you also talked about how breitbart news went after fox news to make it more extreme. the gaming background of steve bannon, recognizing that fox news was for old folks. there was this huge young conservative set he could bring in. got ask, thing i hav who are these people with thealt-right? bannon, a lien of them is a critical figure in the rise of the alt-right. many of the members who read and admire julius evola and his thinking. but back in 2007 after bannon had done hollywood and for making, for about a year and have come he wanted was the ceo of a videogame company in hong kong, which did not actually make video games that you play but pray near something called gold farming, which i'd never heard of. that is the process of going into these massive multiplayer games like world of warcraft, prizes and armoror and gold, which allow you to advance in the game, but then turning around bannon and selling them to people in the real world. bannon's company would hire in 24to play these games hour rotating cycles, when all this stuff, then sell it to wealthier gamers of

he ended up taking over breitbart news when breitbart died. >> his world view became this sort of america first, anti-global, anti kind of -- is it fair to say anti-other? >> absolutely fair to say of the bannon had always had these nationalist, populist politics and a real anger, i think, at liberal secular culture. what breitbart did was try to start a small publication that would fight back against the media. bannon took that over and really used it as a vehicle to push his ideas into national politics and elevate politicians like donald trump who he thought could carry that message for him. >> let's talk about that, because you also say bannon had been looking for basically a ve vessel and he had worked with sarah palin, sarah bachmann, jeff sessions, but not until he found donald trump was it sort of a match made in bannon heaven. what was it about donald trump that allowed this symmetry to

college republicans have asked the university to schedule a venue for former breitbart news editor-at-large and daily wire editor-in-chief ben shapiro, that's tentatively set for september 14. this new policy could take effect next january. but first, there would be a period of public comment and there's no shortage of comments here in berkeley. so that could be contentious. live at uc-berkeley, anne makevoc, kpix 5. >>> new this morning, a tribute to the victims of the aurora theater shooting in colorado. survivors, family members and first responders gathered overnight to mark five years since the deadly attack. they held a candlelight vigil and a moment of silence. police also started a procession from one of the hospitals where many of the victims were treated. 12 people died and more than 70 hurt when james holmes opened fire in the midnight premiere of the dark night rises. he received 12 life sentences and more than 3300 years in prison for the attack. >>> police in hayward are searching for the gunman who shot and killed a father while he was pushing a stroller with a baby inside. s

showdown already in the works college republicans have asked the university to schedule a former breitbart newsen shapiro, tentatively set for september 14. so far the university said it hasn't been able to find a venue for the speech. the new rules would go into effect on january 1. but not before a public comment period. live at uc-berkeley, anne makevoc, kpix 5. >>> time now 6:58. time for your "final 5. >>> a massive fire near yosemite is forcing thousands of people from their homes. strong winds are pushing the 75- square-mile detwiler fire south away from yosemite and it continues to grow. it's only 7% contained. >>> president trump says he would never have appointed jeff sessions as attorney general had he known that sessions would recuse himself from overseeing the russia investigation. that statement is part of an interview the president gave to the "new york times." >>> senator john mccain has brain cancer. doctors with the mayo clinic discovered a tumor after removing a blood clot above the senator's left eye last week. >>> oj simpson goes before a parole board today to ask for freed

leaning in some respects news organizations that strikes.l balls and there's worlds of difference breitbart. news and let's just put it out there. trustu have -- i would fox news. i will not trust breitbart historybreitbart has a of doctoring video. breitbart has a history of the facts and distort formering back to the assistant secretary of agriculture incident which helped put them on the map and it turns out making her look chirac, making it look like she was having a racist speech when indeed you looked at the whole thing, it was nothing of the sort. it was that organization and now they're getting credentialed at least in some parts of this town. some committees booted them away when they asked for credentials because we have to have standards about who's job. the >> and the first amendment is not because the first amendment, it is not for the government to say you're a legitimate news organization and you're not. it really is the ultimate free of ideas.e is thelicing, i believe, way we will do this but to have a central repository for saying factual, this isn't factual. there are people who

