my understanding is they also reached out to ben rhodes separately. and they essentially said in the process of us doing an investigation on cambridge antica we came across references that trump aides had hired a foreign intel ops firm from israel and to dig up dirt on you and ben to try to discredit the iran deal, have you heard about this. to which i responded no, actually, i've never heard about this and that's crazy, do you have any more information. they then repeated -- they then published their article a few days later and kind of story thoughballed from there. to my wife's memory about this encounter to ronan narrow's reporting and laura rosen's reporting and all of the rest. i think the $64,000 question is really who paid for this firm. i think the evidence is now pretty solid this firm was behind it. and the question is why? i don't find it terribly plausible that this was kind of corporate, you know, shipping interests or something like that. it doesn't make any sense why they would go after ben and me specifically. in this regard. and the

trump aides, sebastian gorka in particular, out in public essentially arguing that there was a ben rhodes/colin ckahl nexus that was master minding this deep state conspiracy to leak things and bring the president down. there were leaks to right wing tabloids trying to smear ben and i and only ben and i and so it's just weird. it's weird that you had aides to the president of the united states trying to essentially put ben and i as a pair, blame us for all the ills in the middle east for the obama administration, say we were orchestrating the deep state, at the very same time that someone hired this foreign intel firm. so maybe it's completely a coincidence. i have zero, no evidence that trump aides were involved. the only thing i have is the reporting from the observer and "the guardian" but it's something that needs further investigation for sure. >> and do you know what the connection is with cambridge analytica? you mentioned that when you were first contacted by reporters for your comment on this story, they said that they had basically come across this information while they were in

to be ex president and i mean i think it comes to show how shocked everyone was ben rhodes including the president i think most of them including us in the lead up to election i think you're a little bit more skeptical than most but a lot of us thought you know this is going to be a done deal hillary clinton is going to be president and then it turns out of course that it's not well i think barack obama at the same time as as hopeful as he was the us presidency i think it comes to show that there were some severe consequences that the term presence that could bring around but i think he also makes a point extremely well he set up shop with that fantastic economy with unemployment numbers are so low when he took over remember barack obama twelve percent unemployment he left a child with four and i mean it is a great set up and shop can pretty much to do with it what he does i want to pull in this quote about uncle americal before going out of time here because i think it's just telling about the connection see that they they had we can pull that where he says chance or uncle americal

obama was in the white house and the latest proof is in a new book entitled the world as it is by ben rhodes rhodes was an advisor to obama for much of his presidency but it's his memoirs from the final weeks of the obama administration between donald trump's election victory and his inauguration they called our attention for the first time we were offered a glimpse into what obama was thinking about the u.s. and its allies including german chancellor angela merkel as he prepared to transfer power to a man who intended to undo every major achievement that carried obama's signature right joining me to go through this first glimpse into those heady final days of the obama presidency a familiar face here it was fun though arduous it's good to have you back on the show for people who don't know you were a member of the two thousand and eight two thousand and twelve obama campaign's your political campaign strategist now in berlin right here. let's just talk about what you thought when we read about this book the book comes out next week. there's a quote that's getting a lot of headline play wher

he says the phone call quickly took a strange turn. >> basically, ben rhodes and colin kahl. >> mm-hmmions of impropriety. i mean, it's too strong to s say -- >> i'm sorry. what do you want me to say has happened? zple wanted me to say the administration was culting a deal so people in the administration would be able to put money in their pockets. >> is that true? >> that is absolutely not true. i've never seen anything close to that. >> how was he trying to get you to say that? >> and he was trying to corner me. he was trying to put words in my mouth and he was trying to take my answers and twist them into something else. >> all this sounded suspicious to parsi, and he ended the call. but then he had reason to be wary. >> i was warned sometime after the election, during the transition period, a person inside the u.s. intelligence services tells me through an intermediary that i should be very careful, that i'm on? sort of target list and the folks are going to come after me, they're going to target me, they're going to try to defame me, they're going to try to slander me in order to

these two players and the fomenting of the iran deal were somehow corrupt and under handed. >> ben rhodes was also targeted. internal briefs showed black cube had collected information on both former officials including intimate details about them and their families. >> oh, do you have them? >> nice. these depict a good picture. >> this is like your bio. that's my facebook profile picture. >> it's nice. >> they got our daughter's birthday wrong, her birth and year. >> this has the feel of a plan of how to go after me. >> my parents' names are on here. that's a little strange, and our children's names. >> it's creepy to know someone was trying to dig up your profile and the names of your in-laws and your kids and your wife and where you live. >> it's pretty creepy, though, going after somebody's wife and sending them come-on e-mails and promising donations to their school. >> oh, it's incredibly creepy. the whole thing is. but if you exist in that world, you're used to it. if you don't exist in that world and you're reading it or seeing it on tv for the first time, it's like mind blowing.

