thank you for coming on many david gergen. you first the president was on fox news tonight. let's listen. >> robert mueller do you think he should rekuz himself from this because he is good friends with james come withy, hired some attorneys part of hillary clinton's foundation given pollone to president obama and hillary clinton campaign. >> well he is very, very good friends with comey, which is very bothersome. but he is also -- we'll have to see. we'll have to see in terms -- look, there has been no obstruction. there has been no collusion. there has been leaking by comey. but there's been no collusion, no obstruction and virtually everybody agrees to that. so we'll have to see. i can say that the people that have been hired are all hillary clinton supporters. >> so david gergen, he has declared himself innocent should the special counsel stop now. >> no but i think you can tell he is ramping up in a which -- he is trying to discredit mueller so that if if in fact the mueller and the special counsel finds or has been obstruction or if he finds there has been collusion, t

david gergen says we need to hear from a lot of people. we need to know that particular answer, and i thought the timing of the release of the comey statement today was a dramatic jugs taos position to what happened in that hearing when we had the four law enforcement/intel chiefs for refusing to answer the questions, with no legal basis. they just didn't feel like answering the question. >> that was definitely interesting. david, i said to hear from you. >> i'm going to be a bit of a contrarian here. the piece about flynn i find particularly baffling, but i also think that even as people will be watching in large numbers this testimony tomorrow, because it promises to be dramatic, what is clear too is that a lot of americans are just trying to live their lives, it hasn't penetrated yet. you know, the president is still bumping along in the mid to high 30s. his base is intact. yes, republicans are beginning to ask more questions as ana suggests, but the truth is his support among republicans has been pretty firm so far. it's eroded very li

zero. >> david gergen. >> no, no. >> david gergen. >> no, no. jeffrey, please. my friend jeffrey. listen, the pattern that jim sciutto talked about very properly is a pattern that involves a number of undisclosed relationships, many in contacts, many of them with russians. it wasn't just a saudi trip. it was a saudi trip to talk about a u.s.-russian deal worth $100 million -- >> but the collusion -- >> and nuclear power capacity. but a, you don't forget a $100 billion deal and leave it off your national security clearance form. you just don't do that. you can go to jail. we all know that. but the more you see a pattern, flynn is a guy who's got himself in a variety of things. it raises the question front and center, is that why the president is trying to hard to protect him, to take him out from under the investigation? and that is where it leads to the question of obstruction. is the president -- what does the president know about flynn? his lawyer knows a lot, says he has one hell of a story to tell. what does the president know and why is he trying to protect flynn? >> and jim

back now with david gergen and david axelrod and robby mook.oblem is roger stone for the trump administration when it comes to this investigation? because he says, look, he can explain it all and there was nothing there? >> i think he could be in very deep trouble. if any of the statements, and, as you said multiple times, he claimed the contact through julian assange, he predicted that john podesta would be in the barrel way back in august. if those statements are true, if what he was saying at that time is true, he's in very big trouble and the trump campaign is in very big trouble. so i'm frankly surprised that he is willing to testify. if his story is different than the story he was repeatedly telling before the lelection whn he maybe didn't take this very seriously or any conversations with wikileaks very seriously, his credibility is going to be up in the air, and that's going to urge investigators to look even more closely at this. >> david gergen, how do you see his testimony in. >> i think it's going to be very important. he gave every

joining us now, two former white house insiders, david gergen who worked with four presidents, democrats and republicans. david axelrod who had an upclose view of the passage of the affordable care act during the obama administration. david axelrod, you said obamacare passed, quote, because of the sustained personal commitment of the president to the cause, the details and the process. do you see that from president trump sharing that commitment to getting a republican version of health care bill passed? because he certainly ran o it, he has been making calls about it. is that enough? >> no. look, i don't think that president trump has the personal investment in this issue or the knowledge of the issue that barack obama did. he -- president obama listened to all the details of this law. when he spoke to lawmakers about it, he understood it in intimate detail. for president trump, this is important to get a win and what isn't clear is whether he understands what a win is or what it would look like. and that makes his involvement difficult because he doesn't quite know where to go with thi

