we get the latest on all of it tonight from our pentagon correspondent hans nichols. >> reporter: for the iranian ship, an unmistakable warning. the revolutionary guard vessel coming within 150 yards of the uss thunder bolt. navy footage from a mile away documenting the close call. >> we are operating in a northern arabian gulf. >> reporter: the thunderbolt, one of four american ships, a missile cruiser, conducting routine patrols in international waters, according to military officials. the iranian craft inbound at a high rate of speed, innoerg attempts to establish radio contact. the u.s. crew sending short blasts on the ship's whistle. followed by the unambiguous sound of a 50-caliber machine gun. the iranian vessel slowed, and then stopped. iran's naval forces no stranger to the u.s. navy. last january the revolutionary guard captured two u.s. command boats that strayed into iranian waters, holding ten sailors captive for 15 hours. military officials are telling nbc news that the iranian crew uncovered its guns but did not man them. tense moments in dangerous waters. lester? >> ha

>> hans nichols at the pentagon tonight, thank you. >>> the battle over a bill to repeal and replace obamacare has become so heated, senators will now have to work through part of their vacation later this summer in an effort to approve a new plan. kasie hunt reports on the compromise. >> reporter: the republican path to obamacare uncertain tonight majority leader mitch mcconnell announcing he's forcing senators to stay in washington an extra two weeks to get a deal. >> we intend to utilize the two weeks in august. >> reporter: still at a fever pitch. now on a conservative proposal from ted cruz to let people buy cheaper insurance. if they're willing to trade away the essential health benefits like maternity care or mental health services. >> expanding consumer freedom, letting you the consumer choose which insurance you want to purchase. >> reporter: they can only lose two votes. it could drive up prices for sicker americans. lindsey graham is already talking about cracking a deal with democrats. >> there's an emerging new approach that i will talk to you in the next 24 to 48 hours.

our pentagon correspondent hans nichols joins me now. what do we know? >> you can call this a dry run or target practice. what's clear is the united states and its allies want to send an unmistakable message to kim jong-un. so en route, the b1s were escorted by south korean f-15 fighters and u.s. f-16s. and the b-1s dropped dummy bombs on a target in south korea. on the return flight, joined by japanese f-2 fighters. so a three-country, ten-hour mission meant to stress the importance of alliances. and, kate, the first u.s. response to north korea's july 4th test of an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach alaska was to fire precision missiles with south korea. >> what sort of military options does the u.s. have right now? >> not good ones. at least not ones without adverse consequences. pentagon officials stress that north korea's capacity to inflict civilian casualties is almost unimaginable. thousands of camouflaged artillery pieces within range of some 25 million people in and around seoul. as secretary mattis told a few reporters at the

i want to bring in hans nichols and kristen welker at the white house.lyst retired armarm y attorney gener. have we learned anything about what this launch means moving forward? >> they're still assessing whether or not it was an intercontinental ballistic missile. it was intermediate range and flew for 37 minutes. basically went straight up in the air and came back down. that gives it a theoretical range of more than 4,000 miles putting parts of alaska in play. so, a lot of this back and forth on whether or not it was an ibcm or an intermediate range. the fact that alaska could be hit is a major game change in all of this and we'll see what the pentagon is saying. reporting out of the ap reporting that china and russia proposed this idea of having a missile test on north korea. if the south koreans and the u.s. don't do joint military exercises. in the past that has been a nonstarter for this administration. hallie? >> hans, anything from pentagon officials on that aspect of it or too early to say for that? >> you know, in the past the pentagon has been

i want to go to hans nichols over at the pentagon. ns, we talked about this a couple minutes ago and in that time period, we are getting a new statement from the pentagon. hans nickel k nichols is with u. what are we hearing? >> reporter: the first reaction was refer everything to the white house. captain jeff davis, head spokesperson here, repeated that several times, please call the white house, please call the white house. just a few minutes ago, we got a statement from them and they are pledging to work with the white house on implementing this new policy. i want to make sure i get it right. we will continue to work closely with the white house to address the new guidance provided by the commander in chief on transgender individuals serving the military. the estimates that are out there is this rand study the pentagon itself has cited so it has quite a bit of credence, anywhere from 2500 to 7,000 current individuals. they have been working away on how to make sure those people can serve and if their commanding officers so determine

hans nichols, i'm going back to you. these protests we see every time there is a g20, how much of an affect do they have on the meetings that do happen during the g20? >> very little. heads of state, leaders of the countries, are usually far way. in past you have to get through several security barriers. you will recall other g20s or g7s where they had designated protesting zones. here is the latest from the hamburg police department. they are saying the applicants for this protest, in germany you need to typically, this might sound funny, but when you have a big protest like this, you file an official application. the german police are saying they have withdrawn the application and the protest is ending and they have called it off. that's why the official organizers. police are also saying there are many peaceful protesters among them and they are asking the peaceful protesters to separate themselves from the more violent ones. leading into the entire summit, estimates is that there are a thousand potential radical peop