so ben rhodes' book gives us more of a flavor of that.s is a restrained president, unlike the one we have now, he doesn't show his feelings or emotions very readily. i think you get a little bit of a glimpse inside of the angst and the uncertainty that this must have caused him in those days and weeks after november 2016. >> you know, he says according to the book and according to your writing, "sometimes i wonder whether i was ten or 20 years too early." he also asked his staff, "what if we were wrong?" what does he mean by that? >> i think what he means by that is, you know, did they push the envelope too far, did they assume that the country was more progressive or liberal or multicultural or whatever phrase you want to use, than it really was, that this backlash from people who didn't like what happened in the obama presidency was more powerful than they had expected, and that perhaps the country wasn't as ready, this is what he's musing on, anyway, wasn't as ready for a president like him as it might be in ten or 20 years. >> here is

i think mike pompeo and john bolton have better things to do leaning up ben rhodes' masses and to diga: worth remembering that ben rose brag about the echo chamber and the young journalists in their 20s who didn't know anything about foreign policy that he was able to create this echo chamber to support this iran deal. worth pointing out. thank you, good to see you, as always. >> thanks. >> martha: so, rosie o'donnell thrown in jail. a lot of questions about people violating federal law tonight. over donating to democrats. will the democrats who took her money like adam schiff give it back? also tonight, the cousin convicted for murder suddenly sees his conviction overturned. the family of the 15-year-old girl who was beaten to death in her neighborhood now react when we come back. >> he said i feel your pain but you've got the wrong guy and we just that we will find out in court. ♪ there's nothing small about your business. with dell small business technology advisors you get the one-on-one partnership you need to grow your business. the dell vostro 15 laptop. contact a dell advisor

. >> and ben rhodes was talking about the investigation saying he nor the president knew there was angation into the trump campaign and russia. did you buy that? is that holding water to you? what else are you learning about how president obama handled the russia issue? >> it is interesting that ben rhodes doesn't give regrets or suggestions they could have done or should have done differently. a lot of democrats and obama aides think the president should have done more in that fall of 2016 to alert the public. yes, there was a statement by the intelligence chief. and gentlemen, it was talked about somewhat. but they felt like the president should have done more to counter the russian influence and that he allowed that to go unchecked, in effect. ben rhodes defends himself by basically saying, look, what were they to do if they did that, then president trump, candidate trump, would call it a rig to win the election. and he's threatening that line of argument. and they felt hamstrung by mitch mcconnell that wouldn't go along with a bipartisan statement. but there's not a lot of critici

my understanding is they also reached out to ben rhodes separately.essentially said, look, in the process of us doing an investigation on cambridge analytica, we came across references that trump aides had hired a foreign intel opps firm from israel to dig up dirt on you and ben to try to discredit the iran deal. have you heard about this? to which i responded i've never heard about this. >> joining us now, general michael hayden. he is the author of the new book "the assault on intelligence, american national security in an age of lies." general hayden, i want to get your reaction first of all to this story about the trump administration hiring private israeli contractors of sorts to do this kind of intelligence work, it seems. and is this something that the white house would by now -- should by now have a better answer to than "i'm not aware of anything on that front," which is what the press secretary said? >> well, lawrence, i would hope. and first of all, thank you for having me on this evening. that charge is so outrageous. i have to admit, my p

you remember ben rhodes saying that? >> i remember it very well. the fact he was right.hey are too stupid. look i don't think they missed a beat. they're doing lots of things they could do when they got the new infusion of money. they're developing icbm fleet. they were paying off russians for nuclear development on the facility there. they were buyg s-300 missiles, a whole host of things that make a nuclear country more capable. and so they didn't miss a beat but they got $150 billion. they spread radical islam throughout the whole middle east. that was not a good deal for the u.s. and the west. liz: he admits iran is backing terror. he did not bring that up in 2015 talking about his deal. john kerry has been doing his own quote, shadow diplomacy in iran, basically wait it out, iran, president trump will not win in 2020. we'll get your deal back for you. president trump is saying the u.s. should get out of the deal since he launched the campaign in 2015. msnbc suggest ising that president trump pulled out of the deal, to quote, deflect from scandals. let's watch. >> it

