a book that got tim o'brien sued by donald trump. a lawsuit that tim o'brien won. tim o'brien was the first person to said the words allen weissleberg to me when he identified the chief financial officer of the trump organization as a key player in the investigation of the trump business. we heard michael cohen making repeated references today to allen weissleberg, who may now be called before that committee. and no one can take up inside the trump business -- no one can talk about the inside of the trump businesses better than tim o'brien. so we're very lucky to have him here tonight. and we have a first guest tonight who has played a very special role in the michael cohen story for me personally. you know, whenever i meet members of our audience out there in the world walking down the street or in the airport, you always ask me what's going to happen next, and i always tell you that i don't know because i don't know anything that i'm not telling you right here, and that has always been

tim o'brien, thank you for joining us.eiterate that amazon a few moments ago is reconsidering coming to new york, according to two people who spoke with the washington post. there has been a lot of backlash politicians looking at what was being offered to amazon and now amazon is reconsidering one of its choices for its new headquarters. the stock has been down all morning, now down 2.6%. this is bloomberg. ♪ vonnie: it is time for our global battle of the charts. you can see these charts on the bloomberg. it is a transatlantic battle today. in new york, jessica summers. jessica: take a look at the oil market. we can say that u.s. crude stockpiles as the key storage hub, pushing oklahoma to a ties level in more than a year. not a lot of demand for crude right now. they have been facing some unplanned outages. but in the bottom panel we can see the impact it is having on the market. wti prompt thread moving deeper into -- and showing weakness. and this spread will likely continue further to weaken if we see a buildup of inv

joining us is to move brian, executive editor of bloomberg opinion who wrote -- tim o'brien, executiveof bloomberg opinion, who wrote a biography of president trump before he became president. what is your unvarnished opinion of what happened the last 24 hours? tim: it is important to separate what jeff bezos is doing as an individual in the midst of his marriage breaking up and feeling like his privacy was invaded. that is one lens that it is important to look at this through. the second is as owner of ohshington post pure co--- owner of "washington post." i think a lot of attention stems from the "washington post" coverage of the trump presidency. i don't think for amazon institutional investors, anything signals a change at the top of amazon or a threat to how amazon is being managed. jeff the best corporate executives ever. i think what is really working -- what is worth looking at is invasion of privacy, or how easy it is for personal information, texts, and photographs to get stolen. he has launched an investigation of how ami, publisher of "the national enquirer," got its hands

capitol hill garret haake, peter baker, he's also an msnbc political analyst, bloomberg opinion, tim o'brien and our brett stephens. tim and brett are both msnbc contributors. garret, hopefully you are not frozen today. >> i am back. >> hopefully, we have unfrozen you. you have been on capitol hill, there is a lot of movement when it comes to committee hearings and loogiking into donald trump and not only the administration but he himself. tell me what's going on. he laid out nicely here. the house democrats feel like a backlog of two years of trump's policies and trump's personnel issues that were never seriously looked at under the republican control house, they're going to work their way back into it. you mentioned some of the big ticket items of the president's tax returns, it is going come up today. that's part of an effort to make a case for that publicly before you get down to the subpoena and nitty and gritty fight stage of it. and there are all these other issues of the handling of hurricane maria and irma. there is a host of issues that are backed up. nancy pelosi are careful march

here is tim o'brien in new york, and eli lake in washington.about what we think we know, or start with what we do know, what president trump said about the report. this is what he said. that will be totally up to the new attorney general. a personremendous man, who respects this country and respects the justice department, so that will be totally up to him. david: the question was, will it be released when you are out of the country? at least we have a president now who believes in his attorney general, which we have not had for some time. eli: that is right. we still have to see exactly what will be released. the one thing i would say is any expectation from the white house that there would be a report, that would somehow shield any embarrassing details of people in trump world not getting out to the public, i think, is very much misplaced. we have seen that at critical times, even the robert mueller has kept a tight ship, information like this does get out and there are too many people who have an interest in it getting out, so my hope is we

joining the conversation, tim o'brien, "bloomberg" opinion executive editor.schmidt, take us through the spicer reporting. how -- how did the counsel's office sort of co-exist or learn to live with the inaccurate account given by spicer that day and how did that inaccurate account from the podium come to be? >> so the important thing to understand here is that it's february 14th of 2017, and the white house for the first time is confronting russia in a very public way. they're having to explain why mike flynn has been -- has resigned and has -- and why it took the white house so long to deal with this issue about his contacts with the russian ambassador. spicer getting up there painting a far better picture of how the white house handled it. the white house counsel's office going back to spicer telling him about this and sort of in typical trump white house fashion never coming back and correcting the repocord about i. they were concerned that it was one thing to provide misleading statements about crowd sizes. it was another thing to say the things that were

