at an event there. joining us now co-founder and ceo of axios jim vandehei. this morning axios is looking at speaker pelosi as she continues to swat away for now talk of impeachment. jim, it's very interesting. because of what robert mueller said yesterday, effectively putting the ball in the court of the united states congress, a lot of the talk among progressives was, okay, it's time for impeachment. yes, we heard from new voices in the democratic party supporting that, cory booker, kirsten

gillibrand both running for president among them and new members of congress joining that conversation, but it really still represents for now, again, just for now, a minority of the democratic party in the congress that is ready to move to impeachment. >> yeah, a distinct minority. you are looking at about, you know, fewer than 40 members who are on the record saying they want to do impeachment, so it's almost 200 that don't want to do impeachment. i think that reflects pelosi's view and pelosi's power. even after seeing what robert mueller said, even after hearing from 2020 presidential candidates his advisers say they think it would be a fool's era nd to give in and do impeachment. we could spent two years being known as the party of impeachment, knowing full well the senate will -- she got giggles about nate republicans not being a fair jury on this because they are so pro trump.

they are never going to kick him out of office. what she's trying to say is we need to focus on healthcare, the economy, those are the issues that put her in power, put democrats in power and they are the i wish auto us that she believes democrats can win on in 2020. she believes profoundly that it would backfire if it's impeachment, impeachment, impeachment. now, the big test will be every day is a couple more democrats. at what point is it a critical mass where she feels so much pressure? jerry nadler who runs the josé diaz-balart -- judiciary committee, they feel so much pressure they give in and start impeachment proceedings. still a ways off and she is going to keep making the argument she's making. >> jim, back when you were still eating gerber's peaches another speaker, tip o'neill, used his influence -- this was before he was speaker, actually, to move peter odino, to move carl albert and it became, you know, the

nixon impeachment process. could you speak to the power, the strength, the influence of nancy pelosi as a leader of his party, as speaker of the house. in my mind its extraordinary and pales -- i mean, what tip o'neill did pales in comparison to what nancy pelosi is now doing, holding the house together at such a boisterous time. >> i'd say the second most powerful person in washington has even more command and control of house democrats than i think many of us thought that she would have. remember her pressure now comes from the left. given how liberal she is, the pressure is still from people who are more liberal than her, aoc and others who really want to fight. they want to fight on issues, this he want to fight on impeachment and yet somehow she kind of holds the old guard together. you look at the members who are committee chairs, the people who are in positions of elected leadership power, they've been with her for a long time. they've sort of admired her ability to navigate the

complexities of running the house of representatives. so like that power seems at this point unshakeable. where it would become shakeable or breakable would be if you saw steny some of the senior members say, you know, what, there is just too much evidence. whether or not what the senate does is irrelevant. history is going to judge us. we need to proceed with impeachment. that hasn't happened yet. i still think this is a chance it does happen. there is a slow boil to impeachment and with each new day and each new piece of evidence and each refusal by the trump administration to turn over documents that will add pressure. but so far very impressive how she's been able to hold the caucus behind her position when they would like to do something else. >> what she's managing is the politics of this. which could ultimately help president trump if there is impeachment in the house but no

conviction in the senate which is how it would likely play out. versus the role of oversight that jerry nadler may say hey this is our job, to perform oversight. a check on the executive branch of the government, on the president in particular. and how does she manage is that? and do you believe she doesn't want to purse impeachment or doesn't want to pursue impeachment yet? wh wants to short of slow walk this. >>o i don't have any insight frm watching her speaking. my thinking is she wants trump gone and she believes the road to that the is presidential election in 2020. and impeachment, jim's phrase is very interesting to. do impeachment. and that is a great encapsulation of the politics of this and the tactical nature of it. and impeachment is inherently

political. the framers made it inherently political. we can try to say oh there is this grand constitutional oversight role and then there are the politics of it. but the framers put those two together by not defining what would be impeachable. the debates around the question were really, really interesting. because one of the things they were trying to do is avoid impeachment used as a routine political weapon in the way it had been sometimes in the british system. so you had this attempt to remove, the ability to remove a president not for what the framers called maladministration. that is what you couldn't just like in a parliamentary system, just decide he screwed something up and impeach him. they used a phrase, treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors. and really left it murky.

with the basic view that the people should make that decision more often than the congress. and i think in a way that's exactly what speaker pelosi is doing. to me there is one grand question which comes out of andrew johnson. comes out of the nixon impeachment too. which is, what is the precedent you are setting? that is, if the bar is now so low for conduct. so high for impeachment, what does that do going forward? if you do follow director mueller's literary advice and read his own book you will see. you know, it is pretty stark. what are we going to put up with going forward if we put up with this? and to me that is the question this. >> and jeremy, lot of democrats in the house and senate watched

robert mueller yesterday. and reading into the comments as hey ball is in your court now go take it. >> if i were in my old job providing counsel to congressional leaders, i'd say if you fry to prognosticate the political implications of this for 2020? good luck. it is far to speculative and the constitution defines the role of the house of representatives in this process and it says nothing about looking thahead to a presidential election. i would say look to the constitution. when they lay before you concrete evidence that the president has abused his office it is up to congress to make the determination as to whether or not that is a chargeable offense. >> it is the political thing versus the right thing to do. that is what it's going to come

down to. >> thank you both. meachum and mcgraw coming to a city near your. not making it up. meachum going on tour with tim mcgraw. we can't wait. president trump remains insistent he's been exonerated. carol lee joins us with what she's hearing from sources close to the white house about that threat of impeachment. and former fbi deputy director mccabe joins us for an exclusive conversation on the heels of mueller's remark. the washington post bob woodward will be our guest. and steve bullock. a busy morning on morning joe. coming right back. a busy mornin. coming right back. [ screaming ] oh, it's just this weird little guy. ow! ow, ow, ow! ow, ow, ow! [ screaming ] not cool.

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i was struck by the tone and tenor of his remarks laying out

his case wrapping up this report. this was not, as the president says time and time again "no collusion, no obstruction." it was much more nuanced than that. i think that this was striking. i think it is different than what attorney general barr has opinion saying. >> just is even stronger than the language in his report. this is also a parting shot at his soon to be former boss the attorney general. because this statement is 180 degrees from the four-page statement that bill barr issued at the time he first saw the report. >> the evidence he laid out is remarkably similar to the impeachment charges against richard nixon and bill clinton. richard nixon, hotel haldeman and to the light of the fbi. and president trump tells -- to change his testimony. bill clinton tell betty curry to lie to the fbi. donald trump tell mcfarland to

put a false document in a file you know is going to be subpoenaed. the facts he laid out are so substantially similar to the matured allegations against bill clinton and richard nixon. it is clear where he was going. >> couple of the outliers on fox news yesterday. framing bob mueller's statement. welcome to our guests.

we've got a faull house and we'l dive right in. yesterday special counsel robert mueller stepping away from what appears to be his final job in law enforcement. ending a long career in public service that includes combat duty in the marine corps. 12 years as the second longest fbi director in history. yet he used his last day to break his two years of silence making his first comments since may 2017 appointment to lead the russia investigation. he gave voice to the written findings and decision making in his report. >> we investigated efforts to obstruct the investigation. the matters we investigated were of paramount importance. it was critical for us to obtain full and accurate information from every person we questioned. when a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to

investigators, it strikes at the core of the government's effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable. department's written opinion explaining the policy makes several important points that further informed our handling of the obstruction investigation. the opinion says that the constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrong doing. the report describes the results and analysis of our obstruction of justice investigation involving the president and as set forth in the report after that investigation, if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. under long-standing department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. that is unconstitutional.

even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that too is prohibited. the special counsel's office is part of the department of justice and by regulation it was bound by that department policy. charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider. >> so matt miller, robert mueller saying yesterday the constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrong doing passing the ball over to congress as we've been discussing this morning. what did you hear from your trained ear at the justice department in those eight minutes from robert mueller. >> i thought i herd a delve take point by point rebuttal of what the president and the attorney general and the president's attorneys have been saying since mueller's report was released over a month ago. if you go down everything the attorney general's been saying. the president has been say, starting with the collusion

piece. mueller had a different take. what we found is that there was unsufficient toefd charge broader conspiracy. on obstruction his take was much different than the attorney general. the attorney general said i hope he wasn't making a call because it was left to congress. mueller made clear the constitution and the justice department policy interpreting the constitution leave this question to congress and that is why he didn't make a determination. and then that first clip in the bite you just showed, where mummy ki mueller pontedly laid out why obstruction of justice crimes are so serious because they strike at the heart of the justice department's ability to find out what happened and hold people accountable for wrong doing. that is so different than what bill bar said on the day of the release of the report where he excused the president's actions because he was frustrated and because he thought he did nothing wrong. if you listen to what bob mueller said about obstruction it is much more in line with what you usually hear

prosecutors stay about people who obstruct investigations. >> bob mueller said yesterday the report is my testimony. i'm leaving my job going on to private life wha private life. by what did he leave us with yesterday? >> regularly on your show you have people who've written books or done some article in a newspaper or something on tv. and then they elaborate on it. mueller has said no elaboration, no questions. that's very, very unusual. i think the key here will pivot on the quality of evidence he has. he's laid out an obstruction case.

