Transcripts For MSNBCW Morning Joe 20180813

Charlottesville. And what new polling says about Race Relations in america. Good morning. Its monday, august 13th, and with us we have National Affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc john heilemann. Professor at Princeton University and author of the book democracy in black eddie glove jr. Host of k. C. D. C. On msnbc kasie hunt. Listen to that. Its getting longer everyday. I like it gets longer every time. Nothing but the Dave Matthews band from now on. No. I object. Dear lord. Nonstop. We also have with us Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, historian, jon meacham will join us in a moment when he actually wakes up. But we have a lot to talk about today. John heilemann, first of all, couple quick things. First of all, i dont know how stupid rudy or perhaps maybe the fault lies with rudy, that he said, oh, mueller gave us a guarantee that this would be done by september 1st and all rudy has been doing and all donald trump been doing dragging their feet, saying what theyre going to do, saying what theyre not going to do, making it impossible to come to terms. So i actually theyre the ones that are, again, theyve gone to the four corners and are stalling and yet theyre trying to blame mueller for not making a deadline. Yeah. Except here is the thing, joe, and i know well talk about this probably at some length today, but as giuliani says in the various things he says about the Mueller Investigation and he contradicts himself and claims various things that seem implausible just in the piece of tape we played earlier already this morning he says a couple things that just dont sound right to me, like bob mueller making promises to Rudy Giuliani, criticizing jim comey openly, neither one strike me as plausible. No. It does raise the question of the old oh what a tangled web we weave thing, right . Right. I dont think theres a words that comes out of Rudy Giulianis mouth that we can credit. We have no basis to believe anything he says when hes reporting on bob mueller hes the ultimate unreliable n narrator. He completely contradicted himself on the sunday shows. I have to ask you one other thing, i didnt want to do it but youre going to. I get too many phone calls from people on both sides you have to talk about and the other half saying you done have to talk about it. I didnt watch it. I do not waste my time with omarosa, wherever omarosa is, even if shes on meet the press. I had to watch last night because so many people said you have to watch it. Do you take anything out of that interview . Anything noteworthy. Well, other than the fact that donald trump, who famously claimed he only hired the best people, shes kind of the ultimate refutation of that claim. Are there things its extraordinary. Again, well talk about this im sure at more length. Its extraordinary that she was taping the chief of staff. Its extraordinary she was having an audio recording voice in the sit room that she presumed to do that and that she was able to do that. There are a number of incredible things about it. Is there anything we learned about donald trump from that interview that we didnt already know . I mean, the assertion by omarosa shes come to the conclusion that donald trump is a racist, well, thats sort of not in the category of breaking news. Thats in the category of breaking duh. We also learned that omarosa is someone who is not to be trusted. That was clear to a lot of people who had been paying attention to her since her days on the apprentice. Eddie, what do you make of this whole unite the white right rally was an absolute dud. Yeah. Seriously, a couple of stray dogs wondered into the crowd to make it double in size. What a dud a year after charlottesville. Indeed. You remember those fire crackers we popped on july 4th and they would fizz out, thats what happened this weekend with 20 people showing up. Its a sign and well talk about this later of the kind of cost of folks to come out and publicly declare they commitment to fascism that folks are losing their jobs, being publicly shamed and they have to weigh it in the balance. What really struck me this weekend was the number of folk who came out to counterprotest. We see that there is this current in the country that we can be otherwise, that we reject this kind of hate explicitly. It certainly seemed that way. Finally, john meachum, wanted to ask you, while that is the case and this weekend showed that we werent going to have repeat of charlottesville, you look at some of the polls came out this weekend and almost nine out of ten republicans agreed with Donald Trumps approach on Race Relations, thats about as damning a number as ive heard about my former party. Its 83 , im sorry, 8 out of 10 republicans im told put themselves in the position of agreeing with how donald trump handles Race Relations. How damning is that . Thats so much better at 83. Such beater number. I think it could be wrong obviously. My instinct would be this is a manifestation of this tribal commitment that we now have and so many people have to partisanship. And there are an extraordinary number of people who will walk off a cliff if trump says thats what we should do. And what we have to hope for is that, a, that the cliff is not too high and its not too imminent. Kasie hunt, on the hill we hear all the time that republicans seethe quietly and privately about donald trump, whether its on trade, whether its on his tweets. Im just curious, though, do they seethe quietly about race . Or do they agree with donald trump when he goes after the nfl players and says what he says after charlottesville . I certainly dont hear members of congress, republicans in private saying that they support dividing the country along racial lines. We were talking a minute ago about how many of these White Supremacists dont want to show their faces anymore, and i would say that the standard still carries the day on capitol hill is that being publicly or privately racist or racially tinged is not an acceptable place to be and frankly i dont hear it from members of congress. Now, the question is how aggressively do they speak out when the president does something that can, you know, that comes across as racist . And you see quite frankly varying degrees of that. And i do think this is an area where a lot of republicans are fearful of their own base and where the president is putting them. Its interesting i actually had a conversation last night with a candidate who is a younger millennial generation, used to work on the hill for a republican. Hes running as a writein candidate against the republican who has declared himself to be a neonazi elected in a district in illinois. Yeah. He is out there saying, look, we have to take an aggressive stand against this. You look around, you dont see it on the hill as aggressively as perhaps many people out in the country wish they could see, joe. You really dont and so much of it unfortunately is fear of the base, which five years ago i would have suggested was never the republican base, but numbers like the ones that we just told you show how wrong i was. Eight out of ten republicans say they agree with Donald Trumps approach to Race Relations when he says hispanics are breeders, mexicans are rapists, he attacks a hispanic judge for having parents that were born in mexico when hes from indiana. He could go on and on. It just charlottesville one after another and 83 of republicans agree with that approach to Race Relations . Good luck with that. You are going to be left on the ash heap of history in american politics if thats really the approach you decide to move forward with. So lets talk now about Rudy Giuliani. He seemed to contradict himself yesterday when he sat down with sat down on the sunday shows and said that President Trump and former fbi director james comey never talked about former National Security adviser mike flynn, but giuliani and other Trump Officials have indicated always in the past that the president did discuss flynn with comey. This is what giuliani said yesterday followed by comments he made last month. What happened in that conversation with comey about Michael Flynn . What exactly did President Trump say . There was no conversation about Michael Flynn. So youre saying that President Trump and james comey never discussed Michael Flynn . That is what he will testify to if hes asked that question. They already know that. So why are they asking us for him to repeat what they already know under oath . And youre also saying that a month ago you didnt tell abc news that he said something along the lines of can you give him a break . No, i did not. I said that is what comey says. The reality is comey in some ways ends up being a good witness for us. How is he a good witness for the president if hes saying the president was asking him, directing him, in his words, to let the Michael Flynn investigation go . He didnt direct him to do that. What he said to him was can you give him a break . So john heilemann, what are we to make of that . Is Rudy Giuliani making it up as he goes along . Is he purposefully lying . Does he have early on set of dementia . How does he go from yesterday saying he never asked that question to us of course having a tape where clearly a couple weeks ago he said thats precisely what the president said . I dont want to rule out early on set, but the first option seems to be obviously the right one. Giuliani, as i said before, his credibility is basically zero on pretty much everything at this point because hes contradicted himself over and over and over again. But we are now veering into a new terrain in terms of the kind of deception that theyre trying to perpetrate and that hes trying to perpetrate in this context. It is not just the case that jim comeys word versus Donald Trumps word . Jim comeys word today versus Rudy Giulianis notes. You have contemporaneous notes that jim comey reported to at the time. You have people every account of this thats been given by everyone, including many people who are allies of the president , suggest that that conversation did take place. There are lot of disputes about what did he know about the state of the Flynn Investigation at that moment. Many of those things are in dispute. What has never been in dispute until this weekend is the notion that the question of mike flynn came up in the room with jim comey. And all that is now happening is Rudy Giuliani is pushing a sustained campaign of gaslighting the country and blatant fabrication with a political end to its logical and obviously what i mean by logical i mean insane extreme to the point where hes getting tripped up on words of his own from just a fortnight ago. Yeah. Again, jon meacham, we can go through jim comeys contemporaneous notes and his friends contemporaneous notes or take Rudy Giulianis word for it because giuliani himself said the president was saying give flynn a break. Again, this is you can say this is the death of truth. I just think this is just the renaissance of just stupid, out and out stupid. Those can both be true. No. Seriously. A third grader and ive had four third graders, a third grader would be able to keep his or her story more consistent than what Rudy Giuliani is doing on the sunday shows every morning. If Barbara Tuckman were alive we would have the title for her book about the age of trump, the renaissance of stupid. I love that. Thats perfect. One of the thing the thing that struck me with the giuliani bit over the weekend is so far we had that wonderfully rich vernacular of watergate, twisting slowly, slowly in the wind. Expletive deleted. One of the great entries in the trump version of that is lordy, i hope there are tapes. And so, partly on this one its are you going to believe james comey, who is kind of the samuel peeps, right . Hes an obsessive diarist or are you going to believe donald trump . It seems to me, as john was just saying, this is setting up a kind of political armageddon, almost a cultural armageddon, i dont mean to be wild lly hyperbolic. It seems to me that the goal here has to be wounding every possible vehicle that would bring any contrary fact to the table. So at this point if you obs fu skate, if you have 83 of americans thinking the way donald trump handles race on a basis, if you have 83 of those republicans thinking that, youre going to have an equal or higher number, it seems to me, willing to believe what trump or his lawyers say about the fbi or the deep state or whatever. So we have this moment where we really are going to have to decide are facts stubborn things, as john adams said . Do we actually care about what genuinely happened as opposed to what a president that somebody likes says happened . And thats a really important Inflection Point in the life of the republic. People were willing at the very end to turn on nixon. Now, they had him on tape. They had him on tape so they could hear it. So maybe thats a difference. I dont know. But its a fascinating moment. Why does this always happen in august . It always does. Kasie hunt, it is becoming more and more obvious, of course, donald trump again all you have to do is listen to what he said to lester holt and the Russian Foreign minister and the Russian Ambassador to the United States to figure out that he fired comey to end the russian investigation, Even White House press admitted as much, he wanted to end the russian investigation. But even on the other side of this, for republicans staring at the facts and you look at the indictments of the 12 russians that worked for the gru and it becomes very obvious with the forensic evidence, it becomes very obvious that Vladimir Putin and russia were trying to undermine u. S. Democracy. Tom nichols who is not only a professor but also writes for the federalist and hes a twitter exextraordinary. A lot of republicans are starting to get there saying, hey listen, there is no question anymore that members of trumps team were trying to coordinate with the russian government to influence the outcome of the campaign. The only question is what did the president know, how much did he know and when did he know it . Arent the facts by this week by week falling in such a way that even for the most steadfast trump ally on capitol hill, even if their parodying him, theres not much of a question left that something was going on between trumps team and the russian government and it wasnt good . Im not sure the most steadfast trump allies on capitol hill are ever going to move but i think your larger point is correct and the reality is that we are heading for a reckoning. And that is right now every republican on capitol hill can answer the question by saying let mueller do his job, we want to see the results of this, but the way that the president s team is setting this up they are as you saw with Rudy Giuliani trying to provide their own set of facts, own narrative, own way for republicans to defend them and every Single Person on capitol hill is going to have to choose not only who do