the product were largely millions of twitter and facebook posts on internet sites like breitbart news as well as on kremlin-backed rt news and sputnik news. that was the scoop that mcclatchy had in march. importantly, in march, mcclatchy noted that those bot attacks, those were now the subject of federal investigation being led by the fbi counterintelligence. the fbi was looking into whether conservative websites in the united states, sites like breitbart news and infowars, whether they might have knowingly helped russian operatives who were carrying out this attack. that was in march. investigative reporter peter stone and greg gordon, they've done a lot of stellar reporting on the cyber attacks by russia last year against us. and now those same reporters are out with a brand-new piece today. congressional investigators are looking into whether russian attackers had help not just from conservative media sites in this country, but maybe from within the trump campaign itself. whether the trump campaign's digital arm helped russians target their bot attacks and their fake news attacks t

have it, praising, scaramucci's praising breitbart for capturing the spirit of what's actually going on in the country. so i ask you, david, as senior editor of a newslet, how do you interpret that? >> well, i think breitbart has an audience that is relatively well understood to be people who feel economically disenfranchised. that's one way of putting it. but breitbart's a appealing to the alt-right movement, to some pretty angry nationalist tendencies in this country, economic nationalism but also sort of nationalism generally. i guess that's the codeword for what mr. scaramucci is saying, that's certainly the way i heard it. and i'm not sure that is capturing the spirit of the entire cup. i certainly hope it's not. arthel: well, speaking of breitbart, we all know that steve bannon left breitbart to join the trump campaign, and we also know he is now the president's chief strategist. so it's been widely reported, david, that bannon as well as white house chief of staff reince priebus were furious over president trump making scaramucci the communications director. what is scaramucci's personal messaging behind giving his first interview to breitbar

you can go to breitbart news or info wars dot com or the daily caller or any number of other alternative sources to get better investigative journalism and a different point of view so i think politics in this country in a way has changed for the better there is greater polarization but that's fine from my point of view whether it is bush or clinton or bush or obama both parties in this country until the advent and rise of donald trump were identical what they got us was endless war erosion of our civil liberties massive debt and spending an immigration policy that left our country unsafe our neighborhoods and streets dangerous and trade policies that have sucked the jobs out of america in the meantime we had a foreign policy that was incoherent it appears to me at least in the middle east that the goal of our foreign policy was to strengthen and embolden our enemies while undercutting our allies and that is what we have done i wonder if you are perhaps underestimating the influence of feminists or media because they they seem to be pretty sad on it's not neutralizing down completely hun

and it was really striking to see that, and then on the other end looking at places like breitbart news being trusted and retweeted by the right, but not, obviously not by the left. what i feel good about is being at "the hill," i work at a place that's very nonpartisan and comes at it from a very straightforward perspective so we were right in the middle. in the middle, we were the most trusted news source by both democrats and republicans. but one other thing i'll say about trust is that this is across the board, it's not just a news phenomenon. if you look at surveys, there's a lack of trust in institutions globally. the church, government, you could go down the line, companies. people are just not trusting major institutions that for many, many years have held that trust of consumers and the public. >> rosalind, you're in the field reporting on issues. how do you -- how do you make sure that people trust what you're telling them? >> i keep in mind that from the very beginning of the united states, there's always been suspicion of a free press. let's not forget we once had the in whi

and curt bar dellau, former spokesman for breitbart news. this is juicy. let's talk. joshua green's book is full of anecdotes from the campaign. here's what he told about new jersey governor got chewed out on election night. >> christy had been working a lot of people in trump's circles. christie was smothering the president and christie had somehow arranged with obama's people that if trump won, obama was supposed to call christie's cell phone and he would hand it to trump. trump didn't like he was exerting himself and he's a germophobe and didn't want to take chris christie's cell phone. he disappeared pretty quickly -- that moment in the days that followed, he wound up going from being in charge of the transition and maybe ticketed for some high level job to being completely on the outs sent back to new jersey. >> so chris christie is trying to dominate. and a germ latent phone to a president who's a germophobe. >> this explains the mystery on election night. and joshua green is very well resourc resourced. it's number one on amazon today. i think they're taking us

business school graduate with blue-collar roots and was the driving force behind the right wing breitbart newste when donald trump appointed him the head of his campaign. widely credited with crafting president trump's populist message and helping guide him to victory. it tells the story of bannon and his unlikely partnership in the new book "devils bargain." welcome. in the new york review of books that i just saw. it is a testament to the adroit balance -- we are not certain which of the two figures has sold the bigger part of himself to the other. in the broadest sense, they are co-authors. i think that's exactly right. the point of the book is to go back and answer the question everybody still wants to know about donald trump. how did he manage to get elected when all of us did not see it coming? i had covered bannon, breitbart, this populist uprising. this is how the two men -- josh: tell us the story. met in: trump and bannon 2010. it has this wild background. -- bannon has this wild background. ,oved on to goldman sachs opened a boutique investment bank in hollywood. financing and cutti

