here to discuss, ryan lizza, matt lewis and alice stewart. happy friday. >> happy friday. >> happy holiday friday. what is it? good friday. hope is gone. hope hicks, that is. sources tell cnn -- >> not hope in general? >> well, depends on who you ask. the white house may not fill her job. aides are worried the president will unravel without her. what are you hearing, ryan? >> i think the big picture of all of the recent changes, hope hicks leaving, john kelly being sort of neutered, emasculated, larry cudlow moving into the economic adviser job and bolton, the pundits coming on is what you are seeing is the end of the era where they tried to have a white house -- a traditional white house with a strong chief of staff and the beginning of a new era where trump is a little

april ryan, ryan lizza, philip mudd, and rick wilson. d ryan, your names sort of morphed on the teleprompter. it was weird. so, listen, rick, quickly because i want to get onto guccifer. phil, you said rick was wrong about this? his last comment. >> yeah, just one quick moment. we're assuming the president of the united states. >> he says i got -- >> the end game for something like this is probably impeachment and that's an inherently political theater, so it makes no sense. >> now to guccifer because on the same day trump's lead attorney is out, daily beast is reporting that mueller's team has identified guccifer 20.0, a hacker that took credit for stealing e-mails from the dnc. remember it was trump's friend roger stone who admitted to be in touch with guccifer. so if this is true, isn't it a link to the trump folks and kremlin? i'll ask you that. rick, what do you think? >> look, it has long been suspected that guccifer was not some citizen journalist that julian assange asserted but in fact part of the apt group that's done all this h

back with me now april ryan, ryan lizza, philip mudd and rick wilson. d ryan, your names sort of morphed on the teleprompter. it was weird. so listen. rick, quickly, because i want to get on to guccifer. no, phil you said rick was wrong about this? >> one quick moment. we're assuming the president of the united states potentially goes into an interview with mueller and takes the interview seriously. let me give you another scenario. he walks in for an hour, walks out. says that's all a witch-hunt. they're all trying to come after my family. i told you from day one it was a witch-hunt so i walked out because it was a game. we should not assume that the president would take an interview with mueller seriously. he may just walk out. >> and then he gets the tv lawyers as described, sekulow. >> correct. >> the other guy that he just hired who is always spinning the conspiracy theories to spin that to his base to try to explain it. >> that's right. and if there is an indictment of his son or son-in-law, he says i got to pardon them because as i just told you w

joshua green, april ryan and ryan lizza. because chris read ahead in the notebook, i'm going to give this to ryan. as we're dissecting all the news about hope hicks and really everything that's come out in "the washington post" reporting that mueller is examining trump's apparent efforts to oust sessions in july, and whether this is a pattern of obstruction of justice. what do you make of it? >> i think it's entirely predictable. as predictable as the earlier story this week that foreigners were trying to gain an advantage over kushner by figuring out what kind of -- what his weaknesses are with respect to his financial dealings. just as that is entirely predictable, it is predictable that given his financial endanglements and given the nature of his job, he was inevitably going to meet with officials who then had some business relationship, right? so sometimes these things are totally innocent. maybe he met with this guy from citigroup and then the company got the loan as "the post" is reporting and one had nothing to do wit

joining me now, ryan lizza, phil mudd, and gloria borger. phil, i heard you earlier describing what you would do with this or what value you think this piece of paper had. explain what you think of the republican closing the committee essentially. >> look it, we have a responsibility when we look to our congress whether they're democrats or republicans. they're looking at the same issue that mueller is looking at, looking in the past and saying whether someone did something wrong. how many times in the past two hours since this story broke, anderson, have we heard conversations about the primary responsibility of the congressman you just spoke with in the last ten minutes? that responsibility, i can capture in one sentence. what are you doing to ensure that we're safe in the next election? they're legislating the exact same thing that robert mueller is doing with one significant difference. they acknowledge, including the republican congressman you just spoke with, that they can't speak to some witnesses. you mean to tell me an investigation