they believe but who are they going to stand with . Jon meacham said we send elected representatives to be wiser than the group of people who sent them there to make tough decisions when those decisions needed to be made at the potential expense of losing their elections. Thats going to be the stakes for everybody. You know, its interesting Lindsey Graham watching how Lindsey Graham is handling this in south carolina. Lindsey will say and he said it to the president and also said it to people in town Hall Meetings in south carolina, let mueller finish his job and then hell throw some other red meat out to the left and throw red meat to the right and throw stuff out about hillary clinton. At the same time, it maybe jab the fbi a little bit, but at his core, Lindsey Graham is one of those representatives that at least so far on mueller is doing the right thing, saying let the investigation go where it needs to go and explains politically if the republicans were not to do that, we would have a real constitutional crisis. John heilemann, ive given up. I guess i can say this about politicians on both sides of the aisle. Ive given up thinking that the republicans will stand up and show remarkable courage and maybe even saying we have to keep mueller is just a realization that there would be a meltdown, a political meltdown of Epic Proportions if they allowed donald trump to take the last step in obstructing justice in firing bob mueller. Well, i think thats right. Theres sno evidence of courage. I think the only thing at this point, joe, that is going to matter because its the only thing that hazmatered so far is what the electoral compass is. All the things we find apulling about his behavior, but the ways in which he departed from republican orthodoxy except for a couple things Like Supreme Court and tax cuts have stuck with him because theyre afraid that his base will be too high. So the only question now is what happens in november and what does the calculus look like after the midterm elections and the results are in. If democrats have taken back control of the house and maybe the senate, that calculus will change. How much it will change, we dont know. But the math theyre doing will be different when it looks like sticking with donald trump might be more costly than breaking with donald trump. They just will be a different math problem for them. But lets be clear, its going to be a math problem not a problem in which not a calculation in which patriotism, values, ideological consistency, history, anything of that matters. It will all be about self preservation. Youre exactly right, john. Well continue talking about this over the next couple of hours, but before we go to break, we want to talk about a friend and a member of our family, Mike Barnacle and his family are in our thoughts this morning. Barnacles brother, retired Sergeant Paul barnacle passed away on sunday, passed away surrounded by his children. He was dispatched to vietnam where he served as a combat medic. Back home he worked as a counselor before joining the Boston Police department in 1978. Pauls entire adult life was dedicated to seeking justice for those impacted by violence all around him and in his community. Our thoughts and prayers are with pauls family and of course with mike and ann and all of the barnicles. Still ahead this morning on morning joe, well get to the very latest on the Paul Manafort trial from a former prosecutor who has been following all of the twists and turns inside the courtroom. Later, New York Times magazine writer Mark Leibovich with his extraordinary interview of House Speaker paul ryan. Youre watching morning joe. Well be right back. Hopes you drive safely. But allstate actually helps you drive safely. With drivewise. It lets you know when you go too fast. And brake too hard. With feedback to help you drive safer. Giving you the power to actually lower your cost. Unfortunately, it cant do anything about that. Now that you know the truth. 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Of the deadly charlottesville protest, thousands of antihate protesters outnumbered those rallying. Fewer than 20 people showed up for the second unite the right in washington. It was a gathering aimed to bring together multiple White National organizations, including neonazis. The group was met by thousands of chanting counterprotesters at Lafayette Square park across from the white house. A Massive Police presence kept both of the groups separated. President trump, who was criticized for saying both sides shared the blame for the violence last year, on saturday tweeted the riots in charlottesville a year ago resulted in a senseless death and division. We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and all acts of violence. Peace to all americans. First, eddie, we have this followup to charlottesville obviously put a lot of people on edge, for good reason. And yet 20, just 20 people showed up at this rally. What a damning, damning reality for White Supremacists thought they were going to start something in charlottesville. I think so. I dont want to overread it. We have the evidence from portland, oregon, a couple weeks ago where White Supremacists organized and marched in significant numbers there and four people arrested in that particular incident, but yesterday i think revealed the impact of the counterprotests, the impact of public shaming. And you know, what i found fascinating about that trump tweet, joe, is that it was trump is not typically one to engage in dog whistles, but thats a dog whistle. He is condemning all types of racism, not just racism, all types of racism. At that moment hes appealing to a generalized sentiment among his base particularly that white americans are subject to discrimination. Phillip published a piece just yesterday in the Washington Post kind of laying out the data with regards to this metastasizing assumption that white people are now baring the burden of discrimination more so than black and hispanic people. So in that moment what trump is saying to his base and his folks is im not leaving you. Im still with you here. So theres not a blanket condemnation of the white supremacist gathering, 20 of them though it may be in front of white house, hes still playing the race game even in that moment there. Jon meacham, do you agree with that . Yes. And i think that it is good news yesterday in terms of the numbers. We shouldnt i agree with eddie that we shouldnt overread it, but at the same time if there had been a lot of people there we would be having a very different conversation this morning. Theres an old observation from jeremy benthom who said that publicity is the very soul of justice. And the more you Pay Attention to something ultimately the truth will out. And i think a lot of us are making a big bet on the truth of that observation, not only about race but about so much of what the president does that we have a moral obligation to pay as much attention to these things as much as possible in hope that the collective common sense of the nature will out. I believe it will. It may be a closerun thing. But i think in terms of race, in terms of the more outrageous elements i dont think i know people argue you give it too much oxygen if you talk about it too much. I think in this climate everyone talks about everything more or less the same level, i think we have an obligation to examine this as closely as possible and ultimately trust that we the people will get it right. So, lets bring in something from this past week, john heilemann. Yeah. That a lot of people on the right were talking about. Even a lot of nevertrumpers about the woman who was recently appointed to the New York Times Editorial Board, who made a lot of racist tweets against white people saying she liked to see them suffer. I dont remember the exact language that was used, but a lot of what aboutism out there. What about what happened to Kevin Williamson and others. But even Kevin Williamson is saying i i dont think she should be fired but we get this happening all the time. But does a story like that feed into the belief that there are two standards, that you can say whatever you want to say about white people, well, theyre the majority, theyre the oppressor, so they should be able to take it. The reason i ask this is i just wonder if things like that are what donald trump is talk about in that tweet and do events like that feed into his base and into his strength . Certainly they are events that are fodder for the kind of white revanchist that donald trump fodders in. What eddie said about the tweet, in the altright, the parts of the trump base that approve of the charlottesville the original Charlottesville White naishls protests, they see that tweet and think donald trump says all types of racism. They hear him talking about white genocide. White people are being systematically slaughtered by the majority population of the United States. They hear him very clear saying to them i understand your grievance against white people. Do i approve . I think there are some questions about the New York Times article youre talking about and the context of those tweets. She maintained that she was being she was using this language to make a point. I dont obviously approve of people using hateful language against any group whatever group youre a member of you shouldnt be using hateful language against anybody else, but the reality is that we do have a country in which there is no black supremacy in america and never has been. There is no hispanic supremacy and never has been. So, it is contextually a different thing when speeches used by members of minority groups are critical of whites. Whether people want to agree with that or not, im sure ill get abused for saying that but the context is everything in the context of the american rhetorical frame. Again, doesnt necessarily excuse nasty, hatef fuful divis thing. To say its equal and equivalent to the broader systemic thing we face with race in america is ridiculous. Perhaps not. I will say this and eddie let you jump in a second, but i will say this, i saw one jewish journalist after another jewish journalist absolutely savaged on twitter throughout the campaign. Jewings on the right, jews on t left, the antisemitism, jon, im sure you saw it, too. Yes. And it is just absolutely heinous, the antisemitism was repulsive, but i suspect that a lot of those jews who were savaged during the campaign probably quite a few of them probably would not have received their position on the New York Times Editorial Board if they had responded in kind. So, again, its a tough question. It is. I am against everything somebody has written being a disqualifier, whether its this woman or whether its Kevin Williamson. But eddie, again, weve got a balance here that weve got to strike and that balance is we have to encourage people to play by the rules in a Civilized Society because there are those of us who still believe regardless of what some of donald Trump Supporters believe we still are a Civilized Society and there still are rules. At the same time, we dont want one, two, three tweets or one podcast from four years ago to destroy somebodys career. Right. I want to bracket the question of the New York Times editorial writer for just a quick second and pan out for a minute, joe. Sure. I grew up in mississippi. And one of the great scandals of growing up in the south is the lie that wait, eddie. Let me just say it, joe. I grew up in mississippi, too. But let me just black people dont like some of my best friends, eddie, oh my god. But this is what i mean go ahead. This is what i mean, that the assumption that africanamericans or minorities can experience the histories that theyve experienced and come out as if we have this moral gene and can just love and sing kumbaya and all this other stuff. I grew up with a father who has a deep seeded skepticism of the moral capacity of white folks and has everything to do with his experience. Its not articulated but its part of how he was socialized, its part of what i was raised in. Its a common sense, a racial common sense thats reflective of the country and actually allows us to survive, helps us survive. In those moments when it bubbles and revealed. It surprises me that folks are shocked and clutch their pearls. Part of the interesting things about this moment, one of the interesting possibilities of the moment is that all of this stuff that lies beneath american conversation, all of this race stuff that hovers underneath is now bubbling up from both sides, from all sides. And we have a chance to deal with it. So, i just wanted to kind of put that out there. We do have a chance to deal with it. And, you know, its interesting as were talking about this, its interesting this past weekend my boy and i, 10yearold boy and i, i wanted him to sit down and watch the Jackie Robinson movie, 42. And we sat down and watched it. And of course he loved it because he found out that the guy that was playing Jackie Robinson was also black panther. Hey, hes black panther. Yeah, ill watch this with you, dad. We were watching it. There was a wonderful moment where reese came over from northern kentucky, put his arm around jackie to the booing fans and said, hey, im with you. Youre supposed to go great, this is where people are coming together and understanding the world has changed. But you couldnt look at that scene and say, my god, i thought the arc of civilization was always upward. This was back in the 1940s and there are some days where i feel like were still dealing with it today in 2018. Its quite a jolt because, again, mainly you only have 20 people out in the streets now. Thats great, but mainly because you have a president who really does work to stir that up. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, jon meacham in his wonderful book the soul for america that wonderful book, he talks about us kind of dealing the imperfections, right, the dark side of american life, john. And it seems to me that this contradiction that has haunted this fragile experiment in democracy ever since its beginnings continue to haunt us, continues to haunt us. And i dont know what we can do in this moment. We have another opportunity, perhaps we can fail better to echo beckett. Well continue talking about this and get jon meacham to plug his book, the soul of america. And coming up, the u. S. Is hammering turkey with sanctions and tariffs adds the two countries are sparring over defense policy and a whole lot more. Were going to be bringing in the former commander of nato, admiral James Stavridis next on morning joe. Ive got to tell you something important. Its not going to be easy. Quicksilver earns you unlimited 1. 