Need to halt the Nuclear Ambitions and the destabilizing activities taking place in iran. As most of you know, we ended the iran deal which was one of the worst deals anyone could imagine, and thats had a major impact on iran and its substantially weakened iran and we hope at some point iran will call us and well maybe make a new deal or we maybe wont. But iran is not the same country that it was five months ago, that i can tell you. Theyre no longer looking so much to the mediterranean and the entire middle east. Theyve got some big problems that they can solve probably much easier if they deal with us. So well see what happens, but we did discuss iran. We discussed israel and the security of israel and president putin is very much involved now with us and the discussion with bibi net nanyahu on working something out surrounding syria and specifically with regards to the security and longterm security of israel. A major topic of discussion was north korea and the need for it to remove its Nuclear Weapons. Russia has assured us of its support. President putin said he agrees with me 100 and theyll do whatever they have to do to try and make it happen. Discussions are ongoing and they are going very, very well. We have no rush for speed. The sanctions are remaining. The hostages are back. There have been no tests. There have been no rockets going up for a period of nine months. I think the relationships are very good, so well see how that goes. We have no time limit. We have no speed limit. We have were just going through the process, but the relationships are very good. President putin is going to be involved in the sense that he is with us. He would like to see that happen. Perhaps the most important issue we discussed at our meeting prior to the press conference was the reduction of Nuclear Weapons throughout the world. The United States and russia have 90 , as i said, and we can have a big impact. But Nuclear Weapons, i think, is the greatest threat of our world today. Theyre a Great Nuclear power. Were a Great Nuclear power. We have to do something about nuclear, and so that was a matter that we discussed actually in great detail and president putin agrees with me. The matters we discussed are profound in their importance and have the potential to save millions of lives. I understand there are many disagreements between our countries but i also understand that dialogue and when you think about it, dialogue with russia or dialogue with other countries but dialogue with russia in this case where weve had such poor relationships for so many years, dialogue is a very important thing and its a very good thing. So if we get along with them, great. If we dont get along with them, then we wont get along with them, but i think we have a very good chance of having some very positive things. I thought that the meeting that i had with president putin was really strong. I think that they were willing to do things that, frankly, i wasnt sure whether or not they would be willing to do. Well be having future meetings and well see whether or not that comes to fruition, but we had a very, very good meeting. I just wanted to clear up, i have the strongest respect for our intelligence agencies headed by my people. We have great people, whether its gina or dan coats or any of them, i mean, we have tremendous people, tremendous talent within the agencies. I think theyre being guided properly, and we all want the same thing. We want success for our country. With that were going to start a meeting now on tax reductions. Were going to be putting in a bill. Kevin brady is with us and i might ask kevin just to say a couple of words about that and then well get back on to a private meeting. Kevin, could you maybe just give a brief discussion about what well be talking about. Yes, sir, mr. President. Thank you for having members of the ways and Means Committee here today. Peace through strength is Foreign Policy and the works best when america has a Strong Economy and a strong military. Under your leadership, how and Senate Republicans are delivering on both of them. Today is about how we can strengthen americas economy even more, and we think the best place to start is with americas middle class families and our small businesses. So today were here to talk to you about making permanent this tax relief, one, so they can continue to grow, two, so we can add a million and a half new jobs, and three, we can protect them against the future washington trying to steal back those hard earned dollars that you and the Republican Congress has given them. So thank you very much for having us here today. And the time of submittal, what do you think that would be, kevin . We anticipate the house voting on this in september and the Senate Setting a timetable as well. Thats great. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, good afternoon. Im ali velshi. We were just looking at President Trump. What a difference a day makes. You just heard him say, quote, i have full faith in our intelligence agencies, a direct contradiction to what we witnessed yesterday. Joining me, katy tur, hans nichols of the white house and on capitol hill garrett hank. The president also said that he misspoke, katy tur. He said, when he said i see no reason why it would be russia, he said he meant wouldnt be. I want to play this back. Lets listen to what the president actually said yesterday that basically turned the world upside down and then what he said about it. Listen. All i can do is ask the question. My people came to me. Dan coats came to me and some others and they said they think its russia. I have president putin, he just said its not russia. I will say this, i dont see any reason why it would be. I said the word would instead of wouldnt. The sentence should have been and i thought i would be maybe a little bit unclear on the transcript or unclear on the actual video, the sentence should have been i dont see any reason why it wouldnt be