breitbart, the late conservative publisher and provocateur. bannon became infatuated. his ability and his power to control the media narrative to help shape stories and what kind of news covered. and i think the thing bannon admired most about breitbart was that he was an apprentice with tha matt grudge. he seems to have an ability to see stories and shape them in the mainstream media. was enamored by the fascist propaganda filmmakers in the 1930's and 1940's, was consumed with this idea that if i can learn these skills, if i can harness the power that and arrew breitbart has, i can shape the world in a direction that will advance my political goals. charlie: his political goals were? josh: they have always been the same. to push for a kind of hard right populist nationalism. very much distinct from orthodox movement conservatism. bannon's critique from that kind of conservatism is globalist, that it serves the interest of global, financial class that is more interested in making money and sort of erasing national borders, tearing down cultural identities than it is in serving the kind of ordinary, working-class blue-collar people that bannon thinks are the backbone of

he went on the breitbart news radio show and talked to them this morning and in that, listening to that interview and seeing what he said, i am skeptical that much is going to change because he seems to think the major problem for the white house is messaging and getting the message out. listen, president trump has a direct unfiltered line to the american people through his twitter account and even publications that they, the white house would consider hostile to them regularly report exactly what the president has been tweeting. so i sort of disagree with the idea that the problem they're not getting the right message out. i think trump himself is his own worst enemy, instead of focusing on his accomplishments, he constantly tweets his grievances and focuses on the scandals that surround him and i don't get the impression that scaramucci is going to change that. he's talked about letting trump be trump. >> be himself. that's right. one thing he said yesterday. i will note he did take a question from one of our cnn reporters there at the white house press briefing and has been a long, l

here's to discuss brian stelter, matt lewis, tara palmieri and a former spokesman for breitbart news. this is juicy. let's talk. joshua green's book is full of anecdotes from the campaign. here's what he told anderson cooper about how chris christie got chewed out on election night. >> he had been irking people in the inner circle. christie was smothering the president and on election night christie arranged with obama's people if trump won, obama was supposed to call christie's cell phone and he would hand it to trump and trump didn't like that christie was inserting himself in this pivotal moment and he's a germophobe and lashed out at christie. he disappeared pretty quickly. that moment in the days that followed he wound up going from being in charge of the transition and maybe ticketed for a job like attorney general to being completely on the outs, sent back to new jersey. >> chris christie was trying to dominate the moment and the offering of a germ-laden phone to a president who doesn't like germs. >> this explains the mystery around christie, putrump and afr election night. jo

. >> bannon before joining the trump campaign was famous of being the chairman of breitbart news, thatas as eager and in some cases more eager to attack republicans than it was democrats. and if you were a politician that had come under the crosshairs of breitbart, you probably didn't have a good feeling about steve bannon. so there was a sense that bannon would burn it all down in trying to plop up his nationalist ideas. and in the end he became white house strategist. and one of the interesting things to me is watching bannon be forced to make alliances with the likes of paul ryan and mitch mcconnell, and people he had slandered in his past role. and he depends on them to pass legislation, although that's not going very well so far. >> he seems to be a survivor, obviously he's been in the crosshairs with a lot of these rumors about white house shake-ups and he's really kind of figured out how to navigate that. >> he famously clashed with mcmaster being -- >> one important thing to note, bannon has a very good working relationship with kelly because kelly has been willing to enforce a

set someone from breitbart news, challenged her on quite the scene and retraction of a recent story was not sufficient enough for the president who took to twitter and said, cnn had to retract a story on russia with three employees forced to resign. what about all the other phony stories they do? fake news. storyd retracted the linking a trap adviser to russian investment fund your three journalists -- i do not know if that response is good enough, sanders said. we have gone to a place where, if the media cannot be trusted to report the news, it is a dangerous place for america. philip calling in from kissimmee, florida, independent line, what is your level of trust in the news media. caller: i grew up reading books in the library, getting information that most people do not read in terms of trying to get the facts. corporations are taking advantage of history in terms of propaganda to bring people in this country to the point of use that would highlight their income driven agendas. and their political agendas. most people need to wake up. and start trying to find information. they know