5 cash back on every purchase, everywhere. Actually, thats super easy. My bad. Relations between nato allies United States and turkey continue to plummet. On friday, President Trump tweeted in part the turkish lira slides down against our very strong dollar. Less than three weeks ago trump threatened, quote, large sanctions on turkey for on going detainment of american pastor. Lets bring in four Star Navy Admiral James Stavridis. It seems to me, admiral, that we need a score card to keep up with what exactly is going on with the United States relations with whether its turkey or north korea or now or russia, north korea or now turkey where at first youre concerned because he seems to be the president seems to be too fond of these autocrats, but then you turn around and now we find ourselves on the other side of it where the alliance is taking a real pounding. Whats your take . Im worried, joe. Ill tell you why, turkey is an important country. Its got 80 million people, by a couple more decades it will overtake russia as the most populist nation in europe. Its a strong nato ally. Its been part of nato since the beginning. And its got the largest army of nato saving only the United States. Its an important geopolitical country. Its got an authoritarian leader thats gone too far in driving events personally. Hes personalized everything. And he and the president are in an mono e mono. At the end of the day, president erdogan is bringing a knife to the gunfight. Hes not going to win this. Life is full of choices. Erdogan should make the choice to save the lir and save the country by working with the United States on this one. Hes in the wrong place and driving events terribly and its really destructive to the Nato Alliance. What i worry about most is the way this could pitch turkey into the camp of russia, make them soften on iran. Its bad geopolitics for us. Kasie hunt is with us and has a question from washington. Admiral, to pick up on the last point you made, what implications are there if this is truly destabilizing for turkey and their currency for whats going on in syria and our policy there. Very dangerous because turkey has emerged after russia as the second most significant player in the syrian dispute. And to put them aside and push them overtly into the russian camp is a mistake. Here is what we ought to do, first and foremost, we need an ambassador in turkey. We still dont have one. We need one of significant stature, maybe a former ambassador to turkey, maybe someone like ann patterson. We have people of high stature who can go and be an ambassador. Secondly, we need to use military to military contacts. Were still very strong. The defense minister, former nato general, hes kind of jim mattis of turkey, and thirdly we ought to try to get this dispute off the front pages and solve this diplomatically. But at the end of the day, turkey is going to have to make the decision to stay with the west. We need to encourage that path. Yeah. Jon meacham is with us. Jon . Admiral, in the spirit of testing momentary passion versus longterm impact, whats your sense of where the reaction to the within the alliance to helsinki, to trumps performance at the nato summit chi guess has been now three weeks. It feels like yesterday and three years ago, but as the fallout unfolds, whats your sense of the Lasting Impact of that performance in europe . Its all part, john, of these sce centrifugal poreses pulling at the transatlantic bond. That creaking sound you hear is the transatlantic bridge. Every performance not only at the nato sum mutt but for example at g7, President Trump kind of twists that bridge a bit at the same time turkey pulling away. Italy has an election to elect someone who is opposed to the european union. We continue to see these rightwing moments in hungary, in poland, still bubbling in france. Its sentcen centrifugal force our allies. Turkey has to make the first step at this point. All right, admiral james starvidis, thank you for being with us. We appreciate it. Still ahead, all right, Kellyanne Conway struggles to name an africanamerican serving a senior role in the white house. Nbcs Kristen Welker has new reporting on that. She joins us straight ahead. Morning joe shall return. Welcome to at t innovations where we give you more for you thing. And heres where we shrink the biggest names in entertainment so we can fit them into our unlimited wireless plan. Whos first . No. This isnt permanent, right . Ask him. [terry squeals. ] get unlimited data, live tv, and your choice of an extra on us. More for your thing. Thats our thing. Visit att. Com so, john, it really is, its hard to keep track of donald trump. Whether you talk about him seeming to balance Vladimir Putin but then pushing some very tough policies against russia. Same with north korea, but here, again, we have turkey who has been a troubled ally for about a decade now, and youre concerned at first when hes too chummy with the autocrat, but then he goes in the opposite direction and actually causes us some pretty greg risk to our alliance. There doesnt seem to be any middle ground. No, i feel better. I suspect you would too if i believed that there was any coherence to this, if there was a strategy behind it. I think hes, you know, the president is basically an open synapse and reacts to whatever stimuli comes within. The most important thing about this era, it is a break, as many of the forces that are echoed now have president s in the american past. Whats difference from 1932 to 2016 our politics was shaped by a conversation between fdr and reagan. We had a debate over the role of the market versus the state and the relative projection of power amongst commonly agreed folks. What changed with donald trump this is not a coherent chapter in that conversation and its all mixed up right now with nationalism, and the kind of incoherence. The incoherence and instability is the real National Security threat going forward. At the end of the day youre exactly right. Theres founding of precedent. Looking back, theres no process in handling these Foreign Policy issues moving forward. Its a real challenge for us. Its why we dart around as a country now as much as we do in the age of trump. Coming up the president says he only hires the best people but now hes calling one of them a low life. And the story about mike flynn changes again. What Rudy Giuliani now says about the conversation between the president and james comey in the oval office. Heres a hint, its different than what he was saying just a couple of weeks ago, and hes shocked, shocked that anyone would remember that. Morning joe will be right back. This is not a bed. Its a revolution in sleep. The new sleep number 360 smart bed, from 999, intelligently senses your movement and automatically adjusts. So you wake up ready to train for that marathon. And now, save up to 500 on select sleep number 360 smart beds. Ends wednesday. Anncr as you grow older, your brain naturally begins to change which may cause trouble with recall. Learning from him is great. When i can keep up anncr thankfully, prevagen helps your brain and improves memory. Dads got all the answers. Anncr prevagen is now the numberoneselling brain Health Supplement in drug stores nationwide. She outsmarts me every single time. Checkmate you wanna play again . Anncr prevagen. Healthier brain. Better life. Happy anniversary dinner, darlin. Can this much love be cleaned by a little bit of dawn ultra . Oh yeah one bottle has the grease cleaning power of three bottles of this other liquid. A drop of dawn and grease is gone. This is a story about mail and packages. And its also a story about people. People who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams theyre handing us more than mail theyre handing us their business and while we make more ecommerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country, we never forget. That your business is our business the United States postal service. Priority you the new united explorer card makes things easy. Traveling lighter. Taking a shortcut. woooo taking a breather. Rewarded learn more at theexplorercard. Com welcome back to morning joe. Its monday, august 13th. Still with us National Affairs analyst john heileman. Professor at Princeton University, columnist for time magazine, and nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of kacie dc where they tell nothing about wow, still no big matthews band, kasie hunt. And chief National Correspondent for the New York Times magazine and political reporter for the Washington Post and msnbc political analyst robert costa, moderator, of course, of Washington Week on pbs and, bob, let me start with you. The craziness that happened this weekend, yesterday omarosa is on meet the press and we find out there that she actually, after being taken into the situation room records a conversation in there, which, of course, is one of many breaches that seem to occur in that white house every day. But the chaos continues. Heres somebody that donald trump has been close with for well over a decade, and shes claiming that he uses the nword, claiming quite a few things. But, again, the big take away that shes recording the conversation of the chief of staff as hes firing her in the situation room. I was struck, joe, by my conversation with a different range of sources on this. White house officials, people who were part of the Republican Party establishment, they are taken aback by what mismanigault n newman is going her book. But when you talk about the people seeing Businessman Donald Trump shouting at his assistants for a diet coke, asking, threatening friends and enemies they could be recorded they shrug at this book. They say this is how its always been in trump world, mix of politic, entertainment, ego and business. White house officials dont know what to make of it and are struck by it. John heileman, havent seen donald trump in action at trump tower. Its a sight to behold. You now have one of his longest tv partners, omarosa, and also his fixer, his attorney fixer, both of them would record donald trump all the time. Its almost as if they knew like Monica Lewinsky they had to preserve the evidence. People who had known trump for a long time, these are people who are not new to him. People not just familiar or have been in that office but familiar with the kind of month did you say modus operandi of donald trump. Many recognize that the loyalty they were expected to donald trump might not be returned to them fully in the future and they needed to have some kind of an insurance policy against that. Theres also people who were trying this doesnt excuse anything about donald trump but in Michael Cohens case and omarosas case people trying to use the relationship with donald trump to try to profit one way or the other, either financially, reputationally, in terms of their status in the world. These are not people who were not selfinterested and so, again, you look many of the things she says about donald trump comes as news to no one. The notion that donald trump is a racist, that he says racist things. This is the furthest thing from breaking news in the world. But i think you look at her and say that this is someone who was using donald trump just as donald trump was using her. The nature of the transaction was clear to both of them. The notion that shes claiming now that she suddenly looked up very late in her time and realized she was complicit in having given him racial cover, she knew from the very beginning thats what she was there to do. This is not a stupid person. This is a person with no conscience, soul or ethics but shes not a person with no brain. She knew what her role was. When it was time to go shes taking advantage of the opportunity to cash in. She laid bare some things about donald trump. She is. None of them is news to anyone who has been paying attention. Mark, what is always a surprise to me and shouldnt be a surprise to me because it keeps happening so much is exactly the type of people who will do whatever donald trump wants them to do and despite the fact that they know the story always ends badly. You always end up under the bus, and he will drive it forward and then drive it back, call you a low life. You know, in your cover story, i guess, several months ago an, you know, this town under trump, my god, the faces and the names have changed since then around the president but they all go out the way Steve Bannons of the world go out. Theres never a happy ending. Why do people like Rudy Giuliani, why do they go on tv and embarrass themselves and contradict themselves every five minutes when they know it always ends badly . There is certainly and weve seen this movie before. I think in a lot of cases maybe certainly in omarosas case, sounds like she was going to get a job in the white house. Michael cohen was not going to be lawyer for a future or current or former president any time soon. Michael flynn wasnt going a snags security. Paul manafort wasnt going a campaign manager. You see this pattern of desperation becomes jobs and ends badly with a public feud like this or in the case of indictment in the case of manafort and flynn. You do have to step back periodically and every time it happens you have to say wow this is happening in the white house. This is not a two bit operation any more. This is our country. Yeah. This is happening in the white house. You look thats a great segue to Rudy Giuliani. Let me show you a clip of Rudy Giuliani, show everybody, where hes contradicting himself yesterday saying that President Trump anticipate former fbi director james comey never talked about, giuliani said they never talked about former National Security adviser mike flynn, but this, of course, comes after giuliani and other Trump Officials have said for a long time that the president did, in fact, talk about flynn with comey and said hey, give him a break. This is what giuliani said yesterday, and after that well play the comments he made just a month ago. What happened in that conversation with comey about Michael Flynn . What exactly did President Trump say . There was no conversation about Michael Flynn. So youre saying that President Trump and james comey never discussed Michael Flynn. Thats what he will testify to if hes asked that question. They already know that. So why are they asking us for him to repeat what they already know under oath. Youre also saying a month ago you didnt tell abc news he said something along the lines of can you give him a break . No, i did not. I said thats what comey said. The reality is comey in some ways ends up being a good witness for us. How is he a good witness for the president if the president was directing him, in his words to threat Michael Flynn investigation go. He didnt say that. What he said was, what he said was, what donald trump said was, can you give him a break . Yesterday there you had giuliani acting shocked and stunned and just baffled that anyone would suggest that giuliani had said that. Bob costa, can you explain this to the outside world how the stories change every 15 minutes and you have Rudy Giuliani having to go out every 15 minutes and change his story . Like he did yesterday. Theres no explanation, joe. But if you think about the context of all of this, Robert Mueller is finishing up his report on possible obstruction of justice