mo prosecutors have said you could bring a case on the president. back to watergate you had those thousands of hours of tape records where you heard the president say let's obstruct justice. let's pay black mail one. let's lie. let's stone wall the grand jury. so that raised the bar on how you deal with the president. and at this point we do not have that kind of evidence involving trump. >> of all people bob, you have license to go back to watergate. we'll let you do that own this show. noah what did you hear yesterday and how concerned should the white house be about it. >> they should be extremely concerned. the second part of the report, the president attempted to obstruct justice. he was just unsuccessful. because people around him were

shielding the president from his worst instincts. congress can and should litigate that issue. the conservative case against wh he said yesterday was twofold. he shouldn't have introduced exculpation at all. prosecutors don't exculpate. they clear. they prosecute or they do not. to do otherwise is besmirching someone's character. the second is odder. that mueller is trying to influence events here, the course of events. it is his responsibility to remind congress and the public where his obligations end and theirs begins and i don't think that is outside of his purview. >> effectually he was saying my report and investigation was not the end of something. it was a step in the process and now congressati takes it from h. and matt miller mentioned the exoneration, claims of exoneration from the white house. here is actually what bob mueller said yesterday about

insufficient evidence to establish conspiracy between the donald trump campaign and the russian government. >> the first volume of the report details numerous efforts emanates from russia to influence the election. this volume includes a discussion of the trump campaign's response to this activity. as well as our conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy. >> so carol lee, obviously the white house reaction to this was case closed yesterday. bob mueller's leaving. it is over. everybody move along. that is not exactly what mueller is saying there. >> no. and that is more of their sort of dream, that everything, nothing to see here. everything is moved on. and they are fundraising off it for the trump campaign and all those sorts of things. their view, the people i've talked to said mueller underscored where y they don't want him to testify. why they hope this is case closed. because he's effective because he hasn't gotten into the mud with the president and he sticks to the facts and he's not yet seen as someone hyperpartisan

the way that others of the justice department who have left have become. such as james comey. their view generally is that this is worse for the democrats than it is for trump depending how it plays out. democrats are now having to hand wring and wrestle where w this idea of impeachment. and if things stay where they are then this is more of a moment for the president the get through even though it wasn't a great day for him. the broader view is that sfats status quo is good for the president in the current atmosphere. if they are not moving towards impeachment, but they are talking about it. he can still run against it. nothing changes. there are no new data points that come out. so they are really liking to like the way things are light now. the concern is that if they go move to impeachment there is concern what does that do with the executive privilege. does that then mean a bunch of former white house officials are going to be on the hill forced to testify? how do they manage is that?

so it is more in the defense of, you know, whatever democrats are going to do, they are going to do. and how they manage that is more of what they are talking about. >> this story, nancy pelosi we heard yesterday working through it on stage. saying i know colleagues want us to move to impeachment. i'm not there yet. let's review the evidence. what kind of position is this putting in her now in terms of robert mueller effectively telling her it is yours now. >> a few things. i think robert mueller stated facts. congress has the ability, constitutional ability to review this. that was never at issue and that was never doubted by anybody. so that is the baseline. number two, we're still seeing 42 people have called for impeachment including the republican from michigan. that's roughly 10% of congress.

20% of all house democrats. pelosi keeps making the point this is a relatively small group of people that want to move towards impeachment. pelosi's allies and advisors believe they will undoubt lid lose the house of representatives and the presidency in 2020 if they impeach the president. that is her people's assessment. not mine. so that is the political calculus they are working off of. now, i don't mean to understate the problem she has in the position she's in. house homeland chairman benny thompson of mississippi take the most recent high impeachment. so the group is growing. it is not a critical mass yet. and really time is not working on the impeachment crew's side. because really the august recess is around the corner, not too far away. and then congress has to deal with government funding. debt sealing. a whole lot of thorny issues.

which will at least for the moment in some people in democrat leadership's view stave off the view. this is not a path they want to go down. they believe they are much safer in court where they have won a few battle, at least one to get documents from the administration. >> this isn't a case that the spooker is slow walking towards impeachment. this is a case trying to get people off the trail of impeachment. the people around pelosi believe an impeachment process would lose them both the house and the presidency? >> that's what they believe. and we reported that last week. although the days tend to blend together these days and i don't know if i would necessarily characterize it as slow walking or anything like that. she's saying quiplainly what sh

believes. em impeachment is divisive. foolhardy, the republican senate is not going convict the president. we've not even seen one senate republican call for impeachment proceedings so she's right in substance. this would be the house putting itself on a ledge. lot of democratic activists and people on the outside believe the house has the duty to do this and will suffer politically if they do not. as of now that is not the democratic leadership's view. >> through yesterday's very stock presentation by bob mueller. one could not help but wonder why it was not bob mueller who first spoke about the report and explained the findings of report that he was in charge of with people he worked with rather than attorney general barr. do you have any insight as to why id that did not occur? >> yeah i have some insight a as from trying to convince him to do press conferences when i was there. he doesn't like to do them. he like to marshal his credibility and not use to it

speak at prorvess or public events but to use it so when he takes actions he doesn't look like he's doing political. i suspect he wanted to be consistent with his career and let his work for himself. i don't think that was necessarily the wrong decision because i think it was very hard to anticipate that the attorney general would behave so inappropriately. if you are at the justice department as a prosecutor you don't expect the attorney general to take your work product and be so transparental transparentally political in the way bill barr was. and you can see his frustration internally with the fact that after barr's first letter in march he sent a letter to him complaining about the way he handled it. and i think he must have been even more frustrated when barr held his press conference on april 18th. so i think what you saw yesterday was finally after a month of his work, two months actually if you go back to when barr first transmitted his findings. frustration about two months of

his work being misrepresented to the american people and actually finally having a chance to clear it up and put a stake in the ground. this is what i meant. this is what i have to say about it. and this is hopefully at least in his point of view the last time he talks. >> let's go back to watergate, bob, since we do have you on air. how would you compare the political calculus that democrats are grappling with today versus what went down with knicksen and the stakes with nixo >> first if house democrats are going to have a redo of the mueller investigation, call the wns, get the documents and so forth. i think ner not going to be very happy because mueller dade pretty good job finding out as best they could what occurred. and so you could spend months on that redo.

and coupme up with not much newn terms of hard evidence. i think -- i do not know this. i've not asked speaker pelosi this. but i think she realizes the weakness of the evidence. and if they had tape recording, documents. if it was very clear, not ambiguous, not mushy that the president committed obstruction of justice as a lot of people theorized when mueller was investigating that there was some secret conversation between trump and putin or trump people and russians and so forth. that has not been discovered. should it surface, should it exist, i think nancy pelosi will

do a 180 on it. she realizes you do not have the kind of evidence that surfaced in the nixon case or even in the clinton case. and of course that didn't lead to conviction and removal of president clinton. >> yeah. obviously congress has a job to do and in terms of oversight and a check on the president of the united states. but i've heard from a lot of people that do we believe all these other congressional investigation will uncover something bob mueller did not in two years with all the resources he had as a special counsel. >> it suggests the investigation was conducted in thorough fashion and the conspiracy issue, the conspiracy with russia issue is pretty definitively resolved. what frustrates me is that? 1998, 99 we've internalized this

less son that it was really politically bad for them to em peach the president. democrats could also issue a censor resolution. i don't think they have any choins now but to do something. bob mueller cutoff a lot of avenues yesterday. >> on capitol hill is anybody struck out by the fact we're talking about obstruction and is there going to be impeachment or not impeachment on obstruction? when the bottom line of this case is, russia, a sworn enemy of the united states attacked us and is going to attack us again if not attacking us daily now. >> it is a really interesting point. because no. the main thing that people talk about is obstruction and the president and the russia piece

is kind of an afterthought or something they talk about secondly. and you can see perhaps why then you don't have the public outrage one would expect in that mueller talked about yesterday. that all americans need to pay attention to what russia did in the election. all of the focus is more -- they are not having, you know, hearings about how to defend against, how to do a postmortem of what russia did and how to defend against that in 2020. it is all focussed on the president. and in that sense that is where the president wants it to be because he kind of relishes in this fight. and the risk for democrats is that they go down this road and you already have a situation where the president for two years, said this is an investigation that is not going find anything. i did nothing wrong. that is witch hunt. two years later it is kind of a wash. he getting to still say shah that and his supporters believe it. so democrats then the risk if they go down this impeachment route and focussed on the president and don't get anything.