before joining the administration, he was an editor for breitbart news where he worked closely with white colleague steve bannon. i am pleased to have sebastian gorka on the program. sebastian: thank you kindly, charlie. charlie: we have been talking about a group of reporters about thei am pleased to have sebastin gorka on the program. first six months. tell me about how you assess the accomplishments and failures, if you may, of trump's first six months. sebastian: as i wrote on the six-month anniversary, it feels as if we have been here for 25 weeks. if you look at the successes already, the revitalization of nato, the fact that we have seen without the wall being built a 73% decrease in illegal immigration across the southern border, if you look at the 25 stock market records that have been broken, the riyadh speach, it's basically a reassertion of american leadership globally. ronald reagan had a simple platform -- get us out of the economic malaise of the carter years and revitalize the american sense of self and win the cold war against the soviet union. president trump has a simil

the fbi was looking into whether conservative websites in the united states, sites like breitbart newsinfowars, whether they might have knowingly helped russian operatives who were carrying out this attack. that was in march. investigative reporter peter stone and greg gordon, they've done a lot of stellar reporting on the cyber attacks by russia last year against us. and now those same reporters are out with a brand-new piece today. congressional investigators are looking into whether russian attackers had help not just from conservative media sites in this country, but maybe from within the trump campaign itself. whether the trump campaign's digital arm helped russians target their bot attacks and their fake news attacks to specific states, specific districts, in order to boost trump support in those states and districts. congressional investigators, of course, are not focusing entirely on this. it doesn't appear to be the central focus of their investigations. but we have confirmed separately tonight that they are in fact examining this angle. mcclatchy also reports tonight that u.s

this is a guy who ran breitbart news, this is a man who made his business name on being someone willinggrenades at the washington establishment. and yet he's sort of the gray beard of the group that's still there. i think reince's comments reflect the fact that he and bannon did have an alliance. in many ways against jared kushner and very recently, anthony scaramucci. in wolf's interview with, with reince, you saw reince sort of tense up when it came to scaramucci. he wasn't willing to say negative things about him. but he was willing to strongly dismiss some of the things that scaramucci had alleged. like leaking. so i think bannon is in a tough place now. reince was his most obvious ally within that core group. you now have as you mentioned, fred, ivanka, jared, scaramucci, john kelly, john kelly's loyalties are harder to figure out because he hasn't been in that group as long. but in a way bannon is sort of you know, i think he is someone who you have to keep an eye on. adam in the last segment mentioned don't assume that just because we've had some changes there will be no more cha

breitbart news, former home of chief strategist steve bannon, taking sessions' side against trump, and they're not the only ones. i want you to listen to rush limbaugh and tucker carlson. >> it's all kind of a bit discomforting for trump to go after such a loyal supporter this way, especially when sessions made it obvious he's not going to resign. >> don't shoot the friendlies. sessions is the closest ally trump has in this administration. >> let's discuss now with political commentator matt lewis, and talk show host john fredericks. john, we haven't seen in you a while. we thought you didn't love us anymore. but now you're back. they always come back. sali celina, your reaction to president trump against jeff sessions. >> chuck grassley totally put the kibosh against anything happening. he said there is not going to be any judicial confirmations for a very long time. that pretty much sets sessions in there and makes his job more secure than ever. from what i understand, sessions has no plans on leaving, anyway. i think what we've missed about this sort of whole thing is that for trump

and was a driving force behind the right wing breitbart news web side and donald trump appointed him to head his campaign in august 2016. widely credited with the crafting president trump's. telling the story of ban i been and the unlikely partnership in his new book called the devil's bark. i'm pleased to have josh green at this table. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: this is what i basically just saw in which it says it is a testament, we're not certain which of the two figures have sold a bigger part of themself to the other. in the broader sense they're co-authors of our moments tabloid conservatives. >> i think that's exactly right. the point of the book was to go back and answer the question. i think everybody still wants to know about donald trump. how is it that he managed to get elected and all of us, the media and washington didn't see it coming. i didn't see it coming but i covered bannon, i covered breitbart, i covered the populist uprising over the last three or four years and on election morning i spoke to bannon for a story i was doing. looking back, it really did come i

here he is speaking to breitbart news saturday earlier. >> so, what i am hoping with the right communicationgy, we can get that message out there to what i recalled the heartland and to the people themselves. then we can create grounds where those people who are disaffected and the congress and we've got to get the message out there and we've got to get the message to lift the congressman and the senators to do the right thing for the country. melissa: kelly is deputy managing editor for the weekly standard. thank you for joining us. we have already seen a different approach with anthony, especially when you saw the press conference that he did yesterday and even his own tone in terms of the depth he had with cnn and others that he will be forceful but gracious and charming and jovial and laughing which is different than how the trump team has treated the press so far. do you think that will stick croissant does it work better? >> i think that his press conference did go very well and some of your guests said earlier, this afternoon, maybe he should of been the new press secretary. i wonder