>>> this ben rhodes book every word is sanction bid obama. rhodes is still on staff for obama.t of obama as he gets on the campaign trail and he'll be making some of the arguments himself. probably not directly at trump in the way he has avoided for the last year. >> thank you so much. thank you. when we return, let me finish tonight with trump watch. he's not going to like tonight. you're watching "hardball." delivery should look like this. crisp leaves of lettuce, freshly-made dressing. clean food that looks this good, eaten at your desk. panera. food as it should be. now delivered. my secret visitors. appearing next to me in plain sight. hallucinations and delusions. these are the unknown parts of living with parkinson's disease. what stories they tell. but for my ears only. what plots they unfold. but only in my mind. over 50% of people with parkinson's will experience hallucinations or delusions during the course of their disease. and these can worsen over time, making things even more challenging. but there are advances that have led to treatment options that can help. if

this is about ben rhodes. this is not just according to the paper, but other publications as well as we are getting more information on this story. trying to dig up dirt on the two officials around the nuclear program and the negotiations around it. also some journalists were c contacted as well who seem to be pro-iran nuclear deal. one journalist said he was contacted by someone who stated they were from a company and started asking strange questions about the iran nuclear deal and what it meant to the journalist. the firm in question that is being named, we have to stress this, they are saying they have no part in it and no ties to the trump white house or the trump team or iran nuclear deal. this comes as an important time as we approach the may 12th deadline. iranians have come out in the form of the president rouhani, if they leave the nuclear agreement, it would be historic mistake. iran is preparing for it. there will not be negotiations of the weapons the iranians would have. christine. >> fred pleitge

he and ben rhodes, who was the deputy national security adviser of the president, they became targets of what was something of an odd campaign. when i spoke to mr. call, he said he was not aware of this until he was contacted by reporters of "the guardian" and "the new yorker." but then some thoughts began to occur to him of an odd outreach last year of call's wife. a group claims to be an investment firm in europe saying they're interested in the public school that his wife's child goes to, that their child goes to, and starts to offer the possibility of money, investments, et cetera. she doesn't quite know why they're reaping out to her. she tries to divert them to someone else. they keep coming back saying, no, it's you we want to meet with, et cetera. lets that go. what's interesting in retrospect, the name that is apparently a fake firm, rubien capital partners, is the same name of a firm used to reach out to rose mcgowen who was one of harvey weinstein's accusers, again, trying to make contact, not clear what they wanted to do with that contact. i should note that these obama of

colin kahl, you saw him with the glasses on in that clip you just showed, and ben rhodes. idea was to go after these two former officials, try and find out whatever they could about them, big into their private lives with the idea of exposing whatever dirt they could unearth. not just to undermine the credit -- not to just discredit these two government officials, but to discredit a piece of legislation or a piece of diplomacy that they were involved in, which is the iran nuclear deal. so the ideal was, go back, target the architects of the iran nuclear deal. people were very publicly associated with defending the iran nuclear deal and discredding them, you discredit the deal. >> do you have a time frame? and who could have hired black cube, this israeli firm? >> so the time frame was, until relatively recently, right around the transition period, we're talking about the transition period when president-elect trump was still president-elect and then the early days of the administration, that seems to be the peak point of this operation. who hired them? we don't have a cont

. >> let's talk about the book by ben rhodes.s the president's reaction, president obama's reaction to donald trump's election victory. after the election, according to the new book, rhodes recalls the president saying, quote, what if we were wrong? maybe we pushed too far. maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe. the president went on to say, sometimes i wonder if i was 10 or 20 years too early. when you hear that, those are words, according to ben rhodes, from president obama. what do you think? >> he had an incredibly difficult position. he was describing on the one hand inequality that persist nd this nation and on the other hand trying to move forward as the president for every american. if you're a true american president, you have to grapple with the most serious sin in this country's history, which is race. obama felt, because of his own personal disposition to be calm and cool and collected, that he shouldn't be get into the fray, and i think that was a tragic problem and a flaw. because when you don't addre

>> ben rhodes said it was a bizarre, short-sighted decision.at the president was only thinking about domestic policy and not thinking about what it means to own iran in a potential crisis abroad and it really speaks to the way that the president operates, he's always thinking about making america great again, what it it means to us and less apparent, whether or not he's thinking about the global implications. >> we'll be reading axios a.m. in just a little bit. can you sign up for the news letter at axios.com. that does it for us, i'm yasmin vossoughian, alongside louis burgdorf. >>> my whole life i've been greedy, greedy. i'm so greedy. >> i know the lobbyists, i've done very well with lobbyists. >> i've always taken in money. i like money. i'm very greedy. i shouldn't tell thaw. >> i've turned down millions and millions of dollars, i feel foolish, actually doing it, you want to know the truth. i said no, i don't want your $5 million. don't give me $2 million. it's not my way of life. >> i've always been greedy. i want to give all that up. i h

this is ben rhodes quoting the president. he read a column reading liberals forgotten how important identity is to people. it promoted an empty cost momo globalism that made many feel left behind. maybe we pushed too far, mr. obama said. maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe. >> that is absolutely right. you know, let's remember that president obama did not just kind of campaign for hillary clinton. he basically staked his reputation on the election of hillary clinton. he said if you appreciate what i did, you should vote for hillary clinton. so it is not necessarily surprising that an election that elected perhaps what you could argue is the polar opposite of president obama would rattle him a little bit. i think democrats who really believed not just obama, but the message they were delivering was the one the american people wanted to hear. you wake up the morning after the election and you have to question all of that and wonder what were the american people hungry for and was it the strong rhetoric from the

