. >> well, joining us now, "new york times" white house correspondent cnn political analyst maggie haberman, gloria borger, and cnn chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin. do we know, maggie, where the president actually stands on mueller now? he didn't like him and then he liked him. >> i think he stands wherever it is good for donald trump is how he feels about robert mueller. so when the summary came out from bill barr and he was able to seize on the parts of that that seemed goo, he did that. one of the things that has come out in the last day is there were people on the mueller team who were surprised at how barr handled this and how the president seized on that. and i don't understand how anyone could have watched the last two years and have been surprised by what the president did because this is pretty much how he handles all of these things. i think you will see him and rudy giuliani say any number of things about this report as we head into the time when it is portions of it anyway are released publicly. there were some people around the president when the report was submitted who wer

maggie mayber m haberman. >> we're joined by laura coates. ra, first off maggie's reporting the president pushed the senate to fast track his nominee for irs chief counsel. how do you see that? >> i mean, just think about the context of it. within a week of the federal government reopening, i know that sounds like a long time ago, the president prioritizes the chief counsel of the irs. that's top of the list, even over the attorney general of the united states. i mean, think about what the role of that person is. the role of that chief counsel coincidentally is able to interpret the code, to be able to figure out what should be a plausible interpretation, the enforcement of it. the irs code is known to be extraordinarily boring, and frankly straight forward. this point that what it says is actually supposed to be followed. so to prioritize that really puts into context that the president of the united states anticipated within a few weeks of the new democratic-led house of representatives coming in, knowing that there are going to be three bod

maggie haberman's guess was the president was watching tv and the idea sounds tough to him and being stopped by lawyers doesn't. emily singer tweeted about the idea. trump is so racist. he thinks it's pump to send brown immigrants into someone's city. it's disgusting. on the law of it, joyce, is it legal to do? >> you know it's an interesting question and we wouldn't know a precise answer until we saw exactly what the president did. there's some question about whether isis can transport people further once they've caught them. could they actually transport them for hours. would that be some form of lawful detention? and then there will be questions about whether, for instance, sanctuary cities have first amendment rights and whether the president is punishing them for their exercise of those rights. this is all very speculative. this is new. this is unplowed territory. you want to say that it's dangerous for this administration, but nothing really seems to be dangerous. no matter how far trump goes stepping on these traditional norms and rights. he never seems to be accountable. >> w

here's maggie haberman of the "new york times" reacting to said tweet. general and the "new york times"path reported this as well. we reached out for a comment from the white house shortly after 11:00 a.m. asked for a comment three times. in case the white house approach is not clear here it's not to comment and then have trump say fake news with an assist there by maggie haberman. back to the action. i know you've had fun this week with your half a million twitter followers. let's lop off 10% for russian bots. on the topic of julian assange, other than being a paragon, in the personal hygiene community how do you think they should remember julian assange thus far? >> bad interior decorator and bad cat parent. julian assange in 2016, whatever julian assange started out as, if he started out as a transparency advocate or what have you, julian assange by 2016 was a willing co-conspirator with the russians to provide information for a russian information warfare program seeking to disrupt the u.s. elections. this isn't debatable. there is an abundant track

maggie haberman joins us next. oh, could you, uh, make me a burger? -poof -- you're a burger. [ laughter ] -everyone acts like their parents. -you have a tattoo. -yes. -fun. do you not work? -so, what kind of mower you got, seth? -i don't know. some kid comes over. we pay him to do it. -but it's not all bad. someone even showed us how we can save money by bundling home and auto with progressive. progressive can't protect you from becoming your parents. but we can protect your home and auto. discover. hi, what's this social security alert? it's a free alert if we find your social security number on the dark web. good, cuz i'm a little worried about my information getting out. oh, why's that? [bird speaking] my social security number is... 8- 7- 5 dash okay, i see. [bird laughing] is that your daughter? no, it's a macaw. and his name is timothy. timmy, want a cracker? timmy, do you want a cracker? [bird speaking] what do you think, kevin? no. sign up online for free. discover social security alerts. sign up online for free. might mean a trip back to the

this is also from maggie haberman's reporting. it's unclear what was requested or why the intelligence committee is now involved but it adds a new layer to the existing federal investigations into the inaugural committee, which was run by thomas j. barrack, a close friend of the president. >> the worst job i had was chairman of the inaugural parade. i'm not sure how i got that job. what you learn about the things is one you don't have enough time to plan them. two there are different rules to your point about who can give, how much can they give, and three you have people trying to get around the various activities that shouldn't be there. if the house intelligence committee is looking at it, it's because they believe there was outside influence from foreign actors. that's the only reason they would be involved in this. it should be in a different committee. so that and the way they're using profew lactic gag orders is unprecedented and means they have something bigger than spending dumb money on beer. >> again, the foreign actors

