mark halperin with us and has a question. mark?what ways do you ink trump has behaved at all like a normal predent that would be significant or meaningful? >> i'm guessing not just in the context of north korea. >> no. just overall? >> well, this week was interesting, right. i mean on one hand he -- on tuesday he called for a shutdown of the government in september. that's not a normal piece of presidential. but over the last 48 hours, we've seen them do pretty traditional horse trading for votes. he had, you know, fred upton down and long from missouri and said let's -- what do you need? i need your votes. that seemed something familiar to me. they may not get it today when they vote at 1:30 but that horse trading is what presidents have typically done. >> michael, what would it mean to a new president to have not one, but two health care votes fall not in his favor, to go against him in terms of capital spent in the first 100 some days. >> i'm cringing and i think that's the point of today. willie, i mean, clearly the details in

maybe the president will explain it with lester holt in a way that will start to -- >> mark halperin, it's worse than that. it's not just a complete explanation. their explanation on day one was a lie. they lied about why they fired the fbi director. they said that it was a deputy attorney general that came with a memo that left them with no choice but to fire him. so we know day one is a lie. it's not incomplete. it is false, and if you were wondering whether this white house is trying to subvert justice, trying to stop an investigati investigation, there's some pretty good evidence right there that their explanation for the firing, we already know 24 hours later, was a lie. >> the other thing is, if the president's goal was to stop this investigation if that was his goal, it's failed. from capitol hill to the fbi, people are all over the notion that this must go forward, whether a special counsel or not, this investigation, i think people understand now, it's going forward and it can't be squelched. >> willie -- happy birthday to harold. >> happy birthday to harold ford. i want to t

and you saw from bbc news ckaty kay and msnbc contributor mark halperin. >> this is a big weekend, the season finale of "the circus." i know i compare a lot of things to the beatles coming in '64, but this was close. >> an obvious comparison. last night an hour-long finale on demand, very exciting. but more exciting for me was saturday night. did you not see? i was featured on "saturday night live" in the cold open. >> you guys didn't see that? >> halperin! that's amazing. >> i was on "saturday night live." sunday i was on "the circuit." i can't believe you didn't see that. >> i'm up pretty early, i have kids, so -- i'll look into it. >> do me a favor, find a clip. >> being on "saturday night live" is cool. >> you know you've made it. >> let's show the clip. >> rattner is right, we'll show you on "saturday night live." >> i can't wait to see it. all right, but first the news. >>> emmanuel has been elected for the president over marine le pen. emmanuel macron won 66% of the vote compared to le pen's 35%. >> that's the worst stomping any candidate has had since her father. >> her father

. >> mark halperin. >> i think the thing with north korea is the most serious. by saying he would be -- expressing respected and honor and saying he would meet with him one-on-one, the white house has tried to walk it back, but in the context of all the other things he's said, that's so unsettling to japan, to south korea. mike said it, presidential words matter, and over the course of interviews over the course of a week with such i'm precision about history and his history on health care and then to float the notion to be honored to meet the head of north korea, this is where the i'm precision and behaving the way he's behaving has real world impact. >> eddie, he said not so long ago that we could be heading to a major, major war with north korea. now he's honored to meet -- it's as if he doesn't remember what he said five minutes ago. >> it's really interesting. on the one hand, we've seen this with regards to his embrace, quote, unquote of putin, the call to erdogan of turkey, now the gesture to north korea and also the philippines. there's a sense at which

>> mike barnicle. >> yes. >> and mark halperin, john heilman. >> that's big.conversation, host of msnbc's "deadline white house." >> wow! >> former communications director for president george w. bush, the nicolle wallace. >> wow! >> stop it. stop it. >> your show is awesome. >> so nice. >> hit the ground running. are you having fun? >> yes. fun is had between 4:00 and 5:00. it's the other hours. >> it's a civilized hour. >> it's a lovely hour. you should come visit. do i serve tea? if you come, i will serve you tea, brew it myself, steep it six minutes. >> we'll start again with what happened last night in montana's special congressional election. ben jacobs, reporter for the guardian, approached gian forte. >> what could go wrong? >> gian forte body slammed him and broke his glasses, he says. here is an audio that the guardian released. >> cbo score. you were waiting to make your decision about health care before you saw the bill. >> we'll talk about that later. >> there might not be enough time. >> speak with shane, please. >> i'm sick and tired of you guys

broke this comey memo story, michael schmidt, senior political analyst for nbc news and msnbc, mark halperin. veteran columnist and msnbc contributor mike barnicle and former democratic congressman harold ford, junior. also, joe ahead with new reporting on all of this. first let's lay it out for you. less than a week after president trump fired and then warned fbi director james comey about tapes of their conversations, there looks to be a paper trail inside the bureau of investigation. multiple sources firsthand knowledge of all of this tell nbc news that comey wrote an internal memo saying trump asked him to drop an investigation into the former national security adviser michael flynn. comey wrote the memo which nbc news has not seen, on february 14th, the day after flynn resigned following reports that he misled vice president mike pence about discussing lifting sanctions with russia's ambassador. comey was in the oval office for a counterterrorism briefing along with attorney general sessions. chief of staff reince priebus advisers jared kushner and stephen bannon and deputy cia director