russia, sort of a double negative. So you can put that in and i think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself. Well, that sorts the whole thing out. Thanks for watching msnbc. What did he just do . I almost jumped the gun because its laughable. It is ludicrous that he is trying to explain that away by saying i just forgot to say one word. Its as if he expected us or thinks that were all wearing blindfolds and had earplugs in for the rest of that News Conference and for his interview with sean hannity later at night and for his tweets and all the behavior that hes shown and expect us to believe that that was a tiny misspeak that he did, that he meant to say not, instead he said would. Thats ludicrous. Last night on sean hannity he was asked about putins denial and said, quote, putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial. Once again, siding with Vladimir Putin. Trump also said in the News Conference yesterday that the u. S. Has been foolish for investigating russian collusion and we are all to blame. And the probe is ridiculous. He called it a witch hunt. He called the probe a witch hunt yesterday, yesterday morning. He said our relationship has never been worse now, that changed four hours ago, and that he cant make decisions on Foreign Policy to appease partisan critics. Its ludicrous. All this suggests that he didnt misspeak yesterday . Its ludicrous for him to expect us to believe it. You have to wonder whats been going on behind the scenes at the white house today and how many people have gone up to the president and said, you need to fix this. Right. Notice he was reading from typed remarks. It reminded me a lot of what happened in charlottesville after he said the both sides thing and he said there were a lot of fine people marching with the white supreme cysacists. He read from prepared remarks. He read them. He couldnt speak from the heart about racism. A day later, hours later, whatever it was, he walked that back again and went back to his true feelings which was that he felt that both sides were to blame and that there were very fine people. Watch for what the president says in the coming hours. Watch for what the president says tomorrow. I dont think anybody can call this a clarification or in any way argue that it mitigates the disastrous News Conference that happened yesterday. Its a strange as one can come up with. In the same comments the president made he said it could be other people also. Theres a lot of people out there. To accept that the president misspoke accepts the fact that that sentence he uttered yesterday was weirdly out of character for the way the president has been characterizing the Mueller Investigation and the relationship to russia. It wasnt. He wasnt out of character today. To suggest that he meant to say wouldnt as opposed to would doesnt really make sense to me. Everything katy said, as usual, is correct. Brilliantly put i thought. The only thing id add is something i wrote back in 1988, a book called hard ball about technique and explaining how spin works. Spin is a twostep process. The first thing is you say i made a mistake. Oh, hes being honest with us. In that moment when theyre buying it, you tell them the lie again. You say i meant to say would not. Its a two step. The nightly news, the evening news, all the straight media tonight will cover this as an actual event, that he admitted that he made a mistake, and then they will say that the mistake he admitted making was that he didnt put the word not in. This is the way you game the straight media. Its very mechanical. You watch tonight. You will see this in the front page of the New York Times. Youll see it in adversary media. They will all give him credit for having admitted he made a mistake so he could lie again. This is a technique and i bet you he gets away with it. Ill bet you everybody tonight plays that stupid thing today that he admitted this little mistake. Its a game, its a technique. Its called spin. I think we have to get adjusted to the fact that its not a mistake, but hans no, its a game. Garrett, this going to be something that folks at congress are going to be able to latch onto. In other words, republicans who are not sure where they sat on this thing, fur rowing their brows at what donald trump said yesterday, they get to say, see, he just misspoke. Theres a segment of the Republican Party for whom this will be good enough. They will see this as an off ramp and an opportunity to change the subject back to issues they would rather be talking about, namely, literally anything else. This has really turned the Republican Party against this president in a way ive not seen happen with any other major issue on capitol hill. Those who are allied with the president will take these comments today and say, okay, hes addressed this, hes walked it back, hes made his comments. They will probably turn some of this on the media and say its time to move on, but i do think there is another potentially larger segment of Congressional Republicans up here on capitol hill who saw yesterdays News Conference in helsinki and todays attempted walkback as a sign that they will have to take steps on their own to continue to support our european allies, to continue to support the department of justice this their ongoing investigations and to continue to put pressure on russia to stay out of their elections, the 2018 elections coming up in just three months which are at the front of almost every lawmakers mind up here. Hans nichols, the president got back after what was arguably one of the finest weeks Vladimir Putin has ever had, but conversely, probably one of the worst weeks that the pentagon has had because the president stop after stop kicked our allies in the face and then got to russia and continued to fundamentally undermine the Nato Alliance when he continues this embrace of Vladimir Putin who right now continues to preside over an occupation of a country that was