let's start with maggie haberman. so your reporting and the reporting of others at "the times" there has been -- any idea of a firewall between the department of justice and the white house, that does not seem to be the case? >> no. and abc reported on this as well. there have been a number of discussions between doj officials and white house officials and the counsel's office, as wooene understand it about not just the mechanics of the report, how it will be rolled out, but some top line understanding, possibly more than that, of what will be in the report. a sense of how much will be redacted, what to expect. you know, so i don't know why officials couldn't just say that. i don't know why there was all this discussion about a firewall. i think you have seen the attorney general take a pretty expansive view of executive power. i think it is not a surprise everything that he's doing is within that framework. i think that it is going to raise optics questions when they have made such a display of saying there's no cont

according to the report by eric schmidt and maggie haberman, at a meeting this year, mulvaney made itar president trump equated any public discussion of malign russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory. according to one senior administration official, mulvaney said it wasn't a great subject and should be kept at a low level. it seems to me i'm missing -- hold on. i can't go on here. who else wrote this story? david sanger, exactly. i didn't want to leave david out of there. incredible reporter for the "times." but this was, elise, something that the head of the fbi, the head of the justice department, the head of nsa, i mean, everybody. national director of intelligence. everybody that is anybody in that administration said that actually russian interference in the elections threatened american democracy. that's pretty straight forward. >> joe, it is mindblowi imind-be that leaders' feelings are more important than protecting the integrity of fair and free elections. that is so sack -- we have a leader whose ego would allow us to address crucial secu

and when it gets to the point where maggie haberman of the "the new york times" is complaining that the song trying to make some nazi comparison because she never saw "sound of music" and doesn't realize that the people didn't like the nazis were the one who sang the song, that's a sign of desperation. that's where they are right now. they must prove their narrative right because otherwise they've lied to the american people for two years. and remember, they are. the buzzfeed story was wrong. buzzfeed admitted just yesterday, that story was wrong, that the president hadn't told michael cohen the lie. cnn let go people because another story was wrong. a lot of the russian narrative stuff that we've been told all along has been proven false. but the ultimate peace that they said was true, collusion is just flat out wrong, accept it. >> so -- sorry gary. >> go ahead, heather. >> so what does cnn and msnbc do now in terms of if all they've talked about is this falls narrative for the past two years, if you look after the mueller report was initially released, there was no collusion at the e

against the failing new york times, and yet he continues to give the paper interviews, he talks to maggie habermanwant the paper's approval even as he criticizes? >> i think the reality is he's going to criticize people when he feels he's mistreated, but he's going to give them the opportunity to make it right. in this case perhaps he's given them too many occasions to make it right. howard: you're a bit of a brawler, why do you dive into those other controversies? for example, when lori loughlin and felicity huffman were charged in that college admissions scam -- >> because they seem to have an opinion about everything that relates to us. it's always nice to -- again, i've got a bit of the counterpunching gene. it probably took politics for me to realize i was more like my father than i perhaps thought before this. [laughter] again, it's more about rallying against a lot of the hypocrisy that's out there. everyone has an opinion on this. the second something happens on that side, it's not news, it's covered up -- howard: sometimes maybe i should have let that one go? >> i don't know that i've eve

we have a new "new york times" story that's just crossed from our friends david sanger, maggie haberman, eric schmidt. it talks about how often secretary of homeland security kirstjen nielsen was shut down when she tried to have the administration deal with what russia was doing and what they will be doing in 2020. here is the paragraph. in the months before kirstjen nielsen was forced to resign she tried to focus the white house on one of her highest priorities. mick mulvaney, the white house chief of staff made it clear mr. trump equated any public discussion of maligned russian activity with questions about the legitimacy about his victory. mick mulvaney said it wasn't a great subject and should be kept below his level. in other words, the president wouldn't talk about it so his chief of staff wouldn't allow the people who could help fix it to bring it up >> let's be clear what we are talking about here. this is a threat to the core of american democracy. imagine a scenario where we learned that a foreign entity who is not friendly with us has decided they are going to send a missile

maggie haberman said this in a tweet. philip bump wrote a great piece making the same observation.hat when it finally landed, we knew a lot of the story. but up that haberman tweet, if you guys would. and the point is, what if -- no, not that one either -- what if it had come out -- there it is -- in one thud, and we hadn't known anything? >> that's exactly right. that's what we would be talking about. and that's why if we could rewind videotape that no longer exists and go back two years and change this. and i will say this, i will say the cable news universal. the cable news universe, i'm getting close to you, michael, i apologize, but you've fed off of this for so long, it's diluted the extent what we're really p away. this is not the behavior that any other president from any party could have done without enormous sequenconsequence, but heard so much for so long, we say what else is new. >> let me thi to give credit to and to "the washington post" and "the new york times." all of the reports that the president was lambasting ended up being accurate. and footnoted. >> yeah, yeah