>> hans nichols updating us on that ongoing controversy. u. >>> after a week of blistering public attacks, attorney general jeff sessions is heading to el salvador today to talk about ways to stomp out the brutal street gang ms-13. with his future still in doubt, republican senators continue to rally around their former colleague. i'm joined by eliza collins, politics report we are "usa today." and charlie savage, pulitzer wise prize-winning washington correspondent for "the new york times." he is also an msnbc contributor. charlie, you wrote about president trump's options concerning the attorney general today. walk us through how the president could get rid of jeff sessions if he does not decide to quit. >> absolutely. so the premise for even understanding why this is an issue is that jeff sessions stands in the way of a trump loyalist who could take control of the russia investigation and either curtail it or possibly even fire a special counsel bob mueller, who currently is under the control and oversight of the deputy attorney general b

hans nichols did the calculations and said how far it could go. but it means something else now.t means that they are well on the path of getting a weapon that can get all the way to the continental united states, the lower 48. not just going the 500 miles, the definition says, getting out of the atmosphere and re-entering it. hans nichols also had a very interesting observation too about re-entry because what's really important is to able to control the war head once it re-enters the atmosphere site can be targeted towards a particular place. the last one they fired, not the one yesterday, but the one earlier, a couple of weeks ago did not have fins as it a terminal guidance system. we don't know if this one did either, but it's very big. it's a very big deal they have an icbm. >> the next big deal as i was talking to hans about is you fly a missile somewhere, can it be accurate? can it be targeted? kit re-enter properly. and most importantly can they put a nuclear war head on it? >> the last one is most important. if they can put a nuclear war head on it and it doesn't have to

i want to bring in nbc's kristin welker, following the latest from the white house, and hans nichols tracking information from the pentagon this afternoon. ha in hans, you and i have been talking about this since it happened. this is a more serious missile. to many, this demonstrates escalation in the situation. what are you hearing from the pentagon? >> well, that it is serious. mobile. and that it's new. what we have learned the last couple of hours, it was a two-stage missile. one booster that got it up and away and second that took it even further then allowed it to climb to 1700 miles above the earth. that gets you the range all the way to parts of alaska. the fact it is on a mobile launcher means there is less time for the u.s. to actually see what is going on. and that it is entirely new missile, one they haven't seen before. we kind of knew that last night because this is their first intercontinental ballistic missile. there is one bit of, comforting might be the wrong word but one bit of self reassuring news here, is that they did have a bit of a tip that something was happen

let's go to hans nichols at the pentagon. hans, here we are, american heroes week and it sounds like the president has just defined who he now believes are heroes. >> this has been a complicated process for the pentagon to work through. there are about 250 currently transgendered individuals that have indicated they want to go through some sort of transition process. just at the end of last month, there is sort of asked for a delay from the navy, the pentagon, the army, the air force, asking for a delay for new recruits, those that identified as transgendered and haven't -- actually want to join the military, want to serve the country, but they're trying to figure out a way how to do that. it appears that president trump is going to put all these discussions on ice. right now the discussion is still at the pentagon between the deputy secretary of defense and the service chiefs. we'll see if president trump's short circuits all this. just to give you a quick overview, it was the previous secretary of defense, ash carter, last f

let's start with hans nichols at the pentagon. er the united states confirmed this was, in fact, a successful test firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile by north korea, what did we do? >> they did show force. a symbolic show of force and the u.s. and their counterparts working jointly and basically into the water still in south korean territorial water. you couldn't make, or at least north korea couldn't make a sovereignty argument. they are analyzing this launch. they know how high it went and how long it flew. that gives you a theoretical distance. it did survive reentry. they don't know reentry into the atmosphere.