by the president of the United States. He would like to get that report done. Based on our conversations with federal sources in the next couple of months before the midterm elections, if at all possible. To do that he needs to know fortunates intent. Public statements by Rudy Giuliani are not enough. They are also confusing as we just saw. So the mueller team wants to see what will the president say if he actually sits down in front of them talking to federal investigators. Thats what matters not shes zigzagging statements by mr. Giuliani. How interesting is it, kacie, you have giuliani talking to donald trump not going into a perjury trap, which, of course, seems not to be put in a perjury trap, just tell the truth. And yet you have Rudy Giuliani im sitting there. Hes setting a trap for himself, stepping into it. I mean giuliani is contradicting himself all the time. I mean this is just a white house that cant get a story straight. In a way, joe thats clearly the strategy. I mean this is not giuliani contradicting himself by accident. They are very purposely trying to offer up a narrative that helps them the most and to a certain extent you can see how this suddenly is, you know, this gives us a window into those ongoing, you know, negotiations between giuliani and the special counsels team, giuliani and the broader legal team with Robert Mueller about this interview with the president. Suddenly they realize this focus very narrowly on this obstruction question that hinges on that he said she said between the president and comey. James comey has diaries. The only way to get the bottom of it is to talk to special counsel. One thing here is what we know, everything we know about Robert Mueller suggests that hes capable, imminently capable of keeping the main thing the main thing. While Rudy Giuliani may be out there offering conflicting stories, i think its pretty clear the special counsel is going about their business in a pretty straightforward regardless. Pretty straightforward and the contrast is stunning. Not good at all for the trump team. Because facts actually do matter with Robert Mueller. And with his team. And with the fbi. And the justice department. So they better get a story and they better stick to it. Eddie, so i said before, if youve ever been to pensacola, florida and i know you have. If you go if you go down 9th avenue, you can go to w to wannaburger and usually theres people waiting in line waiting for a burger a at wannaburger than people at the rally in washington, d. C. It was one of the most pathetic, side, pathetic examples of a movement ive ever seen in my life. Ill be honest with you. I was horrified by what i saw last year in charlottesville, the mass crowds. Where are we. Yesterday, boy it was nothing but a wimper. Absolutely the fact that taxpayers had to pay for it makes it more egregious. I think its important for us to understand two things. One, the public shaming of a lot of the folks who participated in the tragedy that was charlottesville had an impact. There was a general sense of outrage about that moment that had an effect on yesterday. And on this weekend generally. But i do want to say this, it doesnt mean these white supremacist organizations have become weaker. Many have gone underground, gotten stronger. We had a reporter on this show not too long ago who produced a documentary called documents hate showing us these white supremacist organizations are getting stronger and more violent. Although yesterday was a sign of, i think the triumph of a more decent america, we shouldnt conclude that somehow the White Supremacists have been pushed to the margins. As long as donald trump is fueling the fire these folks will have a platform and an avenue to really hijack and derail our democracy. Thats really what you just touched on. Thats the difference between 2018 and 2008 or 1998. We got a president in the white house who preaches more equestiekw equivalency with nazis. Theres a moral relativity and he did it in charlottesville and this weekend. The Trump Administration is dealing with fact that Kellyanne Conway couldnt name a single senior africanamerican that is working in the west wing right now. With us now we have Kristen Welker. Whats the administration telling you about a pretty remarkable failure on Kellyanne Conways part . Reporter they are pushing back. They said Kellyanne Conway made activity clear there are other africanamericans that work within this administration that have senior roles. Ben carson being one example of that. But the bottom line is this exchange is making a lot of waves, getting a lot of attention. Take a look and well do some analysis on the other side. The omarosa was the most prominent, high level africanamerican serving in the west wing on President Trumps staff. Who now is that person, who is the most prominent high level adviser to the president on the west wing staff right now . Africanamerican . Yes. I would say that well, first of all, youre totally not covering the fact that our secretary of housing and urban development and world renowned im asking you about the white house staff the people that the president is worked with every day. The president is working with secretary carson every day. Who is on the white house staff right now. We have jaron who is very involved with hes been very involved with Jared Kushner and President Trump on prison reform. Hes been there from the beginning. He worked with omarosa and the others. Reporter a lot of people wondering who is jaron. Jaron is jaron smith. Hes been working with another official here henry child to lead the africanamerican outreach. Now they are not staff here within the white house they are within the eeob. Henry child someone on loan from the Commerce Department who is taking the lead in terms of outreach to the Africanamerican Community has had dozens of meeting with the africanamerican leaders im told. Also working on housing urban development, taking a key role in the prison reform. Of course, thats something that Jared Kushner has been deeply engaged in. Again, when you ask the key question who are the Senior Administrative officials based out of the west wing its very difficult to identify anyone. Again, this is a white house that is defiant and increasingly on defense after these allegations by former staff other ma rosa. Kristen welker, thank you very much. Appreciate you being with us. Mark, your article on paul ryan was remarkable. And people continue to talk about it. You know, ive said here, ive known the guy since he was 22 and always, just had the highest opinion of paul as a person and as a legislator. But i dont really i could have never predicted when i was excited about him becoming speaker of the house, i could never have predicted that could it have ended this way again with a wimper where he had a president just run i was talking to a member in the Republican Caucus that just cant believe how hes s subjugated himself to donald trump time and time again. Its a look into what happens when an idea person in the Republican Party and paul ryan has billed himself for many years as somebody who cares about policy. Im a powerpoint guy. I look deeply into what this means and fiscal conservatism. Has his career absolutely comingled with trumpism. Its such an imperfect and horrible and just really perverse to watch match the two of them. Ryan has really at every term just chosen not to fight. A lot of people have used him as a vehicle for kind of democratic never trump even some quiet recognizes some wish, someone who will fight battles for them against donald trump. Hes part of a Republican Party that really has no voice, certainly in the administration and certainly in congress at the highest level. Now, what i dont understand is i know that paul always sees himself more as a policy guy. Not the type of guy that gets in and fight politically. Maybe hes not good at the business of politics like hillary clinton. Hillary clinton said my husband is good at politic, im not. Thats not what i do. Maybe thats paul ryan. Maybe hes a policy guy and bad at politics. What i cant shake you let someone like nunes to destroy the most Bipartisan Committee on the hill, the House Ethics Committee and lets devin nunes go around whispering about conspiracies to impeach Rod Rosenstein and to subvert the investigation into putin, trying to subvert american democracy. How does paul ryan allow that to go on . Whats interest is ryan really has two sets of defenses for what he has done over the last year and a half. One is he would say look, if i had an argument, if i like got in this back and forth with the president of the United States every day it would be a distraction, no one would win and we would get nothing passed at all in this country. I would lose our caucus, lose 80 of our voters and thats not where the Republican Party is. As the leader of the party in the house, i have a responsibility to represent that, you know, that constituency. The other part is that he would say that he has averted, literally said this to me, he has averted any number of tragedies privately, tragedies is his word. He would say i privately deal with the president. I privately try to shut things down in the house that people will never know about. Of course, i dont know what hes talking about. Its hard to prove a negative in this case. Like a number of other people who have worked in the white house, worked closely with this president he has said look you got to trust me on this. Ive stopped it from being worse. At the end of the day you have this black hole what exactly are they talking about. Do we have to wait for the history books to come out . Are we going to have the luxury of knowing what this is about or are they making excuses . One of the biggest criticism on paul ryan is that hes let the devin nunes run wild through congress. Hes let the Freedom Caucus drive the agenda as far as discrediting the Mueller Investigation. And he hasnt been a stronger voice in trying to counteract what has been a lot of noise to couldnt of the Republican House caucus that has been, you know, i think a lot of people privately would say has been counter productive. Theres a good way, john heileman, to make that stop. As speaker of house you call devin nunes in and say stop now. He hasnt done it. No, he has not. Ill say, mark and i have had a similar experience because, you know, over the course from the time that the last moment you all remember in the 2016 campaign when after the judge incident happened paul ryan said what trump said and done this judge of mexican ancestry couldnt rule favorably on his case because of his ancestry, he said it was textbook definition of racism. That gave some the notion, a flame that ryan might be a counter weight to donald trump. Then you never saw anything like that again. Ive heard the same things that mark has heard from people close to the speaker who said tragedies have been averted, youll never know what hes done behindthescenes to stop worse things from happening. But asking people close to him who care about his reputation saying tell me about background, tell me off the record, give me an example, something to make me believe thats true, ive not heard of one example on background, on deep background or off the record and i dont know, mark, if you have had an experience but i sit here on television now and say to many people i know who are close to paul ryan, who believe in some ways hes a good man, what he said to mark and the story is true, tragedies have been averted, please just so i can believe if they are there call me, i would be happy to hear. Even off the record on one example of a tragedy thats been averted because of paul ryans private efforts on donald trump. Ive searched. Ive asked before. Ive not heard one single example so far. But i remain top the idea its possible. Bob costa, youve covered the white house. Youve covered the hill. You certainly have covered this relationship between donald trump and paul ryan. And it seems to be a relationship that just goes one way, the president threatens paul ryan and paul ryan backs down. Is paul ryan going be the face of this house Republican Party, when the history of trumpism is written . He is. Hes going to be face of the Republican Party and after reading marks excellent piece i kept coming to the word why. Why did this play out with speaker ryan like did it . I kept coming to that word in marks story, policy, a selfdescribed policy guy. Why did ryan have the clout in 2016 at the moment john mentioned even now in 2018. He lost the policy fights that candidate trump and now President Trump has won. He made a case in the 90s and 2000s to be much more open border and moderate republican on immigration. He lost that fight. He lost the push for reform on Social Security and medicare within his own party. Who steps in . This raw, anger motivated politician in donald trump and ryan lost those policy battles which didnt give him the real power he needed to counter the kind of force that donald trump was and has become. Yeah. Paul ryan and donald trump, protectionists as well. Robert costa, thanks so much. Appreciate it. Mark thank you as well. Still ahead on morning joe what does sundays unite the right rally tell bus the altright in america. Well have that conversation next on morning joe. And i dont add up the years. But what i do count on. Is staying happy and healthy. So, i add protein, vitamins and minerals to my diet with boost®. 