ben rhodes hits the nail squarely.n that inner circle to know. >> there's other news in here. and that is there's so much noise and questions about should president obama have done more about the russia interference? you hear it from president trump and his supporters. well, this was on obama's watch. why didn't he do more? here's an interesting passage i will read. mr. obama had authorize said a statement to be issued by intelligence agency leaders a month before the election warning of russia interference but was thwarted from doing more because senator mitch mcconnell of kentucky, the republican leader, refused to go along with a bipartisan statement. mr. rhodes called mr. mcconne mcconnell's refusal staggering unpatriotic. that is new information, that president obama waed, wes, to alert people but mitch mccouple wouldn't go along with the bipartisan nature. >> certainly. and we have heard two bits of this before. the idea of the bipartisan statement. we vice president heard president obama's private reactions on t

fact -- and this is something that's come out before, that president obama wanted, according to ben rhodes to say more about the russian election meddling before the actual -- let me read you what he says. mr. obama had authorized the statement to be issued a month before the election warning of russian interference but was thwarted of doing more because mitch mcconnell refused to go along with the bipartisan statement. mr. rhodes called mr. mcconnell's refusal staggeringly partisan and unpatriotic. you were involved in all of this. you had a front row seat to this. were there partisan roadblocks thrown up to alerting the american people as to what was happening? >> yes, there were and my book has much the same account. there was a great deal of discussion about a more robust reaction earlier, but there was concern on the part of the president himself, because of the allegations of rigging which the candidate trump was then espousing that anything that the president did would be viewed as political and he would be putting his hand on the scale and favor one candidate to the disfavor of the

it's very odd that ben rhodes and colin call were the alleged targets of this operation. not the architects of the iran deal. yes, they worked on it. but they were the focus of sebastien gorka. if you look at what he said during this time, he consistently harps on these two individuals and then just last night, we learned from a uk paper and from "the new yorker," that this intelligence agency, this intelligence firm, was focusing on these very two individuals. you add those two things up, and his fingerprints appear to be all over this. there's a lot we don't know, but we need to find out more. >> we're going to try to do that ourselves. thank you. great to have you here. >>> coming up, state of emergency. lava burning a path of destruction across hawaii. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. what? directv gives you more for your thing. your... quitting cable and never looking back thing. directv is rated #1 in customer satisfaction over cable. switch to directv and now get a $100 reward card. more for your thing. that's our thing. call 1.800 directv. with

interests to lift the constraints on the iranian nuclear program and rick that confrontation. >> ben rhodess. >> still to come, a look at the white house's comfortable relationship with telling plipz sarah huckabee sanders was put on the spot about that today. her response next. >>> you said on march 7th there was no knowledge of any payments from the president and he's denied all of these allegations. were you lying to us at the time or were you in the dark? >> the president has denied and continues to deny the underlying claim and again i've given the best information i have at the time and i would refer you back to the comments you yourself just mentioned a few minutes ago about the time line. >> that statement was in reference to the reimbursement, the payment. >> i gave you the best information that i had. >> sarah huckabee sander was caught red handed today having deceived the american people. this is nothing par from the course. nothing from this white house can ever be assumed to be true. here me to help me understand the kind of toll this takes, congressman from oklahoma. am i craz

that's from ben rhodes. >> that's right. and i think the problem is in all of this, that donald trump gave the leverage away at the start. he accepted the south korean invitation on the spot to meet with kim jong-un. didn't even convene his full national security team. they then rushed out with nobel chance, and indicating that donald trump actually wanted this more than kim jong-un. and so, again, i think this is him trying to press reset on this summit. >> quick final thoughts, shannon and nancy. >> i think the reset is right. maybe we can get to the point with the diplomacy behind the scenes and bring in the president at the end. >> this is the mt. that likes to wing it a bit and maybe they'll take more steps to prepare. >> nancy cook, shannon, ned, this was not the show we expected to have, but it is the show that we had, nonetheless. i'm so glad you were here with us for all this rockin and rolling. i'm running over to the white house, maybe the doj, but for now i'll leave you in the capable hands of stephanie ru e ruhl

but on saturday, the british newspaper "the guardian"ed repohat colin kahl and ben rhodes, two top obamate housnational security officials, were the subjects of elaborate efforts to delegitimize the deal last year. they were targeted by an israeli n ivate intelligence firm trying to dig up informatat might discredit both men as proponents of the iran agreement. dith me now to explain this story is "the gu's" world affairs editor, julian borger, who helped break the story. julian, thanks for being here. first off, i know you have a new story post-ed on "the guaran"'s web site. what's the latest? >> this is about the head of the national iranian american council, a fierce advocate of the iran nuclear deal, and during the transition if lae 2016, he was approached through an intermediatory with a message from u.s. intelligence warning him to look out because the trump crowd were coming after him and would seek to discredit him as a means of discrediting thdeal. and several months later, he was approached by soeone he believed to be a journalist who turned out to be worng for this israeli pri

