our thanks to ashley parker, to charlie sykes and frank montoya. appreciate it very much, gang. >>> coming up here, we'll talk to former cia director leon panetta about what he thinks there is between putin and trump and what he made of today's attempted walk-back. >>> then later, an update tonight on the attempt in the house of representatives, the aer for mentioned congress to impeach deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. "the 11th hour" just getting started on a tuesday evening. >>> as the white house continues to deal with the fallout over president trump's news conference with vladimir putin, former members of the intelligence community are continuing to weigh in on this news over the past 48 hours. well, earlier tonight i had a chance to speak with leon panetta, whose resume may be unmatched in the modern political era, starting with his 16 years in congress representing his california district. he was later omb director and chief of staff in the clinton white house. he then served as both cia director and secretary of defense under preside

our thanks to ashley parker, to charlie sykes and frank montoya. appreciate it very much, gang. >>> coming up here, we'll talk to former cia director leon panetta about what he thinks there is between putin and trump and what he made of today's attempted walk-back. >>> then later, an update tonight on the attempt in the house of representatives, the aer for mentioned congress to impeach deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. "the 11th hour" just getting started on a tuesday evening. discover our largest variety of crab and crab dishes all year! like new crabfest combo. your one chance to have new jumbo snow crab with tender dungeness crab. or try crab lover's dream. sweet, juicy king crab and jumbo snow crab cozied up with crab linguini alfredo. even our shrimp is crab-topped! so hurry in and get your butter-dunkin' game on! 'cause crabfest will be gone in a snap. and now bring home the seafood you crave with red lobster to go. call or order online today. you made moonshine in a backwoods still. smuggled booze and dodged the law. even when they br

officer who ran operations in russia, contributor eddie princeton university washington post, ashley parker. ashley, let me start with you. your colleague phil rucker has been tweeting this leg of the trip. unbelievable press conference, i read jonathan swan was also in the room. said there was a palpable sense of shock at the president's answer that we played to the a.p.'s jonathan lemire at the top of the show. your thoughts on helsinki. >> sure. on the one hand there were indications of this, that this might not go exactly according to script. if you look at the president's tweets, if you looked at his past comments, but to get into the spectacle, it is one thing to criticize your justice department, your fbi, the democrats, the opposition party, the quote-unquote, fake news media on twitter, from the white house, in the united states. it is another thing to do that, not just when you are abroad and you know there is that old saying that sort of politics stop at the water's edge. but when you are abroad at a summit standing next to russian president vladimir putin, one of our biggest geo

ashley parker, pulitzer prize winning. long time conservative radio host who is contributing editor and podcast folks for the folks at the weekly standard and a former fbi special agent in charge with his bureau in establishing the national cyber investigative task force that gives him a line into the line of questioning. ashley, i would like to begin with you. anatomy of a correction. give us the cliff notes starting on the flight home and the arrival back in the united states. morning television today and then seeing what we saw on television. >> so it did really start on the flight home where the president as he always does watched cable news. he had actually been quite pleased with how he felt the summit went and as he watched the coverage that was almost universally negative and there were no people out there defending him and negative from not just the usual critics and the mainstream media, but from republicans including as we wrote, there was a tweet that newt gingrich sent that was aired on fox news that the presi

peter baker, ashley parker and jeremy bash. coming up for us, a delay in the trial of paul manafort and the feds have 11 more audio tapes, it turns out, seized in the raid of trump's former lawyer, michael cohen, by the fbi. the president's all capital letters warping and other than a giant sdrak giant distraction, what might it mean? a monday night on a new week. back after this. ♪ go your own way copd tries to say, "go this way." i say, "i'll go my own way, with anoro." ♪ go your own way once-daily anoro contains two medicines called bronchodilators that work together to significantly improve lung function all day and all night. anoro is not for asthma. it contains a type of medicine that increases risk of death in people with asthma. the risk is unknown in copd. anoro won't replace rescue inhalers for sudden symptoms and should not be used more than once a day. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition, high blood pressure, glaucoma, prostate, bladder, or urinary problems. these may worsen with anoro. call your doctor i