joining me now is msnbc contributor tim o'brien.raphical book about trump in 2005 and sued by the president over that, but with a welcome back to the broadcast. what did you make of the president's rose garden speech? >> i think it was classic trump. i don't think anybody should be surprised that he is trying to find paths around congressional legislation and trying to spin this as a victory because ultimately, i don't think his goal is to apiece his base. i think his goal is to apiece himself. at his core, he's a performance artist. i think the last thing he wants and the last thing he can tolerate is the notion that he lost, that he lost on the border negotiations, that he can't get the money he wants to fulfill a campaign pledge, and that he got emasculated by two women, nancy pelosi to his left and ann coulter to his right. >> i want to get to an op-ed written by "the washington post" dana milbank in which he characterized the speech as bizarre and writing, when president barack obama attempt aid less aggressive use of executive

know, i think during the campaign, it was $10 billion or $12 billion he was worth, but when he and tim o'brienroving that he even possessed $1 billion in wealth. >> interesting. so, andrea, when he hosted "the apprentice," he was able to present himself, right, as a businessman, consummate businessman, who has it all together. do you think that, you know, was thatting a ing ting accurate happening behind the scenes at the trump organization? >> well, from what we know now just from the reporting that we've done, that others have done, there were a lot of problems. there was, i mean, for example, look at the michael cohen guilty plea. well, that involved the trump organization participating in making elicit payments, or there's an investigation of the trump foundation, whether there was appropriate walls between the campaign, the foundation, and the trump organization. so from what we have learned already, there are -- there's been a tremendous amount of problematic behavior. so we don't know why the president is so upset. we don't know what there is left to find. it's unknowable until we actua

we will talk with one of the reporters and tim o'brien who knows more about anybody of the trump organizationnd what the prosecutors find with the investigation with one michael cohen to guide. >> thank you, david gura. >>> he is a $6 billion man and friend of the president caught in a prostitution ring. why new england patriots owner robert kraft could be in big trouble with the nfl. be in big trouble wi here we go! . i like your card, but i'm absolutely not paying an annual fee. discover has no annual fees. really? yeah. we just don't believe in them. oh nice. you would not believe how long i've been rehearsing that. no annual fee on any card. only from discover. if your adventure keeps turning into unexpected bathroom trips you may have overactive bladder, or oab. ohhhh... enough already! we need to see a doctor. ask your doctor about myrbetriq® (mirabegron). it treats oab symptoms of urgency, frequency, and leakage. it's the first and only oab treatment in its class. myrbetriq may increase blood pressure. tell your doctor right away if you have trouble emptying your bladder or have a weak

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jonathan lemire, nbc news senior nerl expandant keers simmons make his triumph frapt return, and tim o'brien, bloomberg opinion executive editor. kieran, let me start with you. we're happy to have you back. you've covered this story from foreign capitals, most importantly moscow. the idea that the new chairman of the house intel committee is now going to begin anew all of this work that could have commenced two years ago if republicans had been interested in our national security, he's now today announcing he's going to start to investigate whether or not donald trump may be compromised. it's stunning. >> it's absolutely stunning. and hiding in plain sight if you want to find the motivation around the world for many of the things happening, it's two words, make money. he's a president who telegraphed around the world, i'm the guy you can do deals with. i'm the art of the deal. ol goings and property magnets around the world read that as bring your money and we can do deals. if you're russian, we can do deals to try to get rid of these sanctions possibly. if you're ukrainian, we can do deals

and tim o'brien, there are some who have said donald trump's biggest problem is the one here in manhattane one who already has michael cohen's conviction and donald trump named as a conspirator in a nut case. >> they're actually just playing bingo and it's robert mueller playing three-dimensional chess. at some point in times past, he decided to hand off the investigation to the southern district of new york. this is when he was under a lot of pressure in washington to define the limits of his investigation, to make sure it was just a collusion investigation, or an obstruction investigation, when the whole thing could become a high crimes investigation. he has crimes that he's given to other jurisdictions that are outside the president's reach. that not only includes the southern district of new york, it's also the new york state attorney general's office. all of those things, as maggie pointed out in her tweet, will possibly haunt trump much longer than his presidency. developments of all that may mean in sort of an unthinking embrace of the presidency and the white house, he put his ent

tim o'brien, executive editor of bloomberg opinion, as well as a trump biographer, and an op-ed columnist for "new york times," noah wily, senior vice president for social justice. and i will go to you first, the president is calling this presidential harassment. chuck schumer, no surprise, saying the president is scared. what are your sources telling you about how they're feeling inside the west wing? >> this is really president trump's worst nightmare. the day after the midterm election he started down this path that said if democrats investigate me, i will find it very hard to work with them. and we might not be able to get anything done in government if i'm under investigation. in reality, that is obviously the job of congress, to look into presidents, and that's their purview and the president is having to deal with the reality of that. i think inside the white house, they're trying to figure out how to deal with this. obviously, a speech writer, or the president themselves, put in that line in the state of the union because they wanted to make sure that it was very clear that the pr

ari melber, msnbc's leaf lee correspondent and host of the beat" tim o'brien and eddie glau a professor at princeton university. barbara, cohen says he has evidence that the president committed a crime. if he did,ings, if donald trump jr. did, wouldn't charges have been brought against donald trump jr. at this point be? to pete's point, pete said anything you're going to hear today prosecutors already know. >> not necessarily. it could be that be prosecutors have this information but are continuing to build a case. just because you have probable cause is a sufficient to file a case. the department of justice requires that you not bring a case unless you have sufficient evidence to sustain a conviction. that means by having proof beyond a reasonable doubt. there's a whole spectrum of possible evidence that you can gather. it could also be they're looking into additional crimes. you may not charge one till you have the complete picture of all the crimes someone is responsible for. i don't think that it means that there is no crime just because they haven't charged one yet. >> matt, what's