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So when did you get into as you said the racial stuff . When Trayvon Martin case happened, you know, Michael Brown and all these Different Things happened, every single case, some little black [ bleep ] behaving like a savage and gets himself in trouble shockley enough. Im here to spread ideas, talk, somebody more capable can do that. Somebody like donald trump who does not give his daughter to a jew. Donald trump but like more racist. A lot more racist than donald trump. It featured a conversation with White Nationalist Chris Cantwell before last years deadly unite the right in charlottesville, virginia. Then cantwell is interviewed again about the current state of the altright moment. The do you think gop is adopting any of the altrights ideas. Not specifically. Might be influencing. Were influencing culture and culture influences politics. I guess you could youre saying it both ways. Heres the difficulty of it, okay. Youre trying to tie the Republican Party to tattle right because you think that will be politically advantageous for you and its a disgusting tactic and im not trying to help fun fact of the matter the more the left goes insane and drives up hyper awareness of the racial tensions more and more people come to us and thats a very good thing and that is going start influencing politics if it hasnt already. And ellie thanks for being with us. Charlottesville was a black stain on American Culture last year, on american politics. Were just curious, we were ducking aboduc talking about the rally yesterday. How did charlottesville change over the past year and how did it change the altright movement . It put a tremendous amount of pressure from journalists and activists. The leaders were not prepared for the pressure. Another leader was exposed by the New York Times as being a fake iraq veteran. A third leader was arrested in a Domestic Violence incident after, according to police he was caught having an affair with his stepfatherinlaws wife. So hes quit the movement. The leaders cant organize either because they cant talk securely online and because they cant raise money. Because payment processors refuse to allow them to use their services. Let me ask you this question. Its easy for us to kind of condemn the obvious villains of charlottesville, the White Nationalists and the like. But what can we learn from charlottesville about us . Not the obvious villains because the villains are part of melodrama. We displace our sins on to their shoulders. How one year later what kind of mirror does charlottesville present to us as a nation, in your view . I think what these white power activists understand is that many people who dont think of themselves as racist still have unconscious biases and theyve learned how to play upon those biases to bring closer to their side. So you see them talk about black lives matter a lot. Thats really important because youre not talking about some imaginary remote rural southerner, youre talking about people in the cities, people where wealthy people live, People Places where liberals live. That strikes at the heart of liberal power. And that is a much more powerful appeal to, like mainstream people. Yeah. Kasie hunt is with us. Kacie . One thing thats been observed in the wake of charlottesville, politico did a long story how there was tremendous backlash to the events, obviously, but also to the president and how he handled the events at that time. There were Business Ceos who walked away, who said that they werent going to associate with fortunate any longer. But over the course of the last year fortunate has continued to make racially tinged remarks to put it mildly, and sort of one by one, quietly a lot of those thought and opinion and Business Leaders found their way back to engaging with fortunate. He had many over them to dinner at bedminster just last week, over the weekend. Is there in your view a material difference one year later . Have we as a country grappled with this and refused to forget it or has it drifted away . I think most people dont forget it. Most people still see this as an evil that we dont want to infect our culture. But White Nationalists talk about something they call shifting the parameters of the political debate. What was once forbidden becomes fringe and then what once was fringe becomes mainstream. They pull their forbidden ideas to be more fringe. So donald trump will condemn all racism. And the idea there is that hes always condemning racism against white people wherever that might be. Let me ask you a very straightforward, very pointed question, right. You were there last, before the horror in charlottesville last year. Youre now back. You talk to these people who are members of the White Nationalist movement, do they believe donald trump has their back a year later. Yeah. Yes. I mean Chris Cantwell was angry at me to ask him about whether there were any links between the altright traen party. He starts yelling at me. The entire time he has his own flag of Donald Trumps face right behind him leaning over his shoulder. They like donald trump not just for the racial politics, but also for the attitude, the idea he doesnt mind making people angry. Another catch phrase among him was womp, womp. And donald trump gets positive tweets adding from, of course, none other than david duke. Its really eyeopening. And Vice News Tonight on hbo airing monday through thursday at 7 30 p. M. Make sure you catch it. Ellie, thank you for being with us. We appreciate you being here. Come underground. Aclu is leading the charge in holding the government accountable for its policy of separating children from their parents. Well get an update on number of families still broken and what the group is doing about it. Morning joe will be right back. This is a story about mail and packages. And its also a story about people. People who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams theyre handing us more than mail theyre handing us their business and while we make more ecommerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country, we never forget. That your business is our business the United States postal service. Priority you all your school get supplies today. School. Grade. Done. Done. Hit the Snooze Button and get low prices on School Supplies all summer long. Like these for only a 25 cents at office depot officemax. Whoamike and jen doyle . Than i thought. Yeah. Time for medicare, huh. I have no idea how were going to get through this. Follow me. Choosing a plan can be supercomplicated. But it doesnt have to be. Unitedhealthcare can guide you through the confusion, with helpful people, tools and plans. Including the only plans with the aarp name. Well that wasnt so bad at all. Thats how we like it. Aarp medicare plans, from unitedhealthcare. Where were changing withs . Contemporary makeovers. Then, use the ultimate power handshake, the upper hander with a double palm grab. Who has the upper hand now . Start winning today. Book now at lq. Com. Heres something you should know. Theres a serious virus out there that 1 in 30 boomers has, yet most dont even know it. A virus thats been almost forgotten. Its hepatitis c. Hep c can hide in the body for years without symptoms. Left untreated it can lead to liver damage, even liver cancer. The only way to know if you have hep c is to ask your Healthcare Provider for the simple blood test. If you have hep c, it can be cured. For us, its time to get tested. Its the only way to know for sure. Welcome back to morning joe. John joe, speak to me. Im curious. I wrote today in the the Washington Post about how, you know, sort of an alternative history. What if fdr was warned about a coming attack on pearl harbor throughout 1941. Democrats had a chance knowing this to vote for a stronger defense in the Pacific Fleet in hawaii. And then you had the chairman of the Armed Services committee privately telling constituents that he was working to fire the generals who will actually talk about this looming threat. Not sure, but i think we would call them traitors. Not dare calling what republicans are doing today treason. But that being said the forensic evidence is so overwhelming. At this point how could the president call putins plans to interfere with u. S. Democracy a host when the u. S. Military has provided and the Intel Community has provided all that evidence in black and white . Joe, i read your column. Its funny, in a weird way it rhymes with the discussion we were having earlier about paul ryan with mark and it raises, positing an alternative history and questions about what that would imply and carrying it forward to today. It raises the question we keep coming back to again and again. What are these people thinking . I ask you about it always because you spent many, many years in this party and for a long time were a card carrying member of it, now not so much. But, again, what are they thinking . I cant imagine because, again, you had the United States military people working at fort mea meade. You had dan coats, Kirstjen Nielsen, trumps own appointed fbi director, you had everybody that donald trump has appointed saying i mean Kirstjen Nielsen of all people said our democracy is directly in the crosshairs of Vladimir Putin. Our democracy is being threatened. Dan coats, Donald Trumps director of national intelligence, tells the press and the world that the warning signs are blinking, and this reminds him of the months leading up to september 11th. So, if youre a republican and youre hearing all these republican appointees saying Vladimir Putin and russia, they have attacked the United States of america in the past and planning another attack now, whats your legacy, john . If you sit back and not only do nothing but try to end that investigation . Its hard to imagine the history would look kindly on any of these people especially if the worst that is now being forecast and the worst that we fear actually comes to pass, whether its in the next three or four months or ahead in the 2020 elections. Coming up next, plenty of secrets surrounding the russia investigation and the judge overseeing Paul Manaforts trial, theres a lot of them. Well be talking about the latest developments in that case with a former prosecutor who has been ring side in the courtroom. Its gotten wild in there. Morning joe coming back in a moment. Guys, i know its so hard to trust but youve got to be strong. Remember janet . She got cash back shopping with ebates and hasnt been skeptical since. Whered the money come from . Stores pay ebates. Psh psh then ebates pays you. Psh psh psh psh psh psh psh psh psh and theyll send you a check. Psh oohh sign up for free. Shop your favorite stores. Get cash back. Ebates. Something to believe in. Join today for a 10 bonus. Happy anniversary dinner, darlin. Can this much love be cleaned by a little bit of dawn ultra . Oh yeah one bottle has the grease cleaning power of three bottles of this other liquid. A drop of dawn and grease is gone. When did you see the sign . When i needed to jumpstart sales. Build attendance for an event. Help people find their way. Fastsigns designed new directional signage. And got them back on track. Get started at fastsigns. Com. And got them this wifi is fast. Track. I know i know i know i know when did brian move back in . Brians back . He doesnt get my room. Hes only going to be here for like a week. Like a month, tops. Oh boy. Wifi fast enough for the whole family is simple, easy, awesome. In many cultures, young men would stay with their families until their 40s. So with us now former prosecutor with the Eastern District of virginia, gene rossi. He tried cases before the judge presiding over the trial of Paul Manafort. Hes among a handful of judges who know the deepest secrets of the russian investigation. Thanks so much for being with us, gene. The first question i have to ask is whats with judge ellis deep antipathy for the prosecution. It seems to come us just about every day in the courtroom. Joe, we have a little bit of an audio problem so ill translate your question to gene. Joes basic question whats the deal with this judge . He seems to be exhibiting hostility towards the prosecution, seems to be putting his thumb on the scale. Theres been a lot of discussion about that. Whats your view about whether or not thats the case . Let me tell you how i know judge ellis. I appeared in front of him for 20 years. I had 20 trials seven trials and hundreds of hearings. And here is the scoop on judge ellis. He is not a potted plant. Clearly. Clearly not. He is very active. He wants to be engaged. Yeah. Hes not a judge thats going to sit back. Yeah. Thats who he is and hes never going to change. Let me address how hes putting his thumb on the scale. This is sort of like a football game. Last two weeks ago, that first week, judge ellis was, indeed, putting his thumb on the scale in my opinion. Very hard on both prosecutors, all three prosecutors, whom i know well. That was the first week. This past week things changed a little bit. Hes pulling back on his criticism, his interjecting, and i think at the end of last week i wouldnt say it was affection, but the warmth, relative warmth he showed the prosecutions case seemed to evolve a little bit, and here is why. Based on my times in front of him and my trials and my hearings, i think he now gets this case. He now sees the big picture, what i call the final mosaic. As i said before the camera came, i have done 30 tax trials. I have never seen more greed, lies and manipulation in a tax trial than i have seen in this one. It is off the charts. On a scale of one to ten on greed, a lies . 11. Manipulation . 12. It is unbelievable. I think judge ellis now has pulled back his interjecting in the case and, in fact, he has sort of apologized a couple of days ago when the prosecutors were reminding him that he did not exclude a certain witness. Right. It wasnt a fullfledged apology, but coming from judge ellis, thats an apology. So you see the way judge ellis is behaving. What do you make of how the prosecutors are pursuing the case, where they place gates and what theyre putting up . I did 100 trials. So what you do is you try to place your witnesses strategically. I got to compliment the prosecutors here, and the Defense Attorneys. The defense attorney is doing a great job with what they have. The prosecutor started off with documents and verbal testimony. Heather wash, philip a. Lipp, Cindy Laporte and others. And then they put on gates monday, tuesday and wednesday. I watched and observed gates testimony. I would love to talk about that. It was a brilliant placement of rick gates, because after he testified he corroborated in part all what the other witnesses said and the documents, and now these last few days weve been bank fraud, bank fraud, bank fraud. Thats documentdriven, and now we get into steven caulk and the federal savings bank, the yankee tickets. You know, were almost forgetting that rick gates testified. We are now focusing on the bank fraud. I thought their timing of their witnesses and the sequence was brilliant. You just said you wanted to talk about gates testimony. Talk about that. Lets talk about that. I thought rick gates direct exam by the prosecutor was outstanding. Outstanding. He corroborated everything that the government theory is asking a jury to believe. I want the folks watching this show to focus on one exhibit that sort of shows who rick gates is. It is an email to rick gates. Paul manafort says, rick, you are the quarterback, quote, unquote. That is the theory of this case. Rick gates was, indeed, the quarterback, but who was calling the plays . Coach paul. And im not talking about paul bear bryant. I am talking about Paul Manafort. That email is devastating and rick gates testimony and the documents corroborated that email. Now lets talk about cross by kevin downing, and i said the Defense Attorneys are doing a great job with the hand dealt them. Kevin downing did a fantastic job. He got in some jabs. But the problem is that he didnt get in enough jabs, he didnt knock rick gates out. On redirect by the prosecutor, he brought the jury back to the core of rick gates testimony, which is i was his quarterback, he called the plays. Jim, we got the leave it there. I got to say to joe, thank you very much for your for your wisdom on this. Joe, it sounds like gene is not definitively not in the category of those who think that the prosecution is in any trouble despite the judges some of the judges thumbon scaling and despite some of rick gates testimony that seemed not to go particularly well for him. One bad day of testimony, it seems like it looks from the point of view of where gene sits, still a slam dunk for the prosecution on this case. We shall see. Thats been the assumption for some time. Often, you know, in these trials that the media cover you have that assumption going in and then there are surprises once in a while. Well see if it happens here. Still ahead, the trump team wants bob mueller to wrap his investigation up, but how could that be possible when they keep providing more and more potential evidence of obstruction . Plus, ivanka trump said she wanted to be a force for good in the white house. We will be talking to columnist Margaret Carlson about whether the first daughter and president ial adviser is living up to that ideal. Morning joe is coming right back. So you have, your headphones, chair, new laptop with free 24 7 tech support. Yep, thanks guys. I think he might need some support. Yes. Start them off right. With the School Supplies they need at low prices all summer long. Like these for only a 25 cents at office depot officemax. Its a revolution in sleep. The new sleep number 360 smart bed, from 999. Intelligently senses your movement and automatically adjusts on each side to keep you both comfortable. And snoring . How smart is that . Smarter sleep. 