him, after asking general questions, asked him about whether these two -- these two officials, ben rhodes colin kal, had been some way -- had in some way maybe profited or benefited from the deal. he didn't think anything mor about other tan to think it was a bit odd until we read from the transcript of that conversation that wgot ahold of from sources close to that firm. >> yang: so they were trying to say, according to yourg, reporthat tease two officials who negotiated the deal were protfiting from i? >> yes. they were, i think, looking for two areas one in ways they were benefiting from the deal and the other the possibility that they may have shared classified information with supporters of the deal or journalists during the negotiation on the defense and the attempt to promote the deal afterwards. >> and from your reporting, who was behind this? sho asked this or hired thi israeli skirt firm to do this? >> our understanding is that th was politically -- had a political intention behind it, from and wasxcisioned by people close to donald trump with the intention of discrediting peopl

trita parsi, someone hiring and in the weinstein's case and they get hired to try to discredit ben rhodestrying to discredit people who put the deal together. they came at you. i want to play a little bit of richard engel's report regarding a phone call that you rereceice from the black cube operative. >> i don't quite follow. what exactly that happened? >> what was this person and who were they? what were they trying to get out of you? >> so i was just contacted by someone who says they were a journalist and my book just came out so i did a lot of media interviews. the conversation takes a strange term which he wants to go after ben and colin cowel and getting me to say that there were individuals trying to deal in the investigation. it was odds because he was trying to force those words into my mouth. >> essentially they wanted your help and use your credibility to discredit ben rhodes and colin cowell. that's part of the reason they came to me. >> did you get the sense during the putting together of the deal or the immediate after math of it, were you aware or could you sense there was

interests to lift the constraints on the iranian nuclear program and rick that confrontation. >> ben rhodesthanks. >> still to come, a look at the white house's comfortable relationship with telling plipz sarah huckabee sanders was put on the spot about that today. her response next. for just $15.99. you can enjoy the classics you love, along with new creations like savory crab-topped shrimp, decadent parmesan truffle shrimp scampi, and creamy shrimp and lobster pasta. your perfect shrimp plate is just waiting to be discovered. but shrimp trios won't last, so get to red lobster today. and get your red lobster fix with our weekday lunch starting at $7.99. happy anniversary dinner, darlin'. can this much love be cleaned by a little bit of dawn ultra? oh yeah one bottle has the grease cleaning power of three bottles of this other liquid. a drop of dawn and grease is gone. but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. the name to remember. >>> you said on march 7th there

>> this newly exposed program involved targeting these obama staff -- national security adviser ben rhodes collin cowell. the new yorker stating that these former spies were targeting their families with fake identification, deploying tactics in addition to the fake identities that were used by agencies from the black cube, the israeli firm that harvey weinstein had hired to try to get dirt to impugn women who called out his alleged misconduct. now ben rhodes handled obama's foreign policy and thus his outreach to many different governments, peaceful allies as well as authoritarian governments. and he says tonight this tactic the trump aides were deploying is a chilling example of what authoritarian governments do. quite a story. >>> up ahead, i want to show you jeff sessions out thing a new policy to try to separate immigrant families and show why it matters. that's next. if you spit blood when you brush or floss you may have gum problems, and could be on the journey to much worse. try parodontax toothpaste. it's clinically proven to remove plaque, the main cause of bleeding gums. for hea

regardless of what the ben rhodes and the obamas think about it, it still end up with themselves-inspecting. trump is saying i know how to buy a used car. kennedy: it's like trusting jeffrey dahm tore clean out his own -- d jeffrey dahmer to clean out his own freezer. >> it's like to depositing stuff in our freezer and i'm going to check once a week. will the iranians go for it? they are not supposed to go for the whole thing. they are saying stop being iran. but this is a menu. in all honesty, if the iranians drop ballistic missiles, the israelis would probably agree to allowing hezbollah, the devil that we know. kennedy: they are the devil, they are awful. who do you hate more, iran or turkey. >> iran. iran killed 3,000 of my fellow soldiers in iraq in 2004, '05, '06 and '07. i hate the iran revolutionary guard, they had killed my friends so i have a personal deal with them. kennedy: we shouldn't even be over there. suits, thank you so much. coming up, hillary clinton back out on her big election excuse tour. but in a yale speech she was even more hypocritical than possible. i'll explain

exposed now by one of his own cronies, a new book, former white house advisory or be ben rhodes detailsent trump reached out to canada -- president obama reached out to canadian president trudeau and others, urging leader to fight against president trump and defend the values they share. joining us, tom fenton, judicial watch president. let's start with i guess preparing the battleground as some would say, for obama as a shadow president. create a shadow government, and create a international alliance to work against a sitting president. just how -- is that not illegal? >> well, you know according to the obama gang, who targeted general flynn with a logan act potential violation, i don't know why it wouldn't apply to president obama. undermining president of united states by working with foreign government leaders is very basis of logan act. but it just shows you how hypocritical president obama has been. when you have his minions going out there and ambushing general flynn, based on absurd notion that his contact with the russians and presidential transition may have violated logan act