and he then gets to say see they didn't get anything. this is all about me. and meanwhile russia is trying to influence the 2020 election in ways we probably haven't explored yet. >> he doesn't talk about that side either. bob you have a great read of the white house. what is your sense of the fear right now about the prospect of impeachment? there is the argument they invite a conversation about impeachment because they know it doesn't go anywhere in the united states senate. >> not only that. but by focuses on this re-examination of what mueller has done you expend a lot of political energy and a lot of time. and i'm fascinated with this notion of the president saying case closed. it's probably not closed. again, i think it is not going to be definitive in terms of

defining the trump presidency. but what is not closed and should not be closed is an examination of what trump is doing as president. and i keep saying there is a governing crisis. and i have five top things i think we really need to look at. relations with china. what's the policy? how has that gone down with north korea, with saudi arabia, all the budget issues and the tax issues and the immigration if that is really what's going to have a direct impact on people's lives. and if we're going to sit around and say, well, does this look like obstruction, or is this not obstruction? i think in a sense i know there

are some in the white house who think fine, let's let congress go after it and have this redo. because key point is all of us have tried to make here, there was no evidence that there was a coordination or collusion between russia and the trump people or trump. lot of people expected that. of course if that was true that would have been explosive. but based on what mueller did, it is not true. >> or as mueller said yesterday, insufficient evidence to prove a conspiracy between them. bob woodward, thank you as always. matt miller. jake sherman. thank you both as well. still ahead on "morning joe," exclusive interview with andrew mccabe the former acting fbi director fired by president trump hours before he was set to retire. he ought to have a lot to say this morning. and former acting solicitor general neil katyal who wrote the rules governing the special counsel.

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i do think those comments about bob mueller about, you know, the other processes obviously impeachment being the only constitutional way to accuse the president of wrong doing. definitely contradict what is the attorney general said when he summarized mueller's report. >> that was former republican governor of new jersey and trump transition chairman chris christie saying that special counsel robert mueller definitely contradicts attorney general barr's summary of his conclusions. joining us acting solicitor general. msnbc legal contributor, neal katyal. and kurt bardella. neal, your generation impressionsen what we saw and following up on governor cristie's analysis.

what contradictions between robert mueller's comments yesterday and attorney general barr of months ago. >> i'm glad you started with the governor christie. frankly i think your panlt got a lot wrong by skugt suggesting oh you can't have a impeachment inquiry because there is no new evidence that is going to be uncovered. and mull did a thorough job and already impeached the president. conspiracy is the legal term. trump uses collusion. the second is obstruction of justice. mueller did not find insufficient evidence on the latter, obstruction of justice. rather he said he couldn't decide the question and was barred from deciding it because of justice department opinions that prohibit the indictment of a sitting president. that very opinion says the remedy is impeachment. is it is not about insufficient

evidence when comes to obstruction of justice. that is why you are seeing new calls for people coming forward in congress saying hey this is something we have to do. so i think yesterday was a very bad day for the president. because it was all mueller, mueller, mueller. and what the president wants is barr, barr, barr. barr spun, the attorney general spun what mueller did in ways that distorted the public debate even as recently as this panel five minutes ago on your show. as cooler heads prevail, be what they are going to look at is hey this obstruction of justice thing we can't just have it dangling out there with no one revolving it. >> the conversation about insufficient evidence we were talk about the establishment of the conspiracy of the campaign of trump and the russian government. we were talk about that

previously but what did you see, neal in terms of conversations specifically from barr to robert mueller and effectively what was robert mueller telling us and congress yesterday when he read that eight minute prepared statement? >> i mean, imagine that you write this long report to your boss, you know, andy lack. and it is a thousand pages long and then lack goes and gives a press conference about it and you complain and write two letters saying hey you distorted what i said. and then lack testifies in senate and then you give your own statement. what does that say? mueller is barr's subordinate. he works for barr. that it is way the special counsel regulations and the system of justice works and yet you had mueller who's the most press reticent person coming forward yesterday with that press conference. i think governor christie was exactly right. i think barr, you know, distorted mueller's work and distorted the public debate.

and mueller was coming forth to say really, you know, two essential things. he had look. in a thousand pages of the report or really three essential things. number one, the russians interfered with the 2016 election. don't forget that. no american should forget that. number two, if i could clear the president, i would. if i had the evidence to do it, i would. and he pointedly doesn't. and three, i couldn't indict the president. so don't think i'm clearing the president. i was constitutionally incapable of doing that because a sitting president can't be indicted. and all of that together is a big, you know, pass of the baton to congress. >> neal, please correct me if i summarize this poorly. is mueller saying essentially because donald trump is president, he's protected.

somewhat above the rule of law like a citizen like yours truly. what is the likelihood that donald trump would be indicted when he leaves office. >> i think it is very high. you even now have a letter from almost a thousand former prosecutors saying look i've read the mueller report. i'd looked at the evidence in there. i would indict this case. so i think what the report is saying is not that trump is above the law. but it is a question of timing and who makes the initial decision. if you need to get him out of office soon, impeachment is the correct remedy. and mueller himselfed a verted o that yesterday say. if you can wait it out, then you indict him after he leaves office. but i don't think you can read what mueller said yesterday to be what the president hopes.

which is oh, i'm totally cleared. or anything like that. this is really devastating. both as a matter of whether the president committed crimes, but also fitness for office. i don't think americans want to have a standard that not guilty by reason of technicality or something like that because of the title of the office he holds he can't go to jail right now. you know, we expect more of our presidents than that. >> the mueller quote neal is referring to. the "constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrong doing." neal katyal, always great to have you. thank you so much. kurt, your latest think piece is entitled robert mueller's statement made the democrats look like cowards. you write "democrats have a version of the wourt and mueller's clear interpretation of the facts and what have they done? issued a lot of strongly worded statements for one. why did the democrats ask the

american people to grant them the power of the majority if they are so reluctant to use it to protect the sovereignty of congress. trump is preoccupied with the optics of the force and strength, what he seas as the democratic congress reluctant to wield the power the voters gave them in the midterms. he sees hesitancy and division. mueller's report has only made this clearer" are suggesting after mueller's presentation yesterday would be democrats to to dive head first into impeachment. >> yeah. this report has been in their hands since mid april. robert mueller didn't say anything differently. it might be great if members started by actually reading the whole thing and then making decisions. but ma mueller made clear that this president there is evidence he committed crimes. why isn't that the end of the conversation? why isn't that the standard he would be showeding the president

too that it is not okay for the person in this office to commit crimes. congress has a responsibility to the office, to the people that voted for them. to the entire institution to hold the president accountable. they asked for the power of the majority, which we knew at the time what the mueller report pending could include conversation about impeachment. knowing they asked the votes for power of majority. to hold the president accountable. to be a check and balance. yet they are so reluctant. they are so scared to exercise that power now when it is very clear that this president has committed wrong doing. >> so sounds like the answer to me question is no. but are you synthetic at all to the -- sympathetic to the dilemma nancy pelosi finds herself in which she believes an inquiry or impeachment process helps the president of the united states? or should they not consider that and just perform their duty of oversight in the congress? >> i think people get into trouble when they try to forecast what may or may not happen in 18 months.

no one seems to have been good at this at all over the election cycles. so they should just do their job and not worry about what might happen 18 months ago. the standard has to be bigger than just the next election. they are going to be judged right now by what they do. for all future presidents. if they don't impeach they are saying it is okay for every president here after to lie, to cheat, to commit crimes and they don't do anything to hold them accountable. >> i hear the frustration in kurt's voice and neal's, and it is a frustration i share. there is a moral imperative and conflicts with the political imperative. the political actors close to the ground know their members are imperilled by this. the vulnerable democrat here's are not going to be able to make the case for democratic governance. they are going to make the case for impeachment. which is difficult to make. we shouldn't overestimate the extent they are going magically

ex machina shape a public argument away where it is now which is against impeachment that they are taking them off messages and that is a direct conflict with the constitutional imperative but nevertheless i think one democrats are not going to be able to overcome. that is frustrating but it is reality. >> kurt bard la with a message for democrat this is morning. joining us now. former acting director of the fbi. andrew mccabe. author "the threat, how the fbi protects america in the age of terror and trump." we've been talking a lot over the last two hours about what we saw and heard yesterday from director mueller what did you hear from where you said? >> thank you for having me on. what i saw yesterday as i watched the broadcast live was really vintage bob mueller.

this was bob mueller delivering what he thought, without adornment, without extra words. short, to the point, delivering his message and then stepping away as he hopes from the microphones permanently. we'll see if that hope comes through. >> andy yesterday's very stark performance, very muelleresque performance, seems to have focused in largely in public opinion terms in terms of what we do here every day on the obstruction element. because it was pretty well laid out in volume 2 of his report. but the obstruction evidence that is listed in mr. mueller's report, it gets to but we don't talk about it a lot, the dna of the crime. at the crime scene. and the dna of the crime scene is russia's declaration of war against the united states in attacking our electoral institutions. then and perhaps even now and going forward. perhaps in 2020.

