thank you. >>> we've got michael beschloss here in just a moment, as promised. this is turning out to be a big news night. he is the right guy to have here. i want to let you know, though, that congressman adam schiff just did break some important news here live just a moment ago. you have been hearing for the last couple days about this very controversial totally unprecedented move which the white house has announced. the white house is apparently going to be convening a meeting tomorrow at which the justice department and the fbi have apparently been directed to hand over information about a confidential human source who was involved in the counterintelligence investigation into the russian attack on our election in 2016 and specifically contacts with russia by three people on the trump campaign. that counterintelligence source, that fbi human source is the kind of thing, the identity of that source, the evidence collected by that source is the sort of thing that would typically be held very, very closely by the intelligence community and by the fbi. the presi

jon meacham, michael beschloss continue to join us. n my lifetime, as a white house intern, i thought i would never have a fronter, front-row seat than this, i thought carter to reagan was the biggest swing of the pendulum politically they would ever witness as an american adult. but do you have reason to think that we're in for something even greater, say nothing of the obama to trump swing of the pendulum? >> yeah, that's for sure, brian. sure looks that way. just the juxtaposition that you're suggesting between george w. bush and donald trump, with barack obama in between, you know, people will be arguing for the next 50 years whether george w. bush was too interventionist, but there is no one who is going to doubt that george w. bush is an idealist about democracy. contrast that with donald trump, who in the people's white house, where every president has lived since john adams told bill o'reilly last year, o'reilly said putin is a killer, and donald trump replied, what makes you think we americans are not killers, too? what makes y

michael beschloss, thank you, my friend. >> thank you, rachel.k. as a face to be reckoned with. only botox® cosmetic is fda approved to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet and forehead lines look better. it's a quick 10 minute cosmetic treatment given by a doctor to reduce those lines. there is only one botox® cosmetic, ask for it by name. the effects of botox® cosmetic, may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be a sign of a life-threatening condition. do not receive botox® cosmetic if you have a skin infection. side effects may include allergic reactions, injection site pain, headache, eyelid and eyebrow drooping and eyelid swelling. tell your doctor about your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. leave your mark on the world. minimize its mark on you. get started at botoxcosm

with us from washington, michael beschloss, the author and presidential historian and biographer of,dent lyndon johnson. gentlemen, welcome. before we say another word, i'm going to put a picture on the screen that mr. beschloss supplied to us. it looks like two high school kids visiting 41 in kennebunkport. in the center of your screen, television veterans will note dead ringer for ken olin of 30 something, now executive producer of "this is us." those are young men, meacham and beschloss, probably trying not to get sea sick and listen to the 41st president of the united states. so on that note, jon, i note as his biographer, you happen to be in houston tonight. inquiring minds want to know if you visited with the former president today. >> i spent about an hour with the former president, whom i first met, introduced to the bushes by my friend, michael beschloss. and that's exactly 20 years ago, wasn't it, michael? >> it was indeed, this fall. >> it was the fall of '98. what i think you can see in that picture is as ever, beschloss is smarter than i am because he was behind the glas

joining us now is nbc presidential historian michael beschloss. mr.eschloss, thank you for being with us tonight. >> my pleasure always, rachel. >> i want to ask you about what i perceive to be a parallel here. i also actually want to ask you a little bit about this breaking news we've just had from the "new york times." let me just ask you about that first, actually. we just had adam goldman here. the "times" is reporting that the fbi did send an informant to talk to two trump campaign advisers dug tring the 2016 campaign. this has become an objective focus both for the conservative media and president trump himself. the president has described, that the fact that the fbi had an informant in the campaign, as itself worse than watergate. what's your reaction to that? >> well, what the "times" is reporting tonight is that the fbi was doing its job, which was investigating the possibility of collusion with a capital k between russia and the trump campaign. you were talking about nixon earlier. donald trump has called the supposed embed by the fbi for po

>> joining us now is nbc news presidential historian michael beschloss. mr. beschloss, thank you for being here. i'm so happy to have you here. >> me too. thanks, rachel. >> once again i'm sort of talking about something that i'm stuck on as something that seems particularly important to me that i'm not sure anybody else in the news business is stuck on, but i am struck by rod rosenstein making these two sort of rare public appearances this week, both of which he seems to be drawing a line in the sand, citing his heroes from justice departments past and saying i'm not going to do what they think i'm going to, do i'm going to draw the line here, i'm not going to be ex-tolerated. i wanted to ask you to comment on that tonight because i don't know if there's any sort of historical precedent we should be looking at when we see him doing this. >> well, he is drawing the line. the best precedent goes right back to archibald cox who in october of 1973 was asked by president nixon lay off, stop asking for my tapes. and if archibald cox had been a nixon lackey he woul

. - i want to ask you, if i had michael beschloss or bob caro here and they were talking about a presidentialbiography, they would talk about the research they did. we spent time at the library, and this, that and the other. you essentially approached the work on this book the same way that a presidential historian might have. you spent time at the roosevelt library. - i did. - this was your base of operations. not the only base, but it was a base. - oh, absolutely. once you have the 3000 letters and the 18 boxes you have a lot of material to look at. and then there were all those biographies. i mean, i was happy to have anybody tell me anything. on the page, or in person. and also, part of what began to emerge for me was that it really always the franklin narrative. - yeah, back to the point we were talking about earlier. - that this relationship was always, it was always sort of the eleanor and lorena relationship was like the tug boat following the steamship, and i just thought, well what if it was not the tug boat? what if it was for them the central event of their adult lives? - was ther

my friend michael beschloss likes to point out that it takes about 25 years before journalism gives way to history. and things loom large in realtime. there are a lot of stories that would have consumed a given era that when you look back on it you think, well, that wasn't that important but this was. >> i want to talk about your new book, "the sole of america, the battle for our better angels." you got the idea after the event in charlotteville. tell me about that. >> as you remember on august 12th last year, neonazis were marching and a young counterprotester kill, two virginia state troopers died as a result of the operation and we had a president of the united states who found it very difficult to come out and say which side there was blame on. i think if you have an issue where the klan and neonazis are on one side and people are on the other, that's a pretty clear call. it's not to say relax it's all going to be fine, it's to say let's learn what happened before, how did we survive the 1920s when the ku klux klan had 5 members perhaps. let's learn those lessons so we can arm ourse