the worst part about it was ben rhodes, the national security advisor, bragged about how he stole theseies through the fake news media about how good of a deal it was because of you actually put the deal to a senate vote, like a treaty would go, no one would have voted for it because it was so ridiculous. they allow them centrifuges, 6,000. they have a sunset provision that they can ramp it up in a few years. the terrible deal. like he said, there is still going to be a deal on the table potentially if they make a smart decision. >> greg: juan, chuck schumer says this is a mistake that he was one of the people against this deal, right? a little hypocrisy there. >> juan: i think you are talking politics. i've noticed everybody who has spoken says the president kept his pledge that he said he was going to do it, and he did it. if that's what this is about, then i guess you can get your super, super, super, super. but if it's about america, i think then you have two go sad, sad, sad, very sad, very sad. here's the thing. when the president spoke today, he didn't say oh, yeah, here's a majo

she previously worked for the clinton foundation and she worked for, i think it was ben rhodes when he. so not a good track record. papadopoulos, they say, that whole thing started when the clinton foundation donor tipped off the fbi. now the person who is prosecuting the guy, it seems like there is a conflict of interest. now if i were a democrat, strategist on the left, i'm going to give you guys advise. if you want to compete against republicans, i would hammer gas prices. college tuition, health care. i wouldn't talk about mueller. he's not going to turn people out in the midterms. >> thank you for that programming note, jesse. trying to be helpful on the other side. >> that's probably where he said i was going to head on this. analyst types have been complaining amongst themselves that they can't get on television to talk about anything sides of russia. the cable companies have decided this is how we are going to get ratings and this is what we are going to talk about, so they are frustrated find a way to talk about some of their programs. they want to talk about health care and t

that includes ben rhodes who worked for the obama administration and a guy named collin cowell who hasy tweeted about it. what do you make of this? >> if there's anybody in violation of the iran deal, it's the americans themselves. the ambassador in germany has been lobbying german firms not to trade with iran. president trump visited israeli last year, supposedly they hired an israeli firm, allegedly they fired an israeli firm. there's rumors this israeli firm is the same one hired by harvey weinstein to spy on these women. there's no confirmation of that. however, to spy on american citizens. so he's hiring a foreign spy agency to spy on former diplomats who worked with the obama team. i don't know if this is legal. i'm not a lawyer. but i think this is immoral. at the least it shows a picture that the president has decided to leave the iran deal and is trying to find justification and dirt on these people who are part of the iran deal. his opposition to the iran deal is an ideological opposition, that whatever obama did, he needs to undo and kill. the international community will no

. >> with all of that at the same time, there was unmaska going on, it involves ben rhodes, susan ricejohn brennan and james clapper. that unmasking was illegal and unconstitutional and leaked the names of people who were unmasked purposely to embarrass him and then they leaked telephone conversations of the president of the united states shortly after taking office with foreign leaders. that is the scandal. what mueller is doing is nonsense. utter legal nonsense. scandal was the coup d'etat that started during the election by the obama justice department and national security apparatus, and it has not stopped until this day. look at brennan, look at the viperous things being said by a former director of central intelligence, and he's not the slightest bit embarrassed. mark: because he's invested in this. look at clapper. a proven liar, under oath, repeatedly, not a single charge ever brought against him. claber is a leaker, comey is a leaker, mccabe is a leaker. >> why did they stall security clearances? >> why do they stall security clearances? why do they still have jobs? why wouldn

ben rhodes.rsonal lives and their efforts around trying to negotiate the nuclear agreement. it is interesting. other papers have picked up on all of this as well as gathered other information. it seems as though there were journalists contacted by the firm and asked questions about the nuclear program. all seemed to be in favor of the nuclear agreement. one has come forward and said he was contact ted by someone a couple of months ago asking a lot of questions he found strange about the nuclear agreement. he pushed back on that. he found the questioning to be curious to say the least. now all of this, of course, comes at a very, very important time around the nuclear agreement and the company named in the media reports say it has nothing to do with it. they have nothing to do with the trump administration and no contact was the trump team. the iranians have come out and ahead of the deadline on may 12th when the president has to extend the agreement or kill it, they say it would be a historic mis