so my question to you is, do you think that donald trump is in cahoots with russia? is he aware of what's going on with the russians? why hasn't he spoken about the russians? what is his involvement with russia that seems to be, that he goes to great lengths to cover up. >> yeah. so mike that is a question great question. and i think that is a little bit of -- i read anyway from director mueller's comments yesterday that is a little oit the frustration. the constant talk about the obstruction side of the investigation has somewhat eclipsed the more important in director mueller's eyes, clearly more important issue of the systemic pervasive attack waged by the government of russia directed by its president vladimir putin and executed by its military and services on the foundations of our democratic process. and as he says it is something that every american should be very concerned about.

whether or not the president has some sort of connection to the russians or is influenced to the russian, i think the only thing we know for certain at this point is that bob mueller's team did not uncover that. i think that there is obviously more investigating to do. there are several other investigative avenues that are being pursued by the congress, through their oversight authority and through other investigations that spun off of the mueller teams' inquiry. but the crime here, mike, is that almost three years after this election we are still talking about the politics around this issue. and we have yet to take a significant step to ensure that the russians aren't successful in attacking our democracy again. >> carroll? >> one of the interpretations, director, of robert mueller's statement yesterday was that it was a rebuke of the attorney general. and and both sides put out a statement saying there was no daylight here and tried to go

over what apparent differences there were. what was your takeaway? did you see him as that doing counterpoint to every the attorney general had done so far? >> you know my experience with director mueller is that he's probably the last person on earth that wants to engage in a tit for tat counter point with the attorney general. the attorney general for this function was his boss and as we also snow know is a personal fr. however director mueller would not have come out and made the statement yesterday and sent the letter to attorney general barr if he wasn't concerned the way his results of his team had been misrepresented by the attorney general's original comments. this was bob mueller's way of very clearly underlining what he thought the most important aspects of the work were and i think this is the statement that americans should focus on. >> as we take a step back from

this. the argument from the white house, and they are not alone in the country i don't think. a non partisan actor. a highly respected man in robert mueller, the former fbi director. given two years, all the resources he needed full staff, anybody he needed to talk to. and concluded in volume one there was insufficient evidence to establish a conspiracy between the trump campaign and the russian government. do you accept that conclusion knowing what you know that the trump campaign did not work with the russian government or just there was not sufficient evidence found by director mueller that that happened? >> well in concluding that you don't have sufficient evidence to prove under the criminal law in this country, the existence of a conspiracy is very different than concluding that all kinds of inappropriate contacts took place. we know now from the report, something over 140 contacts between individuals associated with the campaign contacting and

having interactions with russians or people connected to the intelligence services. this is unprecedented activities. so what has been build as no collusion, no obstruction, should probably be recast as no witch hunt and no exoneration. i think that was the message that bob mueller was telling us yesterday. >> so what is your suspicion given the two years and all the resources bob mueller had that he couldn't establish that kind of conspiracy? >> i think the report clearly lays out some of the challenges he had in obtaining testimony of some witnesses and documents of evidence of communications from fwho fwho folks who had gone to length to conceal those communications. we all know the details of the interactions laid out if that volume one. they are significant. and i will say this too, i was

struck by the amount of detail the mueller team put in the report about the government of russia's activities. you have specific military units being identified. the tactics and techniques they were using to influence the campaign. it is an extraordinarily high level of detail to reveal about a federal investigation. and i think it was done purposefully to show the american people exactly the seriousness of what we were confronts. >> so then do you believe that there was a conspiracy between the trump campaign and the russian government? >> i think there is no doubt that the russia -- there is absolutely no doubt the russians were interfering with the elections for the purpose of helping the trump campaign. there is also no doubt that the trump campaign was receptive to that assistance, interested in receiving that assistance. one thing we lack is the keystone between the bridge t agreement between the parties. and we have a lack of evidence

to bring charges on those grounds. >> you believe there was a conspiracy. >> i believe there was a strong desire, willingness on both parts. >> do you believe there was obstruction on the part of the president of the united states? >> i believe and i think the mueller report details quite clearly that the president engaged in numerous acts intended to obstruct and impede the investigation. >> would you recommend the united states congress bring up impeachment? >> i think it is important that the united states does its job. i think that the american people have the right to hear in detail from witnesses what the mueller team found out. look at the impact of just director mueller's nine minute statement yesterday. people are talking and thinking about this investigation in a different way in the last 24 hours as a result of the fact he came on tv and spoke about it. i think, look. the fact is most americans are not going sit down and read a

400 page report. i think it would be important for folks to hear from some of the key witnesses and make up their own minds about what they think about the president's behavior. >> should director mueller testify before congress? >> i expect he probably will. as much as he probably wants that least in life. if subpoenaed i'm sure that director mueller would comply with that process. >> director you have been making a very clear distinction between conduct that is untoward and conduct that is prosecutable. -- demolishadmonished the forme director for impugning president clinton without the --. that is not what the doj does. is that in a way what bob mueller did here? we cannot impugn the conduct. it is up to have a trial. but is he impugning the

president's character in a way that is beyond the doj's scope? because it is insufficient to prosecute? >> i don't think so knowia. i see your argument but i don't think that is where director mueller was going. there is always that strong bias towards not making any statements or reviewing any details about cases that are not brought. this is far from the traditional criminal case. of course that is the same reasoning that director comey and i and others on the team brought to the decision to make the statement in july of 2016. a decision we very well may have made in error. however, the remit given to director mueller as special counsel was to report to the attorney general. exactly what he had found. he's done that and the attorney general made the decision to release the report to the public which i think was the right one. >> andy, if you could for two and a half years, this country and the fbi specifically has

been under assault. a vital constitution has been under assault. largely led by the president united states. looking bag at it. the two and a half years. you have been under assault along with several fbi agents. could you assess and talk about the damage you think may have occurred to this institution? and what happens to people when their personal lives, professional lives are maligned in public by the president of the united states? >> yeah mike i could go on for another hour about that one based on my own experiences. it is personally, professionally, reputationly devastating to have to sustain these sorts of attacks from the leader of this country, the person charged with upholding the law, the person charged with supporting and defending institutions like the department of justice and the fbi. i worry about what impact those

attacks will have on the institution long-term. i think that the president's attacks and undermining the credibility of the institution makes the job harder for the men and women who are out there protecting this country every day. so that country every day. so that concerns me greatly. do i think they will stop doing that job? absolutely not. i have complete faith in my former colleagues that they will continue to do what they have to do. it's just another burden they have to carry day in and day out sustaining those attacks from the president. >> here he is one week ago talking about you. >> sir the constitution says treason says is punishable by death. you've accused your adversaries by treason. who specifically are you accusing of treason? >> i think a number of people and i think what you look is they have unsuccessfully tried to take down the wrong person. if you look at comey, if you look at mccabe, if you look at

probably people -- people higher than that, if you look at strzok, they want an insurance policy so that should she lose, remember 100 million to one, maybe he said 100 million to nothing, but should she lose we'll have an insurance policy and we'll get this guy out of office. that's what they said and that's what may meant. that's treason. >> that's the president accusing you of treason. how do you respond? >> yeah, it's outrageous, i can't describe for you how -- how impactful it is to see the president of the united states mention your name in the same sentence with words like treason and the death penalty. but let's put that aside just for a second and focus on the facts. it's impossible to unwind all of the misstatements and falsehoods in that clip that you just ran, but let's just focus on the fact that people who know what treason means understand that

nothing that the fbi did, that the department of justice did or that i did or any of the folks i worked with has anything to do with treason or plotting a coup or trying to take down a government. the fact is willie, we at the fbi investigate russia and in 2016 it focused on threats from russia that took us to the president's campaign. so we did our job under those circumstances with clear information to indicate that a threat to national security might exist which is the threshold for fbi investigation. we stepped up to that responsibility and conducted that investigation. i think director mueller's report, his statements following the report completely validate the decisions we made. there clearly was a threat to u.s. national security in the conduct of the russians interfering with our 2016 election. >> director, and just to follow up on that, you say that no one would lightly use the term

treason at the fbi because they know the meaning of it and you in february suggested that it was possible that donald trump was an asset of russia. and you certainly understand what it means to be an asset of a foreign government. you said that you were anxious to review the mueller report when it came out and would offer further commentary there. after reading the report, do you believe that donald trump is a russian asset? >> well, i think that the report makes clear that they did not uncover evidence of that sort of a relationship, so based on what director mueller's team revealed in the report i'd have to say no, we still have not seen clear evidence of that. but again, that's not the position we're in at the beginning of an investigation. we initiate investigations because we think a threat to national security might exist. we have a member of the campaign who tells the foreign government that the russians have offered to provide assistance in the form of foreign e-mails that

will denigrate the opposing candidate hillary clinton. that is more than enough reason to believe that we have a potential of a relationship, of influence on a campaign by our foreign adversary and that's why we took the steps we did. >> and that threat remains. russia still looking at influencing our elections. former acting fbi director andrew mccabe, we appreciate your time this morning. his recent book is "the threat." these are live pictures of air force one as president trump is set to depart the white house any moment now on his way to colorado to deliver remarks at the 2019 graduation ceremony for the united states air force academy. if the president does stop to speak to reporters we will bring it to you right away. "morning joe" is back in three minutes. away "morning joe" is back in three minutes.