msnbc senior political analyst mark halperin was just inside the oval office with president trump. mark, what's happening there? >> reporter: well, chris, the president was in a meeting with the vice president, the white house chief of staff, a few other top aides, and i was at the white house on another matter and got brought in to see e president,o talk about this decision that he made the first thing i can tell you from a senior administration official is the president met tonight for i believe about 30 minutes with the new acting fbi director, mr. mccabe, who is a figure whose name came up in the conduct of the investigation into hillary clinton last year. we can talk more about him, but he's got some ties, sobut as th deputy fbi director, he's now going to be after a meeting with the president this evening, he will be the acting director at least for the time being. the president talked about the decision to get rid of comey and said that judgment was what he thought was the concern. that was the concern of people at the justice department, including the deputy attorney general

mark halperin, this just keeps building up. you have donald trump admitting to lester holt on national television that he fired comey thinking about stopping the trump investigation. you had the russian investigation, sarah huckabee sanders then said the same thing. we wanted this investigation to end. we knew if we fired him, it would come to a speedier conclusion. you had trump admitting to the russians in the oval office he fired comey the nutjob to get him off his back and now he's no longer in the investigation. here you have him reaching out to the top two -- two of the top intel officials saying help me kill this investigation. how do you -- how do you even put a historical context on this, mark? this is beyond extraordinary, beyond inappropriate. >> in the wake of what happened in manchester, it's understandable we talked so long about that and all of us are so concerned about that city and the people who died and the implications of it. it's easy to be a nerd to all these leaks out of the administration and accusations

come host of showtime mark halperin, analyst for msnbc news and nbc. contributor to "time" magazine, analyst and former aide to george w. bush and state department elise jordan. >> might be a deal to at least keep the government open. that's a start. >> the first 100 days ended in a miasma. now theyace the budget deal health care, tax reform, north korea, trade, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. >> only those things. let's start with the news late last night. word of a budget deal to keep the budget open through september, this according to aides of senior member of congress. the $1 trillion deal includes $12 billion for defense spending, $18 billion less than the president asked for. it also includes permanent fix for coal miners health. it does not include border wall funding, money for deportation or cuts in funding to sanctuary cities. instead the $3 billion for border security gets about $1.5 billion. it also reportedly increases funding to national institutes of health by $2 billion. the ap reports the plan does not defund planned parenthood but d

>> mark halperin, this is absolutely stunning. i know you've been critical in the past of james comey. i think it was bill krystal who said one can disagree with the way comey conducted himself during the campaign and still be deeply disturbed by the actions yesterday. >> as you said, this is grave and serious and lots to talk about. let's focus on the russia probe? who is in charge the probe today? rod rosen stein, a career prosecutor who lots of democrats praised. andrew mccabe, the acting fbi director who has a reputation of not being partisan, and the career prosecutors and fbi agents. i think the thing the president needs to do, he's got to talk about this himself, this is not the kind of decision you can make and delegate to sean spicer or a piece of paper. two, he's got to pick somebody to run the fbi who is beyond reproach and do it quickly. in terms of timing, the question i have is why not wait until you have a stellar, sterling person lined up. why the urgency? >> because sally yates testified yesterday and this guy, da

mark halperin writing that the fundamental dynamics are of health and security are bringing china intorary alignment of thes and south korea. everyone knows different obje objectives, and china looking for stability and help in supporting a rogue north korean state. all of this a way to defuse the north korean threat. >> my pick is in the "financial times." this time next week, we'll know who france's new president is. saying amacron will have to make a decisive move on france. the single most exciting is the objective for the eurozone but he owes his voters the onset of the question what he would do if germany lee plies to his four proposals with nein, nein, nein. assume, he would not threaten a french exit from the eurozone, what else might he do? if the answer is not much, would we not be justified in wondering just how different a macron presidency is going to be? and there is a big surprise to markets if it happens. but it -- >> macron would be the youngest prime minister in france. >> yes. 39 years. >> 39 years old. >>> okay. well, it's a busy meeting on tap between a fed meeting

mark halperin, senior political analyst for msnbc and nbc news. let me get to this, mark. your view about this thing. i said it's like an old film developing in front of your face now, polaroid type. you get a sense that there's a lot of action from the russian end, and of course trump seemed to have wanted to build a relationship from russia from his end. >> good evening, chris. the way i've been thinking about it lately, this whole thing fits very nicely with what's happened with nbc's reporting on jared kushner. there's three strands here. you've got the congressional investigations. you've got the fbi and justice department. there's one bucket of things that relate to wrongdoing that's not illegal, right? things that may have happened during the campaign where the fbi is going to say, we don't see a crime here, but it would be politically ruinous for the administration, potentially dealings with russia. the second bucket is thing that may have been done illegal related to russia. a lot of speculation. we don't know where that goes. the third bucket i think is the most