. >> joining me now, david leopold. david, okay, so let's try that first.ooking at the number of years that justice kennedy has been on the supreme court, right, and he's at 29. he's above, if you will, the medium by four, five, six years. does that mean most likely he would be the first to retire? >> no. i don't think so. his health is good, you know, and, richard, he's at the pinnacle of his power. he is the court in a lot of ways. he is the pivotal vote on that court. he's the swing vote. he wrote some extremely important decisions. he's upheld the core meaning of roe v. wade over the years, and he's gone the other way on some other cases. citizens united comes to mind first. so he's at the pinnacle of his power. my understanding is he's in good health, but i'll tell you what the real concern i do have here, and that is this. we're going to talk a little about the travel ban, i know, but we see that the courts in this country right now under this trump administration are the first line and the last line of defense at the constitution. congress is not rea

david leopold. thank you. we will stay with donald trump. twitter by president donald trump have accused him of lying and suggested the white house tried to blackmail them. mika brezinski and joe scarborough, the hosts of msnbc morning joe said they were warned a tabloid would run a negative story on them unless they said sorry for their coverage of mr trump. let's take a look at some of the other stories making the news. around 60 migrants are feared drowned after their boat sank off the coast of libya. around 80 survivors were brought to the italian port of brindisi, where they told aid workers about the disaster. on wednesday, a senior eu official said the scale of migration across the mediterranean is untenable — with around 10,000 people reported to have attempted the journey in the past few days. the leader of the far—right in france, marine le pen, has been placed underformal investigation over an alleged european parliament funding scandal. ms le pen has denied any wrongdoing, and calls the case "politically motivated". we will bring