let's bring in phil rucker of the "washington post." phil, i want to read a moment from an article you wrote for today. it says trump is in some ways like a pilot opting to fly a plane through heavy turbulence, then blaming the flight attendants when the passengers get jittery. you're talking about what happened last week when it comes to james comey and how it wasn't necessarily that the white house got enough of a heads up in order to spin this information to their advantage. after all, donald trump came out and told lester holt something completely different than his aides and that the vice president was telling folks on capitol hill that donald trump was the one who made the decision to fire comey on his own. so what is the result of this? what's it like inside the white house right now? >> reporter: well, there is a sense of trepidation and unease. you've got a president who is angry. he's been fuming for days. he student aboewed about this l. he feels like these negative headlines that have dominated the news about the comey fallou

phil rucker, you've probably missed two or three stories just in the time you've spent with us in our conversation. good luck to you. great job over the past 24 to 48 hours slash last several months. >> i appreciate it. >> okay. nicolle wallace, eli stokols obviously here with us in the studio. coming up after our first break, the president himself exposes his own communications team and his own v.p., who now have been caught telling a false version of events. we'll talk about it further when "the 11th hour" continues. finding time to get things done isn't easy. but we've got the digital tools to help. now with xfinity's my account, you can figure things out easily, so you won't even have to call us. change your wifi password to something you can actually remember, instantly. add that premium channel, and watch the show everyone's talking about, tonight. and the bill you need to pay? do it in seconds. because we should fit into your life, not the other way around. go to xfinity.com/myaccount >>> welcome back to "the 11th hour." we mentioned earlier the differing messages coming from t

joining me margaret talev of bloomberg news and phil rucker of "the washington post." >> the context in which we're looking at this comes just after director comey's most recent testimony before congress and several weeks after he did confirm publicly that there are active criminal investigations into possible collusion between trump associates from during the campaign time and the russians. >> rose: and we continue this evening with the chief technology officer of facebook mike schroepfer. >> a.i. is underpinning all these things and a.i. is being advanced because our computers are becoming faster and we're training on larger data sets. the science is advancing to quite a fastics tent, so we need smart computer scientists to build better algorithms. >> rose: and we conclude with sally bedell smith who's written a biography of prince charles. >> to me, he is such a fascinating combination of modern and traditional, and people in england find him confounding. they can't put him in a box. he is -- i think there's a good way of putting it. he's a prophet without honor in his own land. >

. >> our friend phil rucker at the washington post wrote the pulling the about mueller last night. stay with me here. he says mueller is just the kind of guy who gets under trump's skin. straight arrow, apolitical, studious, prudent, patricean. let's see how this goes in reading that, i realize because there are so many similarities between mueller and comey and hearing from intimates that the president is puzzled by the kind of personality and intellect that really would take notes like that and put memoranda in the file to memorialize a dinner conversation, this is confounding to the president? >> it's completely opposed to how the president handles his own business. you have a meticulous fbi director who takes notes on everything. i think that is sort of standard within the bureau. everything is written down. here you have a president in the oval office who just kind of wing it and who picks up the phone, calls people, who has this amazing sort of myopia and lack of foresight here. and so you see it in him picking up the phone and calling comey and on the with aing to just chitc

charlie: joining me from washington is margaret talev of bloomberg news and phil rucker of "the washingtonost." i am pleased to have them join me for this remarkable story. margaret, tell me what you know, where is this going, and what is the context we look at this? margaret: the context in which we're looking at this comes after director comey's most recent spate of testimony before congress and several weeks after he did confirm publicly that there are active investigations for collusion between trump associates and the russians. this was a big deal not only has he said more in that public venue then folks expected him to, it was widely believed that after he put that on the record, president trump would not be able to make director comey go away until the conclusion of that investigation if he were so inclined. it comes maybe a little more than two weeks after the senate did confirm rod rosenstein, the deputy intern -- attorney general who ended up writing the letter explicating why he believed director comey should be forced to leave his position. charlie: let me read the letters that

. >> phil rucker from the post, washington post. >> hey, governor, good to see you. >> thank you. >> as you may have heard, we're nearing the 10046 day mark -- 100-day mark for president trump, which is tomorrow. [laughter] a two-part question. first, if you could just give a grade, how you think he's done -- >> incomplete. >> okay. and the second question is a little more complex. it's about north korea. >> yeah. >> and i'm wondering how comfortable you are with the leadership you've seen from president trump and with what you know about him having run against him about his decision making process -- >> i have no idea how he makes decisions. >> well, but are you concerned given the threat in north korea? >> yeah, okay. >> just describe your state of mind as it relates to what's happening in the peninsula and what you see the administration starting to do. >> right. first of all, on the first 100 days, i did go to the oval office and had a very delightful visit with president trump. and in the course of describing including my trip to moon you can with john mccain -- munich with john

white house bureau chief phil rucker who reports tonight, inside the oval office with trump and the russians: broad smiles and loose lips. a special headline award for that one. pulitzer prize winning columnist eugene robinson. and ashley parker we have asked to stay late for extra credit and gene us for this segment as well. phil, a two-part question for you. what about the post reporting has been denied by the national security advisor, one? and second, add some of the atmospherics to the oval office that's part of your reporting tonight. >> yeah, to take the first piece, the reporting you're talking about is the big story from about 24 hours ago from my colleagues greg miller and craig jaffe. frankly none of the stories have been denied or contested by the white house. they're contesting president trump did nothing wrong in what he said in that meeting with the russians, but they're not contesting the facts of the story, the crux of the story which is that the president shared highly classified sensitive information that had been given to the u.s. by one of our partners with the russians

three white house correspondents, glenn thrush, shannon petty piece, phil rucker.ee heavy weights. the american people don't care about process. they care about who is leading the country and is he or she getting anything done? how come they're not going to get anything done on the hill this year, it looks like? trump is tweeting. it seems like a kid could do that on the corner somewhere. he's president of the united states. he seems to have no effective power except to be boorish. >> that's the problem for donald trump as president. his approval ratings are at a historic low. >> they're up a little this week. >> he has no major legislative achievement. he had what the house sees as a really good foreign trip. >> he turned nunes into a nothing, the chairman of the intelligence committee. he turns spicer into a patsy every day. he gives him nothing to say except, don't say anything. get out there and cover for me. then everybody else is to blame but him. >> it's distractions by his own making, by his tweets, by his statements, by contradicting himself, and the peopl

here's a story from "the washington post" by phil instructor -- phil rucker. remain is considering negative paris environmental quorgd. -- accord. how boxed in do you think the president is by what he said on the campaign trail and what are the stakes here as it relate to the climate deal? guest: i think the president never thinks he's boxed in. he's made a number of bold promise during the campaign and a number of those have done by the side. so i think the real issue is -- if he pullsks out of the paris accord, there's all kinds of diplomatic and political downsides to that and i think basically, it won't be decided on the basis of whether he believes climate change is good or bad. it will be decided on the politics. guest: i think there's a huge cost on the paris agreement. first of all, i happen to share the view that climate change is a real thing this is happening and that human activity is very substantially causing and it would be bad, to put it mildly. and not just bad for polar bears, extremely bad for us, bad for our national security, bad for the w