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back live on "morning joe" as we come up near 8:00 here on

the east coast. the president of the united states will add any moment take off for colorado springs, colorado, to deliver the commencement address at the united states air force academy. we will see if he stops and speaks to reporters on his way out of the white house. that should happen any moment. a lot for him to react to. he's already doing it on twitter this morning. still with us mike barnicle. white house reporter for the associated press, former aide to the george w. bush white house and state dvepartments and host of the beat on msnbc. also white house correspondent for pbs news hour and capitol hill correspondent, casey hunt. joe and mika are off this morning. you were on morning, noon and night last night watching this mueller news. what was your take away as you

watched that 8-minute presentation? >> my main take away is bob mueller is a school principal who is a little disappointed with the class. in between the lines, if you read it closely, but in all seriousness, he wrote the damn thing. he wrote up the report and it's all in there and there was a type of frustration, i thought, quite clearly both in the way that he felt the democrats in congress were waiting for him to do one more thing, help them one more time when hey, the report is my testimony. it's a pretty clear brush back to the idea that what america needs now is the reading rainbow edition where mueller goes in and reads allow to the country or to the congress what he basically says that he found. number two, this is real stuff. this is serious.

this was as you were discussing with mccabe, this is a foreign inflourens operation that was devastating in many ways. there was a felonious hacking that may have impacted the election and one side is not to benefit from and there was a lot of obstruction. some of it charged as we know and some of it not and that he says strikes at the core of finding the truth and as bob mueller said holding wrong doers accountable. and third and finally, despite what we know about bob mueller's objections to the report, the characterization, the letters of march 25th and march 27th, when it's all said and done bob mueller came out yesterday both in his remarks and in a later joint statement to try to underscore the argument that there's not a lot of daylight between him and barr and for everyone who says i love mueller so much, he's perfect, i think this shows some imperfection because mueller's own letters revealed daylight, the need to

assert an alliance over the substance is not the best tradeoff. >> i want to give you a line from mueller yesterday. john meacham was trying to figure out the grammar of this line. quote, if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime we would have said that. what exactly is mueller saying there? >> i think that is him trying to turn the reports careful nonexoneration section into a sound byte which is difficult to do. but the nonexoneration section of the report was bob mueller's attempt to say, here's a tricky legal theory. we didn't treat this subject, this potential defendant like any other subject or suspect because of the nature of him being president and therefore we conducted a different type of analysis that ruled out charging him. but also as a conjoined hypothetical, if even this

president was so cleared of wrong doing, we would so state and we didn't. so take that for what you will. look, bob mueller is a man of impeccable integrity who did a great job. i'm not here to monday morning quarterback but i think it's become evident that some of that legal parsing has not been super useful because it's just too cloudy. at a certain point, if it's too cloudy it's hard to see the sun, willie. >> it fails that bob mueller is leaving his job unfinished if he can't communicate his findings. if he thinks that his role, a very important role, as the figure head of this investigation that he doesn't have an obligation to actually explain as you explained, a very complicated legal theory to the american public, his job is seemingly unfinished. >> well, and the job is unfinished or handed off perhaps, casey to the united

states congress. we heard nancy plealy yesterday in an event in san francisco stating her case that we need to stick to facts. people around nancy pelosi actually don't want to pursue impeachment because they think it benefit it is president too much. what are you hearing this morning about reaction from democrats and perhaps the increased vigor for pursuing impeachment? >> it really is entirely up to nancy pelosi at this point. and i think that you've got it right in that you know, whatever mueller did yesterday ramped up pressure on pelosi. you heard a couple of democratic presidential candidates were digging into whether there will be more house democrats, we have a count of at least 40 who said they're open to launching proceedings, but you're hearing more and more democrats at least when i have private conversations with them talk about weighing questions of history and for -- even for

those who have believed very strongly all the way along that nancy pelosi is right in thinking that impeachment only helps donald trump have started to say to themselves, you know, what am i going to tell my grandchildren in 10 or 15 years about what i did in this moment and the more things that pile up, the more ways in which the administration flouts, ignores, you know, everything that congress is trying to do, the prerogatives of the article 1 branch of government. the more that sort of sensibility is taking hold and i think robert mueller was so clear in his statement yesterday that you know, that's getting harder and harder to ignore. but for nancy pelosi, the sense really is and she said this yesterday, that it was -- it's just a minority of her democratic caucus. 40 versus 200 approximately is not really a fair fight and the impeachment voices tend to be louder in the media, you know, louder in front of cameras than

that sort of more silent majority who still think that this isn't the we to go. so congress has got its places incredibly quiet because congress is out for memorial day recess and this with is one of those things that opinions coaless and like any i think we were talking about earlier about high school, like any group of cliques or group of peers, they feed off of each other. so my question is going to be does momentum start to change with those moderate swing democrats in the wake of what robert mueller said. because if they start to change their minds you'll see nancy pelosi reflect her decision. >> we'll see if it becomes a critical mass on her. president trump has sent out a series of tweets this morning as you might expect writing in part the greatest presidential

harassment in history after spending $40 million over two dark years unlimited access, people, resources and cooperati cooperation. mueller wuf brought charges if there was anything to bring. and he continues russia, russia, russia, i had nothing to do with hush sha helping me get elected. now the dems and their partner, the fake news media et cetera et cetera. so obviously that's not what bob mueller was saying yesterday. he wasn't suggested it was a hoax or a witch hunt. he reminded us again of the russian attempt and success in many ways of attacking our election in 2016. what do you expect to hear more from the white house and do they invite all this talk of impeachment as some has said? >> well, the first thing that we should remember is robert mueller said lets all remember what this was really about was a foreign country interfering in

our elections and we should not lose sight of that. i was struck that he put that at the end of his statement. we need to remember that there's a whole country hoping that we get lost in the chaos. in terms of the impeachment and the way that the white house is seeing this i've been talking to both the white house aides and trump campaign aides and all of them say the same thing. bring it on. the president has been saying the democrats are bitter about the 2016 elerks. there really is a deep state conspiracy against me, so an impeachment they think would help republicans win back the house and also increase the president's ability to turn out his voters. but that said, i mean, i think what we also need to remember here is when we talk about robert mueller a line that struck me is there's a system outside of the criminal justice system constitutionally that needs to be used to accuse a president of wrong doing and robert mueller said that very

clearly. so even though attorney general barr said it in his press conference before the report came out that robert mueller wasn't leaving this to congress, that in line struck to me very quickly that he is leaving it to congress but i think the president is rightly saying that he thinks it's going to help him so which is why you're seeing democrats lead cautiously. >> i'm told there's one line in here that's worth mentioning and it is this. and now russia has disappeared because i had nothing to do with russia helping me to get elected. a concession that russia helped him get elected. >> this is the first time he ever acknowledged that. this is the first time that the president has given some credence to the idea that russia did play a role in the elections in particularly ho help hto hel. that is significant although of course let's point out this is a white house administration that's done very little to

prevent that from happening again next time around. the very few safeguards put in place about the next election interference. as much as this personally makes a president nervous, the idea of impeachment, he doesn't like that to be the first line in his political obituary, the people around him think that's the first political advantage he could have, to play a victim. and as much as pelosi of course because pelosi is reflecting the will of her caucus, it will be interesting to see what the 2020 candidates have to say here. we're hearing more and more of them say impeachment is the right thing to do. what happens if say, joe biden who's currently the front runner or bernie sanders start talking about impeachment. they're reflecting pelosi's argument that woe should -- it should be that investigation and oversight, but if they change, if biden remains his front runner status and he calls for

impeachment will speaker pelosi have to take that in account. >> i don't think any of their actions suggest that they want to give any ammunition to impeachment because if you were actually to act on that straj jj -- strategy, what you would do is say great, take it all and come get me and that's not what they did. now, look, that's the really bottom line is that what bob mueller found was that donald trump was doing these things and then covering them up. that doesn't mean there was an underlying felony. the good news for the white house has been part one of the report. but he tried to remove mueller. then he sits mcgahn down and says that didn't really happen. >> and every once in a while, a

death, someone accused slips and utters a truth and donald trump may have uttered a truth inadvertently this morning in that tweet when he said -- >> and now he writes and now russia has disappeared because i had nothing to do with russia helping me to get elected. >> what an epic freudian slip because i'm guessing he's not going to retweet this one after he corrected joe biden's last name in the kim jong un insult tweet. i can't imagine what would have come out of donald trump's mouth if he had to sit down with mueller and his team. >> the president has stopped to speak to the press. we will turn that tape and play it for you before he hops on air force one and goes out to colorado springs. so let's again put ourselves in the position of house democrats right now as johnathan said, vice president biden said i'm going to take my queues from nancy pelosi which is to say i'm