not a russian country a few years back. Youre referring to the ukraine and crimea and just last week there were exercises in the black sea, the u. S. Navy training with the Ukrainian Navy this had a large part of their fleet sunk by the russians. Its a show of force at the pentagon level, military to military level, these relationships are enduring and will continue. All across Eastern Europe you have u. S. Training with partner forces, whether or not theyre in a rotational division, rotational battalion going in and out of portlanland, marines training. Overall looking at the president s defense and i should note that secretary mattis has been clear that russia did interfere in the president ial election. He said most recently last january. When the look at the president s defense, his only concern after reading that entire transcript was one word. That throws the ball back to the congressional point katy was making. Garrett spends so much time talking to these Congressional Republicans. Do they agree with President Trumps statement that he hold both countries responsible. Everything else in that, to use a legal term, is now blessed. Hes blessed with a second set of eyes to say that he endorses that. I think that allows this conversation and the questions about the president S Performance to go on and it certainly will not be put out today. There was a whole lot of weird in that press conference yesterday, katy, and the point that you make is that we listened to the rest of it. He corrected one word, if you can even call that a correction. He says that he misspoke on one word, but for the rest of it, he was asked four direct questions from journalists where he could have given 99 different answers that said he was Holding Russia to account or that he believed russia interfered in american elections and he spoke about hillary clinton, a pakistani guy and some servers. He didnt talk about russian interference. He offered conspiracy theories and distractions and he was trying to place the blame everywhere else. This is not my responsibility. This happened under obamas watch. Im going to put this in the past. We need to move forward. He in no way looked to the man to his left and said what you did was wrong, we will never you allow you to do that again. This is a very simple thing to do. Its not a declaration of war on russia. Its a declaration of fact, number one, that they attacked our elections and that our president should be confronting the man who did it. But he did not do that and we have to remind ourselves, he went into this meeting armed with that indictment from the doj. He knew about it. It came out publicly on friday but he knew about it days in advance. He should have been prepared to go in there and hand him the indictment in the same way that Chris Wallace of fox news tried to hand Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Putin didnt take it. He pointed to a table and said put it down. He was asked, would he ask to extradite those 12 russians. He was asked this by an anchor the cbs news, will you ask Vladimir Putin to send them to america and he said to him, you know, i hadnt even thought about it. That means he wasnt all that well prepared. Lets go to peter alexander. You were in that room where President Trump issued his in air quotes correction where he said he misspoke yesterday. Sounded unusual to us. What did it seem like in the room . Reporter just a couple highlights i want to emphasize. For one, the president today was reading from typed remarks so it effectively shows you the confidence that his aids have in him delivering the message that they want to get out today. One of the things that struck me in the president s comments even as he was reading where he said i accept the findings of the u. S. Intelligence community that russia meddled in the 2016 election, he added that critical caveat where he said could be other people also. To be clear, that is not the finding of the u. S. Intelligence community, as we hear a giant rain storm behind us, a metaphor for a storm thats been around this president for the course of the last 24 hours. One moment you may not have seen at the end of that exchange, the president s comments there in the cabinet room alongside republican lawmakers, john bolton was on one side of the room, ivanka trump, his daughter, was seated a couple seats away in that room as well. As we were being escorted out of the room i yelled to the president will you publicly condemn Vladimir Putin for meddling. I said it three times. He simply ignored me or said thank you. This was an effort to try to clean something up but its not something that happened in a vacuum. He had two opportunities in two interviews with fox news yesterday to do it and it only happened today after that outrage from the hill and also after an emergency meeting of Top National Security leaders here at the white house that took place earlier today. This is an important piece of reporting that peter is mentioning. There was an unscheduled principals meeting, Top National Security advisers convened at the white house prior to donald trump speaking on camera today. So somebody said something and drafted something and now we have the president saying on the point of being asked whether he holds russia responsible, he said i heard from dan coats, my intelligence officials, that it is russia. President putin had a strong response. I have no reason to believe it would be, and now the president said he meant to say i have no reason to believe it would not be or wouldnt be. For reaction on this i want to go to Richard Engle, our foreign correspondent, who is in moscow. Richard, i imagine this is reverberating around the world. Have you had any chance to get any official reaction from anyone yet . Reporter no, i havent had a chance to have an official reaction. Actually, theres been very little official reaction when you see european leaders, asian leaders. They dont really want to weigh