so here with me tonight to discuss all of that is david gergen, malika henderson, david ax axelrod, ana navarro. also scott jennings, former special assistant to president george w. bush. let's get into it, james comey describing his first meeting with president donald trump on january 6th, at trump tower two weeks before the inauguration. he was breaking the news to president-elect, the president-elect of a classified dossier full of salacious allegations by russian operatives. here is what comey says. i first met then president-elect trump on friday, january 6th, in a conference room in trump tower at new york. i was there with other intelligence community i.c. leaders to brief him and his new national security team on the findings of an ic assessment concerning russian efforts to interfere in the election. at the conclusion of that briefing, i remained alone with the president-elect to brief him on some personally sensitive aspects of the information assembled during the assessment. the ic leadership thought it important for a variety of reasons to alert the incoming president to the

david gergen, political analyst and former adviser to many presidents. and dan fife, cnn political commentator, former senior adviser to president obama. david gergen, "the new york times" yesterday raised the possibility of the president declaring executive privilege. i sort of raised my eyebrows and went, oh? when kellyanne conway would not rule it out this morning, i sort of went, wow! look, we don't know if the president will try to block james comey from testifying. what we do know is that it's not a definite no right now, and to me, that seems significant. >> it is significant, john. it would be a major decision by the president. it would be extremely controversial, where he could try to block him. i think it would probably lead to maybe some sort of court action about whether the president waived his right to invoke executive privilege, just as we heard from joe johns. there is a question about all the tweeting around what the president himself has said. is he really going to be able to legally block somebody else from describing what happend when

here to discuss, david gergen, a presidential adviser to four presidents, presidents nixon, ford, reagan and. and margaret hoover, republican strategist and keith boykin, democratic strategist and served as an aide in the clinton white house. david gergen, to you, the president tweets that he is under investigation and that he is under investigation for firing the fbi director by the man who told him to fire the fbi director. what do you make of it? >> the president's lawyer must be going a little nuts this morning. you know, they clearly don't have control over what he's tweeting, and it's been longstanding practice that if you're under investigation, you don't attack publicly the investigators. it only stirs them up, and it can invite all sorts of retaliation underneath everything. i just think it's strange. and of course, the facts are off. but i think the most important thing that's going on here, poppy, is that the president is clearly launched a campaign to discredit the special counsel, to discredit the investigations, no matter what happens, and it could be a prelude to firing ro

david gergen is back with us.a lot of presidents, seen many national security team come and go. have you ever seen top advisors having to do this much damage control so soon? >> no. and this whole story about having the speech change at the last minute, the sentence dropped. it's been very disturbing on several levels. first, it has badly hurt u.s. relationships with nato. the administration was trying very hard, mcmaster and mattis and tillerson have been trying very, very hard to repair things to say that we do support article five and very importantly they have been seen as the real adults and a stabilizing force, those three men have enormous credibility and to undercut them really damages the presidency itself. it damages the credibility of the president. nobody knows -- if you listen to mattis or to trump, if they disagree with each other, which one should you believe is u.s. policy. and finally, this underscores as the travel ban story has, this president really does not listen to the people around him. he

dana bash is here, jim sciutto and david gergen. all of them join me. good evening to you. jim, there's new video tonight on one of the london attackers being searched by police back in 2015. tell us what we're seeing and what happened at the time. >> so this is another example of where you have attacks like this play out where the attackers were known to authorities before the event as was this attacker. he's actually appeared in a number of videos including in a documentary on jihadis living in the city of london and here it -- he is at another event where police had to respond to it, a public event where he was espousing extremist views. this happens. we saw it with the attackers at the "charlie hebdo" shooters. some. -- some of the paris attackers had been known to authorities. the trouble is, they have so many people on their radar screen, it's difficult to impossible to have all the resources to follow all of them. the other point i would make is that you had another case here where the attackers had been reported to authorities by people within the muslim community.