. >> ashley parker it seems like this is something that the president keeps going back to the well for. >> it sure is. on the one hand, this is actually a very natural topic to bring up to an audience in a vfw hall. in some ways, he was very on message. hitting military themes that would especially appeal to this crowd. that said this is also a topic the president returns to repeatedly. and he has told aides he thinks this is a cultural wedge issue that he can go back to in moments of peril. it's a raw, visceral issue. that he understands. that he enjoys talking about. that sets the sort of fight that he likes. and that often almost always gets his base to rally behind pim. >> matt miller. >> i'm sorry, when you go overseas and stand with an adversary who interfered with our democracy and make excuses for him and apologize to him on behalf of the american people, say he didn't attack our intelligence services, attack the fbi who are trying to prevent that foreign adversary from interfering in america's democracy, you don't get to question anyone's patriotism anymore. i know he'll keep

ashley parker with the washington post. and presidential historian john meacham here joining me on set, a man dedicated his career to diplomacy. former assistant secretary of state for east asian and pacifica fares as well as the former ambassador to several countries. christopher hill. all are nbc news and msnbc contributors. eli, since you're on the ground right now, if vladimir putin meddled in the election, helped get donald trump elected, he certainly is reaping the rewards at this point. >> reporter: well, it remains to be seen exactly how much, but he is clearly the beneficiary of any weakening of the transatlantic alliance. any weakening of nato. and what you feel being here today is more of that. it's what all the people of other member nation ands diplomats who come here, what they were worried about and what ultimately came to fruition very quickly this morning is the president really setting the tone here, it being a negative tone, very hostile going after merkel when she wasn't in the room. he's at a breakfast

joining me now msnbc kristen welker, political analyst ashley parker. white house reporter at "the washington post," msnbc political analyst elise jordan. and msnbc national security analyst clint watts, a former fbi special agent and author the messing with the enemy. good to see all of you here. chris what do we know so far? >> the president really trying to shift the focus to the economy, his daughter and top adviser is there. she is talking about a new work force initiative and apparently the president signaling he's going to make a big announcement about that. he also says he's going to be inviting the leaders of the eu to the white house for a meeting, talking about trade, saying there's a a possibility he may be able to strike a trade deal. really trying to shift the focus here, but as you point out, the question today remains, was the president sincere in that walkback yesterday, particularly after he had this series of very defiant and fiery tweets this morning which seemed to be a walk back of his walk back. by the way, hisbackba walk back add

ashley parker, white house reporter for "the washington post" as well. also an msnbc political analyst. betsy woodruff, a politics reporter for t"the daily beast" and an msnbc contributor. danny sav alos, nbc legal analyst. phil, i do want to start with you. this new that alan weissleberg has been called in before a grand jury is not surprising because we heard michael cohen reference him in that tape. but at the same time weissleberg is somebody who is going to know a lot about how the trump organization operated and whether or not there were payments potentially to more women in the lead up before the election to try to keep some negative stories quiet so as not to harm donald trump's chances. if those payments exist, am i right to say, he would know about them, phil? >> i think he would. he has been working for the trump organization for decades now, including for fred trump, the president's father. he knows all the expenditures. he knows times when michael cohen might have been reimbursed for these payments. he knows how much donald trump is really w

my thanks to chuck rosenberg, matt miller, ashley parker and phil rucker. that does it for our hour, i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now with the fabulous katy tur in for chuck todd. >> what a day. thank you. and if it is thursday, the president is inviting vladimir putin to washington. tonight, the intel quotient. dan coats sounds off on the president's conflicting statements on the intelligence community. >> well, my thoughts were that i needed to correct the record for that. >>> plus indecent proposal. what the white house is saying now about letting russia interrogate americans. >> unbelievable that they wouldn't confirm that they're not entertaining that for a second. >> we'll talk to one of the

. >> peter baker is chief white house correspondent for the "new york times" and ashley parker for "the washington post" and jeremy bash who happenings to be former counsel to the house intelligence committee. because you are the former fed, i would like to begin with you. why do we offer security clearances to former very senior ranking intelligence officials including, but not limited to our former cia directors once they left office? >> it's to benefit the country. it's to benefit the current occupants of the leadership offices so they can call their predecessors and consult on complex and difficult issue that is the current holders may be facing. it's done to support the country. what's crazy about this move by the president is that if he were to strip them of security clearances, it wouldn't hurt the former officials at all. most of them are doing things unrelated. it would hurt the currency agencies and it's part of a long practice dating back when he went to the cia and used the memorial wall through doubting the intelligence assessments and attacks on the agencies through this w