not hopping into this yet. cory booker and gillibrand, the two senators said they're ready for impeachment. does it remain this small group in the house that says yes, we've said that for a long time that there ought to be impeachment hearings and now we really believe it because of what robert mueller left us with. >> i think as of this morning, it's still kind of seeping outward slowly from that group of 40 people. i would not yet describe it as a ground swell or say necessarily that the dam has broken wide open. i think we need a few more days to figure out if that's going to be the case. honestly i think we need them to all come back to washington to be able to kind of get a sense, take the temperature of where things stand. i do think it still remains a possibility that this will be

the thing that tips people over the edge. but i do think, you know, vice president biden with that statement, he shows he really has his finger on the pulse on where things stand here on the hill because he said that he defers to nancy pelosi which is still kind of the perspective of most of the house democratic caucus, but he also suggested that impeachment proceedings might become inevitable and that sort of way of framing and thinking about it is how it has started to feel on the hill. you know, this -- when the attorney general put out his summary, this did seem like case closed on the hill from a political perspective. it seemed like he had slammed the door, that there was going to be no political option or opportunity or will for impeachment proceedings to go forward and quite frankly that has evolved more than i expected it to in the intervening six weeks or however long, eight weeks that it's been since that actually happened and it's partly because of the trump administration actions in other

areas, how they have refused to honor a single subpoena but it's also because of how, you know, what we have learned in the interim about the conflicts between mueller and barr about how this was released. the fact that now bob mueller clearly felt compelled to come and make this very straightforward but clearly detailed statement about how, you know, he said out loud if front of the cameras that if they were going to charge -- if they were going to exonerate the president they would have said they were exonerating the president. that is a clear message to people up here. so again, i think we're still kind of feeling it out but i do not think by any stretch this question about impeachment has been finally decided in the house. >> off of what kasie was just talking about, do you in your reporting get any sense that there's going to be an expedited process that's going to arrive quite quickly when the house members return next week that the stark difference is going to

come down to stick with doing the political thing on impeachment or now is time to do the right thing on impeachment? >> i'm not sure that it's going to come down to a quick decision. i think nancy pelosi has been very methodical if her thinking. i think the people around her including the lawmakers understand what's at stake here. there's obviously this idea of what the constitution requires and robert mueller saying that he left this essentially to congress and then there's the political side. 2020 is a real issue that democrats have to face. they have to wonder whether or not impeaching the president without republicans in the senate, on board, whether that's going to make it fail at the very on set and what they're going to lose in the process of that. i don't see any reason why they would rush that decision. that being said i think it does really come down to the fact that the president can use this as a political tool.

a lot of people, even democrats, they're frustrated with the pace of things but they understand there is an election coming and the american people are also going to have a very loud say in whether or not they think that the behavior that the president has been exhibiting, something they can get behind and think was necessary for these times or whether or not they think it was unethical and that he needs to be voted out. >> i think the problem for the democrats is there was a lot of talk waiting to see what mueller found. then he found it and there wasn't a clear plan about what to do about it. if the fair result is, this is concerning behavior but not impeach million then you say that and that's your finding and you move on. i think speaker pelosi has tried to walk this line. we could have some real talk at the table, right? >> go ahead. >> what does anyone think would happen if all of this was laid out as a case against barack obama? right? i mean, we kind of -- you step

back and you just forget. we all lived through that. what would happen? and so it's not my job here to pretend i have the per fektd hypothetical in my head and it's up to the congress to decide and congress in our beautiful system is a shaking, changing, flowing river and new people come if and out and i'm not in congress, but does anyone really think that barack obama under the congress that he was dealing with would just be sitting through all of this? >> on top of -- >> so that's the situation that the democrats have to deal with and they have to deal with that as a constitutional matter. >> do you think everyone would have been okay with barack obama and his family getting multimillion dollar government loans for their building company? would they be comfortable with the transfer of trademarks from china to the family? would they be comfortable with foreign governments leasing buildings and building 'em blazened obama tower? no. >> or siding with a north korean

dictator over former vice president cheney. time and time again, this is a different paradigm and republicans have made their decisions to support this president and the democrats find themselves in and boo. how can you not be sympathetic with the argument that you pursue impeachment as well as trying to figure in the political calculations. >> that gets to one of the more frustrating aspects in this whole process. what i hear repeatedly from a lot of republicans off the record, they'll talk about the president of the united states in totally disparaging terms and you get the sense that both democrats and republicans, but republicans specifically, they now just want to survive this presidency rather than indict, rather than go forward. just, let's hang on, we have about 18 months left. le let's just survive this presidency and return to

normalcy. what do you hear? >> you're absolutely right and what they don't want to do is go down with the ship that is donald trump or they don't want donald trump to take their ships down. i mean, they're simultaneously, you know, afraid of him and you know, can't believe what they're seeing and they can't say that out loud. weave been having these same conversations with republicans for months now. i mean, you know, you can say the same thing about george bush. if that had been laid out against barack obama, honestly i get the sense both of these men would have handled a lot differently than this president has. imagine the pressure they would have been under. but to underscore your point, mike, and i think one thing that we have been missing in this whole conversation about impeachment, it is about pelosi and house democrats but it's equally as much about the fact that mitch mcconnell controls the senate and that republicans in the senate are just completely unwilling to entertain any of this despite the evidence that's in front of their own faces and they have

justin who was a republican is out there perhaps making the most articulate case out there for impeachment. and he is essentially saying that yes, this is contradictory to what my party's interests are but this is in the interest of the country and the fact that he's the only one completely by himself on an island let's not lose sight of how remarkable that is. and from a political perspective and this is something that's ongoing, an under the radar trend heading into 2020, if democrats want to do something about this president or this problem generally they need to run for and pay attention to senate races because as long as mitch mcconnell controls the senate this is going to be the status quo. so while i understand the presidential race is always important, you know, and all of these candidates who could have been great senate candidates who elected to run for president, that ultimately at the end of the day is not what's going to make the difference against this president or in our system in

the long-term. >> meanwhile the president is engaged in an extended question and answer session with the press as he departs the white house on the way to colorado springs to deliver the commencement address at the air force academy. we will get that to you momentarily. weave got an update to a story we told you about just a couple of hours ago. the white house wanted the navy to move the warship uss john s mccain out of sight before president trump's to japan. now we have it. obtained by cnbc it outlines plans for trump's arrival between the 7th fleet of the u.s. navy which included the instruction, the uss john mccain needs to be out of sight. photos reviewed by the journal saw a tarp hung over the ship's name. sailors were directed to remove

any coverings from the ship that bore its name. later the tarp was moved and a barge was moved closer to the ship and sailors who wear caps bearing that name were given the day off. meanwhile the "new york times" reports this, quote, mccain sailors were not invited to hear trump speak that day. while sailors from other american warships were. that according to two navy sailors who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. acting defense secretary said this. i never authorized any action around the movement or activity regardsing that ship. further more, i would never dishonor the memory of a great american patriot like senator mccain. i would never disrespect the young men and women who crew that ship. president trump tweeted last night quote, he was not informed about anything having to do with the ship. naval officials insist they did not hide or obscure the ship

saying in part the picture of the tarp is from friday and it was taken down on saturday. all ships remained in normal configuration during the president's visit. mike, we talked about this earlier in the show. we now have the e-mail that shows the white house asking the 7th fleet to effectively hide and obscure the usa john s. mccain, named for mccain's grandfather firster, who is an admiral during world war ii, then for his father who was an admiral in vietnam and then for senator mccain himself because donald trump doesn't like the guy. >> and with all due respect, in the case of the united states population, the public voters of the united states, them versus the stability of this president of the united states, of his narcissism, of his inadequate sense of his own character, of what he has done each and every day to institutions with this

e-mail from the white house to the pentagon urging the removal of the uss john mccain's name out there in japan, the prosecution now rests. >> and to break it down a little further, just imagine if you're one of those sailors who's deployed on the uss mccain and you're away from your family, you're livering on a warship and the commander in chief who is your ultimate boss shows up, you don't get to go to the event with the commander in chief. >> it's -- it's beyond. i mean, you've worked in our foreign policy teams. you've worked with the military. it's -- i wouldn't say it's my area of expertise, but any person looks at this story and you think, we have these honors for soldiers who served as you

just outlined and the the notion that there were people here requesting to hide that honor, it cuts against it. and so it is one of these things that just grabs ahold of you and says what is broken? what is broken in the process that someone is trying -- >> or in this individual. >> right. as you put it in the individual that someone is trying to potentially dishonor that which has been formally decreed through the military, through the government, the way the senate and the house name things and do all of that to -- as you said it, mikes o, to deal with somebody's insecurities. >> the president said he knew nothing about this but it's reflective of the fear that has been installed in the white house, people around him are afraid of upsetting him knowing how he will react to this whether it's about john mccain or the russia probe which is why it is so stunning he seems to acknowledge that russia helped him. >> a lot of people lessen to

this show on the radio and the car i want to read what the e-mail says. this is a list of requests from the white house. number 3 on that list is uss john mccain needs to be out of sight. later it says confirm number 3 will be satisfied. as someone who worked in the government, can you imagine ever drafting that line? >> absolutely not. and i am concerned that within the military chain of command they went along with it too. i remember within the bush white house we would have these, you know, video conferences once every week, maybe every couple of days when we were -- during the iraq war and the iraq war surge messaging and we would be communicating with the embassy in baghdad, with the spokes

person and the basic job of communicating to the american public and the spokesman was so careful about that line and before he was coming to testify to congress he was like well, that's, you know, that's all we can say about that. of course we're not going to say anything about what the general will be testifying. you'll be given no head's up and that's why it's shocking to me that the institution that i have always admired for staying apolitical was brought down by the narcissism of the commander at top. >> i mean, this is all because a former war -- a war hero, a former united states senator, the nominee of president trump's adopted political party for president did not reflect to donald trump roeptly. we'll be watching the beat. we'll see you later tonight. still ahead on "morning joe,"