good to pull out of that iran, we know ben rhodes was so bad he had to lie about this deal to america now know it's bad. third thing going on right now is north korea. people are acting like oh my god, this is shocking. this is shocking that he cancelled. first, you must be shocked by the sunrise. this is how negotiations go. and what's interesting to me is seeing the media kind of happy if world peace might hit a snag because they dislike trump so much. to them trump is not a president. he is -- no, he is your exthaexthat you are better abou. if your ex discovers a cure to a disease you can't be happy because is he your ex. >> kimberly: that's child oish. can't do that you have to be happy when the disease is cured. >> greg: thank you. >> kimberly: jesse, one more thing now? >> jesse: president obama left the iraqis behind. he left the ukrainians behind and the israelis behind. if you want to talk about alliances. >> juan: did you notice who just won the election in iraq? >> what about libya? >> juan: anti-american cleric. how about that? this is the thing. if i'm going to get to a s

it appears as though it was ben rhodes who were targeted in this.nistration aides. and the new yorker is reporting that it was apparently their rives who were specifically targeted trying to extract information from them. at least he said it is true that his wife was called on a telephone and asked specific question and people tried to get in touch with her and that they all thought that this was something that was very strange. apparently in an attempt to try to gather information on their personal lives and build up a file of them apparently to try to discredit the nuclear agreement. on top of this there is reporting saying that apparently journalists who appear to be in favor of the nuclear agreement were also targeted and some were contacted as well. one journalist says he was called by someone who he thought was a little bit strange and asking a lot of questions about the nuclear agreement in a very combative tone and he found that strange and has come to the conclusion that it might be this company which is called black cube that might be behi

feel some sense of vindication that the president did have a strategy and a lot of people like ben rhodesthe last straight have been out on social media in the last year saying the president was bringing us to the brink of nuclear war and this was going to blow up in america's face. instead, you have this release of three americans and now happening on the eve of a summit where there's a lot of hart work to be done. a lot of diplomacy that needs to be done. nobody here is spiking the football, but people in the building behind me are saying that compared to where we were eight, ten months ago, the critics saying the president was bringing the nation to the brink of nuclear war, we're in a different place and you can bet the president will talk about that. >> bill: are you saying singapore is not a solid location? is that what you're hearing? >> they have not nailed that down. they don't know how long. maybe one day. but it may go on longer. here's the president. >> bill: thanks, ed. to mark and juan, hang on here. the president is making his way to the gymnasium there, a school in elkhart

ben rhodes? will be here about cement powers basically unmasking an american a day? we do hear about samantha powers. i don't know if we will hear about all the players.f i do have one thing to say, sea sean. brennan was in charge of the ci cia. they are supposed to deal with foreign issues. what is he doing involving himself in what is fbi issues and are nation security issues that have nothing to do with foreign issues. we should be asking him why he is involving himself in. this is not the purview of the cia. >> sean: thank you so much. good luck with the book. hillary clinton's latest excuse on why she lost next. ♪ are you done yet? does it look like i'm done? shouldn't you be at work? [ mockingly ] "shouldn't you be at work?" todd. hold on. [ engine revs ] arcade game: fist pump! your real bike's all fixed. man, you guys are good! well, we are the number-one motorcycle insurer in the country. -wait. you have a real motorcycle? and real insurance, with 24-hour customer support. arcade game: wipeout! oh! well... i retire as champion. game hog! champion. the commut

sean: if the truth comes out, it will go right to the obama white house, and rice and power and ben rhodes >> given the way they ran a very tight operation, does anybody believe that valerie jarrett didn't know the stuff? >> sean: "the new york times" trying to do catcher, which i thought was vindication in a way but in another way, just trying to spin it, they revealed very early on when that trip took place to great britain, that in fact there were deep negotiations with downer with the state department that had to be at the top for him to allow himself to be part of the fbi. >> is a good on this list, then you have this guy that was now sort of identified, who got a million dollars over the years,, it's okay, -- what i read was entrapment. i mean, he's saying -- >> sean: that is what victoria toensing said. >> they are saying, give me, give me, give me. >> sean: there was a cute blonde. >> there's nothing there. >> sean: are you confident -- if hillary wins, none of this comes out. are you confident we have the ability to get to the truth completely? >> no. >> sean: either my. >> what i

. >> when is this conspiracy theory insanity of the resist movement, of the ben rhodes, colin kahl nexus, we're not going to endanger national security anymore. >> reporter: the reports come as trump faces a may 12th deadline to decide whether to continue waiving sanctions against iran or pull out of the deal. >> in fact, as that deadline approaches on saturday with the president's noum president's announcement scheduled for tomorrow, 2:00. several diplomats is tried to convince him to stay in the iran nuclear deal. they feel the president will withdraw from the agreement. >> we don't know what the ramifications of that agreement will be. could be enormous. >> no, and i spoke to a senior european doip wiplomat who was in town, make the case to stay in the deal and he made that point, that the consequences of the deal have not been spelled out or interestingly, he says, even understood by the trump administration. >> see what he says tomorrow 2:00 p.m. thank you very much. >>> there's other news we're following, including that volcanic eruption in hawaii. it's now destroyed almost three d

