donna edwards. donna, let me start with you. it seemed that nancy pelosi started the day on the defense within her own caucus and ended up on the offense with the president. does that buy her time within her caucus? >> i think it absolutely buys her time. she was able to have her chairman present their case for continuing investigations. it managed to quiet some of the loudest voices for right now. but i think it's only a little bit of time that it buys, and i think not only is speaker pelosi going to have to deal with elements within her caucus but there's a growing ground swell of people outside, at the grass roots, who want accountability for this president and that may only come through impeachment. >> chuck, just put the politics aside for a minute. from a law and order perspective, or sort of the history of impeachment, explain the point nancy pelosi is making about one of the articles of impeachment for richard nixon. >> sure. the cover up. you know, to your point it's often worse than the crime or it often is the crime. when the president says he doesn't do cover ups, i think he means he doesn't do them particularly well. because they've all been in public. now, you also have to be careful, there are valid assertions for instance of executive privilege, all presidents have asserted it. but using it to preclude the congress from an appropriate investigation is a cover up. so because he asserts it all the time about everything, it's hard for us sitting here to know what's valid and what's not. but you don't have to go there, nicole. you can read the mueller report, you can read volume two, the extent of his attempt to interfere in a legitimate ongoing investigation is staggering. so i don't think he's right. i think he does do cover ups and he is not particularly good at it. >> blake, you've been analyzing the back and forth all day long. just sort of take us through the president's downward spiral. he started the day agitated what he heard from nancy pelosi, in his mind he has a bond with her, whether real or imagined, she has good manners, he thinks she treats him with respect, she does treat him with respect and it seemed to unravel him psychologically for her to accuse him of a cover up this morning. >> if you look at the president's tweets this morning he tweeted out the phrase witch hunt five times before the clock struck noon. this was on his mind maybe before he heard about the comments nancy pelosi made. i think nancy pelosi's comments are interesting here. she has obviously, as you mentioned, been doing a difficult balancing act between a caucus that is very much more and more interested in impeachment, a democratic base on board with that for a while, and wanting to take a cautious and more politically smart approach to this. what we're seeing is while she started out and said the president is not worth it, we're not going to do it unless republicans are on board with this. she's leaning more into it, at least rhetorically, perhaps because she realized she needs to play ball rhetorically with those members of her caucus and not dismissing them out of hand and this might not end up in a place they might not want to go. >> where is that place? if you look at the -- we cover the campaigns, if you look at beto o'rourke last night, he's done it before, elizabeth warren, every democrat running for president is calling for at a minimum the commencement of impeachment proceedings to strengthen their tools because you have a white house stonewalling. >> it's difficult for democrats to on one hand say the president obstructed justice, there might have been some form of collusion, even if there wasn't a conspiracy here. and then to layer on top of that you say there's not only those potential crimes there's also a cover up involved here. how many of these things do you need before you get to the point where you said we need to invoke our constitutionally protected right to hold the president accountab accountable. crimes plus a cover up, how is that not reaching a level of impeachment, that's a question that nancy pelosi is going to have to answer, even as she leans it into more. >> one nerd dy legal point. >> please. >> starting an impeachment inquiry ju inquiry unlocks a particular evidentiary door which is grand jury information. remember, grand jury information is prohibited unless it's in conjunction to a judiciary proceeding. and the courts have ruled that impeachment is a judicial proceeding. so if they're stonewalled at every turn by executive privilege, one way to get stuff, a grand jury information, is to open an impeachment inquiry. >> the justice department expected when the redact d version of the mueller report was in the hands of the public and congress that process would likely commence and that was the trigger they anticipated would put into motion having to overturn underlying evidence and those things. do you think there's been too much caution on capitol hill? >> that seems to me a political calculation. and i'm not good at making that. but i can tell you, if they're upset about not getting stuff, this is a way to get more stuff. it opens the legal evidentiary door, because it was ruled back in the mick snixon era that the congress could have grand jury information in connection with the impeachment inquiry. >> this was not a spontaneous eruption from the president we see plenty of those from the president, that's him in his pjs watching "fox & friends," but this was a poster board and press conference, straight from his tv persona. what was this morning? >> i had people telling me the president was upset from the moment he walked into the office this morning. this is a president we know is always watching tv, what's he been seeing on tv the last few days, democrats more and more of them talking about impeachment or as he put it, the "i" word, not infrastructure. and yes, nancy pelosi is trying to placate members of her caucus who feel he's goading them into impeachment, because even if they don't have the votes in the senate they feel it's their responsibility to do this. so she makes this comment and then he thinks well, she's -- they're coming to the white house, i don't want to deal with them, i'm angry. so he flips the script. but it's this attempt to assert control. he's struggling right now with a lack of control. yesterday we had a federal judge in washington rule that an old accounting