. >> joe mccarthy and donald trump stand for very different things.s of joe mccarthy, the smearing, the disregard for the truth, that's similar. so when i wrote about that phenomenon, there were things that i wrote about with the perspective of 2018. and there's also this factual connective tissue. joe mccarthy's protege, roy kohn. roy kohn's protege, donald trump. he may say this is the swamp that donald trump writes about, and he may be right, too. >> the degree to which money corrupts politics and lobbying and special interests are all in collusion. it's a pretty sad, cynical view of washington. >> i don't know that it's sad. i would prefer to think of it as a fun and kind of vaguely disgusted view of washington, but i think it expresses a lot of my feelings about washington, about the compromises that one is forced to make. there's also the larger theme of, what does mccarthy want to do to protect america? what compromises is he willing to make? what compromises is president eisenhower willing to make in order to protect america from both the comm

and joe mccarthy appears in that, but he's deliberately not defending him or attacking him. he's just using him as someone who provoked liberalism and let me respond to how liberals reacted to him. so he sort of moved mccarthy off center stage to just be a provocation. and then much later in his life he explicitly said mccarthy was wrong in the way he proceeded. and so i think today we're sort of in a similar position. i think, you know, bill's excuses for being taken with mccarthy were, i gather he was charming personally. bill was young. this was also communism. you know, this was a threat much greater than any that we face now. and so, you know, he saw this man, engaged in calling it out, and he thought, well, this must be a good thing. so -- but i think there has to be a similar process of disengagement from the person who occupies the white house. maybe it will -- maybe it will make the conservative movement go a little cold turkey on the task of always finding the right president. you know, that occupies so much of our thoughts. and obviously it's politically important

when joe mccarthy was finally censured, 22 republican senators voted against the measure send century. -- censure. eisenhower would look today and say, politics is tough. we're divided. some people are never trump, others are tea-party republicans i. it's the job of the leader of the feature fit it together. on the one hand he done ticket. o the other hand he would say we have always had difficulty with the range of opinion in the party. >> sharon, i'm going to ask you parallel question about darpa. this is an agency that at various times, as you recount in your history, has been searching for a mission for itself. where does it belong and what is it supposed to be doing? as you look forward from where we are now, what is the future of darpa? what is it going -- we're in an age of asymmetrical warfare, hearts and minds rather than hardware. where is the agency. >> the question is where is the white house or the secretary of defense seeing the agency? i think unfortunately they don't think about it at all. darpa was at it best when it had a mission, and the mission under eisenhower was

running for re-election, with those kinds of vague threats, that's a little -- shall we say a little joe mccarthy threats are one thing. but there are a number of democratic senators running for re-election in states that the president won. the president has done an awful job of holding those democratic senators accountable when they vote against his agenda on things like tax reform, strengthening the military. and so if he can provide the sustained attention and focus on senator tester that he hasn't yet, it may create opportunities to get more democratic senators on board his initiatives. >> you have claire mccaskill, heidi hidecamp, joe manchin. >> it's a long list. is that is will tell the story whether that turns. >> i think jon tester is the big winner. trump looks desperate, waves a fake dossier in front of them. i worked in front of two white houses. you get senators with honey more than vinegar. to level these attacks on senator tester, when he was standing up for veterans and having competence at the department of veterans of afirs is going to win him votes. telling them that they're de

there is a connective thematic tissue in the sense that joe mccarthy was a disrupter.washington to upset a lot of apple carts. and -- >> how did it end for him? >> not so great. not so hot. because by the same way that i think establishment washington is trying to figure out how to deal with donald trump, the disruptive part that is positive as well as the disruptive part that is negative, the lying and the smearing, which mccarthy did as well ultimately caught up with him and one other interesting parallel, mccarthy and cohen were incredibly loyal to each other, the way you see donald trump and michael cohen be loyal to each other, that ended up being the undoing of mccarthy and cohen. their loyalty ended up paving the way for people to destroy them. >> the book is "the hell fire club", read it for education, not just on the 1950s, but washington and maybe now as well. thank you. >>> moments from now, scott pruitt faces a grilling from house lawmakers. how will he defend really the questions and the scandals that have embroiled his tenure. if you'd have told me three

. >> this is the way it was with joe mccarthy. people loved him. lots of them.st. you couldn't say a word against him publicly but behind the scenes they're all embarrassed. morally. >> jeff flake, bob corker, it doesn't work out well for your political career whenever you take the other side. >> why do they only talk on their way out of the door? >> there is not from the situation defasio criticized obama on israel or on trade. >> nobody called president obama forest gump. >> they did speak out against him. it took time for that to evolve. >> did he say he was stupid, evil? they never said that. they thought he was aloof. i'll give them that. >> some of th. >> they did take stands. they said he didn't work well with the house and cost them over a thousand seats in the elections. from that standpoint, after we come out of 2018, you may have a different attitude with the conference. for now, the situation is there is support for the positions he's taken and states where trump is still very popular. >> and more popular than people running for election. >> katy, ca