. >> it's interesting too, this bit of reporting, maggie haberman said this. it was interesting.s was playing in her mind apparently, according to this reporting. people close to her say one reason that she didn't leave sooner, perhaps not only one is she was aware of how awful life will be for her on the outside after defending his policies for a long time. which is to say she knew what she was doing. >> exactly. and you know who's life is snaufl the kids who were kidnapped by the federal government. >> dozens who are not reunited. >> thousands of kids are not reunited. she is going to fail up and she'll live in a gilded prison. she is going to have a high cushy six-figure sal rich. and yes, she'll be shanld yes, at some mexican restaurant someone is going to go hey, weren't you the person that put mexican babies in cages and then she is going to complain on fox news and say look at these politically incorrect vicious demons on the left who are mocking kirstjen nielsen. i just want to say this. i want every date of kirstjen nielsen to be as uncomfortable as possible until she ap

maggie haberman joins us now so does jeffrey toobin. so explain what's happening here, maggie. he's not going wait a year to possibly close down the border? >> what happened was we had the same reporting that jake did. we approached the white house at 11:00 a.m. and they very notably would not comment on it. the fact that he had this discussion with mcaleenan about closing the border and i'll offer you a pardon if anything happens to you. it was made a day -- this conversation took place a day after his public pledge of we're going to wait a year and then maybe we will close the border to possible asylum seekers or people trying to cross. it's not clear where the president's head is right now. what seemed to have been happening in that conversation is he was using it as some kind of a nudge or a push with the person he knew he would be bringing in as the new secretary of homeland security. he knew he was pushing out kirstjen nielsen. the fact that this took place at a time when he was preparing to bring this person on speaks to the type of pressure he's planning on putting in p

peter, you and your colleague, maggie haberman, have written the deadline piece of journalism for the ages at "the new york times" tonight. in fairness, our friends messiers, rucker and costa have done the same at "the washington post," because that's what you guys do. you won't mind if i quote from yours. "the white house that emerges from more than 400 pages of mr. mueller's report is a hotbed of conflict infused by a culture of dishonesty, defined by a president who lies to the public and his own staff then tries to get his aides to lie for him. mr. trump repeatedly threatened to fire lieutenants who did not carry out his wishes while they repeatedly threatened to resign rather than cross lines of propriety or law. at one juncture after another, mr. trump made his troubles worse, giving in to anger and grievance and lashing out in ways that turned advisers into witnesses against him. he was saved from an accusation of obstruction of justice, the report makes clear, in part because aides saw danger and stopped him from following his own instincts. based on contemporaneous notes and

maggie haberman, white house correspondent for "the new york times," cnn political analyst. you know who is looking at the biden candidacy closely? >> i think i know where you're going with this. >> the president of the united states. >> you're right. >> he's all over twitter. he seems to be fixated on joe biden as a candidate. what is going on here? are the president's advisers happy about this? you can make a case, this is elevating joe biden. >> some are happy and are encouraging him, and i think others think this is not the way you handle a new entrant into a massively crowded democratic primary field, when the party is figuring out who they want, how they want to challenge the president. donald trump believes he can brand anyone. he's watching the coverage. he's getting frustrated. he think what this race needs right now is him shaping it. what he's doing is elevating joe biden and basically turning this into a one-on-one between himself and joe biden 18 months ahead of time. this is something you'd see a presidential candidate for re-election do in the summer of the el

interesting point because, tim naftali, you'll remember in that now famous "new york times" interview maggie habermanith her colleagues where the president called any investigation of his finances a red line, right, for mueller. and mueller didn't cross that red line here. he did not do, you know, what the southern district looked into michael cohen, et cetera, but mueller did not go there on the finances, and that goes back to max's point just about business dealings, et cetera. why do you think that is? >> well, because i think the mueller team laid out for us their philosophy of dealing with the president. they did not apply certain prosecutorial approaches to the president. he was not a target of the investigation. >> because they knew or took from the olc memo you can't indict a sitting president. >> so you couldn't really -- if he couldn't defend himself in the court of law, you can't charge him. so perhaps there were areas they didn't go into. now, what they did talk about is the moscow tower, and i think it's extraordinarily important for people to keep in mind that while the president is sen