in on this. You didnt see a lot of officials come out today and say we were so disappointed to see President Trump on the stage praising Vladimir Putin. They still need to work with President Trump tomorrow. They still need to work with president putin, so theyre staying out of this. Instead what weve seen is a lot of editorials in newspapers, newspapers from generally protrump countries like israel in which President Trump was called a either a pood manila puppet. I believe it was a puppet. Weve been seeing a lot of editorials in the international media. What we just saw a few minutes ago, this correction between your air quotes, very few people around the world are going to believe this. What were having now is President Trump trying to tell people that what they just saw for the past week they didnt see, that they didnt see a quarter Million People on the streets of london, that they didnt see President Trump embarrass theresa may at her own dinner, that they didnt see President Trump on that podium dismissing the u. S. Intelligence findings on russian meddling, that it was all one word mistake. I think we saw an attempt to feed the media cycle in the United States to give the republicans a bit of an off ramp but people around the world are not going to say what we saw last week, we were all mistaken, everything is corrected now, there were no problems at nato, no disruptions there, everything is settled. This was not a doover. This was an attempt at illusion. Yeah. It is kind of remarkable. Chris mathews, to your point earlier that the spin begins with something that sounds like an apology and to garretts point, it does give some republicans on congress an off ramp or cover, i want to ask you, chris, Rod Rosenstein was seen at the white house this morning. I dont know whether theres any connection. We dont know whether he met with President Trump, but clearly someone was able to bring enough pressure to bear to the president to at least have him issue this clarification about one word that as Richard Engle says nobody really believes. Ultimately, what do you think happened and what impact is this going to have . I think its probably Critical Mass because the world basically condemned what they saw yesterday. No one believed it, no one. This is like jerry ford saying there was no soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Youre told by your best friends you blew it. Youre watching trump play another element of his playbook which define all reality as right now. There is no yesterday ever. Its never yesterday. He can erase that conversation where he attacked theresa may and say it didnt happen the next day because i was nice to her the second day. Trump is a genius at Getting Press attention, at destroying enemies and defining all human existence as this moment, right now when im talking to you. I dont think its going to work today. I think hes on defense today, one of those rare moments when donald trump is trying to protect himself rather than attack. Peter alexander, do you know anything about this rosenstein visit to the white house . I can only tell you what weve now heard from Sarah Sanders which is that Rod Rosenstein who is overseeing the Mueller Investigation was as you can see in our video here at the white house, we are told by Sarah Sanders that he was here for routine meetings, that he did not meet with the president while he was here. I can say with certainty that he didnt meet with the president because the president didnt even arrive in the west wing until after noon. We know that because theres a marine guard that stands outside the west wing when the president is there. He didnt get there until after rosenstein departed. Joining me is congressman carlos ka bello. Sorry to keep you waiting there but we were not expecting this to happen. I am concerned that there have been some on your side of the aisle who have been hesitant to be critical of what the president did yesterday and that this small correction that is a little bit hard to believe gives people comfort to move on from the fact that the president embraced an adversary in hill sinky yesterday. Im glad that the president reversed course today but the damage that was done yesterday, a lot of it is irreparable. It hurt our reputation, undermined our intelligence agencies, undermined Law Enforcement agencies in the United States, so unfortunately that is still unacceptable by any standard. The bottom line is that the president has to fully and finally accept that the russians did meddle in the 2016 election. That does not mean that the result is ill legit mat or invalid, but they did work intently and in a very targeted way to manipulate our elections and that must be condemned unequivocal unequivocally. When the president of the United States stands next to Vladimir Putin, there can be no equivalence between the types of things that russia does to undermine our interests throughout the world and our democracy which as flawed as it can be, as much as our politics have deteriorated in this country in recent years, we still have elections that are monitored, where people are allowed to vote. We have institutions like the house, the senate where people are allowed to express their differences, and our system of government is simply superior and that should not be anything that is ever in doubt or in question, especially when the president of our country is standing next to an adversary yal leader like Vladimir Putin and others. How do you square that circle . Some people associate collusion and interference, to them its the same thing. Some minds can separate the two. The fact is if we have evidence from our Intelligence Community and lots of other people that russia interfered in the election and continues to interfere in the election, the fact what effect it had on the outcome is a separate discussion and that is something that some republicans are having difficulty getting their heads around. We can say