ryan lizza, kirsten powers, rob astorino, alice stewart and frank bruni. frank, you wrote about this, about president trump's silence. you said it was, quote, a glaring and fascinating omission. what do you think is behind it? >> you know, i think we've also assumed the people he's tweeting the most about are the one who's are rattling him the most. i think it may be the case when he's not saying anything about someone, that's when he's really rattled. i think there are many possible explanations but one of the ones i wonder about is when you have someone like stormy daniels coming out. she's striking -- what she could or couldn't say is striking one of the pillars of the president's vanity. he has spent many years of building the persona of the irresistible lady's man. he used to brag about it on howard stern. we had a debate where he assured us everything below the belt was just fine. he knows that someone like stormy daniels is going to talk about various facets of their actual encounter. she found it pathetic she was pointing to himself on a magazine c

here with me now, cnn political analyst ryan lizza and julie and michael zelden. there was a lot there. julian, you first. this was quintessential back on the campaign trail. at the same time there was a lot of entertainment. is this the president's reset exclamation point moment? >> it's not a reset, it's counter to what he did in the 2016 election, and it's more a set-up for the midterms for his 2015. the comedy is doing well. i'm about to have a big breakthrough with north korea. . that was the message we heard, we're going to mix that up in a. something that he's proposing in the future. let's talk, michael, about the whole penalty for drug dealers. we also remember hearing prr, people who were dealers, but is this really peshl remember. >> you would need legislation, and i don't think this is going to pay us. having been narcotics manager in the justice department and watching the draconian three strikes you're out types of penalties that go in, they did nothing to stem the flow of drugs in the united states. really, we have to focus on our, why is there such

let's get to cnn's political dal analyst ryan lizza, april ryan and former congressman david jolly. good evening to all of you glad to have you on. ryan, you first. we have all the chaos coming out of this trump white house, and then we have a red district turning blue last night and the president doesn't seem to think it has anything to do with him. >> well, what you said in your intro is right, don. these midterm elections and reelection campaigns are always referenda on the incumbent president and so this entire year, and we are in an election year, is going to be about one person, and that's donald trump. and look, the election in pennsylvania, there were a lot of local issues that this democratic candidate campaigned on because it was -- it is a more conservative district. but at the end of the day, trump is what is driving these sort of historic special election turnout for democrats. he's driving some republicans in the suburbs away from the republican party, and he's driving obviously increased turnout on the democratic side. and he's also driving a lot of republicans out of

ryan lizza and david sanger, guys, good to have you with us, thanks for joining us on a holiday weekendan, what's your reaction to this new report? >> well, it's not totally surprising. this white house has had, first of all, a tremendous amount of turnover, almost depending on how you define senior positions, almost half of the senior positions in this administration have turned over since the start of the administration. that is remarkable, and well above any recent presidency. and we know from the security clearance problem that they've had, the backlog, that clearly there was some chaos going on with getting people vetted, getting people through the system. so it doesn't shock me and it's just another sign of some serious dysfunction in this white house, you know, at a time when there are a lot of big issues on the president's plate. >> no doubt about it. david, there are several reports that incoming national security adviser john bolton plans to clean house at the national security council, starting withhowith holdovers from the obama administration. we know bolton has a reputatio

. >> let's bring in ryan lizza and dana bash.dana, i know you are doing a lot of reporting, we all are. what are you hearing about more imminent changes? >> we've learned enough about the way this president operates to know that what he says to people he calls on the phone early in the morning and late at night about asking about this person or that cabinet choice or how about if i switch this out which he does a lot and still does is my understanding doesn't 100% portend changes. having said that it's clear from the way he has that he's got that m.o. going on and that he might do something similar soon. at the end of the day, the unfortunate thing is when it comes to people working in the west wing, it's stressful. it's stressful no matter who you're working for but it's stressful if you're waiting to see if the tweet that comes out of the president's thread next will be about you. >> i've spoken to officials in the administration how awkward it was that rex tillerson whether he was a good secretary of state, bad secretary of st

with us to discuss the impact of today's marches now, cnn political analyst ryan lizza.nd with abc radio, ann compton. i saw a sign earlier that said this is not a moment. this is a movement. what makes this a movement? what could make this become the next civil rights movement or the anti-vietnam war movement? >> what makes it so different from the others is in the old days, civil rights, when i was the same age looking at those kids out there today, when i was their age, the civil rights act was signed. 100 years after the civil war. when you look at issues, public polling on same-sex marriage or the me too movement, things now happen much, much faster. and i think what the young people today are finding is that in the digital world of communication today, their message, they have a message. they can speak out, and it has much quicker resonance. >> it's impressive how articulate they are at that young age. i think, gosh, i wish i were that articulate then. a lot of these students we have been hearing from, the signs we have been reading, can have called for taking it t