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there they are. aww! whaa , whaa, ahh! finished speaking with reporters as he goes to board air force one for colorado. we'll have those remarks for you momentarily. in the meantime governor steve bullock of montana. good morning. it's good to see you. >> great to be with you as well. with all of you. >> you have just launched your campaign the last time we saw you. what's it been like? >> it's been great. just got back saying there's no direct flights from iowa to montana so it curves me through new york. like yesterday or the day before, five or six different meetings across the state of iowa and i think that folks

definitely want to make sure that donald trump is not re-elected but they also want to believe the government can work and we need to win back some of those places that we lost, not just for an electability but so that we can believe that washington, d.c. can function. so i hear great excitement out there and have really been enjoying it so far. >> the field is massive. it's a long climb from where you're starting to get to where joe biden and kamala harris and elizabeth warren are right now. what's your angle? what do you say to people in iowa when they say all right, i like you. you've done a good job as governor, why should i vote for you? >> in this whole field of 23 or 37 or however many there are today. i'm the only one that won in a trump state with trump on the ballot. 25 to 35% of my voters also voted for donald trump. if we don't win back some of the places we lost, we're not going

to win. my legislature is 60% republican but weave been able to get progressive things done from health care to getting dark money out of our elections to freezing college tuition. the and way we're going to get washington, d.c. to move on so many many of the big issues are to address the procitizens in the united world where laws are shaped by the donors and not by congress. and since i was attorney general to today i've taken on that fight to get rid of dark money and we've done things that have impacted beyond our state. >> we heard from some of your candidates. cory booker, gillibrand, they support impeachment. there's another big group that says they're open to the question and the possibility of impeachment. where are you? do you belief this president knowing what we know now from

the mueller report, having heard from robert mueller himself, do you believe president trump ought to be impeached? >> yeah. stepping back to a year and a half ago, president stood next to putin and said i take him at his word that they didn't meddle in the elections. bob mueller spoke more about meddling in the elections in eight minutes than president trump has in eight years. we have to look at two things. moving forward what's going to happen because i think this is a moving target and also what's happened to date. congress certainly has itself constitutional obligation of oversight but the president has to respond and what we're seeing is stone walling time and time again which isn't normalized behavior. now, as we look at what's happened to date in the mueller report, i get the real concern. and i get we don't ever want to normalize misstatements and false statements. but i also, you know, when i'm out there i would so much rarter spend the next year and a half talking about how the department of justice, his department of

justice is trying to hip health care for all americans. >> so you're open to impeachment. you think congress ought to look into it. >> i think we should have the full investigations. >> impeachment investigations. >> oversight. the 11 different investigations, oversight that's occurring right now. i would much rather that be the focus and then the focus being on not impeachment. we have to see where these investigations, the oversight goes. i'd rather have the focus on americans that are struggling and saying wait a minute, this tax cut made it so 16 of the fortune a # hundred companies don't pay a thing and we're it gr getting hit or what's happening to farmers. i would much rather be less about donald trump than the people all across america that say there ought to be a change. >> sit tight for us for one second because we are now getting in the remarks from the president of the united states who's leaving the white house. let's take a listen. >> turkey released a prisoner

that we were trying to get and they released him a little while ago into home custody and will be released from home custody to the united states pretty soon and i just want to thank the president, we dealt with that and he was great. they released this prisoner, hostage, whatever you want to call him, he's at home custody in turkey. he'll be released fairly soon so that's good news. i guess probably you know about that. other than that, i think things are going very well. the economy is doing fantastically well. beyond any expectation, unemployment numbers are just about the best in our county. we have close to 160 million people working today which is more than we've ever had before. i'm going out to colorado today to give the commencement address for the air force, when is

actually very exciting for me. it's an amazing place. these are great people. so i look forward to doing that. any questions? well, i think it was the same as the report. there wasn't much change. it was to me the same as the report. and there's no obstruction. you see what we're saying, there's no obstruction, there's no collusion, there's nothing nothing. it's nothing but a witch hunt. it's by the media and the democrats and it keeps going. i thought it was finished when the report was released and it goes on but to me it was the same frankly as the report and he said basically it was the same as the report. >> i think he's totally conflicted because as you know, he wanted to be the fbi director and i said no. as you know, i had a business

dispute with him after he left the fbi. we had a business dispute. not a nice one, he wasn't -- he wasn't happy with what i did, and i don't blame him but i had to do it because that was the right thing to do. but i had a business dispute. and he loves comey. you look at the relationship that those two, so whether it's love or deep like, but he should -- he was conflicted. look, robert mueller should have never been chosen because he wanted the fbi job and he didn't get it and the next day he was picked as special counsel. so you tell somebody i'm sorry, you can't have the job and then after you say that, he's going to make a ruling on you, it doesn't work that way. plus, we had a business dispute, plus his relationship with comey was extraordinary. one other thing i'll say, why didn't he investigate strzok and paige and mccabe and comey and

all the lies and clapper and the lies to congress and all of the things that happened to start this investigation? why didn't comey come clean? why didn't comey come clean and say the things that he knows are fact? why didn't mueller investigate comey, his best friend or his very good friend? and there's so many other things. here's the question. this is a study of russia. why didn't they informs the insurance policy? in other words, should hillary clinton lose, we've got an insurance policy. guess what? what we're in right now is the insurance policy. i think he is a total conflicted person. i think mueller is a true never trumper. he's somebody that dislikes did. he's somebody that didn't get a job that he requested that he wanted very badly and then he was appointed.

and despite that, and despite $40 million, 18 trump haters including people that work for hillary clinton and some of the worst human beings on earth, they got nothing. it's pretty amazing. >>, russia did not help me get elected. you know who got me elected? i got me elected. russia didn't help me at all. russia, if anything, i think helped the other side. what you ought to ask is this. do you think the media helped hillary clinton get elected? she didn't make it. but you take a look at collusion between hillary clinton and the media, you take a look at collusion between hillary clinton and russia, she had more to do in the campaign with russia than i did. i had nothing to do. and by the way, that's one other thing. if you look, this is all about russia, russia, russia, they don't talk about russia anymore

because it turned out to be a hoax. it was all a hoax. and then they say gee, he fought back, isn't that terrible, he fought back. of course i fight back because it was a false accusation, a totally false accusation and it's a disgrace and it's a very -- it's a very sad period for this country and i think in the end, i will consider what's happening now to be one of my greatest achievements, exposing this corruption. >> do you think they're going to impeach you? >> i don't see how they can because they're possibly allowed although i can't imagine the courts allowing it. i've never gone into it. i never thought that would even be possible to use that word. it's a dirty, filthy, disgusting word and it had nothing to do with me. so i doesht think so. because there was no crime. you know, it's high crimes and not with or or it's high crimes

and misdemeanors. there was no high crime and there was no misdemeanor so how do you impeach based on that? and it came out that there was nothing to do with russia, the whole thing is a scam. it's a giant presidential harassment and honestly, i hope it goes down as one of my greatest achievements because i've exposed corruption, i've e exposed corruption like nobody knew existed. >> i think we're doing very well with china. i want to shake your hand. come here. you've treated me fairly. thank you. thank you. wait, wait. i want to ask a real reporter's question. we're going to ask a real

reporter's question, okay? china would love to make a deal with us. we had a deal and they broke the deal. i think if they had it to do again they wouldn't have done what they did. we're taking in billions of dollars in tariffs. china is subsidizing products so the united states taxpayers paying for very little of it and if you look at inflation and you look at pricing it's gone up very little. the tariffs are having a devastating effect on china. people are fleeing the country with their companies. these companies are leaving for vietnam, other parts of asia and they're even coming to the united states because then there's no tariff. i think we're doing very well with china. we'll see what happens but i can tell you, china very much wants to make a deal because the companies are leaving china to avoid the tariff. china is becoming a very weakened nation. just as iran has become a very