david gergen, you've been in many a white house. you know, in 18 days, we're talking about 18 days here where michael flynn was -- you know, had access to this very sensitive information. how much would he have been exposed to in this time? >> a lot. these are very formative days for the incoming administration. they were receiving and ending out lots and lots of communications to various countries around the world. some of which was extremely sensitive. so it's inexplicable that the white house sat for 18 days without taking action. that the president knew for two weeks that the vice president had been lied to by flynn, but didn't say anything. and then fired flynn, supposedly because he did lie. so there is just a cluster of mystery surrounding mr. flynn about what he did and why the president has been so solicitous of him since he left. and i don't think we have the answers -- i'm not sure we're going to get 'em anytime soon. i do want to distinguish between flynn and jared kushner. i just don't think they're in the same league.

i'm going to bring in michael, david gergen, and eric, cnn's investigative editor. good evening everyone, welcome to the panel, welcome to the program. david gergen, your reaction to this new reporting about attorney general jeff sessions? >> i think we have to greet it cautiously. see whether if he met him, if it was in a social setting four or five people standing in a circle chatting before a speech. that seems to be pretty harmless and forgettable. on the other hand if they had a private session and went to a private room in the hole somewhere that's suspicious. and jeff sessions has been hurt on these questions what he has been willing to say and not say and backed into a corner and all the rest. he said he was going to recuse himself from this whole proceeding. after he volunteered to do that. then he got direct in the comey firing which was in direct violation of the recusal promise. it is a mixed record. but on this particular element i think the thing that's interesting to point out as jim sciutto just did is that republican lawmakers are asking these quest

outfront" right now, john dean, ana palmer, and former adviser to four presidents, nixon among them, david gergenavid, let me start with you. why is trump's legal team so consumed with talking -- coming out and talking and saying that trump is not being investigated? there's a report out, t"the washington post" report said that he is being investigated and trump came out and tweeted that he was. why are they out there creating more and more back and forth on this? >> i think they're creating a fog bank so they confuse everyone so no one knows where the investigation stands and the reason for that is quite simple. the latest story that's been portrayed so far, we've also followed the lead to "the washington post" and confirmed it, is that the path of the investigation, not only leads inside the white house but leads inside the oval office and that puts the president under a cloud. we've heard that he's been yelling at the television, that he seems very frustrated and he's angry and distracted as president. so there's clearly something going on. whether he's formally under investigation or not, it'

. >>> former clinton treasury secretary larry summers and david gergen out with interesting commentsg leaving the paris deal is the worst thing the u.s. has done in our history. listen. >> this is a very sad day. this is the biggest u.s. foreign policy error since entering the iraq war. >> today we've walked away from the rest of the world and it's one of the most shameful acts in our history. >> let's go to a historian now to fact check this a little bit, doug wead joins us. i don't know, forget about larry summers for a moment, doug, and, you know, david gergen surprised me, supposed to be a middle of the road guy. worked in republican administrations and said it's one of the worst things we've ever seen. >> yes, connell. this is to the point of absurdity. all i can say is thank god we still have the internet, and your viewers better pray they don't lose the internet because your viewers could google the kyoto protocol would and see exactly where the u.s. senate, where politicians, when they have to put their money where their mouth is, how they line up. the kyoto protocol was the

joining me now, cnn's senior political analyst and former adviser to four presidents david gergen andr, you wrote a piece for the post just a day which you say the president embarrassed himself and america with these tweets. why do you feel that way? >> well, to begin with, he started off with a retweet of a drudge report. this is the chief of the american national security. he is the commander in chief. he's the leader of the free world. this is the information completely unverified that he is sending out. so the first entree into the subject was completely you irresponsible and unprofessional. he then went on just as you outline, anna, to talk about the travel ban. which frankly wouldn't apply to england in any case unless he is thinking of expanding it toening glanld. we don't know anything about the nationality of the people involved. and what is more, his formulation that the courts give us back our rights, the courts are enforcing americans rights. they're protecting americans rights in the travel ban cases. and finally with, regard to his sort of political correctness this is t