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Liberty september 1st was the date that bob mueller gave me back two months ago where he said, when we were talking about getting his report done, he threw out the date september 1st as being a reasonable date to get it done. Maybe i credit it too much. I thought he meant, well, that will keep us clear of the elections, and they did Say Something like they didnt want to repeat some of the mistakes that comey made. So thats the president s lawyer setting a deadline for potential president ial interview with the special counsel. Trumps team wants any possible sitdown to focus only on the questions of collusion, not obstruction of justice. Were going to get to that, plus the latest developments from the weekend rally and counterprotests on the oneyear anniversary of charlottesville. What new polling says about Race Relations in america. Good morning. It is monday, august 13th. With us we have National Affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc, john heilman. Professor at Princeton University and columnist author author. And host of caskasie d. C. , kasi hunt. Listen to that. It is getting longer every day. I like that it gets longer every time. Theres a lot to talk about today. So, john heilman, first of all, a couple of quick things. First of all, i dont know how stupid rudy thinks we are or perhaps maybe the fault lies with rudy, that he said, oh, mueller gave us the guarantee that this would be done by september 1st. Right. And all rudy has been doing and all donald trump has been doing, theyre dragging their feet, saying what theyre going to do, what theyre not going to do, making it impossible to come to terms. So actually theyre the ones that are again, theyve gone to the four corners and are stalling, and yet theyre trying to blame mueller for not making a deadline. Yeah, except here is the thing, joe, and i know were going to talk about it probably at some length today. But as guilliani says the various things that he says about the Mueller Investigation, and he contradicts himself and claims various things that seem implausible. Just in the piece of tape we played earlier this morning, he says a couple of things that dont sound right to me, like bob mueller making promises to Rudy Guilliani, criticizing jim comey openly in that conversation. Neither of those strike me as plausible. Yeah. It raises the question of the old, oh, what a tangled web we weave thing. I think theres not a word that comes out of Rudy Guillianis mouth we have a reason to credit at this point. Theres no basis to believe anything he said last month, this month, yesterday. When hes reporting on bob mueller, hes the ultimate unreliable. We are going to where he contradicts himself yesterday on the sunday shows. I have to ask you one other thing, and i didnt want to do it. But youre gonna. I get too many phone calls from people on both sides saying, you have to talk about it, and then the other half that said you dont have to talk about it. Yeah. I didnt watch it. I just i do not waste my time. Yeah. With omarosa. Yeah. Wherever omarosa is, even if she is on meet the press, but i had to watch it last night because so many people said, you have to watch it. Do you take anything out of that interview . Well anything noteworthy. Well, other than the fact that donald trump, who famously claimed he only hired the best people, doesnt shes kind of the ultimate reputation of that claim. You know, shes are there things i mean it is extraordinary. Again, we will talk about this im sure at more length. It is extraordinary she was taping the chief of staff. It is extraordinary she was making had a recording device in the sit room, both she thought she presumed to do that surreptitiously and she was able to do that. There are a number of kind of incredible things about it, but is there anything we learned about donald trump from that interview we didnt already know . I mean the assertion by omarosa that she has come to the conclusion donald trump is a racist, well, you know, thats sort of not in the category of breaking news. I think bill mar said the other night it is in the category of breaking duh. I dont know we learned that much. We also learned that omarosa is someone who is not to be trusted. But, again, i think it was pretty clear to a lot of people who had been paying attention to her since her days on the apprentice. Beforehand, you can put her in Rudy Guillianis category. Eddie cloud jfrmt, what do you make quickly, and then we will get into it more later, but this whole unite the right, white right rally . It was an absolute dud. I mean seriously, a couple of stray dogs wandered into the crowd to make it, you know, double in size. But what a dud a year after charlottesville. Yeah, indeed. You remember those fire crackers we used to pop on july 4th and they would fizz out . Thats what happened this weekend with 20 people showing up. I think it is also i think it is a sign, and well talk about this later of the kind of cost for folks to come out and publicly declare their commitment to fascism, to white supremacy. Folks are losing their jobs, being publicly shame and they have to weigh it in the balance. What struck me was the number of folk that came out to counterprotest. We see theres a current in the country we can be otherwise, that we reject this kind of hate explicitly. It certainly seemed that way. Finally, john meachem, i wanted to ask you though, while that is the case and this weekend showed that we werent going to have a repeat of charlottesville, you look at some of the polls that came out this weekend, and almost nine out of ten republicans claim to agree with Donald Trumps approach on Race Relations. Thats about as damming a number as i have heard about my former party. It is 83 . Im sorry, eight out of ten republicans, im told, put themselves in the positive tigs of agreeing with how donald trump handles Race Relations. How damming is that to my former party . So much better at 83. Yeah, yeah. Such a better number. I think it could be wrong obviously. My instinct would be this is a manifestation of this tribal commitment that we now have, that so many people have to partisanship. There are an extraordinary number of people who will walk off a cliff if trump says thats what thats what we should do. And what we have to hope for is that, a, that the cliff is not too high and it is not too imminent. Kasie hunt, on the hill we hear all the time that republicans seethe quietly and privately about donald trump, whether it is on trade, whether it is on his tweets. Im just curious though. Do they seethe quietly about race or do they or do they agree with donald trump when he goes after the nfl players and says what he says after charlottesville . I certainly dont hear members of congress, republicans in private saying that they support dividing the country along racial lines. We were talking a minute ago about how many of these White Supremacists dont want to show their faces anymore, and i would say that the standard still carries the day on capitol hill, is that being publicly or privately racist or racially tinged is not an acceptable place to be. And, frankly, i dont hear it from members of congress. Now, the question is how aggressively do they speak out when the president does something that can you know, that comes across as racist. You see, quite frankly, varying degrees of that. I do think that this is an area where a lot of republicans are fearful of their own base and where the president is putting them. Right. You know, it is interesting. I actually had a conversation last night with a candidate who is a younger a millennial, member of the millennial generation. Used to work on the hill for a republican. Hes running as a writein canned again candidate against the republican who declared himself to be a neonazi, who was elected in a district in illinois. Yeah. He is out there saying, look, we actually have to take an aggressive stand against this. You know, you look around. You dont see it on the hill as aggressively as perhaps many people in the country wish they could see, joe. Yeah, you really dont. So much of it, unfortunately, is fear of the base, which five years ago i would have suggested was never the republican base. But numbers like the ones we just told you show how wrong i was. Eight out of ten republicans say they agree with Donald Trumps approach to race rlgss when ela he says hispanics are breeders, mexicans are rapist, he attacks a hispanic judge for having parents born in mexico when hes from indiana. I mean you can go on and on. It is charlottesville, one after another, and 83 of republicans agree with that approach to Race Relations . Good luck with that. You are going to be left on the ash heap of history in american politics if thats really the approach you decide to move forward with. So lets talk now about Rudy Guilliani. He seemed to contradict himself yesterday when he sat down with sat down on the sunday shows and said that President Trump and former fbi director james comey never talked about former National Security adviser mike flynn. But guilliani and other Trump Officials have indicated always in the past that the president did discuss flynn with comey. This is what guilliani said yesterday, followed by comments he made last month. What happened in that conversation with comey about Michael Flynn . What exactly did President Trump say . There was no conversation about Michael Flynn. So youre saying that President Trump and james comey never discussed Michael Flynn . That is what he will testify to if hes asked that question. They already know that. So why are they asking us for him to repeat what they already know under oath . And youre also saying a month ago you didnt tell abc news he said something along the lines of course not of can you give flynn a break . Of course not. The reality is that comey in some ways ends up being a good witness for us. How is he a good witness for the president if he is saying that the president was asking him, directing him in his words to let the Michael Flynn investigation to go. He didnt direct him to do that. What he said was can you give him a break. Comey says he so, john heilman, what are we to make of that . Is Rudy Guilliani making up as he goes along . Is he purposely lying . Does he have early onset of dementia . How does he go from yesterday saying he never he never asked that question to us, of course, having a tape where clearly a couple of weeks ago he said thats precisely what the president said . Yeah, i think i mean i dont want to rule out early onset, but the first option seems to me obviously the right one. I mean guilliani as i said before, his credibility is basically zero on pretty much everything at this point because he has contradicted himself over and over and over again. But we are now veering into a new terrain in terms of the kind of deception that theyre trying to perpetrate and that he is trying to perpetrate in this context. It is not just the case that this is not a question of jim comeys world versus Donald Trumps word. Jim comeys word today versus Rudy Guillianis version of Donald Trumps reality today. You have jim comeys contemporaneous notes from the time. You have contemporaneous notes of other people that jim comey reported the conversation to at the time. You have people every account of this thats been given by everyone, including many people who are allies of the president , suggests that that conversation did take place. Theres lots of dispute around the details, around what did trump intend, what did he mean, what did he know about the state of the Flynn Investigation at that moment. Many of those things are in dispute. What has never been in dispute until this weekend was the notion that the question of mike flynn came up in the room with jim comey, and all that is now happening is Rudy Guilliani is pushing a sustained campaign of gaslighting the country and blatant fabrication with a political end to its logical end. Obviously what i mean by logical is i mean insane extreme, to the point he is getting tripped up on words of his own from just a fortdp fortnight ago. Dozens of unite the right show up to the rally only to be out numbered by counterprotesters. First here is bill karins with a check on the forecast. What does it look like . More of the same. Soggy weather continues and flash flooding is imminent if not occurring in areas of eastern pennsylvania. It is coming into eastern pennsylvania, and we are going to get a quick two, three inches of rain out of this. This is on top of the saturated ground from the heavy rain on saturday. We have numerous Flash Flood Warning issued for outside of philadelphia all the way through the mountainous terrain of areas of eastern pennsylvania. 20 million people, by the way, are in the Flash Flood Watch from north of d. C. And just about everyone east of new york city over to williamsport and harrisburg. Showers and thunderstorms obviously occurring in areas of the northeast. We are getting soaked in areas of texas, dallas. A cool day for you. The heavy rain goes up into cans. This is more needed. This is not needed and we get the flooding concerns. Of course, not much changed in the west. It is not as hot as last week, but the fire danger remains high. Another 90degree day for you in portland. 