former breitbart news arthur believes -- releases his self published book dangerous. sarah offers her thoughts on how art can temper war and lead to a more peaceful world and draw your weapons. >> look for these titles in bookstores this coming weekend watch for many of the authors in the future on booktv on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] >> all right, folks, let's get going this morning. remember to put your phones on do not ring so that we are not interrupted during speaker presentations. my name is reina pennington and i teach military history here and i'm happy to introduce a couple friends of mine. first up is jennifer

conservative writer of the washington post, and political commentator, former spokesman for "breitbart news." you wrote an opinion piece called why breitbart hasn't gone to war with sessions. what is the calculus for breitbart's move not to do so? >> what you are seeing the conflict of interest they have, and they are trying to maintain their proximity to power. i have seen what is like when breitbart goes full tilt against somebody. it is a nonstop grind of stories. you are talking 20, 30 stories a day calling on people to apologize, calling on people to have consequences if they don't apologize. if breitbart were going to go behind jeff sessions and take on donald trump, they would be calling every republican member in congress asking them to condemn what donald trump said about jeff sessions and writing a story about every single one of those and they're not doing that. >> they want the power and they see having influence with the president? >> that and i think you can't underestimate the impact steve bannon has on the editorial direction that breitbart takes. when they started going aft

source, one that's owned by sinclair broadcasting, which is emerging as kind of the successor to breitbart news to the trump media outlet on the right, they're reporting as of tonight that a third person on this list, the fbi general counsel, another one of these senior officials on this very short list, this right-wing media outlet circa is reporting tonight that, quote, fbi general counsel james a. baker is purportedly under a justice department criminal investigation. saying that he leaked national security information. now, we have no way of knowing if that reporting is true. the fbi wouldn't comment to us about it. the doj wouldn't comment to us about it. our efforts to do our own reporting about this were not met with any confirmation one way or the other. it is possible that the front page of this pro-trump conservative media outlet looking like this tonight, exclusive top fbi lawyer, allegedly under investigation for leaking classified information. the picture of him and everything. it's possible that the front page of circa looking like this tonight is just a brushback, designed to mak

if you look at breitbart news, very prominent in trump-space. used to be run by steve bannon, now the white house chief strategist. they've started siding with sessions. the main headlines today on their website have been anti-trump. >> thank you for spending time with us on this very busy day. >>> matt miller. former chief spokesman and now an nbc analyst. what is jeff sessions to do? now that he has been publicly undermined by the president. if he survives it seems like he is a super virus. like he's almost immune from further attacks. >> there is an opportunity for jeff sessions here. whether you agree with his policies or not, and i disagree with most of them -- one thing he preached as a member of the senate judiciary committee for years is that senior justice department officials needed to be independent from the president. honestly he kind of failed that test for himself when he signed off on the comey firing. now, with the pressure trump is putting on him, he could come out, make a public statement and say, mr. president, i am sorry you'

he worked at breitbart news. sides who was never taken seriously by anybody in washington because as chairman of breitbart, he attacked politicians in both paerts and nobody really liked him. but for trump, who was this outsider and a punch line early on in this campaign cycle, he didn't really have a lot of people to choose from when it came to political advisers, but bannon was more than willing to do it. and every time trump got in trouble during the campaign, even before bannon was his manager, steve bannon was the guy who kind of ran to his rescue and fought his battle is, so after trump made his announcement speech in which he called mexican rainists and drug dealers and came under all sorts of attack, bannon was of the guy who helped organize a trip to lor a dough texas to the mexican border so had that trump could double down. and his advice in the campaign, keep going further, don't ever apologize, don't listen to the establishment. and that was a winning formula for trump as a candidate, if not trump as