>> thank you, hans nicholls. david nakamura, kasie hunt, appreciate it. here is more of what president trump had to say about the failed health care bill. well, they were not disloyal. they had their own reasons. i was very surprised when the two folks came out last night because we thought they were in fairly good shape, but they did. and, you know, everybody has their own reason. but if you really think about it, you look at it, and we have 52 people. we had no democrat support, which is really, you know, something that should be said. we should have had democrats vote. it was a great plan for a lot of people. we had no democrats aboard. we are 52 people. we had four noes. we might have had another one somewhere in there but essentially the vote would have been pretty close to, you look at it, 48-4. that's a pretty impressive vote by any standard. >> democratic senator maria cantwell of washington state joins us. she sits on the health care subcommittee for the senate finance committee. you just heard from the president. he said this would have been a r

hans nichols at the pentagon, thank you so much. >>> and coming up, more on the west wing war. new communications director, anthony scaramucci, taking center stage after some very public and vulgar shots at reince priebus and steve bannon. is the real risk here that he's upstaging the president. >>> and russia retaliation. the kremlin already taking action against the u.s. in response to a new sanctions bill approved by congress. but will president trump actually sign that legislation? >>> and live pictures from brentwood, new york. this is where president trump is expected to talk about gang violence about half an hour from now. will he take on the republicans who voted no after the big defeat last night? we'll have that speech for you, live. this time it's his turn. you have 4.3 minutes to yourself. this calls for a taste of cheesecake. new philadelphia cheesecake cups. rich, creamy cheesecake with real strawberries. find them with the refrigerated desserts. whuuuuuat?rtgage offer from the bank today. you never just get one offer. go to lendingtree.com and shop multiple loan

my thanks to peter alexander, peter baker, susan glasser and hans nichols. thank you for spending some time with me. when we come back for two men who never met until today, their comments on election meddling sound similar. >>> don't let the photo-ops fool you. donald trump woke up the same way he does most days by taking to twitter. raising a lot of questions before that meeting with putin even started. ♪ your body was made for better things than rheumatoid arthritis. before you and your rheumatologist move to another treatment, ask if xeljanz is right for you. xeljanz is a small pill for adults with moderate to severe ra for whom methotrexate did not work well. xeljanz can reduce joint pain and swelling in as little as two weeks, and help stop further joint damage. xeljanz can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections, lymphoma and other cancers have happened. don't start xeljanz if you have an infection. tears in the stomach or intestines, low blood cell counts and higher liver tests and cholester

nbc news pentagon correspondent hans nichols joins me live. i feel we have to rewind.had this discussion once before with a whole lot of national security and defense experts saying that that person, steve bannon, shouldn't be involved in military decisions or strategy. >> reporter: well, remember bannon was briefly on the national security council, then was taken off. in general, white houses do try to influence what the pentagon is doing and the pentagon typically pushes back and they fight for their independence. what we know is that on saturday, secretary mattis took a meeting with mr. bannon and from the "new york times" mr. bannon is trying to get this idea of having an alternative strategy review on afghanistan that relies in part on the ideas of eric prince and steve freeman and get their views to sort of do a separate afghanistan review. now, what we hear consistently here at the pentagon is the afghanistan review is in process, they want to get it right. we ask about timing all the time. we are routinely pushed back on that and they say we will come next week

nbc's correspondent hans nichols has been following this story and with each passing 15 minutes has more detail about the capability of this missile and the relevance to us. so, you know, hans, it may be a misnomer that they launched another one. the issue is is this a more capable one? >> it is a more capable one. it knew higher and it knew longer. it was alaft for about 47 minutes. it reached an altitude of almost 4,000 kilometers up in the air. when you tease this aum out, that clearly means the west coast of the united states is in range of this kind of icbm. from denver down to san diego, seattle as well. if you factor into the way the earth rotates, potentially cities in the northeast are in range. boston, new york, maybe not washington. a lot of this analysis is coming from the union of concerned societies that does the analysis. he's a physicist. we don't know if it had a pay load in its tip. and that could am effect all of this. just politically and diplomatically what's happening, in the last hour we heard of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, general dunn ford spoke wi

hans nichols, good to see you. thanks very much for joining us. we will stay with this story and we'll catch up with you a little later in the hour. okay. we're still following the latest on this ever evolving situation. just going to listen in to see what it is. i should be doing next. we're following this. all right. kristen welker is in the briefing room where that briefing, the not on camera audio only briefing has just wrapped up. kristen, tell us what else happened in there. >> well, as hans just sort of laid out, a number of the headlines had to do with the russia probe and also health care. given that there's going to be a delay on a procedural vote this week, some proponents of the legislation are concerned that that will give opponents more traction, more time to knock this bill out. so i asked press secretary sean spicer what the president was going to do about it. he said he's going to be very engaged. take a listen to what he had to say. >> is the president resigned to the idea that it seems unlikely that the senate will vote on any t

