he inherited very tough sanctions during his transitions and put more on putin. >> i hear john flannery grumbling. i am so over on time you have to go quickly. >> well, i think we're so far past it with this president, he makes errors in every direction and when has a president ever been treated like a baby floating overned a nation that's our ally? >> john, i would not call him a baby. i think it's well documented he doesn't appreciate that but i'm going to go on to my next guest who i specially booked for a different perspective and i'm very grateful to john flannery and sam nunn. bob mueller's new indictment marched into the center of our polarized politics. these questions raise suspicions about how much the operation shaped the race then you have what if questions. aggrieved clinton fans losing by the narrowest margins and the questions rankle trump fans who feel they were underestimated and find their victory greeted by a delegitimizing story. today mueller's boss showed his awareness of that divide. he's urging non-partisanship which could be a warning to trump allies who benefit

let me bring in john flannery on some of these questions. mr. flannery, when you look at everything you just heard, what is the legal significance? >> well, in terms of the law, the campaign violations are an obvious one. but in terms of the strength of the evidence to show that, i thought the times story just before the quote that you had was significant because it shows knowledge of both men, cohen and trump, of what ami is doing with play mate mcdougal. he says should we buy her story directly? or should we buy it from ami? and that suggests -- and then the question is, should we pena check or should we do it by cash? he's encouraging cohen, trump is encouraging cohen to do it by check, which strikes me as bizarre. and you have do wonder if this was also a pattern to reimburse ami for what they'd already done. >> let's slow down a bit. we're getting into the initials. you're talking about the "national enquirer" parent company, you're talking about whether there was an elicit plot to misuse or abuse that organization, that media company to sec

you need tough industrials at the board's helm after watching john flannery operate for the past year, meeting him on a few occasions, and listening to his plan for the future, i believe that he is indeed the right man for the job. he's showedhimself to be an honest broker, someone who is willing to reveal bad news shortly after he finds out about it and then make the tough decisions needed to turn things around i really like that i'm just going to say it it's time to buy the stock of general electric yep, i think the end of the long decline in ge is finally here. after seeing the results of the company's lengthy strategic review last week, especially the plan to break up this conglomerate, i am a believer. john flanry h rnery has gotten head around the problems of this industrial giant the bottom is near, not here, but i don't want to equivocate anymore about this thing i'm not saying the numbers will start picking up tomorrow. i'm not saying the dividend is safe remember when i told about you the health care spinoff. i do believe at these levels the potential upside far outweighs th

john flannery, and here in new york. john, what speaks to you in this indictment? >> the thing that speaks to me is what i expect we'll see in the next indictment, the kind of one, two, three of the mueller investigation, which is pinning the tail on the donkey, being the orange man in the west wing. we have two critical dates. there are others here, but you may notice that on june 8th, these russians set up a special website, a facebook page and a twitter account all of which was to disperse all the e-mails they'd stolen from the dnc and the dccc. as of that date. the next day, they have a meeting in trump tower. and it was published as a meeting that was going to give information to the trump campaign to go forward against hillary clinton. then we have, later in june, we have another request for information, because they were afraid that the bernie sanders people would go with hillary after the nomination battle in july. and so, about a month later, they had collected information and they did exactly that, they released it. and days after they released that infor

he's worried about -- john flannery has his arms around it. larry culp, lead director, brilliant.ll talk about it on the other side >> other side? what's that mean >> other side of the opening bell i want to continue the conversation on ge but we do have the opening bell which you're going to hear in about three seconds' time. because you are watching the opening bell here at the new york stock exchange. [ opening bell ] >> the fraxa foundation draws attention to down syndrome and mission continues. >>> back to ge i hear you telling me you're betting with flannery over tuesday at this point. >> i am. i just think it was a really thoughtful plan. does it really raise to $25 billion? that was disputed on the conference call. it wasn't that friendly. that's why i mentioned tusa. he was respectful. i felt like it was the conference call that most people on the call thought flannery just fell off a turnip truck he didn't. he's a thoughtful man, came up with a bold plan and i like the plan i do think, by the way, no one is giving him any credit on the brilliance of now doing baker hughe

i'm joined by former federal prosecutor john flannery. what's your reaction to this news tonight?> i would think not significant witnesses in this sense. they're probably bank officers or tax preparers and so forth who may end up as stipulations in the case, and they have probably given a list of witnesses to the other side as required by the rocket docket of the eastern district of virginia. and i don't think judge ellis would like any delay. so i'm sure he's glad to give immunity to the witnesses who may or may not appear. >> i get excited when you talk about stipulations. you know that. >> yes, i know. it's so exciting for litigators. >> who knew it would ever be national news. you're referring to the process by which they're going to prove certain things. why for viewers wondering, why would those type of people need immunity at all, if they didn't do anything wrong and just involved in paper flow? >> well, there are problems about if you transfer more than $10,000 from an offshore entity called ukraine loot, and it comes into a bank in the states as a loan and the money is th