mucish dimd figure for not meetinghe margaret smith test of standing up to the demagogue she did to joe mccarthysaying she didn't want the party to ride to victory on the four horsemen of bigotry smanr and fead ignorance. he said the man was aan of exquisite leadership. i think he leaves with a tax bill that notth onlye country with a debt of a trillions doll year as long as the eye can see according to thel congressiodget office, but a bill seen by voters in 2018 as written bychhe rior the rich, and, so, it's a political -- it's no political asset going in. i will say if his defense, the all purpose one size fits all cuse for leaving, i want to spend more time with my family, i think paul ryan does know th names of his children and does really care about his family. i think ty are tenagers and anybody who's had teenagers knoa that ters aren't interested in spending much time with their parents or as much time asirhe parents did, so i wish him luck. >> yang: david, quickly, as we run out of time here, turn to the scooter libby pardon. is this something that the president says he doesn't know the

you know, this guy was the preeminent fixer, mob lawyer, worked for joe mccarthy. i've always thought that michael cohen was trying to live up to that, but was somewhat of a cheap and now it seems somewhat more incompetent imitation of that. and don't forget, michael cohen was all over some other russia deals that trump had. he worked for years with felix sater, a felon who helped set up trump with some deals in russia, including, including when trump was running for president in 2015, this very odd arrangement between a russian company that had no experience building a tower or a hotel, coming forward and trying to give trump millions of dollars while he is a candidate. and it's all happening through felix sater and michael cohen. he is really at the center of -- i think not just one or two, but probably three or four or five or six different scandals that are indeed converging with this. and don't forget the taxi cab medallions. >> we're going to get to the taxi cab medallions. >> good. that's my favorite part of the story, lawrence. >> michael cohen's taxi cab m

it took us four years of joe mccarthy.ook six and more years with vietnam, but the truth ultima ultimately will out here and i think honestly that both the president and those who lie and misrepresent and enable him on his behalf are on the wrong side of history here. >> they are on the wrong side of history. the truth will win out and all of these lies will be looked back upon by just about everybody like -- well, let's just say it, the lies of iraq. all of the conservatives that flocked around george w. bush, when deficits were exploding, when the national debt was exploding, when they were passing a $7 trillion expansion of medicare and they weren't paying for a dime of it with medicare part d. all of these things happened and if you crossed republicans and if you crossed the president that time you weren't considered a conservative. of course george bush got out of office and then suddenly it back very envogue to say he had a foreign policy and we're never going to do that again. of course, they're doing that again, bu

the stuff about joe mccarthy, the character in the breej and how much he smears and lies and completelyrse. people in washington have no idea how to handle it. they try to straddle the world, this okay, can i let this happen. tll are few people who stand up to it. they say history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. i heard a lot of rhyming. >> jake, talk about people you've been described as a merciless slayer of alternative facts. they say, look at his face, you know exactly what he's thinking. >> that's just my face. you know my expressionstime to time. >> it's got you on schblds word. when you write on a novel are you constantly detecting daily work or was this not part of the day to day as you were writing it sf. >> a little bit of both. i didn't have to strictly adhere to factses i do during the day to day work as you guys do. but also you could see things going on in 2818 of. you think, ooh pg that's interesting. there are purpleful echoes of today that i project backward. >> charlie has an acute sense of smell, i'm told. so do you. >> i do. >> dwho we smell of? >> hope and int

and also when writing about joe mccarthy the indecency and lies that he put forward that people didn'te of the brate thingreat t you in this book is you show a drip drip about the personal behavior and scientific research and things just slowly start to move skblf that's how it works. we've all seen this, people who go to washington, they're good people, they want -- >> good intentions. >> they want to aye chief things like the main character in the book, he comes to town, he wants to protect veterans, he's a veteran of world war ii and little by little he's asked to make compromises. and ultimately next thing he knows he's in way over his head. and that's -- i see that happen all the time in washington. people, democrats, republicans, they come to town, they want to do good and they're forced to make compromises and they lose themselves. >> there's a list of sources. >> yes. >> one of themsy thought something that -- is that yours? >> i thought only i had it but of course do you. tell people what this -- >> i have the hard back. >> you do. i don't have one to one up you. and you've al

joe mccarthy ultimately was discredited and mccarthyism went away.pretty confident these things work out. that's good. the american system usually works. but trump is not stupid in this way and he could get away with it. the combination of his pardon power, his ability to fire people, and the acquiescence of republicans in congress, and to some degree around the country, is a very toxic combination. i think people are too confident that it is all going to be fine and i think the key players here are republicans on the hill and the way to pressure republicans on the hill i think is to have republicans around the country say step up! step up and just let the mueller investigation -- >> bill, let us talk for a second. we like what you're doing but you got to let us talk. first of all, there are polls out this morning that show 70% of americans support mueller's investigation. something like 65%, 64%, want mueller to investigate the finances. what do you think about hatch saying what he said full stop? the chairman of the judiciary coming out saying it w

and mccarthy's office i think is right over there it's really kind of cool >> first time we've done a show from inside the capitol. >> i'm joeecky quick. futures are responding with all this nationalism up 183 points right now after a triple digit gain yesterday. nasdaq indicated up 60 and the s&p indicated up about 16.5 >> the dow crossed above its 50-day s&p came within a point of it. >> people talk about consolidations, corrections aren't -- it's not just the points on the way down it's the duration too. time time you sort of see one group go up, the other goes down. nobody knows, but we were down at the lows 12% or 13% we'll see how this holds here's what's making headlines we have two dow components reporting this morning united health earned $3.04 a share. and the estimate was $2.89 so that was well above. and results were helped by a lower i guess maybe a medical loss ratio i won't know until you actually scroll up, but results were helped by a -- there you go. it's not hard. by a lower percentage of lower medical premiums i giuessed that. the health insurer also raised its full year forecast also out this morning, le