i want to take you over to hans nichols following the north korea situation and has been for days. hans, as war talk develops and red lines and threats, defense secretary mattis in may had said that a conflict in north korea would be the worst kind of people in most people's life times. let's talk about some of the reasons for that. number one, there are about 28,500 troops in south korea. when you add up all of the u.s. troops in the area, total nearby that includes the number in south korea and japan and philippines, we end up with 79,000 u.s. troops in the area. and all of them are in danger the minute there's war with north korea. >> they are in danger in south korea and dependence and families are in nger. that's one indication they were not quite at tgger level. that fils have no bn recalled in the past and difficult situations whether been turkey or bahrain, you've seen families and dependents get recalled. publicly the pentagon this morning it seems to be strategic studied silence. they are not necessarily teasing out what president donald trump meant by severe consequences

hans nichols following all the developments live from the pentagon.know about what happened here in this horrific crash. >> it's puzzling to investigators because initial assessments are that this plane landed upside down and crashed in that way. a lot of reports coming in not furly confirmed. it's not officially from the pentagon, but they saw a fire in the back policiy. not in one of the engines. remember, this is a kc130. it is a workhorse and been around for a long time. officials keep stressing what a safe airplane this is. just how rare. it's got four engines and a turbo prop. if there is a fire in engine, you can shut it off. little more information of those 16 deceased. 15 of them were marines. one of them was a navy sailor. we've learned the wing, the aircraft wing and they asked us to hold on to that information until next of kin is notified. >> hans, the president tweeting about this today. >> you saw president trump and mike pence offer their condolences. marine plane crash in mississippi is heartbreaking. melania and i send our deepest co

as i was discussing with hans nichols. hington post" found that the pentagon spends triple the amount of money to treat erectile dysfunction than on medical care for the transgender individuals and hans talked about $8.4 million, the high end of the estimate of what it costs. that would be 0.001 of the annual budget. for more i'm joined by aaron belkin, from a research institute focusing on public policy issues including lgbtq in the military. good to see you. is it possible -- we're just trying to figure it why this happened today? nobody was expecting it. there was a push by the house republican to end the policy of providing money for the gender reassignment surgery and they were trying to figure out how to get through in in the bill? is this an aside, president trump said i'll do it this way? >> nobody knows aside from president trump. he decided to reinstitute don't ask/don't tell, but for the transgender troops. it's a shock after 20 years that he'd try to reinstate such a disaster. >> tell me what was a disaster abou

i want to start with nbc news capitol hill correspondent kasie hunt and han nichols on the north lawn. mitch mcconnell wants a repeal and what do you think we'll hear from paul ryan? >> well, hallie, we are expecting, actually, to hear pretty shortly from mitch mcconnell on the senate floor, as well. and i think that's going to be very telling about how this goes forward. now, we know the statement he put out last night, it lays out a complicated procedural set of maneuvers to try to get a debate started on the senate floor over health care. the proposal is to try to take up the house version of that bill and then amend it so it is a full repeal of obamacare and that they have two years to then replace it. so, what we're waiting on now is we've heard from mike lee that he's willing to support this plan. that's one of those conservatives who had come out last night and basically sunk the senate bill that they had spent all of those weeks negotiating. so now the question is, what will moderate senators do? are they willing to go along with this plan and let that debate open and take the

guys >> nbc's hans nichols. thanks for update on that, and i would point out the obvious, that the market has not responded to that at all if we would expect that. >> art cashin mentioned that, especially with the drama in the white house, the way china has been amass troops and still nothing major. >> we'll see right now the dow is still positive a gain of 20 points. as we close out this week the rest of the major averages are negative tobacco stocks up in smoke today after the fda announced it wants to cut nicotine levels the fda commissioner spoke about it on "power lunch." we'll have the highlights coming up here. >> and amazon's earnings dragging down the tech space we'll talk whether apple can tu tngrnhis around we'll have the results next week stay with us where's jack? he's on holiday. what do you need? i need the temperature for pipe five. ask the new guy. the new guy? jack trained him. jack's guidance would be to maintain the temperature at negative 160 degrees celsius. that doesn't sound like jack. ac

