>> here at the table for the hour, steve schmidt and matt miller. but first, to react for the first time, single threads -- different threads of a single story. questions about russians and contact with people in the president's inner circle. former cia director john brennan, lucky for us, now a senior national security and intelligence analyst for msnbc and nbc news. i understand now, sitting here today, why donald trump a week or so ago said don't believe what you see, don't believe what you hear on the news channels, because when you take all these events just this week together, they paint a very compromising position for this president on the question of russian influence. >> i think that's right, nicolle. i think we've seen over the course of the last two years basically an effort on the part of president trump and others to pry to inoculate public perceptions of what actually