thank you, ashley parker. great reporting by the post. >> and michael steel, thank you for your reporting of the republican party. >> we got to understand these guys. they don't speak the truth. they look like they are sort of telling the truth and you have to be stupid to believe it is the truth. p putin was confronted with the latest indictment. and how did special counsel mueller happen in yesterday's summit. i think he saw some things. and with the threat to mueller's job growing by the day, will republicans do something to protect his job, mueller's job. and the "hardball" round table weighs in on trump's two step. this stupid explanation of what he blew. it was a wonderful speech done in joe hansberg. and let me finish tonight with trump watch. this is "hardball." rodney -- mastermind of discounts like safe driver, paperless. the list goes on. how about a discount for long lists? gold. mara, you save our customers hundreds for switching almost effortlessly. it's a gift. and jamie. -present. -together we

in hans nichols at the white house, and "washington post" reporter and msnbc political analyst ashley parkerhley, the president from what these, from what it appears to be saying to peter alex sander o is in the room says that collusion or -- sorry, meddling took place, but there is no collusion, and he also says that it could have been other people also. this is the same thing that we have heard him saying over and over again, and does it not sound like he is listening. >> that is exactly right. it started out that he is equivocating there, and he said these before, that there are times that he has said before and this is one of the things pushed out in the white house talking points that he does support the intelligence agencies, and the conclusion of them, and he often says that the under duress or really pushed there by the aides or some sort of backlash, but he will say th that. what is striking is that so far at least, he also, and we heard him say something similart at helsinki that i believe my intelligence agencies, and i also heard what putin said, and he said that he didn't do it.

. >> ashley parker, a serious that speaks to the balance of action versus reaction. how did the trump presidency agenda advance today? >> um, that, that is a good question. i think, i don't really have a great answer, this is a white house that is sort of even they will concede privately given up on legislating and they are just sort of responding to the latest crisis. last week was a week of walk-backs for instance. sort of, yesterday the all capitol letters on iran tweet, changed the theory. they believe it was a deliberate distraction, trying to, and again, it's not necessarily a great tweet for him that reassures the dwloglobe, but he being criticized for being weak on russia. if you talk to people in the white house, had they don't necessarily know there's a campaign rally tomorrow or a rally tomorrow, they don't know what the president is going to say or happen, so the legislative agenda or the agenda in general, to answer your question, sort of gets advanced with the passage of time, and not necessarily with the strategy underlying any of that. >> that was a t

joining us to discuss the developme developments, ashley parker, jason johnson, kimberly atkins, and bill crystal, editor at large. ashley, you wrote the definitive tick to ck which you described s walkback week. this white house still very much trying to undo the damage done by the president'shelsinki. >> they sure are. one of the challenges that you're reporting on and we saw sort of reporting from helsinki onwards is you do have some adults in the room. it's not necessarily that people don't tell the president no or don't tell him you really rattled the global community or that was not a good look. but the president at the end of the day, determines what he's going to do. except for all of the interventions or all of the aides saying, it's not backing down, just reassuring allies, that allies are standing tough. they can do that and the president may hear it and the president will send out a tweet that they don't know that is coming, or an overcorrection or he may say something unexpected or off script at a campaign rally. so it's a walkback, followed by a step in it and another wa

panel on a wednesday night, peter baker, chief white house correspondent for "the new york times," ashley parker, white house reporter for "the washington post" and jackie coms. good evening. peter, you've been around awhile. how seismic was today and what is your damage assessment to nato as of the time of this conversation? >> well, it's hard to remember a moment quite like this. it's not that the issues that president trump are raising are not issues that have been out there before. in fact, they have, president obama, president bush, certainly pushed the nato allies to spend more on their own defense. if it was under president obama they came up with the target of 2% and supposed to meet it by 2024 but neath of them ever sort of did it in your face kind of way that president trump does it. neither one of them went into a nato summit clearly intending to sort of go on the attack the way president trump did today. and the way president trump did today literally in advance of a meeting that he will have with russia's president in just a few days, a meeting he has promised will be friendly and p

joining me now, ashley parker, white house reporter at "the washington post." lie sikes, contributing editor at the weekly standard. welcome both. ashley, you've written about this, and the fact is the white house was really angry. and viewed it as you reported, going rogue. but the fact is, he did not in that statement, walk back from any of the other things he said in an hour which was a wide-ranging interview. i want to play one exchange about vladimir putin. >> so again, we should be very wary around the former kgb leader who is leading their nation? >> i think anybody who thinks that vladimir putin doesn't have his stamp on everything that happens in russia is misinformed. it is very clear that virtually nothing happens there of any kind of consequence that vladimir putin doesn't know about or hasn't ordered. >> you would think the white house would focus on the fact that he disagreed with the president's characterization of the mueller probe and of russia's involvement in attacking the u.s. a range of subjects, whether north korea could be denuclearized in