nbc's pentagon correspondent hans nichols. and editor at large for the atlantic. w is this different than what we've seen before? >> well, this one went further and it flew longer. so when this missile went up almost a thousand kilometers. it flew for 45 minutes. just to give you an idea of how serious it is, general dunn ford called his counterpart in south korea to discuss military options. it's remarkable that they're talking about this, that they're being public about this, saying openly they're discussing military options. and they teased out at least the scientists have teased out how far this missile can go with everything we know. the west coast of the united states is clearly within range, including denver all the way down to has hang, and that doesn't take into account the rotation of the earth. you add that in and it's conceivable that major cities in the northeast of the united states of america are now within range of north korea. chris. >> and they've moved up the timeline, steve, for this potential threat from 2020 to 2018. now you have general dunn

nbc news pentagon hans nicholls hash through it. it seem to indicate they can't afford the medical care, what do we know about that, is that the case. >> it's not argument we've heard here. the issue of transgender at the pentagon has really been focused on what you do for new recruits, right? they were suppose to have guidelines in place on july 1. they had a six month delay. what you do for current service members who have identified as transgender is there's a whole process in place, last year they were told that they will be allowed to identify with the gender of their choosing and there are, by some estimates, anywhere for up to 7,000, that's the high end of number of individuals. here, people are telling us more in the couple hundreds and the cost, i'll get to the cost argument here, $8.4 million which is a rant study, that presupposes several thousand individuals that are going to need some sort of medical treatment. in reality, the numbers probably closer to 100, at least, so far those that have come far in the last year or

let's start with hans nichols at the pentagon. hans, after the united states confirmed this was, in fact, a successful test firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile by north korea, what did we do? >> they did show force. a symbolic show of force and the u.s. and their counterparts working jointly and basically into the water still in south korean territorial water. you couldn't make, or at least north korea couldn't make a sovereignty argument. they are analyzing this launch. they know how high it went and how long it flew. that gives you a theoretical distance. it did survive reentry. they don't know reentry into the atmosphere. they don't know how much control they had on that missile when it was coming down. it doesn't appear to have fins on the cone and that gives you a sense that this isn't a precision-guided missile, but it does give you. we know that it did reenter the atmosphere. >> how is this playing in north carolina north korea, hans? >> in part because it's very controlled there. we saw them doing their victory

hans nichols, i think he is at the pentagon, hans, you lived in hamburg. tell us what you are seeing and learning. >> i lived in berlin for three years. i know hamburg well. what german police are saying on their official twitter feed is that the protest spread to st. pauly's. the german police are claiming the protest has been cancelled. the demonstrators that applied and had their permit pulled that permit and that the demonstration is cancelled. at the same time one of the main organizers of the protest, is in hamburg, she is claiming the police started the violence. they initiated it. they started these attacks. very difficult to report this from afar. least on social media what we are hearing from the german police as well as organizer is that the protests have indeed spread. hamburg is a very wealthy, perhaps the wealthiest city in germany but also has a strong tradition of the left. you look at government in power there. 45% are the social democratic party. left got about 12% in last elections. greens around 13. this is left of center city that is a

i'm joined by nbc's hans nichols from the white house. hans, let's start with everything that we saw today, which is first of all you have this 11-page statement. it comes out 6 in the morning. then you have him go behind closed doors. he comes out, he gives less than a two 1/2 minute statement. what's the white house staying in reaction to all of this. >> we don't have hoefl ponce from the white house quite yet. sarah huckabee sanders will be gag ling here in a moment. i think when you look at the statements from kushner, the two book ends, what happened before the meeting hient closed doors and after are consistent. they're very specific, and they're saying that he did not, and he can only really vouch for himself that he did not collude. but in the specific sort of argument, the legs of his argument, in a lot of watz he can't vouch for the overall kos mick statement the general statement that he was making that there was no collusion by the campaign. and you'll notice, if you listen to that statement very carefully, he says i cannot non