we have chris cillizza and david gergen. avid, we have some divisions here breaking out within the president's own party. you have a secretary of state complaining to the white house about his level of control and then on this tweet you have many republicans calling the president not presidential. i wonder it's not the first time we have seen that kind of criticism from inside the party. but i wonder if you see any significance with more of this breaking out into the public eye. >> well, it's a little unclear that unleashed it all. i think that the frustration by secretary of state tillerson has been building for a long time, jim and i must say he has every reason to be frustrated. i had a tour at the state department many years ago and it's unimaginable to me that with 124 positions at the state department that are supposed to represent nominees of the president and then confirmed by the senate, of those 124 positions, only 9, only 9 are filled today. and it has left many people at the state department, many officers. i keep

david gergen, clearly the president is going to tout his accomplishments. >> absolutely. of course, of course. unfortunately he doesn't have any major legislative victories. he does have the gorsuch victory and that's turning out well from a conservative stand point. but this is giving fresh meaning to the phrase "permanent campaign." you would think tonight that the president would be scrambling, doing everything he could to rescue the health care reform bill, which is now in serious trouble in the senate, as we know. but we're 159 days since his inauguration. 1,224 days till the next election. you would think the emphasis would be on trying to be a good president right now and let the re-election take care of itself down the road. >> kirsten, how much of this is about trying to send a message to fellow republicans considering a primary challenge down the road or to opponents who think he doesn't want to run for re-election again? >> well, i mean, even if he's going to -- if someone is going to run a primary against him, doing things like this wouldn't stop them. i think

david gergen as always, good to see you. james woolsey. so nice to you have on set with me. happy father's day, gentlemen. coming up, seven navy sailors are now confirmed dead after a collision in the waters off japan. what could have happened in those fateful moments before the collision? your live in the cnn newsroom. at whole foods market, we believe in food that's naturally beautiful, fresh and nutritious. so there are no artificial colors, no artificial flavors, no artificial preservatives in any of the food we sell. we believe in real food. whole foods market. hi..and i know that we have phonaccident forgiveness.gent, so the incredibly minor accident that i had tonight- four weeks without the car. okay, yup. good night. with accident forgiveness your rates won't go up just because of an accident. switching to allstate is worth it. when it comes to reducing the evsugar in your family's dietom. coke, dr. pepper, and pepsi hear you and we're working together to do just that. bringing you more great tasting beverages with less sugar or no sugar at all. smaller portion size

how big of a test will this be for president trump and his administration, david gergen? >> first of all, let's give credit to the white house and president trump for not invoking executive privilege. they could've done that. i think they did the right thing. when you do the right thing we ought to say so. goodness gracious. we take them on all the time on other things. james comey's testimony is i think is extraordinary significant in terms of this particular episode and it may have historic effects. we'll have to wait and see. if he lays out a pattern of conduct which shows that the president and his team were trying very hard to shut down the flynn investigation, that is going to prove great weight to the whole question of obstruction. we're now hearing the democrats like mark warner saying we don't see evidence of collusion, we don't see any smoking gun yet on the collusion question but the obstruction of justice may turn out to be a more serious problem for the administration than the collusion issue. >> jim, as has been said by a number of people especially those wh

. >> david gergen is a former white house communications director and so is jen psaki and also jeffrey lord. david gergen, what should a spokesperson do if they disagree with what the boss has done, do they just suck it up and go out there and defend their boss? >> well, if your colleague, chief of staff is not giving you a straight line, you're left out there in a battlefield unprotected and i have some sim pat three for her, actually. you talk to people who know her and have known her in the past, i do not, but they say she's lovely young woman and they feel sorry for her because she's an evangelical christian and here is a president doing things like weird, crazy, sexist, whatever you want to call that, and yet she has to defend it and i thought "saturday night live" actually got sympathetic with sean spicer. they felt badly for him. i think she's going through the humiliation. it's not fair to her. >> nobody is forced to do this job, though. she clearly wants to do this job. there are options. >> there are. look, i do think that sarah and sean spicer are in very difficult positions

today david gergen is head of the u.s. government's nutrition program and he's invited all over the world for a scientific conferences where he gives his experts point of view. totally independent. this week to. introduce reasons why the need is in order to be healthy diet has been just. on that day he was in france speaking to scientists from around the world about meat and the link between processed meat and cancer in order to denounce backed up by a power point the climate of fear panic and even hysteria. and we know because we were there. it was right at the start of our investigation when we barely knew about nitrites and had the need of enlightened specialists to help us. so there are new reviews published this year that say nitrite is not harmful and others that say it is harmful. i don't think anybody really knows. definitively but the answer is. a few months after this handshake you can learn more about the industry and doubt bells started ringing. so we took advantage of our trip to america to ask him for another