that's a question we begin with former federal prosecutor john flannery and with the school of government. get your view as a prosecutor, not as a critic of donald trump's policies or a critic of his judgment. does anything on this tape, in your view, legally hurt the president? >> absolutely. and, in fact, if you listen to the beginning of the tape, there's a very interesting thing happening. you hear a rustling, which i think means cohen turned on his recorder before he went to the meeting. and he knew he was going to tape it. and it goes off when he says no, no, no, a check. cohen was protecting himself, and when he got to the meeting, he probably took it out of his pocket, pretended to be checking e-mail and put it down between the two of them and then taped the conversation. >> you're putting out a theory. you don't know that for a fact. you're suggesting it was bad stuff cohen wanted to get on record for himself. no, i'm not about some secret cash payment that could blow up in our face. >> i think it's worse than that. he knew before the meeting what the meeting was about. that's my

john flannery's call takes place in half an hour. bashes rate hikes, potentially stabilizing the rate after the pboc lowered its rate for the most in two years. breakdown between the italian prime minister and populist leaders, throwing leadership into doubt. happy friday. you made it. it is a gorgeous day new york city, if you look at the empire's a building. -- empire state building. jason: it is such a lovely friday. a lot of news to get to. we will get there. alix: welcome to bloomberg daybreak. i'm alix steel. jason kelly is joining us. up by three points as we start to turn over as a report from president trump he would not think about tariffs on $500 billion worth of chinese goods. he talked about the fed and not liking them raising rates. the spread weaker, 24 basis points. has nownger story paused, helping crude up by .1%. ge offering investors relief after earnings beat estimates. strong demand for aviation and health care equipment help to boost results. joining us now is scott davis, melius research chairman and ceo. ing

i mean, john flannery the ceo of ge did a major reorganization and people yawned. they yawned.oday airbus puts out new forecast saying business is more are robust people are said ignore it. i can't ignore it. i can't ignore the good and focus on the bad. >> yeah and, you know, there's money flowing into treasuries. >> did you see that you can get a 3% on the cd out a couple of years? that's pretty good so the competition is there, but look at what the soft good stocks have been doing look at kraft heinz. when was the last time you had ce velveeta. >> not that long ago. >> there was a guy frankie they had so much velveeta and campbell's soup. did you know that survives >> along with cockroaches. >> post nuclear war , it's going to be there. >> do you think too much is being made in the trade issue? ian bremmer is going to be on with us at the 10:00 hour. calls it vastly exaggerated. last night he tweets out five hours until, quote, vastly exaggerated -- >> i'm not with him. i'm usually not with him we have the same misdemeanor on tv i think he's right on this i think that basica

half of the year and that is exactly the situation they found themselves in last year when ceo john flanneryividends. ♪ shery: you're watching "bloomberg best" and i'm shery ahn. blackrock recorded second quarter earnings that the estimates. they saw out those and's lowering inflows into his exchange traded funds. interview, they are seeing a shift in client if your. >> we saw clients worldwide confused saw clients as to what direction the markets will go. >> us is what they're telling you? >> absolutely. clients are questioning the whole foundation of international invest and that is the foundation of globalization. start entering the conversation about trade and tariffs, we are seeing clients pull back a little bit. we are waiting to see how does this play out? the back drop is we have very strong earnings. first quarter represented we saw strong earnings threat the s&p. we believe we will see strong earnings in the second order. we are growing at a rate of $800 billion worth of stock repurchases. a record amount of everyday -- of m&a. we are shrinking equities and markets are essentially

with me now, former federal prosecutor, john flannery, sasha and national security reporter, ken delaney. great to have all of you with us. john, let me begin with you. help us decipher this interview with michael cohen. decipher the substance and manner in which it was done. >> my view is it's less than meets the eye. people seem to be so excited he would say anything at all they're reading all sorts of things into it. what i got out of it, he still thinks he's innocent. this is a man talking about his family. we know what a worthless person he's been. he pays off women during the campaign. he makes a loan based on false pretenses, funnels the money through his firm. does pay for play when trump wins with at&t and others. he has a meeting with a ukrainian to have a plan to save russia from the sanctions and hands it to flynn, who is cooperating with the government. now, we're supposed to believe he cares at all about family. when he says country, which he never showed interest before, it strikes me what he's doing is sending a signal to trump. he doesn't have to go on tv to say he will