weakened nation and iran wants to make a deal also. >> i may, he's a friend of mine. boris is a friend of mine. they're two very good guys, very interesting people. nigel has had a big victory, he's picked 32% of the vote starting from nothing and i think there's big power of there. i think they've done a good job. i like them, they're friends of mine but i haven't thought about supporting them. maybe it's not my business to support people but i have a lot of respect for both of those men. >> reporter: do you think it is fair to the sailors of the john mccain that they were banned from hearing the speech simply because -- >> i don't know what happened. i wasn't involved. i would not have done that. i was very angry with john

mccain because he killed health care. i was not a big fan of john mccain in any way, shape or form. i think john mccain had a lot to getting president bush, a lot to do with it to go into the middle east when was a catastrophe. i wasn't a fan but i would never do a thing like that. now, somebody did it because they thought i didn't like him, okay? and they were well meaning, i will say. i didn't know anything about it. i would never have done that. i heard sailors, we had a tremendous group of sailors from various ships. it was a beautiful day. but the mccain thing i knew nothing about. >> well, i think i've been much tougher on elections that president obama. president obama was told in 2016 just before the election in september that russia may try

and interfere with the election. he did nothing and the reason he did nothing is he thought hillary was going to win. we are doing a lot and we're trying to do paper ballots as a backup system as much as possible because going to good old fashioned paper in this modern age is the best way to do it. [ inaudible question ] >> well, i think we want to have a relationship with russia and china and everybody and i've said that for a long time. getting along with russia, getting along with china is a good thing if we can do it on fair terms or our terms. [ inaudible question ] >> well, venezuela, we're just on watch. we'll see what happens. i'd love to see them work out their problems. i understand there's a lot of talks going on but i'm all for the people of venezuela.

steve, go ahead. >> it's too bad what happened in israel. it looked like a total win for netanyahu, a great guy. he's a great guy and now they're back in the debate stage and they're back in the election stage. that is too bad because they don't need this. i mean, they've got enough turmoil over there to -- it's a tough place. i feel very badly about that. it looks like they're talking, but more likely they'll have to go back into election mode. >> is the mueller report to help you and hurt hillary clinton, was mueller wrong about that? >> i believe russia would rather have hillary clinton as president of the united states than donald trump. the reason is, nobody has been tougher on russia than me, whether it's our energy policy which was not heard, whether it's the pipeline as you know in your -- going all over the

place, that i've been complaining about, whether it's ukraine, whether it's a whole host of things, there has nobody ever been more tough or difficult for russia or difficult for russia than donald trump. i have to tell you this, i put sanctions on russia that nobody has ever seen before, nobody wants to write about it it. with all that, i want to get along with russia, with china, with europe, i want to get along with everybody if it is possible. i even want to get along with iran. if iran wants to talk. if iran wants to talk, i'm available. thank you. >> [ inaudible question ]. >> we will be meeting with a lot of the irish officials. it will be an overnight stay.

i look forward to that. >> [ inaudible question ]. >> a lot of the things that you said. >> [ inaudible question ]. >> i can't because i didn't know anything about it. i don't know who did it. we will probably be able to find out who did it. they thought they were doing me a favor because they know i am not a fan of john mccain. john mccain killed health care for the republican party, and he killed health care for the nation. i disagree with john mccain on the way he handled the vets because i said you have got to get choice. he was never able to get choice. i got choice. i disagree with john mccain on the middle east. he helped force bush to make a very bad decision and go into the middle east. i wasn't a fan of john mccain. i never will be. certainly, i couldn't care less whether or not there is a boat named after his father. >> [ inaudible question ]. >> there were no charges.

none. if you look at -- if you look at bill clinton, that very nice gentleman who has been so much on my side, as you know, his special prosecutor, it was guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty -- so many guilties. with me, there was no guilty. number one, there was no crime. and number two, i fought back. and i tell you -- wait, wait, wait, wait. there was no collusion. there was no collusion. read volume one. there was no collusion. >> [ inaudible question ]. >> that means you are innocent. that means you are innocent. excuse me. then he should have said, you are guilty. >> [ inaudible question ]. >> that's wrong. that's wrong. no. because he said it -- he said it differently the first time. so he said, essentially, you are innocent. i'm innocent of all charges. you know, the thing that nobody brings up, there was no crime.

they are saying he is obstructing something. and there was no crime. and nobody brings it up. also, some day you ought to read a thing called article two. read article ii which gives the president powers that you wouldn't believe. but i don't have to rely on article ii. there was no crime, there was no obstruction, there was no collusion, there was no nothing, and this is from a group of people that hate me. if they only found anything, they would have had it. and he knows that better than anybody. >> he said he did not -- >> there was no crime, there was no charge, because he had no information. yeah. >> do you agree with louisiana's ban on abortion at six weeks? >> we are going to have a statement about it. i'm also going to have, probably today, a major statement on the border. this is a big league statement, but we are going to do something very dramatic on the border.

because people are coming in to our country, the democrats will not give us laws. they will not change laws. they will not meet. they will not do anything. they want to have open borders. they want to have crime. they want to have drugs pouring into your country. they want to have human trafficking. i am going to be making a statement probably tomorrow, but maybe today. >> [ inaudible question ]. >> i am not closing the borders. i'm doing something else. we are going to have a major statement on the border sometime later today or tomorrow. >> what kind of statement? >> it will be a statement having to do with the border and having to do with people illegally coming over the border. and it will be my biggest statement so far on the border. we have brought something to the light of the people. they see now it is a national emergency. and most people agree, the democrats agree, too, but they won't give us the legislation you need to fix it.

right now when you catch somebody, you have to release them. they won't give us the legislation, whether it is complachain migration or lottery. they won't give us any. and the asylum procedures are ridiculous. no place has what we have in terms of ridiculous immigration laws. i will be making a major statement, i would say my biggest statement, on the border probably today or tomorrow. thanks. >> that is a frothy president trump walking to out the marine one on his way to air force one to go to colonel colonel to deliver the commencement address at the military academy there. he talked for about 17. you got the questions started about mueller. >> i asked whether he acted with

integrity. he took that moment to tee off. the white house is still claiming vindication, exoneration. at the same time the president is accusing mueller of being conflicted, he said he wanted the fbi job, didn't got it, was bitter. he mentioned that dispute, the business dispute that the president and mueller had. at the same time, they are disparaging bob mueller and holding his report out as vend indicate. one of the many contradictions here. we also heard from him on mccain. real quick on the mccain, the president said yes they did this, they were well intentioned. he didn't know anything about it. he said he wouldn't have had any problem with it. but he didn't seechium upset. he appreciated the gesture, what he considered a well intentioned gesture. but he didn't have any concern. and then repeated his long standing concerns about john mccain. >> he said i would never do a thing like that, somebody did it and they were well meaning the

president said of his staff. hans, i know you have got to go. thanks so much. there is so much to go through. we only have a couple minutes to do it. let's start with the criticism of bob mueller. the president calls him totally conflicted because he is hanging this on a business dispute, the alleged business dispute, which is not a business dispute, was bob mueller's membership at the trump national golf club in virginia. in a footnote on page 80 and 81 of the report mueller actually touches on this and says yes i wrote a letter to the club saying i was leaving the club and could i get a partial refund on my initiation fee. that's the extent of the business dispute on which president trump is hanging his criticism of bob mutualer. >> speaks to mueller's transparency. he wrote that he and his family didn't get to the club anymore they were leaving and would like a partial refund. it took some weeks to resolve that.

that's the business dispute. and fact check number two, mueller did meet with president trump in the west wing to discuss candidates for the fbi job, because mueller served in the post so long. it was not an interview, mueller was not seeking that job. in fa mueller didn't want it. he didn't go in there looking for it. the president also called mueller an original never trumper. he has expressed no political views. >> he called him a true never trumper. is he a guy who quote exonerated him or is he a true never trumper. let's give you a chance. your reactions. business disputes are golf course fee arguments. let's talk about what the report is, let's talk about where we

are as a country. you listened to 17 minutes. and again that first half of the report was about a direct attack on our elections. and he is still two and a half years in not talking about what happened and what we need to do to protect these elections come 2020. and the time -- time and time again what we are seeing is trying to pour gasoline on the fire of division as opposed to saying both here's what i am doing for the country -- i mean attacking john mccain because he actually preserved health care for americans all across this country, i think we certainly deserve better as a country. >> the president said minutes ago it was the clinton campaign that colluded with russia. there was no evidence that. and that's what robert mueller said yesterday. >> i'm not hearing about the

mueller report or impeachment. i am hearing about farm prices, rural hospitals, img hearing can i stay in my community because while the economy is booming for some people a lot of folks aren't feeling it along the way. i am hearing about the base issues, jobs, education. >> montana governor, 2020 presidential candidate, steve bullock thanks for hanging with us. >> that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage. >> hi, i am stephanie ruhle, it is 9:00 a.m. on the east coast. we have lot to get to. our team of extraordinary msnbc reporters is here with new details on the stories impacting your life today starting with the president, who just responded to robert mueller after the special counsel broke his silence, stressing that if they could have cleared the president, they would have. and was it a typo