. >> all right, hans nichols for us, thank you, hans. i want to bring in msnbc jack jacobs, a medal of honor recipient. i want to start with you, what's your assessment of this test so far, give me on a scale of one to ten here, how serious is this and how concerned should americans be? >> well, we ought to be terribly concerned because every task range north korea closer and closer to being able to threaten the united states directly. and it's designed to do exactly that. you could say it's ten every time. we ignored their development now for decades. china's done the same, ignored the development for decades and as a result we find ourselves in this position. we have to look at north korea as a continuing criminal enterprise. if north korea were subject to rico, we'd be able to confiscate all of their stuff, they do not want a loss of control. that's the only reason that they're continuing down this path, the closer they get to being able to threaten the united states directly with nuclear weapons, the less capable we are or anybody el

hans nichols at the pentagon. >>> arizona senator john mccain, who chairs the armed services committee, he issued a statement on the trump administration's new transgender policy announcement. and that statement reads in part, quote, the president's tweet this morning regarding transgender americans in the military is yet another example of why major policy announcements should not be made via twitter. we should all be guided by the principle that any american who wants to serve our country and is able to meet the standards should have the opportunity to do so and should be treated as the patriots they are. here is some more reaction from capitol hill. some did he riding the plan. others the way in which it was delivered. >> at the end of the day, i want a strong, vibrant military, but i want to be fair. and the best way to do this is to have a hearing, not a tweet. >> the president is sanctioning discrimination. our nation is not safer when we sanction discrimination. >> we ought to be thinking about one thing. and that's readiness. and every debate we have about whether or not somebo

. >> hans nichols, good morning. >> good morning. having some sort of certification process, how you validate items made in the usa, actually produced and manufactured here. we'll see to what extent these two other brewing stories, we have this russian investigation, as well as health potentially cloud out the president's preferred agenda. and the white house wants to let obamacare fail, they're willing to wait until after the 2018 elections, relitigate after the 2018 elections and cop bame bac with a weakened democratic party. if it gets too intense, next week the president heads to ohio. >> and as hans mentioned there, president trump is formulating his strategy for the road ahead for health care. that will include welcoming senate republicans to the white house for lunch, though the white house has not released who will be attending the meeting, only saying health care and other issues are on the agenda. i'm ayman mohyeldin alongside louis burgdorf. "morning joe" starts now. >> we've had no democratic support. which is something t

. >> joining us now, hans nichols and military analyst and retired colonel, jack jacobs, hans, just received a statement from the former defense secretary. made a small segment but you have the statement. >> ash carter, the last secretary of defense implemented this change, it was last june that he said it was okay for those who are transgender to serve in the military. here's what he's saying now. this just came across. there are already transgender individuals who are serving capably and honorably, this would also send the wrong signal to a younger generation thinking about military service. now, guys think of this in terms of two baskets, those individuals who are already serving who were told by the previous administration that they can be honest about who they are and they can identify with the gender they choose to identify with and the estimates as you're saying from the rand corporation around 2500 to 7,000. then there's the separate idea of how you bring in new recruits that already identify as transgender. and it's that policy that the current secretary of defense had put on a six-

nbc's hans nicholls is following the story from the pentagon. hans, what happened?reporter: well, they don't know. there's one report that there may have been an engine failure, but a plane like this, it's got four engines, a turboprop, a kc-130, a refueling aircraft. as you said, it's a workhorse. these are planes that have flown thousands of hours with trained an seasoned pilots, a full crew. we do know where it originated from, cherry point, the marine air station in cherry point, north carolina. they're not giving a squadron details yet because they need to notify the next of kin. the investigation will continue and accelerate throughout the day, stephanie. we heard the president himself tweeting about this saying his condolences go out to those families as well as the vice president and the governor. very tragic but it bears repeating, this is very rare. >> very rare and very tragic. a quick break. next, donald trump jr.'s meeting with the russian lawyer, we'll get back to that with some top campaign officials there, how could the president not been aware of it

hans nichols covering the white house for us today. garrett headache covering capitol hill. hans, let's start with you. the thing of that long statement that he read that is going to stand out is the part where he said i did not collude or know of anyone else who colluded with russia. >> and ali, the fist part of that that's a consistent message from jared kushner he said that going into the meeting, is the statement he released and then he said it coming out r. whether or not he can say definitively that no one else colluded is under cut by his own defense, that e-mail that he didn't read through. he claims he didn't read the entire e-mail from done junior. so there's a little bit not inconsistency, but it isn't necessarily clear how jared kushner can make that blanket statement. and one of his arguments in there is that he didn't really have a great relationship with the russians and that's why he was trying to set it up on that december 10th meeting because he wanted to advance things. so how if he didn't have a strong relationship could he have colluded. i think that's on