. >> david gergen is a former white house communications director and so is jen psaki and they join us now along with maggie haberman and jeffrey lord. i know you would never call sean spicer lovely, but so be it. david gergen, what should a spokesperson do if they disagree with what the boss has done, do they just suck it up and go out there and defend their boss? >> well, a press secretary is only as good as the white house that person works in. if your colleague, your chief of staff is not giving you the full dope and you don't get a straight line and you don't agree on it, you're left out there in a battlefield unprotected. and have i some sympathy for her, actually. you talk to people who know her and have known her in the past, i do not, but they say she's lovely young woman and they feel sorry for her because she's an evangelical christian and here she believes in traditional virtues. and here she has a president who is doing things that are weird, crazy, sexist, all, whatever you want to call that. and yet she has to defend it. and i thought "saturday night live" at the end in

but i would second david gergen. this is shameful day. the president seems to regard the world as a zero sum game in which either we win and everybody else loses or everybody else wins and we lose. obviously it's not that way whether you're talking about trade or immigration or the climate especially. because if we see the climate of the world continue to deteriorate, we are going to suffer, our children and our grandchildren just like everybody else. this is irrational from a standpoint of economics. it is shameful from the standpoint of morality. >> steven, the president said that the world is not going to laugh at us anymore. i'm not sure what his constant reference to people laughing at us is about or where that comes from, but do you believe this was in any way about politics or was this purely based on economics? >> i certainly think donald trump should keep the promises that he made. i was on the campaign trail with him at times when he made this declaration. it was one of his strongest applause lines. americans who voted for trump

you think of david gergen. is there a figure in and around the administration now or maybe in republican politics that could play that kind of a role with someone like donald trump? >> no. i don't think there is one at this point because tillerson and mattis and mcmaster, these are three very tough guys, and if they cannot manage to keep him on track, i don't know who else can. this is also in the context of the tweets where president trump is complaining about the action of his justice department on the travel ban, the justice department works for him, so this suggests a president who is really strange at the edge of his leash and out of control to some extent. this is very unnerving especially in national security. >> is there anything in u.s. history that sort of equates to the situation we have? rex tillerson, the secretary of state who's cloistered with two aides, doesn't talk to a lot of people, the son-in-law who's embroiled in his own controversies, we have all these figures around the president who the

. >> let's get perspective from dana bash and david gergen.ea that the american public should discount the president of the united states's own words shared directly on social media in favor of spin from his staffers making the morning show rounds seems ridiculous, particularly in light of the fact that for months they have been extolling the virtues of his direct access to the american people, extolling the virtue of his ability to tweet. >> absolutely. i don't know about you, but -- do you have the sense the president is becoming more irrational in his tweeting? sort of busting loose whenever he can? >> this was all about infrastructure and he is not tweeting about that. >> exactly. threatening his own case before the supreme court. that's perhaps the most serious part of this by the tweets on the travel ban. he is disagreeing not only with his aides, representatives from justice department who are arguing the president's case in court. they have been arguing to the courts that this is a pause in order to strengthen the vetting process and n