us reporter ashley parker tweeted. .. brennan when one step further, he tweeted. .. let's bring in christian fraser. he is in helsinki. so many extraordinary moments in this presidency. where the frank? -- well does this rank? is pretty low, i would say. remember it comes on the back of that extraordinary summit in brussels at the nato headquarters last week and then calling the eu a serves, undermining theresa may on her brexit plan and then on this undermining his own intelligence agencies. two countries that harbour 90% of the nuclear weapon is a any will to not be seeking to each other, many would say but it is the persistent refusal to accept intelligence from his own agencies. as you said, three different intelligence agencies, a senate intelligence agencies, a senate intelligence committee. on saturday, his own intelligence chief dan coats said the lights blinking on the dashboard, the warnings are there but today he prefers to believe the russian president as if in some way this undermines his election victory and

my thanks to chuck rosenberg, matt miller, ashley parker and phil rucker. that does it for our hour, i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now with the fabulous katy tur in for chuck todd. >> what a day. thank you. and if it is thursday, the president is inviting vladimir putin to washington. tonight, the intel quotient. dan coats sounds off on the president's conflicting statements on the intelligence community. >> well, my thoughts were that i needed to correct the record for that. >>> plus indecent proposal. what the white house is saying now about letting russia interrogate americans. >> unbelievable that they wouldn't confirm that they're not entertaining that for a second. >> we'll talk to one of the people in the kremlin's crosshairs. >>> and would he? wouldn't he? wouldn't you like to know what's really going on? this is "mtp daily" and it starts right now. >>> good evening, i'm katy tur in new york in for chuck todd and welcome to "mtp daily." we begin with breaking news. get this, just moments ago the white house announced on twitter that

. >> ashley parker has a whole article today about the behind the scenes, what donald trump was supposed to do and the prep that he had and what he actually did. from your conversations with those inside the white house, what is your assessment? is that meeting that he had and that press conference that he had, was that the plan all along, or did it catch his own administration by surprise? >> it definitely wasn't the plan all along and did catch every member of his team that i've spoken to so far by surprise. i think you can best describe them as embarrassed, certainly disappointeds an o s disappointed, as one sort of described to me. the bottom line is, despite the urging by his advisers to be tougher in public as he stood beside the russian leader putin. the president obviously again called an audible. perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise because this is a point that he has made repeatedly where he obviously can't separate this idea of collusion with interference. while there's no determination so far whether or not members of his team, in fact, colluded with russia, robert mueller will

digest the omg developments, jeremy bash, cia and the pentagon, washington post correspondent ashley parker. and with us on set, aaron blake, washington senior political reporter and eli stokols, reporter for the l.a. times. jeremy bash, let me start with you. you have worked with and dealt with intelligence for your tour there. talk about what it does, not just to the heads of these agent sitz, but for the people who work under them, many layers under them, so hear the american president so blatantly and repeatedly contradict the universally agreed upon assessment of the intelligence community. >> here's the problem, nicole. when an intelligence officer of the united states goes out and tries to recruit a human asset, whether that individual is behind enemy lines or report on the actions of an adversary government or proliferation network, what our cia officers do is say to that humana set, listen, our president needs this information. our president needs in information to protect america, to protect the west and to protect flee dom around the world. now we can't do that. the people riskin

it's ashley parker's line but this has turned into walkback week which is even more exciting than infrastructure week. carol, walk me through the president now saying, nope, you cannot come interview michael mcfall or any of our former diplomats. what's your take on this about face? what are people saying about it in aspen? because, again, he called it incredible on monday. >> you know, i think what my take is and other people we've talked to in aspen, there's another example of this disconnect between you have the president's advisers trying to clean up a situation, issuing statements, you know, saying things publicly, walking things back, and then you have what the president actually meant in real time, which people believe is what he really meant. and then as kristen welker said at the top, you have him doubling down on his strategy by sending an invite to vladimir putin to come to washington to have a second meeting. so i think there's this -- there's these two tracks. there's the president's view and people believe that he expressed it in real time and that's what he really thinks and feels