. >> hans nichols, thank you for that reporting. the u.s.professional actions. >> coming up next, the latest in the political dog fight as the senate continues to voting on the republican plan to dismantle obamacare. >> and we'll have reactions from dick durbin, chris koons and angus king. >> and tim ryan and jim himes and adam kinsinger join the conversation. a very busy "morning joe" moments away. rrying flowers that signify why we want to end alzheimer's disease. but what if, one day, there was a white flower for alzheimer's first survivor? what if there were millions of them? join us for the alzheimer's association walk to end alzheimer's. register today at alz.org/walk. but their nutritional needs (vremain instinctual.d, that's why there's purina one true instinct. nutrient-dense, protein-rich, real meat number one. this is a different breed of nutrition. purina one, true instinct. shawn evans: it's 6 am. 40 million americans are waking up to a gillette shave. and at our factory in boston, 1,200 workers are starting their day building o

hans nichols made it earlier and matt made it here that these informal dinners after these global eventsere's something unique about this relationship, donald trump and russia, and nobody who's a grownup would think that would be okay to have an unscrutinized conversation with vladimir putin -- matt are you there? >> i'm sorry i lost audio for a minute. >> i'm saying it's not possible that anybody, let alone the president of the united states would have thought given the scrutiny of the relationship between donald trump and vladimir putin that a sit-down conversation without any government officials present would have been okay. >> that's absolutely right. and one of the questions we have to ask now is did anyone else in the white house or state department find out about this conversation after wards? did donald trump tell other members of his administration, the government of this conversation. it's highly unusual there was no other american present. i keep coming back to trump would have known this would have been hugely controversial and he was willing to take that risk anyway. what w

we have hans nichol at the white house, along with "new york times" julie herschel davis and a former chief of staff for the cia. hans, that was the president trying to be on message at a made in america event. but as the brilliant frank bringny said the teleprompter is his quiver and all the others are his tributaries. a great way to get into his mind. but what did you make of the day's communications starting with the tweet about the meeting that his son took and book ended by this address at the white house? >> well, the address to the white house he did take one detour from the made in america event and that is to talk about health care. and he seemed to be expressing renewed optimism almost as if there's an urgency to this, it could get done quicker than many are expecting. from what i heard from the president, the news that he thinks the vote can done. he thinks they have the votes. they have to do a little horse trading. our colleagues on capitol hill aren't exactly reflecting that in their reporting. it seems to be a much more difficult swath. the president looked at mike penc

to ambassador emerson's point, i think he's sti while we -- there's a point hans nichols was nmaking that germany has a protesting culture. for purposes of the g 20, which is really the biggest leader -- the biggest gathering of world leaders, they had -- we have not seen these types of pictures for years. the horses are struggling to get through the crowd because they're getting spooked by whatever it is the protesters are doing. generally speaking horses keep a good handle on this. this has a different flavor, ambassador, than what we've seen at g 20s. >> no question. it clearly, as i think your reporters mentioned, these people have come from all over europe to this. you have people that are, i would say, more traditional or legitimate protesters who actually have substantive issues they're concerned about. then you have the anarchists who basically -- >> hang on let's go back to kooer simmokier simmons, what's happening? >> kier, can you hear us? >> we are now seeing that confrontation we thought was going to happen. the water cannon and armored vehicle there just pushing through

covering the story is hans nichols. what do we know about this? >> the russian real estate company.t to that meeting, according to his lawyers. he went to that meeting thinking he would be the translator. turns out there already was a translator. we also know from "the post" that robert mueller has contacted his lawyer, which is an indication that mueller is investigating this meeting where don jr., as well as jared kushner were present with potential agents of the russian state. we also know that back in 2000 there is a gao report and ike kaveladze was setting up u.s. bank accounts in delaware where, you know, corporations are easy to set up. some 230 bank accounts that were set up and they moved some $1.4 billion. now, at the point it was a congressionally requested report about russian laundering money in the u.s. so, we're learning more as the day continues. we've placed him at that meeting. nbc news has confirmed that and we'll try to figure out just what his role was there and what questions robert mueller might have asked him. separate from this, sarah huckabee sanders in tha