maggie haberman points out it's unusual for such a gag order to be put in place. sdny is not known to have done so in any cohen-related cases other than with winston wolkoff. frank figliuzzi told me there could be multiple reasons. >> a prophylactic gag order, looks to make sure she's not giving up what's going on. this is not someone who's been outspoken about her cooperation but rather someone they need to keep secret. >> is that to protect her? is that in the witness tampering protection category? >> i think it's twofold, one to protect her and secondly to ensure she's not tipping off certain people, she can't talk to individuals who are potential subjects of the case and let them know what's going on. it's a significant finding. >> here tonight, two of the reporters working on this story today, emily jane fox, national correspondent for vanity fair who's chronicled the plight of michael cohen, the author of born trump inside america's first family and rebecca davis o'brien, reporter for the wall street journal. i learned everything from both of you, take us th

maggie haberman was reporting one of the reasons she didn't want to leave the cabinet for so long isew it might be hard for her after being part of the trump administration, having done what she said. >> nielsen has been the brand ambassador, willingly, for president trump's most inhumane policies and his efforts to bend the law. remember, she was a critical part of family separation, zero tolerance. she was not against the travel ban, brand ambassador for his most inhumane moments and attempts to bend the law. the question for me is now what happens at the department of homeland security. kirstjen nielsen i hope will have a difficult time finding a job based on the things she did while secretary. is the department going to revert back to fulfilling its core missions. there are over 240,000 employees at the department of homeland security. it covers such a range of missions including election security which is critically important right now. is whomever replaces her going to be able to focus on those priority areas and again not just be there to serve president trump's mood swings an

what's new and in the 400 pages there will be new information but we know from reporting from maggie habermanhouse strategy is going to say there's nothing to see here. we're getting some insight into the white house posture which is not surprisingly playing offense. i want to play for you a clip from rudy giuliani on a radio show the other day and, jeff, i want to get your reaction. >> i think it was the product of a -- you want to call it a political dirty trick or you want to call it a crime, i don't know. criminal conspiracy. with you in any event i think the collusion will leave that question open, how did this come about? >> they want to turn this into an attack on the steele dossier and the origins of this investigation. one thing i think the white house is completely right about is that it won't change people's minds. you know, one of the touchstones of the trump administration has been the polls don't change. we make a big deal when his approval goes from 40 to 42%, 44 44% to -- it's all noise. no event, not charlottesville, not helsinki, not the children at the border, nothing has c

maggie haberman says trump is trying to make her a household name as an enemy among enemies.the irony, of course, is that this is a president who has used poor choice of words nearly every day of his presidency. but being a hypocrite is clearly not something this president has any fear of or sense of shame about. it's also hard to argue that it's an accident that this president is yet again focusing his ire and attention on a person of color and a muslim as well. how many times have we seen this before, american judge being labeled as mexican by a president and unable to be partial. african-american football players choosing to take a knee or called sons of bitches and railed against at a rally. and s-holes, implied nigerians live in huts. all presidents have the power of what's known as the bully pulpit to focus the country on what's important. this preponderate doesn't understand the meaning of the phrase, the bully pulpit. joining us, a muslim-american who has unfortunately experienced being on the receiving end of the president's insults. thanks for being with us. i don't

last night maggie haberman broke the news the president wanted priority action on his pick for the irs council. he wanted to give it higher priority than even the confirmation of the attorney general nominee william war. maggie is back with us tonight. and with us is susan craig, one of three names on the by line of the trump tax story we mentioned earlier. former federal prosecutor and cnn legal analyst shan wu is with us as well. maggie, how did president trump going from making the release of his taxes to a campaign promise to a vow to fight it to the supreme court? >> i think the same way he handles everything, anderson that he changes his mind about when it doesn't sound as good for him from one moment to the next. i think it's no surprise that he's not releasing his tax returns despite having said he wants to, he has claimed they're under audit, we have no independent verification of that. we may not know that for quite some time. and what we have seen repeatedly is his legal team invoke his idea he doesn't lose his rights as a private citizen because he's president. in the case

or as maggie haberman puts in "the new york times," and i'm quoting, the white house that emerges for