. >> joining me now, cnn political analyst, ryan lizza, and sabrina siddiqui, politics reporter for "guardian." sabrina, ryan, thanks for coming on. first to you, this tweet to the president today, saying that his lawyers have shown conclusively that there is no conclusillusio russia. that's simply not true. there have been no conclusions on this matter. where is that coming from? >> since the very beginning, the president has dismissed this investigation as a witch hunt. he sees it as delegitimizing his victory in the election. but he has also refused to even acknowledge russian interference in the election. and he has dismissed the fact -- >> he's slightly acknowledged it. >> he's tip "todatoed around it back and forth, one day it happened, one day it didn't. but there have now been at least four officials indicted. and you have sam nunberg, his longtime mentor is roger stone, who had contact with julian assange, cofounder of wikileaks. that is where the hacked e-mails from the clinton campaign and the dnc have appeared. so what you have is this pattern of contacts between officials

and cnn political analyst april ryan and ryan lizza. >> it's interesting when he talks about her being the trump whisperer. i remember inauguration night was the first time i ever met her, and heard her name besides reading it on a statement from the white house. she was not very visible. you don't know hope hicks? no, i don't know hope hicks. but you're not buying her resignation, are you? >> to go from anthony scaramucci to hope hicks, literally the biggest contrast in profile you could ever have. no, jeff touched on this, she said she told maggie haber man -- or aids told maggie that she left because this was the perfect time to leave. it's the opposite of the perfect time to leave. you just went through the number of stories, don. that's just today. and really, that's just this afternoon. >> yeah. >> because yesterday, a sill lar open to the show, there was so much news, four or five stories, either of which could have been the big story or the only other story. >> and would have been in any other administration. >> her leaving now, a day after the testimony in the house intelligen

both ryan lizza and patrick e healy, thank you for joining us. >>> and also, some ethics questions involving the president's family and scrutiny over ivanka trump and jared kushner's finances. and nbc is reporting that robert mueller's team is looking into whether or not any of kushner's former ties may have influenced white house policy, and this is as the white house is reporting that kushner's family business received more than half a billion of loans from two companies after meetings at the white house. to join us with more of in is democrat steve cohen from tennessee and congressman, thank you for spending part of the weekend with us. we have a lot the talk about. and first, blurred lines right now between the family business deals and the white house? >> i think that there are no lines, and not blurred lines. it is a family business of the trumps, and the family business of the kushner's, and they always violate traditional conflict of interests. they don't think anything about thoughts like see czar's wife should be beyond raproach and it is for the best of people who want to say anyt

. >> i want to bring in ryan lizza and sahill kapoor. so the president saying, we don't have the right people in there yet. how did you interpret those comments? >> well, trump has still not taken on leader of the republican party in the same way that previous republican presidents have. and he is willing at any time to go after the leaders up on the hill, whether it's paul ryan or mitch mcconnell, when he feels it's necessary, or the leaders of these committees that he apparently thinks are unfairly investigating his administration over the russia probe. the interesting thing is, republican voters don't seem to have much of a problem with that. trump has 80 to 85% approval among republican voters. so the party is very much in his control in a lot of ways, at least at the grassroots and voting level. but he's, he's not a normal party standard-bearer in that sense, that he still sees hu hums -- himself as a bit outside of the system and willing to take shots at his own people if they don't step in line. and it goes both ways -- >> and he

ryan lizza. john dean, the former white house nixon counsel. i'm going to start with john. good evening to all of you. cnn is learning about these four main focuses, the focus area that mueller is interested in talking to the president about. with particular interest in the president's actions related to comey and the flynn firings. what type of case does this sound like to new is it an obstruction of justice case given what you know? >> well, there certainly are some questions there that would directly relate to an obstruction case. but, don, i don't think we really know what he's going to ask, and he's not going to be bound by any agreement as to what he'll ask. he's going to go where he thinks he needs to go. he's going to go within the four corners of the general charge he's got from the deputy attorney general as to what he's to investigate. and he's not going to be restrained. so i don't think we can really figure out what's going to happen in that session. >> and the backdrop of the new details we're learning about today is the president's twitter tirade against muel