. >> up front front david gergen, john avelon, and jason miller former senior communications advisor for the trump campaign. this was a landmark global agreement, right? there were only two countries today that were not privy to its. now the united states joins that group. is this an unpress dented decision? >> yes. and i'm sorry to say this, but erin, listen, some 70 years ago, the united states entered an international agreement called the marshall blaj we came to the aid of europe. it was one of the noebelest acts in human history. today we've walked away from the rest of the world and it's one of the most shameless attacks around the world. it's a terrible setback for the planet. we represent as a country 4% of the world's population, but we represent about a third of all the excess carbon dioxide just warming the planets. we're the largest contributor of carbon dioxide in the world. as we walk away from that, it's grotesquely irresponsible. it's true that the nations that are going to faye greatest price for global warming are the poorest countries of the world mpltd and yet the

thing we don't know, not to just lead things away from the president, but what's not clear, and david gergen raises the point, the president has always defended flynn where he hasn't defended other people nearly as much. was the president directing flynn to do stuff? was flynn keeping the president apprised of whatever it was he was doing, and was there anything improper with that? again, we don't have any evidence that there was, but that seems to be what the investigation would try to figure out. >> there are a couple open questions. to david's point, yes, it was a trip to saudi arabia, but he said it was about a saudi-russian nuclear deal. in fact, general flynn mentioned this trip himself in testimony before the house committee on foreign affairs in june of 2015. he said, i just came back from a trip with the middle east talking about nuclear development there. oddly enough, he said it in congressional testimony, but then later left it off his sf-86 for a security clearance form. so flynn's own words contradicting himself to some degree. on the question of trump to flynn, when you speak

david gergen calling it one of the most shameful acts in u.s. history. you say what? >> i think there say lot of hyperventilating over a deeply flawed treaty. i mean, the rhetoric has been pretty heated. when you look at the treaty, it has tons of loopholes, it is not enforceable, the alleged progress would be minimal. so, i mean, i'm hardly a huge supporter of trump. but i do think there say lot of flaws in this treaty. >> so, assuming there are flaws in this treaty, to get 195 countries to agree to any one thing, you can only imagine the kind of horse trading that went on. let's talk about the symbolism here. you have all of the world leaders from capitals around the world saying the president made the wrong move, and he is distancing himself from this global community that has been the standard post world war ii, doesn't that concern you about what this means for the u.s. role in other issues? >> i think it is intentional, christine. i think this administration and steve bannon want to isolate the u.s., fortress america, let's disengage from all of these global con

also with us, david gergen.admiral, the president at least laid implicit blame at president obama's feet. you were part of the obama administration. what do you say to that? >> i take great issue with that. i mean, look, there was nothing more important to president obama or frankly secretary kerry while i was at the state department than the safety and security of americans overseas. and though we weren't successful in getting otto back, and i do believe the trump administration should get credit for accomplishing that. it was not for a lack of trying or lack of effort. secretary kerry personally was involved in seeking otto's release. i can't tell you the number of times he brought it up directly with his chinese counterpart and others in the international community. we're all sorry it didn't happen and sorry to see the results. and there's great regret over that. but again, it wasn't for lack of earnest effort. >> multiple voices, particularly republicans, call thing murder. what options does the trump admini

step back in terms of his role which was so vast and broad in the white house before and like david gergend, there's a lot of concerns now as this investigation escalates about what he says, what he's advising on. but we don't know really what the conversations were between jared kushner and president trump, how much running room he gave him. he gave him a lot of running room. but it's clear that kwhil he's taking a less visible role, ivanka will be the trumped adviser to her father and she talked about in an interview with april with cbs, talked about speaking quietly to the president, speaking with total candor on a lot of these issues that she disagrees with him on, like climate change and planned parenthood. so i think it remains undiminished. but clearly they know there is a lot of legal jeopardy there and he's certainly taking a less visible role. and today you heard how sean spicer has full confidence in jared kushner and how he thinks the entire investigation is a witch hunt or at least that's what he says publicly. >> well, the answer was absolutely when asked, does the president

so here with me tonight cnn's david gergen nia-malika henderson, mike ana in a varieso, and van jonesthrough the critical february 14th oval office meeting. comey says president trump asked him to let flynn go, he's a good guy. fbi director comey now had a difficult decision. should he report this conversation with the president to the attorney general? the fbi leadership team agreed with me, he writes, that it was important not to infect the investigative team with the president's request, which we did not intend to abide. we also concluded that given that it was a one on one conversation, there was nothing available to corroborate my account. we concluded it made little sense to report it to attorney general