joining us now, maggie haberman, cnn political analyst. we want to start on immigration. it seems the president now, in the midst of this period where he is pushing everyone out and pushing legal boundaries, if not overstepping legal boundaries. >> we've seen him the last two years try to run up into what the law will allow on any number of topics across the board. we've seen it on immigration. he has been stopped and stymies by courts, law, international law, and u.s. law. right now, he seems to be wa wanting someone he feels will be aqcquiesce ent to what he desires. he's wanting people who are willing to go against what the courts have said. he'll be frustrated with whoever is in the job. the relationship between him and kears kearse kirstjen nielsen deteriorated a long time ago. i think he is going to run into the same headaches over and over. >> family separations were so unpopular. i, as you know, interviewed trump supporters, panels. that's the one they got stuck on. they didn't like that. it was so unpopnpopular. why would he go back to this? >> he wants to look a

or as maggie haberman puts in "the new york times," and i'm quoting, the white house that emerges foran 400 pages of mr. mueller's report is a hotbed of conflict infused by a culture of dishonesty, defined by a president who lies to the public and his own staff and then tries to get his aides to lie for him. utah republican senator mitt romney is also weighing in with a statement that reads in part, is it good news that there was insufficient evidence to charge the president of the united states with having conspired with a foreign adversary, or with having obstructed justice. even so, he continues, i'm sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office of the land, including the president. as the report shows, he and his subordinate lied again and again, lied about mcgahn, lied about interfering with the special counsel, lied about the firing of comey, lied about business deals in russia, lied about seeking clinton e-mails, lied about the purpose of the trump tower meeting, lied about his role in lying about the trump tower me

maggie haberman had an excellent piece about this in the "new york times" and it is not out of the blue, it is not simply about her, it is about his campaign long quest to ban them from the country and to use that population in the same way, frankly, that he is demonizing immigrants at the southern border. it's two different ways to go after the same goal. >> i'm not sure it's the hardest way. i wonder if it might be the easiest. we've talked about some of the policy things the president has not been able to get done but he has been able to fire up a base. that's how he won in 2016. remember what abraham lincoln said -- >> i thought you'd want to govern getting 55 or 60% is how you actually govern. >> winning elections is -- remember what lincoln said -- he's found ways to fire people up on the left and the right. i think you're right about that, and if he can't do it through policy, if he's not getting the policies through he wants, the playbook that worked in 2016, firing people up about cultural issues might work in 2020. >> that's also all he knows and he's not expanding his base. t

. >> good morning, maggie haberman. think it is also going to be intriguing to see what happens after the redactions are made public. in terms of what congress can negotiate access to, remember in the testimony, the second day, i think it was, the senate testimony last week, barr said he is open to working with members of congress who want to see more that is redacted in the public version. >> right. >> how is that all going to play out? >> i think we'll have to wait and see.sceptical, and only because i think barr's position has been to start with less is more and work his way backwards a bit. i'm not quite sure what it is going to look like. i think you have members of congress who are prepared to take this to court if need be to get access to the underlying materials. >> maggie, your reporting also said the core white house strategy is try to treat the full report or redacted version as an adun dudenduaddendum. that seems like a magic trick. >> like to barr's four-page summary? >> the main event is the four-page lett

i witnessed a debate last night on cable as to whether and maggie haberman was involved on this, whether he has as a le leadooit, not caught up with press coverage these days or whether he has by dent of wat watching fox news become a genuine trump partisan. >> i think that we are agrand to invoke rachel's mauntra. watch what they do, not what they say. the reassurances from our friends like chuck rosenberg and joyce vance that he was an institutionalist gave him more credit than he deserved. on the three three reelection strategies, hard line immigration policies, the central conspiracy theory that animates donald trump's entire presidency that he was spied on and the cd that there was a complete and total exoneration from robert mueller which in the few words we've seen from robert mueller, there was not. robert mueller wrote, we do not exonerate trump on obstruction. barr has embraced all three. he is a lot more dangerous if you don't like the way donald trump seems to trample on the rule of law and a lot more of a booster if you're a trump backer. >> i was going to say we covered the

one of them, there is a kernel that we were familiar with thanks to the excellent journalism of maggie haberman and many others, but the full story that mueller was able to get is a much more rich and much more incriminating story than we even knew. and that's true of the rod rosenstein story. >> can i just say something about rod rosenstein. it's interesting, by the way, that rod rosenstein was one of the people who decided there was no obstruction, and he is a witness, a very important witness in this investigation so far as it comes to obstruction. >> it's fitting that he was standing behind but not talking. he is the zelig of this story. >> exactly. >> he is there everywhere. and of course he is the one who appointed mueller in the first place. >> he looked like he wanted to throw up at some point. >> he did. >> the president is using the term no obstruction. that is not what mueller is saying. >> to the contrary, this is a narrative about a vast, sprawling, insidious cover-up by the president of the united states. that's what it is, and we see the act of the president, you just read it, on