that the observer and the new york are saying they hired an intelligence company to dig up dirt on ben rhodes, obama's national security adviser, colin call who is an aide to president obama. it is also reported in intelligence agency was hired to dig up dirt on calls' and rhodes' wives. there is a lot being said here. the observer and rhodes -- or sorry -- the observer and call are saying black cube was hired to dig up dirt. black cube, you may remember, is the israeli intelligence agency that worked with harvey weinstein to find dirt on women who were accusing him of sexual allegations. now, black cube came out and apologized for that, saying they didn't intend to harm anyone, but when it comes to this case, black cube released a statement saying that black cube has no relation whatsoever to the trump administration, to trump aides, to anyone close to the administration or to the iran nuclear deal. anyone who claims otherwise is misleading their readers and viewers. the company also said they're not needed to look up information about the iran nuclear deal, that the cia or massad is able to

ben rhodes, he was part of the problem, not the solution.dency is going to go down as one of the worst presidency is next to jimmy carter's in american history. this president, president trump has virtually taken every step of the last 17 months to erase the obama presidency from a legislative and policy standpoint, because it was so wrong. we were stagnant, our economy was stagnant, now we have a booming economy. her unemployment rates are down, gdp is up. you know all of the numbers. we hear them all the time. consumer confidence is up in an way. not leading from behind, barack obama was the disaster that we all said it was going to be. >> martha: here for the last minute that we have together, i'm curious, because you know the president very well, is he considering these pardons for martha stewart, for rod blagojevich, and the one put out for dinesh d'souza today because he wants to stick it to mueller and comey, and patrick fitzgerald who were involved in all of these cases and the similarity is that he sees and what he is going through

what did susan rice and ben rhodes no? we haven't even talked about unmasking.president-elect, and the president of united states. you put spies, lying to pfizer judges? >> i think the number one thing the average every day american kente from all of this is that the corruption wasn't so deep at the top. remember, we are not talking about the everyday fbi agent doing their job. we are talking about people at the very job, and those people were so corrupt and arrogant that they thought they could get away with anything. so they just proceeded down the road, protecting hillary, covering up hillary, giving immunity to people who were breaking the law and then going after trump and going after trump supporters. when all of this comes out in a way that is easy to understand, it may tank, frankly, another year and a half because it is so much, and every time we turn around, another piece unravels. you'veig had more big stories in the last year and a half than i would have thought possible and again and again, you have been right, and inch by inch, even "the new york t

about this, new reporting that israeli operatives were targeting obama administration advisers, ben rhodesmong them, key people who worked on the iran nuclear agreement and in an effort to discredit them and discredit the agreement. what the observer is reporting in the uk is that aides of president trump, trump aides were behind this hiring. if that's true, and we don't know if that's true, the optics are certainly not good, right? foreign agents hired to look into, dig into, dig up dirt on american citizens. what is your reaction? >> well, first of all, if it is true, it evidently didn't go anywhere because the allegation is that it started last year. we haven't heard a peep out of the people that were undertaking this, assuming that they were. secondly i think frankly pretty sadly, poppy, it is a great big giant flashing neon exhibit a and how low politics can become in this country where people resort to the demonization and character assassination of people with whom they simply disagree. can't be about the policy argument anymore. it has to be about destroying their character and i f

joining me now is ben rhodes. he worked on this deal. welcome back to the show.that the prime minister produced yesterday which is evidence of essentially iranians wanting to build a nuclear program. that these plans were there. many people have said yeah, we knew they were doing this. this is the reason for the deal. others argue yep, they're prepared to cheat. this is the reason to get out of the deal. is that where we're aiming at? >> actually, prime minister netanyahu made the case for the deal. this was not a new story. the fact that they had a weaponization program before 2003 was declassified we the u.s. in 2007. the fact they had a secret facility was revealed by barack obama in 2009. the fact is the iran deal puts in place the restrictions on that program and has an intrusive inspections to make sure they're not cheat and we can catch them if they're lying. if you blow up the deal, you lose the inspections and the capability to know whether or not they're meeting their commitments or whether they're lying. >> does the united states have to be in the deal

the harvey weinstein sexual harassment case and in another case in which that company targeted ben rhodesrmer government officials. richard ingles joins me from jerusalem. you peered into the black box that is black cube. what did you find out about how this company works? >> reporter: so, as you just mentioned, they were involved in the harvey weinstein case. what did they do? in the harvey weinstein case, they were hired by harvey weinstein to find out what the accusers knew to try to manipulate them, to try to prevent them from talking to reporters, and effectively just to try and control them without their knowledge. that's one operation. well, it turns out they had a much more political contract as well, and that was to go after former members of the obama administration to try to dig up dirt on them in order to undercut their credibility, and these were specifically people who were involved in negotiating the iran deal. and we spoke to someone who has inside knowledge of this particular political operation and the targets. >> know that someone was trying to dig up your profile and n