now, politico chief investigative reporter ken vogel and "washington post" political reporter, phil ruckeri know you get that question on twitter all the time, ask donald trump to see his taxes, repeatedly, repeatedly. obviously the white house is only going to do what donald trump says they can do. they're using the audit excuse. how much longer will they be using this excuse, especially since they won't verify that he is actually under audit? >> well, i think they're going to use whatever excuse they can come up with at the time to continue to punt this issue, to not release his tax returns. i don't think he's ever going to release his tax returns unless he somehow feels like it is in his personal interest to do so. that could be a greater intensity of the political pressure. it could come up, frankly, in the tax reform debate. we're starting to hear democrats say we're not going to have this conversation about tax reform until we know what the president's tax returns look like and we can determine whetr the president himself would personally benefit from some of the changes that he's ad

for more on this discussion, let's bring in phil rucker of "the washington post," and jen palmeri. phil, let's talk about this palace intrigue. we're hearing lately a couple names we haven't heard in c conflict with each other, and at was jed kushner and steve bannon. i was talking to a coue sources a few days ago. they said that steve bannon is "in a very bad place right now," that he's being told to lay low. now we're get thing news reporting out there that breitbart has been told to stand down on writing any bad stories about jared kushner. what does this all mean, phil? >> well, it's a continuing feature of this white house, the palace intrigue contention. we know that jared kushner, the president's son-in-law, he survived so many different regimes in this white house. i don't think jared is going anywhere. the problem for steve bannon is he's gone cross wired with the president's son-in-law and the man who is the most powerful figure in the white house. it's not even about personalities, it's about their fundamental, idealogical positions. they just can't agree. bannon thinks k

joining me is phil rucker. the white house bureau chief and jeff mason with reuters. jeff mason.cene. in the oval office. what was the atmosphere? what did you perceive in the president's demeanor? >> it was a relaxed atmosphere. it was conducted by myself and my colleagues. we walked in the oval office. a couple of friends of his seated in front of the desk. he invited us to visit with them for a while. w sat down and visited with them for 10 or 15 or 20 minutes. they departed. we started the interview. he was confident. he was relaxed and he was straight forward. we had a couple of other people come in during the interview. vice president pence walked in. chief of staff reince priebus walked in. it was a casual element about it. >> jeff, beyond the atmosphere, what surprised you? what was the headline to you? >> there were a few headlines. the biggest news that came out of it were the comments on north korea and saying a possibility of a conflict with north korea. also him signaling the united states would be tearing up or terminating the free trade agreement with south korea a

phil rucker, "washington post."ur time. >> bye, katy. >>> let's check the microsoft polls question. we've been asking, should the u.s. launch a preemptive strike against north korea? 90% of you say no, do not do it. there's still time to cast your votes at pulse.msnbc.com. >>> after the break we'll take you live to little rock where they are doing all they can to conduct death row executions. that with david echols, next. had helped the pig with homeowners insurance. he had replacement cost coverage, so his house was rebuilt, good as new. the big bad wolf now has a job on a wind farm. call geico and see how easy it is to switch and save on homeowners insurance. are you one sneeze away from being voted out of the carpool? try zyrtec® it's starts working hard at hour one and works twice as hard when you take it again the next day. stick with zyrtec® and muddle no more®. adult 7+ promotes alertness and mental sharpness in dogs 7 and older. (ray) the difference has been incredible. she is much more aware. she wants to l

i want to bring in colonel jack jacobs back in, msnbc contributor steve clemens and phil rucker back into the conversation. before i get to the conversation before the press conference started is blowing up my media field because there is an obligation we all sort of normalized president trump's behavior because he's realized these things are more complicated and don't have to change. i'm also going to talk to courtney because we're getting more information about this gb-3 bomb dropped in afghanistan versus the bigger bomb called the gb-37. do you know anything about this bigger bomb that hasn't actually been used? >> this is the largest non-nuclear bomb that has been used on the battlefield by the u.s. that the military is aware of, anyway, that they're telling us about. it's significant. it's 21,000 pounds. now that we have a little bit more time, i've been able to talk to a couple more military officials about why this mission was chosen. this is a large complex. it was a complex of isis fighters and it had an extensive tunnelwork system underneath it. so they dropped a bomb of th

. >> so, to be clear, the interview was actually conducted by my colleague, phil rucker, our bureau chief, and he was in the oval office with the president. i know jared kushner, the president's son-in-law was there. i believe reince priebus, the chief of staff was there for a bit, and i think he mooy have seen a few other people milling about on his way in and way out. but i will say, it's not sort of dozen people who sometimes sit in on these interviews. >> in all of these interviews, in the final hours before he hits the 100-day mark. do you get a sense that this is part of, i don't know, a white house strategy to have him be part of all these interviews, or do you get a sense it was more the president just wanted to talk? >> so, i think it's two-fold. this story, actually, this was a story we were trying to do reconstructing how he sort of shifted on nafta and changed his tune on taxes, and we heard very late in the day that the president was interested in kind of walking us through his thinking, and i think this with us particularly, with the "post," he just wanted to kind of chat. b

we begin with politics with phil rucker, david frum and julie hirschfeld. >> there has been a lot of discussion about whether this is an accident or actually by design that they haven't actually filled a lot of these really vital u7bd second tier positions under the cabinet level that are needed to make government go i honestly think it's a combination of both but i think it's more just a chronically late start and lack of planning. and a real sort of distaste for the kind of process oriented thinking that you have to do in order to figure out okay, who are the people we need in place. who is the eight-team for this particular position or function and how do we get things going. and i don't think you can recover from that. >> rose: we conclude with the actress carrie coon of the leftovers and fargo. >> for any young actor you are never going to learn to act in the classroom. i think scru to be on the stage. i think the stage is a wonderful training ground for tv and film. because you learn how to repeat a performance. and i think a lot of times young actors think of tv and film as th