certainly that russia interfered in the election and continues to do so and we need the president and the Intelligence Community and our entire infrastructure to work against that happening again and put aside the separate conversation about what the Trump Campaign had to do with it or what the legitimacy of the outcome of the election was. Why cant we separate those clearly . Well, what we need, ali, is for republicans and democrats but especially republicans to sincerely express the truth and to back up our intelligence agencies and so many hard working american men and women who have dedicated countless hours to investigating what the russians did to uncovering it and to try to hold them accountable, and if necessary here in congress, we should consider additional sanctions against russia. I remind everyone last Year Congress passed with vetoproof majorities in both chambers sanctions against russia, against north korea, against syria. If necessary we should be prepared to do that again because we know that the russians would like nothing more than to once again interfere in our upcoming elections, cause problems, disrupt our democracy, and in doing so, undermine the strength of our country and our interests all over the world. So again, people need to be honest, need to be explicit. Theres no nuance here. There is no nuance here. The russians are not friends of the United States and we need the president to stand strong. This is not the first president who thinks that Vladimir Putin can be a friend. I remember president bush saying that he looked into his eyes and thought he could trust him. President bush was wrong. President trump was wrong yesterday and even in the case of the Obama Administration there was a degree of tolerance for Vladimir Putin. All of these men have made great mistakes and we need to call it like it is. Congressman, thanks for your time. Congressman carlos car bello of florida. Despite the president changing his tune about american intelligence agencies, the damage may be done. The backlash now includes calls for those who work in the Trump Administration to step down. In a Washington Post column, ruth marcus writes directly to dan coats saying, quote, you said friday that much as with the mumblings of a terrorist attack on the United States before 9 11, the warning lights are rumbling again. How do you continue to serve a president so determined to ignore those flashing lights. With me is msnbc National Security analyst and author of messaging with the enemy, clint watts. Clint, this is kind of remarkable. I assume leading principals who went to the white house today involved intelligence officials but there have been attacks on the Intelligence Community since before donald trump became president , since his presidency. Yesterday seemed to turn an interesting corner. His appointee, dan coats, republican of indiana, widely respected, he said to the world he doesnt really believe the information. Yes. And this is where you start to see institutions red lights flashing. What if this is the worst case scenario. Imagine being in the intelligence agencies today and youve watched your commanderinchief take the side of your adversary who struck you with an information attack in 2016, who is messing with you on many fronts against nato allies, who your president advances conspiracies that the kremlin might put out against u. S. Intelligence agencies. We saw it with a tweet yesterday, this is a rigged witch hunt, the Mueller Investigation. Russia, we agree. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs retweeted the president of the United States who called it a witch hunt and said we agree. This is remarkable. Russian active measures work because President Trump advances them against americans. He is now discrediting u. S. Institutions. I guarantee you inside the country today, inside these institutions, the question is how much do we share with the president of the United States. We dont even know what happened in that meeting. They were there for over two hours. Right. If that press conference was the train wreck that it was, i cant imagine what was going on inside. Can you imagine being an Intelligence Analyst on russia and any of the intel agencies in the United States government today and you have a twohour period where the president of the United States was in there, you have no documentation, dont know what was discussed and he walks out and literally takes the side of Vladimir Putin and does not take your side. And beyond the analysts, there are clandestine workers, spies, fbi agents who face mortal danger on a daily basis, who do so willingly in the defense of this country, but then to find out that the ultimate boss sort of doesnt really believe in the value of what youre doing, that has got to make you question your very work. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people. If you add the department of justice which is constantly up to fire, youre up to well over 200,000 to 300,000 people employed. Not only that, the department of justice yesterday while this is going on in helsinki takes an indictment against a russian agent they believe to be infiltrating a u. S. Organization tied to a political party. This is what more evidence do you need that this is a fivealrm fire in our country right now. What happens because the president was the last best hope to go and say to Vladimir Putin we know what youre up to, we wont have it anymore. Even if he didnt offer a material threat as to what was going to happen, just the idea to say we know what youre up to, John Mclachlan and i were talking about it last night that you know in the world of spy craft that someone is lying to you but your job is to let them know you know theyre lying to you. We didnt even do that. We didnt do that, we didnt bring up the indictment. That is the most detailed indictment. In cyber space that is unprecedented. It told us how the russians interfered in the election, specifics