89 in seattle. Cooler in areas of coastal california including los angeles and southern cal so thats nice. Wednesday, a little drying, a summerlike day in the east, but here comes the next front with showers and storms from st. Louis, up to chicago. Thursday it goes into the ohio valley, Tennessee Valley and shifting to the east on friday. If you are getting dry weather in the northeast, it will be more or less tuesday, wednesday and then the rain chances return by end of the week. New york city, i would grab the umbrella if you are Walking Around new york during the lunch hour. If it is not raining yet, it will be shortly. You are watching morning joe. We will be right back. Lets begin. Yes or no . Do you want the same tools and seamless experience across web and tablet . Do you want 4. 95 commissions for stocks, 0. 50 options contracts . 1. 50 futures contracts . What about a dedicated service team of trading specialists . Did you say yes . Good, then its time for power e trade. The platform, price and service that gives you the edge you need. Looks like we have a couple seconds left. Lets do some card twirling twirling cards e trade. The original place to invest online. Chair, new laptop headphones, with free 24 7 tech support. Yep, thanks guys. I think he might need some support. Yes. Start them off right. With the School Supplies they need at low prices all summer long. Like these for only a 25 cents at office depot officemax. Hawaii is in the middle of the pacific ocean. Were the most isolated population on the planet. Hawaii is the first state in the u. S. To have 100 Renewable Energy goal. Were a very small electric utility. But, if we dont make this move were going to have changes in our environment, and have a negative impact to hawaiis economy. 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So on the First Anniversary of the deadly charlottesville protests, thousands of antihate protesters out numbered White Supremacists who were rallying just steps from the white house. Fewer than 20 people showed up for the second unite the right rally yesterday in washington. I have seen longer lines at wattaburger in pensacola. It was a gathering aimed to bring together multiple White National organizations including neo nazis. The group was met by thousands of chanting counter protesters at Lafayette Square park across from the white house. A Massive Police presence kept both of the groups separated. President trump, who was criticized for saying both sides shared the blame for the violence yesterday, on saturday tweeted, the riots in charlottesville a year ago resulted in a senseless death and division. We must come together as a nation. I condemn all types of racism and all acts of violence. Peace to all americans. First, eddie, we have a followup to charlottesville. Obviously it put a lot of people on edge for good reason, and yet 20, just 20 people showed up at this rally. What a damning damning reality for White Supremacists who thought they were going to start something in charlottesville that would continue through this year and beyond. Yeah. I think so. I dont want to overread it because we still have the evidence from portland, oregon a couple of weeks ago where White Supremacists organized and marched in significant numbers there and four people were arrested in that particular incident. But yesterday, i think, revealed the impact of the counterprotest, the impact of public shaming. You know what i found fascinating about that trump tweet, joe, is that it was you know, trump does not typically want to engage in dog whistles, but thats a dog whistle. Yeah. Because he comes you know, hes condemning all times of racism, all types of racism. Not just racism but all types of racism. At that moment he is appealing to a generalized sentiment among his base particularly that white americans are subject to discrimination. Philip published a piece yesterday in the Washington Post kind of laying out the data with regards to this kind of me tassumption that white people are bearing the brunt of the discrimination. Trump is saying to his base, his folks, that im not leaving you here. Theres not a blanket condemnation of the White Supremacists gathering, 20 of them though it may be, in front of the white house. He is still playing the race game in that moment there. John meachem, do you agree with that . Yes, and i think that it is good news yesterday in terms of those numbers. We shouldnt i agree with eddie that we shouldnt overread it, but at the same time if there had been a lot of people there we would be having a very different conversation this morning. Theres an old observation from jeremy bentham, the english philosopher, who said that publicity is the very soul of justice. The more you Pay Attention to something, ultimately the truth will out. I think a lot of us are making a big bet on the truth of that observation, not only about race but about so much of what the president does, that we have a moral obligation to pay as much attention to these things as possible and hope that the collective common sense of the nature in the republic will out. I believe it will. It may be, as wellington said of waterloo, a closerun thing. But in terms of race, in terms of the more outrageous elements, i dont think we i know there are people that argue you give it too much oxygen if you talk about it too much. I think in this climate where everyone talks about everything at more or less the same level, i think we have an obligation to exam this as closely as possible and ultimately trust that we, the people, will get it right. Coming up on morning joe, the plummeting turkish lira is stoking fears of an economic fallout. We will talk to an admiral about the United States diplomatic dispute with our nato ally. We will talk about that when we come back. When my hot water heater failed, she was pregnant, inlaws were coming, a little bit of water, it really it rocked our world. I had no idea the amount of damage that water could do. We called usaa. And they greeted me as they always do. Sergeant baker, how are you . They were on it. It was unbelievable. Having insurance is something everyone needs, but having usaa now thats a privilege. Were the bakers and were usaa members for life. Usaa. Get your insurance quote today. Ke me ta this is a story about mail and packages. And its also a story about people. People who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams theyre handing us more than mail theyre handing us their business and while we make more ecommerce deliveries we never forget. That your business is our business the United States postal service. Priority you all your school get supplies today. School. Grade. Done. Done. Hit the Snooze Button and get low prices on School Supplies all summer long. Like these for only a 25 cents at office depot officemax. California had the worst wildfire season on record. Scientists say, our weather is becoming more extreme and we all have to be better prepared. Thats why pg e is adopting new and additional safety precautions to help us monitor and respond to dangerous weather. Hi, im allison bagley, a meteorologist with pg es Community Wildfire Safety Program. Were working now, to enhance our weather forecasting capabilities, building a network of new weather stations to identify when and where extreme wildfire conditions may occur, so we can respond faster and better. Were installing Cutting Edge Technology to provide realtime mapping and tracking of weather patterns. And we use this information in partnership with First Responders and californias Emergency Response systems. To learn more about the Community Wildfire Safety Program and how you can help keep your home and community safe, visit pge. Com wildfiresafety relations between nato allies, United States and turkey, continue to plummet. On friday President Trump tweeted in part, i have just authorized a doubling of tariffs on steel and aluminum with respect to turkey as their currency, the turkish lira, slides downward against our strong dollar. Less than three weeks ago trump threatened, quote, large sanctions on turkey for their longgoing detainment of pastor brunson. Lets bring in retired four Star Navy Admiral james trevitis. It seems to me, admiral, we need a scorecard to keep up with what exactly is going to with the United States relations with whether it is turkey or north korea or now or russia, north korea or now turkey, where at first youre concerned because he seems to be the president seems to be too fond of these autocrats, but then you turn around and now we find ourselves on the other side of it where the alliance is taking a real pounding. What is your take . Im worried, joe. Ill tell you why. Turkey is an important country. It has 80 million people. By a couple more decades it will overtake russia as the most populous nation in europe. It is a strong nato ally. It has been part of nato since the beginning, and it has the largest army in nato, saefving only the United States. It is an important geopolitical country. It has an authoritarian leader who has gone too far in driving events personally. He has personalized everything. And he and the president are in a mano y mano. At the end of the day, president erdogan is bringing a knife to a gun fight. He is not going to win this. Life is full of choices, and he ought to make the choice he, erdogan to save his country by working with the United States on this one. He is in the wrong place and he is driving events terribly, and it is destructive to the Nato Alliance. I will close by saying what i worry about most is the way it could pitch turkey into the camp of russia, make them soften on iran. It is bad geopolitics for us. Kasie hunt is with us and has a question from washington. Kasie. Admiral, to pick up on the last point you made, what implications are there if this is, you know, truly disstabilizing for turkey and their currency, for what is going on in syria and our policy there . Very dangerous, because turkey has emerged after russia as the secondmostsignificant player in the syrian dispute. To put them aside and push them overtly into the russian camp is a mistake. Here is what we ought to do. First and foremost, we need an ambassador in turkey. We still dont have one. We need one of significant stature, maybe a former ambassador to turkey like frank ricker doney, maybe someone like ann patterson. We have people of high stature who can go and be an ambassador. Secondly, we need to use militarytomilitary contacts. Were still very strong. The defense minister, the former nato general, he is kind of the general mattis of turkey. Third, we ought to get the dispute off the front pages and solve this diplomatically. But at the end of the day, turkey has to make the decision to stay with the west. We need to encourage that path. John meachem is with us. John. Admiral, in the spirit of testing the momentary passion versus longterm impact, what is your sense of where the reaction to the within the alliance to helsinki, to trumps perform abs at the nato summit, which i guess has been now three weeks. It feels like both yesterday and three years ago. But as the fallout unfolds, what is your sense of the Lasting Impact of that performance in europe . It is all part, john, of these kind of centrifugal forces i feel pulling not only at Nato Alliance but at the idea of the trans atlantic bond. That creeking sound you hear is the trans atlantic bridge. Every performance, not only at the nato summit but at the g7 in canada, President Trump twists that bridge a bit, at the same time turkey pulling away. Italy has an election and elects someone opposed to the european union. We continue to see the rightwing movements in hungary, in poland, still bubbling in france. It is centrifugal force pulling apart our greatest allies and partners. To lose turkey would be a geopolitical mistake of Epic Proportions. Hopefully we can pull them back, but turkey has to make the first step at this point. Admiral james stravydris. Ivanka trump has a tweet which is largely to where her public contributions to solving the problem starts and stops. We will talk about that next on morning joe. Booking a flight at the last minute doesnt have to be expensive. Just go to priceline. Its the best place to book a flight a few days before my trip and still save up to 40 . Just tap and go. For the best savings on flights, go to priceline. So moments ago nbc news exclusively aired a second audio clip from omarosa. The omarosa tapes on the today show, this 24second excerpt from a longer phone call she had with the president the day after she was fired. Omarosa, whats going on . I just saw on the news that youre thinking about leaving . What happened . General kelly general kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave. No, i i nobody even told me about it. Wow. You know, they run a big operation but i didnt know it. I didnt know that. It. I dont love you leaving at all. Do you think hes mentally competent to do this job . No, i dont think hes fit. As we heard on the recording you just played, he doesnt even know what is happening in his white house. General kelly, john kelly is running this white house and donald trump has no clue what is going on. He is being puppeted and thats very dangerous for this nation. Nbc hasnt been able to listen to the full recording to know what was said before or after. Im sorry. And has reached out to the white house for a comment on this part of the reported phone conversation. The conversation was first reported within omarosas new book, unhinged. With us now, White House Correspondent for pbs news hour, and also a columnist for the daily beast, Margaret Carlson. Margaret joe, can i ask you a quick question . Just to go to the hilarious thing about omarosas reaction to this, apparently it has not crossed her mind that when she called donald trump to say, hey, ive been fired, that trump knew all about it but just didnt want to be mean to her on the phone. Like if they fired me from msnbc and it was because you had me fired, for instance, if i called you and said, hey, joe, i just got fired today, phil fired me, what would you say . Oh, john, i had no idea. What . What are you talking about . What are you talking about. Hey, huh . Then i might go like this that was actually that was a moment for me, Margaret Carlson. I know, seriously. That i broke out laughing. It was such an unconvincing but he says it under his breath. What, hey, who, youve been fired . Wilell, he never said your fired since he has been in the white house. Hes had other people do it. Right. Omarosa, you know, sister margaret said to you im sure, show me your friends, ill tell you who you are. Right. He chose omarosa. She grew into who she was with him. He brought her to the white house. Yes. He gave her the open door. He did all of that. So he certainly wouldnt be shocked by her. Shes the best that he had to offer the country, and this is who he is. This is the kind of person he wants and this is the kind of person he cant fire but have somebody else do it, and then lie to her about it. Yeah, margaret. Yeah, sister margaret probably did tell me that. My mother though always said judge yourself by your enemies. And also, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Really warm and fuzzy things you crochet and put up on your wall. This is why you got into politics. Yeah, that explains a lot. So