to bring them into the mainstream political conversation by giving them a voice on places like breitbart newsd what bannon thought he was doing is marshaling these hidden political forces to go up against not democrats but the establishment republican leaders, people like mitch mcconnell, paul ryan and before him house speaker john boehner who was bannon's original target and forced to resign in 2015 in part because to have the energies that bannon and brite parent news unleashed in washington politics. >> woodruff: okay, on just a straight a measurement as you can, how successful has steve bannon been in getting his ideas across in this administration? >> well, it would be hard to argue that bannon hasn't been shockingly successful overall. if you go back three years, and i tell this story in the book, steve bannon was closely aligned with jeff sessions who, at the time, was the populist republican senator from alabama, and bannon tried to talk sessions into running for president not because he thought he could win but he thought sessions could elevate the issues of immigration and antipathy

he was the publisher of breitbart news. the right wing website. but he knew sessions.cared a lot about these issues. and he knew that sessions was sort of the original trumpian populist in the senate before trump came on the scene and knew it would be important to get that kind of endorsement, that kind of mainstream affirmation for trump if you were going to go ahead and get the nomination. i lay out the scene of how sessions essentially got cold feet at the last moment and sat in a rental car while steve bannon talked him off the cliff on his cell phone, lo and behold, he has a private meeting with trump on his plane and the next day makes a surprise appearance at a trump rally. and endorses trump by putting on a make america great again camp. this is a big betrayal of somebody who's very important to donald trump. >> were you surprised to hear the president's comments yesterday to "the new york times"? >> i was. yeah. i mean, it had been clear for quite a while that trump was unhappy about sessions' recusal, but sessions is a very loyal cabinet member and he's instr

a major owner of breitbart news. executiveon left his positions when he became manager of the trunk campaign. of course, he is now the chief strategist to president trump. they employ data mining as well as government records to develop a dossier on every u.s. voter, which was first used by the ted cruz campaign and later the trump campaign to mark a target -- micro-target their message campaign. has been a central consultant for this kind of thing with the various u.k. organizations that pushed for the brexit vote. appears tonalytica be the owner. time magazine reported yesterday congressional investigators are looking at cambridge analytical in the context of their exploration of russian activities. included russian elements. short, quite a tangled web. you tell us about how your work relates to this whole thing? how we should think about the claims about the effectiveness of their work for the trunk campaign? michal: those are very good questions. there was a lot there. first of all, we don't really they were.fect

investigators are looking into things like if breitbart news might have been part of that second prong. but those reports are as yet unconfirmed. the third prong of this three-prong russian attack on our country last year was straight up hacking. the russians hacked into american political organizations. notably including the democratic national committee and the hillary clinton campaign. they stole data from those sources and then they strategically fed that information back into the united states to try to inflict maximum political damage on hillary clinton and not incidentally to help donald trump win the presidency. so we know about that three-pronged russian attack. and that reporting from "the wall street journal" a week and a half ago was a really significant advance to understanding what happened. because for the first time in that "wall street journal" report, we had news that american citizens tried to participate in one prong of that russian attack. american citizens tried to participate in the third prong. the hacking part. they tried to obtain some of the hillary clinton m

. >> is this move, though, also playing to breitbart news, to rush limbaugh, to some of those conservatives who in the last 24 hours have come down hard on the president and sided with jeff sessions? >> absolutely. and i think this is what we've seen the president do again and again. he sort of -- when he's facing fire from his own party, from the centrist wing of his own white house or the congress or the senate, he sort of retreats to his corner and goes back to the sort of more conservative ideology espoused by someone like steve bannon, who's still a key architect of strategy in the white house, despite all the tumult that we've seen, and he goes to an issue that will please the conservative base. i think he needs it psychologically in order to feel mobilized to go forward and feel empowered. as you see, it's extremely divisive. when you look at the polling on some of these issues where the broad american citizenry stands and the more centrist republicans that he needs to coral to get health care done. >>> steve bannon and reince priebus feel like they're on the ropes. scaramucci is in.

the conservative site breitbart news trumpeting this headline, suggesting the president, not sessions, has changed his stance on clinton. after the election, mr. trump said this when supporters continued their campaign refrain of "lock her up." >> that plays great before the election. >> reporter: on capitol hill today, sessions' former republican colleagues rallied to his defense. senator richard shelby of alabama said he's not the president's lawyer. he is the attorney general of the united states. senator lindsey graham of south carolina called the president's behavior highly inappropriate. and senate majority leader mitch mcconnell added this. >> i think the attorney general is doing a fine job and i think he made the right decision to recuse himself from the russia matter. >> reporter: today the president suggested his disappointment was about far more than russia. >> i want the attorney general to be much tougher on the leaks from intelligence agencies, which are leaking like rarely have they ever leaked before at a very important level. >> reporter: so, would have, at the end o