firm of the president has to turn over financial information. new york state lawmakers today are passing a law that the governor is expected to sign that will enable the state to release trump and other elected official's public state tax returns to make those public. so there is a lot happening that is running up against the president's efforts to block further investigations. and i think he's frustrated, he's lashing out, he's saying we're not going to operate on two tracks. i think another piece of that, when it comes to infrastructure, everybody in washington laughs about it, but the president was given three weeks to come up with a funding plan. he didn't have a funding plan. last night he sent a letter to schumer and pelosi, he said, before infrastructure you should pass my revamped nafta. so he's always moving the goal post, this was a convenient way to get past the meeting and vent a little bit, according to the folks i talked to. >> amazing the presidency serves as a vehicle for a 70 plus-year-old man to vent but such it is. here we are. annie karni, great reporting since this started happening this morning. this was your beat. what was supposed to happen today. when he said "i" word i thought of the reporting you've done around immigration, infrastructure week, and the backdrop it's hard to hear anything above the din of impeachment. he could have been talking about any of those things. they're all the spinning plates they've been juggling. >> one thing that was supposed to happen when chuck schumer and nancy pelosi go to the white house, we don't know what's going to happen. three weeks ago they came out saying it was great. and schumer made a point saying we can't do two tracks, doing oversight and legislation. i was pleased to hear that. other times he brings the cameras to the oval office. so it's always surprising. he managed to surprise us again with this impromptu press conference. i think he learned the chuck and nancy playbook. they walk outside and give their version of the meeting first. this is the first time donald trump has walked out of the meeting and given his version of the meeting first, so he pre-empted them in a sense. but they got him on the record to say i won't do any legislation while you guys are conducting your oversight work. it's akin to in the oval office where they got him to say i'll own a shutdown. in these meetings he often gives them a sound bite that is helpful to them. now chuck schumer and nancy pelosi as we saw them do later in the day say we wanted infrastructure, we wanted to give him a signing ceremony to do this, to help build roads and bridges and broad band across the country. here he is in the rose garden saying i won't do that while i'm under investigation, which is a parallel plank that is congress' job as well. so that's what happened. >> it's such a good point and this president ovften projects his weaknesses onto his enemies. is there any recalibrating, any reaching out to you on the phone to try to clean that up? >> no, i think that there was some sense of titilation among white house aides watching this happen. hold onto your seat belts, he has something planned. i heard from people in the rose garden that aides were watching and smiling at the spectacle. so from the white house perspective, i think they were happy that he staged his own communications strategy here. from a legislative perspective, we saw their legislative director announce she's leaving and part of her reasoning was she doesn't see a lot moving forward in this period of the presidency. let's take a big step back here. the infrastructure plan, no one thought that was going to happen. so it's not that he -- he was about to sign and he couldn't sign now. but no, i don't see a lot of walking back from the president's performance today. >> it's so revealing, aaron, a lot to unpack in what annie is reporting. the head of legislative affairs resigned because it's clear this is a white house that doesn't plan on governing. i remember i used to get the heads up, the last one i got was before the midterm about the faux caravan and crisis and we ended up not taking it because the aide couldn't keep a straight face. so this idea, though, that they've sort of tied a hand behind their own back. they said this morning, and i'm sure they feel good about it because the president feels good about staging a tv production this morning. but he's laid down some structural dee f structural defin sis for the sbierp republican party by saying i'm not doing anything until i'm not under investigation. he's going to be under investigation until his dieing breath. >> this was something that the president campaigned on. he was talking about a $1 trillion infrastructure package when steve bannon was running his campaign. by saying i'm not going to move forward with this, he is saying i'm not going to move forward with something that is, in fact, one of my major campaign promises, something he talked about repeatedly, devoted weeks -- we laugh about infrastructure weeks being held over and over again. he likes the idea of doing omething big like this. for the next 16, 17 months isn't just a big loss for democrats. it's also a big loss for him. and i don't think democrats had illusions it was going to happen again. >> and for the country. nothing happens. no one talks anymore -- we're down this rabbit hole with him. the we did for you, donna, i think it's undeniable that nancy pelosi time and time and time again by being a cool competitor gets the better end of him. but it's undeniable she's in a political vice herself right now. >> she is. but here's where the president really loses because the speaker controls the house. they can pass a reasonable house infrastructure plan. democrats can introduce the same thing in the senate and where does that leave republicans without a plan at all? democrats passed a prescription drug plan last week. they can, you know, do that again in the senate. i think it again stacks up against the president saying, you know, we're not going to legislate until you stop investigating. well, democrats continue to legislate. so i think for right now the speaker is probably in a good position as long as they continue to investigate and it begins to bear some fruit. if they get held up in the courts you'll see the same frustration come that we've seen in the last several days that we've seen from de