specifics, names, methodologiesolomethodology. In the netherlands there are claims in the public press that he helped support us. What did we see the week before . Degradation of nato, taking a slap at the u. K. If youre in these u. S. Intelligence agencies, the message is we need to move forward. You continue to move forward and continue to do your job. It will come down to institutions, the department of justice, capitol hill and congress and were starting to see that today. I felt some relief today that you saw congressmen across the board say this is way out of bounds. Then look at our intelligence agencies. Theyre not going to stop. Dan coats did put out a statement after President Trump did what he did at the press conference. A lot of people said, all right, this is the beauty of a strong bureaucracy, the stuff that President Trump criticizes as the deep state. There are people whose lives are dedicated to the service of the United States and they are prevailing right now. Dan coats was America First yesterday. Clint, good to see you, thank you. Clint watts, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy institute. A quick programming note, our colleagues, lester holt, peter alexander, and Andrea Mitchell head to the Aspen Security Forum for exclusive interviews with the fbi director and director of National Security intelligence dan coats. Well bring you the news from those interviews right here on msnbc and on nbc news starting thursday. Up next, President Trump is getting praise from some remembers of the Republican Party for actually sitting down with Vladimir Putin. Were going to hear from one of those lawmakers, thomgs massey, after the break. President obama delivered some of his harshest criticism yet of President Trump without actually naming him while speaking in africa today. Each days news cycles bringing morehe head spinning a disturbing headlines. 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Having said that, the president bravely went out and did what Ronald Reagan did which is you meet with your adversary, enemy. Kentucky congressman Thomas Massey also tweeted for the spofor the meeting saying dialogue is important and the president was right just like obama was right in meeting with cuba. Republican congressman Thomas Massey of kentucky joins me now. Good to see you. You also tweeted out a picture of boris yet sin talking to congress in 1992 and you said remember the time a democratic speaker of the house invited a russian president. Dialogue is good. We share this view that dialogue is good but im not sure there are a lot of americans who feel that we should have no dialogue with russia. This is a Massive Nuclear power. It is remarkably influential in the world, but there are a lot of americans who thought it was strange to give kim jongun the credibility that we gave him from a meeting that we didnt get much out of and this sort of falls into that category. There are moments where you and congress have decided that it is time to sanction russia for its bad deeds but the president doesnt seem to not even sanction. He doesnt even criticize russia. Ive never voted for a sanction, whether it was against north korea or russia. I think dialogue is good. I applauded president clinton im sorry, president obama when he went to cuba and met with castro there and im going to do the same thing when President Trump meets with the leader of russia. Some people do say that this is different, they say that cuba is different than russia. Yeah, weve considered cuba to be so bad that for 50 years you couldnt travel there but you could study abroad in russia. I dont think theres really the difference that people are trying to point out here. Its sad to see some of the left and some of the right become xenophobic isolationists. Im a noninterventionist so ive been disappointed in trying to solve these problems with war. I think you solve them with dialogue but its a disappointment. Im with you on the dialogue. Im with you with not wanting to have our fellow countrymen become xenophobic isolationists. Do you accept that russia messed around with our elections in 2016 and attacked our electoral processes . Good question. Every intelligence briefing classified that ive read here in congress has a level of confidence associated with each of the points in there and they have presented us with varying levels of confidence. So its not an all or nothing. The other thing is what is meddling . Lets define it. Are we talking about spying and propaganda . No, were talking about specific things like the allegations the indictments that came out on friday which is very, very detailed. Im talking about the actual indictments in our four Intelligence Agency assessments. Lets talk about those specific dimtindictments. The russians are accused of showing with democratic emails that Bernie Sanders was cheated out of a primary election by the dnc to the extent that they may have been involved in leaking it, thats what they showed was that there was a corrupt thing going on. You saw one of the indictments had to do with state electoral processes. Of which nobody has claimed they changed a single vote, right . But that shouldnt be the gauge, should it . The idea that somebody cant change a vote doesnt mean that its okay to otherwise attempt to influence our elections as an outside body. That is against the law. I dont think russia is going to follow our laws any more than were going to follow russias laws when were spying on them. Its possibly true that theyve tried to meddle but what is absolutely true is they didnt change a single vote in this election. You dont know that though, sir. Theres no claim in any indictment that they changed a single vote. Did you know before friday what those indictments were going to be . We havent finished this investigation yet. I guess im trying to figure out there are a lot of views that you come along because of your ideology. What does this get you