tim o'brien from writing the book, how observant, how he wrote down things that like -- that's real hard for other people to understand. i think he did a real good job of breaking down certain concepts and that the way he did it, writing this book, can help other people understand even the stuff that we go through on a certain level, just being in this abnormal situation, and so i think that with that said, a lot of clarity comes from being in this situation, and i think that's one of the good things or one of the pros, you know what i'm saying, that comes with being in this situation, like good can come from it, and i know at least for me, a lot of clarity came from being able to sit. i spent my fair share time in the hole, and like it is torturous before you get used to it, but afterwards you kind of -- you find a certain peace, a certain clarity of mind and you're able to express yourself that much better. you're able to articulate yourself that much better. you're able to know yourself that much better. so that's what i took from it, just the clarity that comes from traumatic situati

. >> tim o'brien, that's amplified by the fact that the president of the united states is now usurpinged authority. if he's exercising that kind of authority outside of the constitutional framework and perhaps outside the interests of the united states, one wonders why you have people like lindsey graham running point as if he worked for the trump organization. richard burr, the gentleman supposedly leading the investigation of him was on the campaign. there was a transparent attempt to help donald trump -- all of the transition. they were all with him during the campaign. we haven't even gotten into the other compromises by russians into things like the nra which were all on board for republicans. i wonder if we are thinking too small about this potential scandal. >> we are. >> it's clear that trumpism has bled downward from the oval office into his staff in the west wing and into a large portion of the gop. i think one of the lessons when people look back at this historically will be that the gop lost its political courage. it didn't really step up either as traditional conservatives

tim o'brien. er and executive producer, co-host and creator of showtime's "the circus."go back to what the president said. and a long state of the union address. draw the bridge here between that and what we saw this week. what was that hearing yesterday with the acting attorney general. >> i think any time that donald trump specifically targets individuals it's usually because he's worried about something, it's not because he's coming from a position of strength, he's attacking adam schiff by name, he's worried about adam schiff. when he uses a term like presidential harassment that everybody else would call the rule of law or justice or checks and balances or whatever you want to call it, it's because he's worried and he has reason to be worried. that's why it came up in the state of the union. i think the own lie other president that has brought up an investigation of himself during his state of the union speech was richard nixon speak being about watergate. he's aware that this vice is tightening around him. it's happening in the congress, happening in the southern d

roger: deirdre o'brien is one of the most trusted executives of tim cook.he has been with apple for two decades. prior to becoming v.p. of people, she was one of the top operations and sales executives at apple. she was the one helping churn out products at this rapid pace, getting them into distribution hubs, stores. she is really the impediment of what apple has pretty much done better than any other company. getting its products physically into the hands of consumers. it makes sense for her to go back into that operational role in terms of being a retail head. however, her position is a departure from what apple has tried before with retail chief and that is all three of the previous retail heads coming from a real till company before it. ron johnson was at target, ceo of jcpenney. angela ahrendts from burberry. john browett was at one of the -- best buy in the united kingdom and working retail in europe right now for a woman's clothing company. this is something new for apple, putting an operations person, people person in charge of retail. it is a new

announcing that angela ahrendts will depart in april deirdre o'brien will step in here take on an expanded role of retail and people and reporting to ceo timendts saying five years have been challenging and stimulating and fulfilling of my career, a big job, guys. apple with more than 500 stores around the world online stores and retail employees. but again planning to depart apple in april guys, back to you. >> josh, this is one of tim cook's roughly speaking how many direct reports >> only a handful, wilf. >> i mean, she was a high profile hire she came from leading the ceo, she was a ceo of burberry. what has she done? >> she played a key role of redefining the experience. going to apple stores now, a big part is not just going in and buying a hardware. what angela tried to do is reimagined what you experience going into the stores and now you go to lectures, workshops, lessons but a big job. i was there opening the store in chicago. we interviewed her then and talked about how big role her was there and also was on stage when they had big product announcements, often taking the stage. retail a big part of the operation and a point of c

deirdre o'brien will replace angela, who held the job for five years. some customers complained. timk wants to find more revenue streams as the iphone era wanes. the australian central bank cheap has shifted to a neutral outlook on interest rate hikes. -- the australian central bank chief has shifted to a neutral outlook on interest rate hikes. today, the probabilities appear to be more even now. viviana: that is your bloomberg business flash. david: investors were looking closely at last night's state of the union address for any encouragement president trump might give about a chinese trade deal. the president to talk about such a deal. pres. trump: i have great respect for president xi. we are now working on a new trade deal with china. but, it must include real structural change to end unfair trade practices, reduce our chronic trade deficit and protect american jobs. [applause] --id: we welcome fredrickson fred berkson, a senior member of the international economics team. with alix steel, sarah hunt. he did address trade. i'm not sure how much he told us, really. question.mitted