ryan lizza, what do you think, larry kudlow replacing gary cohn?first thing i think people will point out is that he disagrees with the president, obviously, on the issue of some of the protectionist measures, whether they're tariffs or other -- or free trade agreements that trump seems to support. the thing that i'm -- that i think trump hasn't realized about this position is that the national economic council director is a kind of boring facilitating job. you're the person in the white house who gets the views of all the other economic advisers and agencies and you're sort of an honest broker and then you sort of -- you help present those ideas to the president, who makes a final decision. from what i know about larry kudlow, those are not his core strengths and experiences. he's mostly been a sort of doctrinaire, conservative on taxes. frankly i think trump picked him because he is extremely lavish and has been in his praise for trump over the last few years and has been on tv a lot. >> we just heard congressman joaquin castro saying despite the

back with me ryan lizza, kiersten powers and matt lewis. i want to play this moment.is from the president a year ago. watch this. >> i turn on the tv, open the newspapers and i see stories of chaos, chaos. yet it is the exact opposite. this administration is running like a fine-tuned machine. >> okay. so, that's a fine tuned machine, but then that was, you know, a month into his presidency and he was disputing reports of chaos then. this is a year later. and i just want to say that, you snow, hearing the president wanted to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum, maggie haberman is confirming the previous chief economic cohen warned the chief of staff john f. kelly he might resign if the president went ahead with the plan according to people briefed on the discussion. a former goldman sachs president had lobbied fiercely against the measures. what do you say to that, kiersten powers? >> i mean, wasn't this one of the main things that the president -- that donald trump ran on to become president, was his anti-trade position? it's a little strange to me someone will come

i want to bring in cnn senior white house political correspondent pamela browning, ryan lizza and phillip mudd, good evening. thank you all for joining us. white house physician ronnie jackson is in as the veterans affairs secretary. it's the latest shake-up, just the latest one, what's the inside scoop, how did this all come about? >> this was a long time coming, at the same time, it's a pretty remarkable reversal of fortunes for david shulkin who had been praised by the president. he had joked at one time he would never hear the phrase you're fired. clearly that has changed as of today with the chief of staff john kelly calling him and telling him, that he was indeed fired. i'm told by a senior white house official that this started even before shulkin went on that trip overseas that landed him in hot water by the ig. he had been warned by several administration officials not to go on that trip, that it could inappropriate, seen as inappropriate for the v.a. secretary to go given the optics around it, at a time when other cabinet members were in hot water for potential abuse of taxpayer

15 hours after i sat with them -- >> i want to bring in the panel, jeffrey toobin, anne milgram, ryan lizza and gloria borger. jeff, there's so much to talk about on this. how much legal trouble is sam nunberg in tonight? >> well, can i just say one thing first, that, you know, his latest stop on his media tour was with our colleague erin burnett, and she said she smelled alcohol on his breath. and, you know, that is something -- and he denied he'd been drinking. but given his behavior, i think that is certainly a possibility and, you know, just i think people should keep that in mind. the legalities here are -- >> i mean certainly he seemed -- i don't know if erratic is the right word, but i mean -- >> erratic sounds like the right word to me. >> not thinking clearly necessarily. >> to say the least, yes. and just to answer your question about the legal situation, i mean it's really very straightforward. a grand jury subpoena is not an invitation to a birthday party. it is a legally binding obligation on the part of the recipient. and unless you have some sort of privilege like you take th

want to bring in our panel, gloria borger, ryan lizza, michael caputo, asha rangappa. gloria, does it seem to you that we're entering sort of a new phase, particularly with the president's tweets, the new lawyer? >> oh, it does. this is the donald trump phase of the donald trump defense. this is being run by the president. he's the one who wanted joe dedigenova. i think this was not welcomed warmly by john dowd, who is leading the interactions with -- >> the president said last week it was fake news the idea he was going to bring on another lawyer. >> i think this affects the president's feeling that the strategy, which was the dowd strategy and the ty cobb strategy, which was kind of, mr. president, hold on here. mind your matters. don't tweet about mueller. this is going to be over. just hold on. and suddenly the president looks at the subpoena for the trump organization. he looks at these questions that pamela and i are reporting, and he says, whoa. you guys are wrong, and i need to start pushing back and discrediting mueller right now. >> michael, if the president'