former obama administration tony blinken joins me now with david gergen.y, "the washington post" article quoted a senior obama official involved in the russia deliberations. they said it was "the hardest thing about my entire time in government to defend, i feel like we sort of choked." how does the obama administration absolve themselves for waiting until december before enacting punishment on russia? >> we didn't wait, anderson. when this information came to light in the summer, we thought the primary objective that russia was pursuing was to hack into the elections and disrupt them, or at least create doubt in the american public about the legitimacy of the elections. so the first thing we did is made sure the elections were massive defended. and we had to take into consideration what the russians were trying to do and thinking how do we present this? we didn't want to play into russia's hands by creating the perception of a problem. that would have been doing russia's work for it. at the same time, president obama confronted president putin, warned him

joining me now to talk about what the obama administration did is tony blinken and david gergen."the washington post" article we talked about in the previous segment quoted a former senior obama administration official that said it was, quote, the hardest thing about my entire time in government to defend and, quote, i feel like we sort of choked. how does the administration about solve themselves? >> well, they didn't wait, anderson. couple of things that are important. when this information first came to light, late in the summer, we thought that the primary objective that russia was p pursuing was to hack into the elections and create a lot of doubt within the american public about the legitimacy of the elections. and so, the first thing we did was make sure the election systems themselves were properly defended and secured. we made a massive effort to do that. we had to take into consideration what the russians were trying to do and think, how do we present this publicly? we didn't want to play into russia's hands by creating more of the perception of a problem than really ex

"out front" now former advisor to four presidents, including clinton and nixon david gergen, gloria borger, jeffrey toobin and former white house nixon counsel john dean. we have the people here that need to be here to understand this. this is a crucial moment in this investigation. the most crucial moment perhaps thus far. when you read through these prepared remarks, it is six single spaced pages, going through meeting after meeting after meeting. does this to you look like obstruction of justice or not? >> it does, because it tells a story. it's not just one isolated incident. it's a demand for loyalty. not just where -- not just to -- not to the constitution, not to the fbi but a demand for loyalty to the president. comey dodges that with you it's clear that he is looking for response from comey and he has a demand and that demand is made over and over again, vindicate me, vindicate me. and finally on february 14th, he says drop the investigation of mike flynn. that february 14th meeting, if it's believed, if comey's testimony is accurate -- >> right. >> -- is frankly a smoking gun in

joining us our political and legal panel, jeffrey toobin david axelrod, david gergen gloria borger as well as carl bernstein. gloria you said earlier today director comey left a lot of bread crumbs out there about the attorney general. did the attorney general clarify anything, address any of the unanswered questions? >> sweep the crumbs away is what he did. first of all, the big confrontation today between senator ron wyden and sessions was about one of those bread crumbs because comey had said, well, i expected -- the question to comey was why didn't you go to sessions? and he said, well, i expected him to recuse himself because he had been in the campaign, et cetera, et cetera. and then there was another issue that was more problematic. and that's a key word. it's my least favorite word of this investigation because everything seems to be problematic these days. but he was asked about it today and he got incensed. outraged. >> he said innuendo. >> yeah, innuendo and outrage and there is nothing problematic. and then comey also sort of implied that if he was fired because of russia

even my friend david gergen said it's shameful.have to get on top of the issue. >> why are you so convinced that a foreign buyer wouldn't buy an american good simply because this accord is not part of our policy? has nothing to do with the innovation of the products or the technology or the quality of our workforce. is it really that big of a game changer for a foreign buyer? >> no, i just -- i'm going to have to -- first of all, we want the foreign companies, like the german auto companies to produce in the u.s. we want that. and this is going to push them away a bit. also, it's going to force some big companies like ge going into china and building there and exporting. i think business can go it alone but it doesn't have the support of the government it needs. i think it's pulling away from the tight relationships we have had. we need those close relationships. >> you advised corporate leaders all the time, if you were talking to a ceo that is opposed to this decision to pull out of paris, do you tell them to pull a bob iger and