said one senior house republican aide -- let me bring hans nichols in for some fact checking. was the pentagon caught off guard by the president's three-tweet policy announcement? >> it depends what you mean by the pentagon. it seemed like a lot of officials here were taken aback by it. whether or not there was a conversation between secretary mattis and president trump over the last 48 hours, i can't really speak to that in part because secretary mattis is on vacation. here's what i can tell you, nicolle. july 14, secretary mattis came by the briefing room. first time through there wasn't any reporters and he came back later. he said he spoke to representative harts her on july the 13th. that's the amendment to this military defense authorization act that was slowing things up. he's opposed at the time, matt advertise was opposed to this amendment just be clear about what this amendment did. it restricted funding for gender reassignment surgery. it said you cannot spend any money on transgender individuals. as of july 13, mattis was opposed to that. we also know that the chai

let's get right into this, with andrea mitchell, hans nichols.eremy bash and ian stokals from "the washington post." andrea, i watched ambassador haley as i'm sure you did. i thought -- i mean, i heard escalation more than you heard the word. i heard it on the military and the economic front and i thought what she was essentially threatening was a trade war with china. what did you hear? >> that's what i heard as well. she said that there are -- that the u.s. will use all of its options, military as well, to defend itself and its allies, but prefers other options. so she seemed to be taking a step back from what president trump said back in april when he said that we could have a major, major conflict with north korea. then on may 28th, on cbs, defense secretary mattis said that would be catastrophic. they seem to be pulling back from threatening military action which is the worst of all possible choices. probably because not only with the -- would the reaction be so catastrophic as the defense secretary says, but because it would likely not work

as you go forward, are you thinking of making any big purchases or just more hans nichols oceans?ex we have had a good strategy over the last seven or eight years where we made steady and consistent acquisitions. has done extremely well. we are extending these businesses in different countries, seventh generation into the u.k. as we talk. tresseme into china. we are making these strategic on acquisitions and put global scale and reach behind that and create shareholder value as a result. we happen able to grow at about twice the rate as the market. overallg spreads, 3.4%, gross 5.5% in a market that is flat, these are good results. and driving the financial [inaudible] operating margin of improvement. guarantees as we stay in the top percentile. the great majority of acquisitions have been in home and personal care. are you going to make more acquisitions in that area or in food or both? >> we continue to look at value enhancing acquisitions and all of our categories are going, you talk about food and refreshment, the last six months we grew 4.2% and we have made acquisitions like

hans nichols, let's start with you. let's remind those who have not been fully tuned into the news that this is a game changer. this intercontinental ballistic missile. >> reporter: it's a new missile. it's very clear when they are going through the assessment that there's a lot they don't know about this missile. they haven't given it a new designation yet. what they do know is it is an icbm, that's really a technical definition for how far it can travel. it puts alaska in to range. the preliminary assessments here at the pentagon is that it survived reentry. they don't know how much control it had upon reentry but it definitely survived reentry. that's what they are trying to assess right now. been doing the rounds all morning. just dropped by the navy. it doesn't appear as though the u.s. is moving any naval assets into the region. right now it looks like the joint fire exercise, precision firing that can go deep into north korea even though they just shot it into the waters off south korea, that looks to be the only

thanks also to hans nichols and kelly o'donnell for us. let's sink our teeth into that meeting today between president trump and president putin. helping me out on this is former senior director for european affairs at the nsc and former national intelligence officer for europe on the national intelligence council. and also we have former assistant secretary of defense for on international security affairs and former senior director for strategic planning at the nsc. both of them are with the german marshall fund. thanks to both of you for being here. what is your sense out of what you heard from the meeting and while there are differences in the readouts from the russians and american, both sides seem to be implying that it is a productive meeting. >> so i was struck that they began the meeting by talking about russian interference with in the u.s. election. we heard president trump yesterday in poland say that he wasn't clear about who had intervened and that was striking because the u.s. intelligence community had assessed that there wa

let's go to hans nichols at the pentagon for us. hans, good morning. >> reporter: good morning. officials this morning are saying this is a workhorse, the c-130. there are few clues on why this one went down in that field in mississippi. officials also warning residents to stay away from the crash site because there's so much jet fuel on bard. this morning, officials are on the scene of the deadly military plane crash in mississippi, trying to determine how the c-130 transport airport crashed monday afternoon, 85 miles north of jackson, killing all 16 people on board. witnesses say the plane slammed into a soybean field, bursting into flames. thick plumes of smoke, visible for miles. emergency personnel responding to 911 calls. >> there's a plane crash on county road 286 near the county line. >> reporter: overnight, authorities asking residents to stay clear of the area. >> we have fuel everywhere. so we don't want anybody without responders in the area. >> reporter: the plane, a c-130 is a four-engine turboprop tactical tanker. the latest version of a vietnam-era aircraft, long