and john flannery believe use this as an opportunity to change the narrative in terms of the with theompany communicates with investors. when you think about it health care business, it has been a starved for capital and attention within ge, and people ignore the fact that that is actually a very good business. margins are increasing and revenue is growing, cash flow is great, but it is hard to get excited about that when your power earnings are dropping off a cliff. dividends potentially getting cut, nobody really cares. so now, you have this business going on, this standalone or it could potentially make acquisitions and invest in organic growth. that will be exciting for investors. jonathan: the trump administration taking a softer than expected approach to trade, i guess harshest measures on chinese investment. how does that contrast with what we expected? >> president trump and senior administration officials saying that they are getting behind bipartisan legislation on capitol hill that would expand the committee on foreign investment in the united states cifius. or what exactly

breakup call and no way it will go down the way ceo john flannery said, the guy just came off a turnipuy at carnival and the random fuel prices and randomness of the dollar yet none of these facts seem to matter, all shadowboxing even as it's taken control of the hearts and minds of the analysts and media, there must be something going very wrong or the market would be up much more than it is some of the analysts on these calls are breathtakingly pessimistic. after mccormick blew away the numbers, french's mustard doing beautifully and ceo, lawrence kersey with seemingly tenuous relations with number one client, walmart and the loss isn't even true. the food group has been stellar. to some degree i get it. i was openly critical about the deal when it happened. so much i had to cry but then they walked me through how trenches just needed better management to gain control the yellow part of the mustard franks is the hottest subcategory because they really do put that stuff on anything. the analysts aren't buying it. they're far more worried about early signs of disruption in mccormick's

. >> i'm bringing in john flannery and seth waxman. back with me as well. hn, take it away. >> well, these guys sure shouldn't be teaching first year law criminal law. there's also not, in the code, you won't find colluding with russians either. but the definition that we're concerned about is when two or more persons commit -- agree to commit a crime, that is the crime of conspiracy. and if you are considering the fact of what collusion is, again it's two or more persons agreeing to commit a crime. so you can't subtract the crime, the object of the agreement and say, well, collusion's not a crime. and i suppose what they're saying is the technical word collusion, they can't find it in the code. but the elements of a crime is how we define it. in section 371 -- >> yeah -- >> defines it that way. >> it's a collusion conspiracy. >> correct, yes. and interestingly if you just take the june 9th meeting, you may have the pre-meeting that rudy doesn't know happened or not. >> you're talking about the sushi dinner. >> yeah, sure. >> and then on june 8th, the russia

we like the steps that ceo john flannery has taken he's basically said if we are not getting a good return on keeping the business together, let's split it apart some of the smaller businesses, put them in the hands of companies that are more synergistic, have more synergy opportunities, and we have no criticism at all of the steps he's been taking >> you said it, not me i was trying to be nice to you, bill >> appreciate it >> thanks for coming on again. we'll see you soon >> thank you >>> let's kick around some of these picks. bristol-myers. what do we think >> i like that name. i'm not in that name now for a long time we referred to it more as a biotech disguised as a pharma company. a lot of times these stocks give you great opportunities. >> sooner or later ge will have a quarter, just a short-term bounce, where they're going to surprise and you'll see a significant rebound in the stock. that might be tomorrow >> that already had a short-lived bounce >> i think you're going to see -- i think they're due for that quarter where the street kind of gets caught offsides i know the overwhelm

>> i'm joined by former federal prosecutor john flannery and washington-based reporter, shelby holidaywhat do you think of it at this point? >> i was wondering if he's trying to build a case for trump as ineffective assistance of counsel. >> ineffective assistance of counsel joke right off the top. >> that's what we try to deliver for you. >> will you explain what that means? >> yes. when he was a jowrng yard dog prosecutor in the southern district -- a junkyard dog prosecutor in the southern district of new york, he would have seized on the statements in the case both after hannity saying trump paid for this woman and funneled it through the law firm, number one. over the weekend, there's really no big deal about go easy on my former national security advisor, who may be a witness against me, who could put me in an orange jumpsuit. out of his own mouth we have evidence why this is a serious investigation. part two, he has no business expecting a prosecutor to tell him what is evidence is before there's an interview. the history and the law of a subpoena for the president is it gets fu