in your ideology to not to disbelieve our intelligence agencies in their conclusions and to not support the investigation of whether russia is actually involved in attacking our elections . I misspoke by the way, i said 2018. Obviously we havent had our 2018 election, but what does it get you . We spend half a billion dollars on radiofree europe. We have voiced in propaganda on dozens of languages in dozens of countries. Its hypocritical to criticize its actually two different things. Hacking emails is a crime. Debbie Wasserman Schultz probably shouldnt hire foreign nationals to run her congressional email accounts and give her passwords to the dnc. That was Donald Trumps reference to a pakistani yesterday. Is that more important to you than the idea that we seem to have evidence that russia actually hacked into our systems for whether its the Democratic Party systems or state electoral systems, both of which are alleged, debbie Wasserman Schultz and the pakistaniamerican citizen is more important to you . Im not i dont see your dichotomy there. What i do see is that we should protect our systems. You cant protect stupid. When somebody uses password 1, 2, 3 or for password, its going to be hard to protect against that. Congressman, you know thats not the allegation, right . In the indictment on friday, thats not the allegations that somebody guessed a password. The allegation is that they leaked emails that showed that the dnc rigged the election against Bernie Sanders. Lets be clear. The allegation is that russian Intelligence Officers disguised as other parties hacked into systems. The allegation isnt they leaked emails about Bernie Sanders. That would be sock pedaling this. Do you think thats ever going to be proven . Do you think indicting russian Intelligence Officers is going to achieve anything . You probably know more than i do on this. Im asking what it gets you to doubt that. Do you think that russia should indict our Intelligence Community, as you pointed out, there are 2 or 300,000 people involved in . Look, we spy on other countries. They spy on us. To get back to the original thing that everybody seems to be most upset about, i think you got to have dialogue. President obama was right to dialogue with castro. President trump was right to dialogue with putin. People are going to be upset no matter what he said when he came out of there. I support the notion he did. Politically, yes, politically its not a good thing. He knew he would burn Political Capital to do this but the world would probably be safer, so i admire the president for doing it even though its not the politically popular thing to do. Okay, congressman, you started with the concept that you embrace dialogue. I started with the concept that i share that view with you so i appreciate that. I just want to be really clear for our viewers, in the indictment it says, quote, hacked the website of a state board of elections and stole information related to approximately 500,000 voters. Just want to make sure that you and i are both on the same page of what the allegation is. You stated that, let me restate not a single vote was changed at that state board of elections. Youre on the record for that. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for the dialogue. Always a pleasure. Youre always invited back. Congressman Thomas Massey of kentucky. Joining us to have a closer look at this is brett stevens, New York Times oped columnist and msnbc political contributor and noted conservative. He wrote a piece after the nato summit titled America First, america hated, america alone. I just wanted to get a comment on what the congressman said. One true comment he made was you cant protect stupid. Comparing boris yell zin to Vladimir Putin is like comparing Angela Merkel to adolf hitler, a regime that invades its neighbors, uses exotic weapons to assassinate its enemies on british soil and tried to temple fundamentally with our election, by the way, something we dont do in russia. Were not trying to make the state less democratic than it already is. That comparison blows my mind and reminds me of why im no longer a republican. But it comes up a lot. The fact rs america historically does not have its hands clean of interfering in other peoples outcomes. That aside, looking at the very specific instance here, we seem to have evidence that russia interfered in the election. Put that aside, too. We have all lieies for 70 years have come to our defense after 9 11 and we shook that tree to its core. We shook it in the last week, donald trump did. This is possibly the most serious outcome of this. Donald trump has made it clear that he sees our traditional allies as enemies. He called the eu an enemy or foe at least when it comes to trade and he is treating our traditional enemies or adversaries, russia, north korea, as if theyre his new best friends. What donald trump has never believed and this goes to the heart of what America First is about, i dont think he believes in the concept of a free world. I just came back just last week from a year in living in germany, a country that tried to kill my ancestors not that long ago. Heres a country that shares core liberal democratic liberal in the broadest sense of the word, liberal Democratic Values and that holds up what we think of as a free and prosperous world, the richest world that ever known in terms of the exchanges of technology, the exchanges of people. Its a fantastic world. That is not a republican democrat thing. This is a franklin roosevelt, dwight eisenhower, Ronald Reagan type view of the world. Its not an accident that America First goes back to the isolationist sentiment that predate the second world war, which some americans tried to keep us from helping britain in its hour of need and thank god those voices were ignored and we went on to defeat fascism and naziism. But there is an idealogical i think donald trump does not believe in liberal values. He doesnt believe in it when it comes to dealing with opponents or the press, and he doesnt believe in it when it comes to uniting a free world against autocrats. So we must all stop being surprised. Were short of time today because we were listening to the president walk back his stuff. Thank you very much. Brett stevens is a columnist at the New York Times and msnbc political contributor. Up next, social media played a major role in the Russia Influence Campaign in 2016. So are the social media campaigns prepared for 2018 . 