yamish, i dont know, maybe it is a it is not really a columbia jschool question. Maybe it is just that i just dont want to play tapes of omarosa. Like should we be playing tapes of omarosa . Should we be talking about it . Is this where reporting has come . Is there really anything to gain from it . Secret tapes made of white house officials is definitely news. You have omarosa, despite whatever people think about her, she is someone who was in the white house, getting paid Something Like 179,000 a year, of taxpayer dollars, and she now has these recordings. I think it is absolutely newsworthy. The fact that just yesterday we heard john kelly firing her and her recording that and then today we hear the president of the United States talking about the fact that he thought she shouldnt be getting fired and he dont love it, those to me are definitely newsworthy things. Omarosa knows the president longer than a lot of other people in the white house, despite whatever credibility issues she might have. She is someone who gets President Trump, at least in his personality and the fact he was an entertainer much like she is an entertainer. So i think there is something there. I think what is important is that the white house has forcefully come out against omarosa. They said they fired her Something Like four times. They talk about the idea she was a low life. The president just called her a low life yesterday. So while this recording does have the president kind of being nice to her and saying, hey, i didnt think that you should be fired, theres this idea that omarosa is trying to say that john kelly is running the white house when in reality john kelly is supposed to be running the staff of the white house. The president may not know about every Single Personnel decision that he makes. Yeah. But im just wondering, eddie, as we step back out, just again talking about the type of people that not only donald trump attacks or that he hires, but the type of person that donald trump is himself. This is just all very creepy. You have trump that, you know, used to get on the phone and pretend that he was john baron or whoever he was as his pr guy. You heard that he would record conversations, and now you have omarosa recording conversations. Youve got the president s former fixer recording conversations. Who knows . Maybe theyre doing it, like i said, for the same reason monica kept the dress, because she knew she would be attacked and needed evidence. But it just all seems so creepy to me, that all of these people are recording themselves. Well, i mean they obviously exist in an environment that is defined by deep, and seems to me reasonable distrust. It is reasonable, yeah. Joe, this white house i mean it feels like i dont know if we can make it a verb, but it feels like weve been tabloided. Tabloidized. There we go. I think your gut disinterest and distaste for this, it is an assault on seriousness, the seriousness of the moment. It is like were passing by star magazine at the Grocery Store where we see the headline come out. Omarosa and donald trump have forced us all in some ways to get down in the gutter with it. I think thats at the heart of my distaste for this. I think the word you are looking for is abasement or selfabasement. Something like that. Desecration. Every day is the New York Posts headline, best sexy ever had, screaming at you. Of course, that was a headline trump planted in the New York Post 30 years ago, from those not in new york. Kasie, when you talk about the abasement, one of the things as far as policy goes, we were talking in the last hour about paul ryans a policy guy. You know, the Freedom Caucus is now they are basically successors to a group that i was in when i was in the house, and we would obsess over deficits, over debt, over wasteful Government Spending, over entitlements, over balancing the budget, over sending as much authority back home as humanly possible. That was our obsession. Now youve got the Freedom Caucus who claimed to be concerned about things like this, you have the tea party who claimed to be obsessed about Government Spending, and what are they doing . Theyre sitting back and going along with the president who has the Largest National debt ever, has exploded the federal deficits, signed the largest spending bill ever, the biggest pentagon budget in the history of the republic, the biggest domestic spending. I mean everything is the biggest, like everything. And trump people wouldnt believe this, but they are spending more on just about every category of Government Spending than barack obama did, and yet policy doesnt matter. What are they doing . Theyre going after Rod Rosenstein, something that even the white house privately says is a joke. If you want to talk about abasement, i think that the most the most telling anecdote in that article that mark liebowicz wrote about paul ryan was that the president was calling paul ryan boy scout. Paul ryan didnt realize that the president was insulting him, not complimenting him. Not only have the policy prescriptions of paul ryan and company been rejected, and as you point out people who claim that they wanted him to go further on that stuff are actually throwing it even further out the window than he has, but the very essence of paul ryan, which was, you know, this idea that if he was a basically good human, if he was polite to other people, if he tried to negotiate in good faith, if he didnt secretly record conversations and then release them to the media, but rather, you know, talked privately, that ultimately voters would reward him for that and say, you know what, this is a good man trying to get stuff done for us. Forget it. The Republican Party picked omarosa and donald trump. I dont know. It is interesting. Margaret, right now you have ivanka trying to walk a fine line where, oh, no, of course the press is an enemy of the people. We could go down the line talking about how devastate it she was with what was going on at the border. Margaret, youre like me. You have been around washington an awful long time, and theres sort of a game of politics as it is played by some of the bigger players on the stage. I could see this coming a mile away. Ivanka wants to be president of the United States and donald trump wants to do anything he can to help facilitate that. Well, she is in a unique position to influence him, and when she came, uprooted the whole family, it wasnt to get parental leave passed. It was to act as a breake on he father. When people leave the white house they say to me, you dont know the half of it. Well, she does know. She knows from the momandpop operation in the trump tower, she knows what her father is like. She came and she was going to be, quote, a force dpfor good, d time and again she has not been. Not on charlottesville, not on travel ban, not on climate change, and certainly, heartbreakingly, not on the border. It was just right up her allie. One of the worst days of it she was shown tossing her own baby up in the air happily while the pictures on tv were, you know, distraught parents having their children taken away. One person close to the white house told me that one of the reasons she didnt take it on was because melania did. Melania hardly took it on. She did actually go to the border, which is more than what ivanka did. But has there been anyone whos, you know, maybe you werent fooled by it, joe, but i thought she would have some innuns on her father. And she simply had none. Hes had more on her. Yes, theres no doubt. I think mika and i talked about having lunch with them one time very early. In the white house. Maybe the first weekend, second weekend. And my biggest takeaway was she stood in line just like everybody else to get a sentence in. I think he treats just about everybody the same. Shes first among equals. And i do believe that they are thinking that one day shell be president or one day she can succeed him. But theres no doubt shes not had a lot of influence on him. Yameesh, when we talk with the border, its been the aclu. The white house has deferred to the aclu. So ivanka trump, the first of the aclu. Instead of using her powerful position to do it herself. I mean, just this morning, what we know is there are still hundreds of children who are still separated from their families. And then there are parents who are deported without their children. I talked to an immigration lawyer over the weekend who said hes very worried about all these different basically all these different Access Points where you could look at this. Theres kids that are with their parents that are still stuck in jail. The kids that might never see their parents again. The government has basically said were going to try to put this plan together. Its because the aclu has been exerting pressure on this government is why were seeing even these numbers. All right, thank you. We appreciate it. Thank you both very much. Coming up next, were going to be talking to a director at the aclu on their efforts to lead the charge on trying to resolve this tragedy of child separations. Heres somethingu should know. Theres a serious virus out there that 1 in 30 boomers has, yet most dont even know it. A virus thats been almost forgotten. Its hepatitis c. Hep c can hide in the body for years without symptoms. Left untreated it can lead to liver damage, even liver cancer. The only way to know if you have hep c is to ask your Healthcare Provider for the simple blood test. If you have hep c, it can be cured. For us, its time to get tested. Its the only way to know for sure. With us now, the Deputy Director of the aclus immigrant rights project. And lead attorney in the legal challenge to the Trump Administrations family separation policy. Lee gallant. Thank you very much for being with us. Lets start with the question we always ask. How many children are currently separated from their parents and in danger of being permanently orphaned . Yes, we believe there still may be over 600 children who are still not with their parents. You know, its been a long time now. Its really unfortunate. Because every day the medical community is saying more and more harm is being done to these children. Eventually, it may be irrapable harm. Whats the age of these children . It ranges from babies and toddlers, years old up to 17. Were not talking about only older teenagers, were talking about little babies that they took away. What i cant understand about this, what baffles me about this more than well, i guess other than the horrific policy, is the fact that there is nobody in the federal government that is directly responsible for bringing these children and these parents together. Im shocked that the senate, the house, have not demanded more answers on this process. But the aclu has been standing in that gap. Is where do you all go to get accurate numbers . Yes. So one thing thats fortunate, with us pushing enough, the judge has finally said to the government, look, you absolutely need to designate a point person. So now weve had point people. Were getting numbers. Were getting information. But its way too late. And its not complete. So weve had to push every second. Youd think after the administration did something this horrible they would say, okay, a federal judge has said its unconstitutional. They would be do everything they could to help us take in the initiative. It appears theyve been sitting on phone numbers of these parents who were deported that weve been trying to reach for weeks, maybe months. I want you to just talk real quick about a very specific case that relates to when the judge last week lashed out to some extent at the government because of a very particular instance in which a family you guys were intervening in the middle of this case. A family was in the middle of it, was put on a plane and flown out of the country. Very much in stark contravention of what the judge was trying to accomplish. Just talk about how that happened. Exactly. We dont know. Fortunately, the judge said we wont the government to say exactly how it happened. Because these are families that are so scared. I cant even imagine the fear that this mother and little child being put on a plane. They were told theres a case going. Hopefully theyll prevail. Then all of a sudden theyre put on a plane. Theyre back now only because the judge said get them back and i want to know why it happened and im going to hold people in contempt. I think its just sort of part and parcel of the administration rushing people out of the country without due process. Do you think somebody needs to go to jail for this . Because this is evil. We cant call it anything else but what it is, right . We have not asked for that and it does not appear that our judge is looking at those remedies. I know people are calling for that. Right now, we havent asked for that. Right now, we are focused solely on getting the children and parents together. I think whether other people are going to call for that, i think well leave to them. Let me ask you what americans can do. There are a lot of people that feel so helpless, reading about this story day in, day out. The Trump Administration has said well let the aclu handle it. How do americans help you do your job . If people want to contribute to this specific effort, even if somebody doesnt like other things the aclu does . What about this specific effort . How can they help you reunite these children, these toddlers, these infants, with their mothers and fathers . Right. I want to pick up on one thing you said really quickly. I think youre absolutely right. This is an issue the administration i think did not realize wouldnt cut along normal ideological lines. This is beyond the pale. I think were going to hopefully have go fund campaigns and other things where many can be given where weve already done that. So families need shelter. They may need transportation. All those things. If you go to our website, we will have suggestions about that. Absolutely, theres been a public outcry. Thats been critical surrounding the litigation by us. All right, lee, thank you so much for being with us. More importantly, thank you for the important work that youve been doing. That does it for us this morning. Stay with msnbc for news throughout the day. Because Stephanie Ruhle picks up the coverage right now. Thank you, joe. Im Stephanie Ruhle with a lot to cover today. Starting with omarosa, who is not holding back. The former white house aide calling out President Trump just moments ago. Do you think hes mentally competent to do this job . No, i dont think hes fit. The Trump Administration firing back after omarosa reveals she made secret recordings of white house officials including the president himself. Omarosa, whats going on . I just saw on the news that youre thinking about leaving. What happened . Changing his tune. Rudy giuliani, the president s lawyer, now says President Trump did not talk about Michael Flynn with former fbi director jim comey. What happened in that conversation with comey about Michael Flynn . What e