joining me now is frank bruni who wrote this piece, mayor pete is plenty gay. ands better not eat has changed your view? >> the allegations that lucy flores and others levied i think for the reasons that you stated so eloquently in your intro there. one thing that has given me pause that has always given me pause is joe biden's appearance before union workers on friday. i'm not sure what he thought was gained about making jokes about the allegations against him. it's one thing to say, i'm not going to apologize for something that has no ill intent. i'm not going to apologize for the kind of behavior that for many decades no one questioned. it still doesn't mean he should make light of it. it made me wonder how this is going to play out if he's going to act somewhat resentful that he went through it. the media has put him through a feeding frenzy that i think we do a disservice to ourselves and we do a disservice to the nominating process. but it's still not a good idea for joe biden to make light of this. >> i'm so glad you brought that. you because there's som

we have frank bruni, errol louis and laura barron-lopez.lking about before we went to break, cruelty. to the president's base, it's strength, that harshness plays as strength, being firm, rule of law, left is weak, left is soft. is there space for the argument that you are articulating a little bit in the first segment of compassionate, sweet strength and how we look at these people? what julian castro was saying in large doses tonight in the town hall. is there space for that to develop a following? >> i think there is. i mean, we're hearing that from more candidates than just julian. but it's something that he is definitely trying to play up in his response to the president's immigration playbook and response to the president trying to stoke fear among his base. so i think we're going see more of that. he was talking a lot about the cruelty. that was kind of the buzzword he was using, as well as talking about the compassion that he wants to have in dealing with the situation at the border. he also brought up his background. he is of mexic

frank bruni. an antidote to the college admissions mania. and areva martin, author of "make it rain." good evening to all you have. did loughlin and her husband and their attorneys misjudge how serious of the situation they're in now? >> yeah, don, it's kind of curious as to why the reports are that they didn't engage in any kind of substantial plea negotiations, given how clear the prosecutor was. when this whole cheating scandal was announced, the prosecutor gave a press conference. and he was very clear that they were going to be seeking jail time for everyone involved in the scandal, and there are other parents who were named initially by the prosecutors who have been they didn't understand the gravity. there's text messages, e-mail messages and an mound of evidence that's going to make it pretty impossible to mount any kind of credible defense. it's not clear to me what their strategy is. we haven't heard from them or the legal team. it's not clear how they tend to defend themselves given the

also here, alana plot and frank bruni, cnn contributor and op-ed cl columnist.he speech rod rosenstein gave to the armenian bar association >> as one does. >> was fascinating. he was taking on critics from all sides defending his role in all of this. saying i did it all right. he was critical of donald trump for saying the independent counsel investigation shouldn't have happened. one thing that jumped out was how serious he said the russian attacks were >> he said we haven't even heard all of it in the mueller report. i fear that's been obscured by looking at how trump behaved and did he attempt whatever. beyond all of that, what donald trump hasn't done as president is address the interference and take steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. as we know he can't do that without feeling like the legitimacy of his election has been questioned. going forward that's a serious thing. i think years from now when we look back at the mueller report which went into this in great detail, i think we'll be talking as much about the absolute complacency, the cavaliernes

joining us now, frank bruni, julia cayem and john avlon, senior political analyst.what's the impact of the acting secretaries instead of the senate confirmed people running their agencies, especially at homeland security where apparently kirstjen nielsen is leaving because she wouldn't break the law for the president. >> she wasn't harsh enough which is shocking when you think of what's happened so far. what does it mean to the 300,000 agents, coast guard officials and others working every day to protect the homeland. the acting status says something about the stature of the person. there is a difference between a mattis and whoever replaces him. a difference between even john kelly and the person who came in after. is the white house paying attention? the second piece is you're acting because the senate has not confirmed you. it is one thing to get senate confirmed to run the customs and border protection, another to run a multi billion dollar department. having these actings once again bypasses the senate's constitutional duty to have oversight over who is running

let's discuss, frank bruni's here, kirsten powers as well. so good to have both of you on.ed in, i was talking to congressman dent, like -- does anyone in washington think about what happens after this administration? do you think republicans are thinking about that? >> no, i don't think so. i mean, i do think to say like if this would have happened if barack obama had done this, for example, hair on fire, the republican party would have just, you know, he would have been hitler, basically, right? it's -- and so the level of hypocrisy is hard to take sometimes. and when you think about what would happen in the future, i mean, the precedent that's being set there's no question they would be absolutely freaking out. >> when you talk about the hypocrisy, just look -- this is from the -- the government website, this is from oversight.house.gov, from their research from 2016. this article was written on september 29th of 2016. and in july is when comey came out the first time and said we're not going to investigate any further. she acted recklessly but didn't break any laws, sim

back with me, chris cillizza, frank bruni. they're saying they want six years.in these, do you think? >> this is a political move that will trigger a legal fight. this is based on a 1924 provision in irs tax code that was basically put there to try to mitigate the executive power over the legislative branch. to really create more sharing of power. in that 1924 law it says that if the ways and means committee chairman, richard neal, requests them of the treasury department, he can request any american's tax return, that the secretary of the treasury shall turn it over. that the secretary of the treasury shall turn it over. now, the issue is well is this a legitimate above board investigation, or are democrats just trying to score political points and that's going to come down i think -- trump is not turning these over. steve mnuchin is not going to be like -- it's just not going to happen. it will become a legal fight, and then it's a question of what court does it end up in, and how do they feel about it? >> you mentioned mnuchin, let's listen. >> based upon the

. >> joining us now to talk about this we have jeffrey toobin, cnn chief legal analyst, frank bruni, cnn contributor and biaga rolitriga. i'm fascinated by your process, jeffrey >> my process. you mean my orange theory workouts? >> i do want to shadow you for a day. tomorrow would be a great day to start. tomorrow morning when you get 400 pages in your hot little hands what's the first thing you search for? >> redactions. it's the one thing you can see easily. attorney general barr has said there will be some sort of color coded system which tells you what was redacted and for what reason. he has four categories he described. just as an initial matter, we are going to want to know how much of this was censored. after that it gets complicated. i guess the next thing you'll want to know is how did mueller deal with the question of obstruction of justice. barr said -- i don't remember the exact words, but he said it was not the conventional approach. he didn't say yes or no. did he leave it to congress? did he say it was too difficult and i can't make up my mind? next step is to determi

frank bruni, errol louis, and laura barone lopez. laura, welcome to "prime time." this story? silence! okay. go ahead, lopez, you go first. >> yeah, i'll go first. it's believable. again, this fits with trump's efforts as well as stephen miller's to try to push the envelope as much as they possibly can when it comes to immigration. fru trump wants to make the entire 2020 campaign about this. and if he could go unchecked, would enact proposals such as this. but again, we saw that he met resistance, and even though they repeatedly pushed this out there, they weren't able to get their way. but this again illustrates that trump wants to use immigration as a political tool against his opponents as opposed to trying to work with democrats to come up with some comprehensive immigration reform to actually address the issue at hand. >> now, if you can get past, errol, the obvious dehumanizing aspect of this, that you're using them basically as chits, there is a little bit of an evil genius at work here. you take the people that you can't hold, right, which is part of the pr