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Well, itsonce again. Eason yeah. Lot of Tech Companies are reporting today. And, hows it looking . I dont know. Theres so many opinions out there, its hard to make sense of it all. Well, victor, do you have something for him . Check this out. Td ameritrade aggregates thousands of earnings estimates into a single data point. That way you can keep your eyes on the big picture. Huh. Feel better . Much better. Yeah, me too. Wow, you really did a number on this thing. Sorry about that. Thats alright. I got a box of em. Thousands of opinions. One estimate. The earnings tool from td ameritrade. Were back with a quick check of the markets. Trading just about wraps up for the day. The markets started in the red, now relatively safely in the green. 50 points higher on the dow. All three major markets are up right now. Lets end the show with where we began, russias influence on america politics. Social Media Companies were on the hill defending their actions or lack thereof in the leadup to the 2016 election. Were doing a lot a lot more, and i think we have gotten a lot better since the 2016 election. We have gotten much better at removing fake accounts. The accounts that the that russias i. R. A. Had on facebook in the 2016 election were inauthentic. We now have a mix of technical tools and human reviewers that have identified those types of accounts. Were hearing reports that twitder has suspended 58 million accounts in three months of 2017, not the ones that were just suspended this week. Representatives from facebook, twitter, and youtube were there. Joining us now is roger mcnamee, an early and current investor in facebook. Our time has been cut short because of Donald Trumps talk earlier. Let me ask you, these companies were asked very specifically about the basis for which they throw people out, get people off, demote their visibility. And the fact is, where they have made money, we have seen examples where twitter, google, apple, have all kept things up there that have made them money and have been conspiracy they are theories or not well proved ideas. Thats true. Disinformation, fake news spread much faster and much further than facts. As a consequence, theyre good for the business of facebook, stwiter, and google. The challenge we face is were trusting the midterms to facebook, google and twitter, and theyve made changes, but its not at all obvious that the changes theyve made would even have prevented what happened in 2016, much less the Natural Evolution of Technology Strategy thats likely to come. We also have to remember that the Cambridge Analytica data set used improperly by the Trump Campaign in 2016 is still in the hands of the Republican Party and still used for Voter Suppression in states around the country. So i dont think were were not only not out of the woods, were just hoping and praying that these guys are good enough to protect our democracy. Weve been talking for months and months, and i just had a remarkable conversation with a congressman from kentucky who says i heard it. Who says no votes were changed. If thats the view we go into the 2018 election with, i think its naive. The idea that somebody didnt change a vote in a voting machine doesnt mean were not susceptible to manipulation. We dont know that nobody changed a vote, were just saying that like whistling through a graveyard. The focus of the russian effort and the focus of the trump effort were about Voter Suppression, and they were clearly enormously successful. There were 4 Million People who voted for obama in 2012 who did not vote at all in 2016. And we saw what they did to inflame the Bernie Sanders supporters. They would not have needed to inflame very many of them at all to switch michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania, the only three states they needed to win that election. Are we substantially safer than we were before the 2016 election on that front . In one way and one way only as voters we now know that its really important to get out and vote this year, that Voter Suppression is the most effective thing that you can do on social media. And so if everybody recognizes that and gets if we can get one of our friends to vote who didnt vote, to double the voter turnout, then we dont have a problem. Then thats the job we have in front of us. I would have liked a longer conversation, but we have tomorrow. That does it for me for this hour. Ly be back here at 8 00 p. M. But for now, ill hand it over to Nicolle Wallace for deadline white house. Hi, everyone. Its 4 00 in new york. President trump is locked in a crisis that rivals his charlottesville equivocation of good people on both sides. And it has shaken even his most ardent fox suppo ardent supporters. President trump woke up to withering headlines for accepting vladamir putins denial of election meddling over the universal assessment of the u. S. Intelligence community. The president engaged in feeble cleanup this afternoon. I have full faith and support for americas great intelligence agencies. Always have. And i have felt very strongly that while russias actions had no impact at all on the outcome of the election, let me be totally clear in saying that, and i said this many times, i accept our Intelligence Communitys conclusion that russias meddling in the 2016 election took place. It could be other people also. Theres a lot of people out there. There was no collusion at all