i think ceo john flannery is doing his level best to turn things around, but rome wasn't built in a quarterand this one won't be fixed in one either speaking of industrials, you believe how much honeywell is making and how much dave cote's successor has been telling the story of the breakup at all, a tour de force. illinois tool works has become maddingly inconsistent that's quote for just plain for two quarters bad, and that the declines are pretty daunting as i told club members, i request whether itw should still be on the other hand here. so let's say industrials right now are a question mark on a case-by-case basis retail is also hard to puzzle over however, that question could be resolved by the positive commentary and forecast boost that we just got last friday from vf corp with strength coming from jeans, van sneakers and north face that i think it is fair to extrapolate right now positively to many of the brick and mortar stores that carry the stuff. i'm particularly interested in seeing target. i think that acts well i think kohl's is having a super quarter. here is the bottom lin

about two weeks after that the ceo, john flannery came out and said they are going to adjust the dividend and the real question i think now, going forward, is how much they're going to cut the dividend and here is the -- ashley: so where is the good news in any of this? charlie: the good news is they're getting it down to a core of profitable business. bad news is they still have a cash flow problem and unfunded liability in their pension. remember ge used to be a much bigger company. they're still big but much bigger with hundreds of thousands of ex-employees -- ashley: ge capital. charlie: on top of that too they still have that overhang so you have cash flow problems, you have the, you need to sort of grow the businesses. they think they're getting it down to a core where it can grow but before it gets there, you need money and i think the only way you can get money is through cutting the dividend more and i think that's what this shows that a lot the reason why people blowing out the stock today even despite the positive spin, the company is cutting on is that this dividend is going t

this is the second year in a row. , -- year the shortfall cause john flannery to cut the dividend for only the second time since the great depression. said it wills rethink its dividend policy and that will likely mean a lower dividend. what today's numbers underscore is that this will be a significant cut. mentionedur piece you ge is working through its woes at a time when a lot of industrial companies are doing well. brooke: you see that today from honeywell's numbers today. ge reported a 6% decline and honeywell had a 6% gain in organic revenue. leased --inc. increased guidance and you are seeing that from companies. distributors reported strong numbers and saw strength and core industrial markets. ge is missing out on the upswing. takinghe shift they are and far -- as far as the health care business, they will be dependent on longer cycle businesses if we get to economic downturn. the risk of underperformance if we see downturn. shery: we saw aviation below estimates. brooke: that is a focus point because they need aviation to be perfect to meet profit guides to make this narrativ

. >> exactly ge has to address it john flannery has to address it. ine of tusa's very thoughtful piece was this is about to happen to health care and that was john's vision. >> right. >> it made the earnings look better and because ge capital is being scaled down. >> they pushed out too much product? >> no. >> they got the sales. but when you look something a long-term contract and then you sell it to ge capital and get rebated, then that's fine as long as the credit is good right. if the credit good meaning that customers could pay. >> right. >> now there's issues about whether the customer is going to pay. the group has gotten weak. there are issues if you're shrinking the ge capital can they do this and the answer is no it was all, frankly, it was all a tremendous read through for various footnotes which are enclosed in the report and you find yourself saying tusa is on to something. if tusa is on to something, the numbers haven't come out. >> interesting the numbers are going up is the ten year yield after all those sessions in the 2.8. 2.91 highe

course, the call going on it will be interesting to hear any comment on trade something we asked john flannerybout and he would say he's not too worried about it and that he thinks ultimately cooler heads will prevail. honeywell reporting pretty good earnings rising guidance today. >> microsoft is the other big story. it will open at a record high again. dow component issues up guidance better than expected results helped by growth in the cloud business they talked about that last night. take a listen. >> we delivered more than $110 billion in revenue with double digit top line and bottom line growth and our -- surpassed more than $23 billion in revenue for a year with gross margin expanding to 57% the strength of our results reflects accelerating innovation and the trust customers are placing in us to power their digital transformation. >> our friend tom hearden said it's a classic 2018 story. you got all the macro worries, all the trade worries this morning. presidential tweets about tariffs and currency and microsoft is opening up 3%. >> you mentioned tweets. cramer last night -- right, the

stock is up almost a percentage point the bad news is that equates to 11 cents it's a $13 stock john flannerys with our strategic review complete, ge's moving forward to implement the strategy and the structure we laid out in june our focus is on unrelenting ek kugs execution of this plan to strengthen our balance sheet and accelerate growth across our business to increase shareholder value. he added that second quarter, in his view, was in line with expectations and there was some strength across many segments including aviation and healthcare. power market remained challenging. we continue our focus on operato operational improvement. joining us now is the exhausted, longstanding holder of ge stock, jack at this point there's other things in life, i guess, that are good family, friends. you still own it how do you like the quarter? chief investment officer at harvard advisory long suffering shareholder you buying more? >> first, congratulations on getting the interview with the president. >> thank you >> to answer your second question, we sold the shares after third quarter earnings last ye