Responsibility, in fact, more important than ever to protect the special counsel. A special report reveals russia has been arming military drones in the the wartorn nation. Taking russia to task over the latest chemical weapons attack. The russian regime, whose hands are all cove red in the hand of syrian children cannot be ashamed by pictures of its victims. Weve tried that before. Facing the firestorm, Mark Zuckerberg finally takes a seat at the witness table. The facebook ceo expected to be confronted with a barrage of questions from lawmakers about how his Company Plans to protect its 2 billion users. If we dont rein in the misuse of social media, none of us are going to have any privacy any more. We begin today with yet another escalation in the legal peril surrounding this white house. A president described as glued to cable news and increasingly furious, in this case, with the fbi, after federal agents seized records from Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer, who has been at Donald Trumps side for more than a decade now. Arguably nobody know, the ins and outs of trumps relationships and business dealings better than his friend and fixer. Now that information is in the hands of federal investigators. This morning, the president tweeting attorney general client privilege is dead. A total witch hunt. Flatout misstatements in his comments about the fbi raid. Ive got a great panel to break this all down. But first, a look at how these highly unusual events unfolded over the past 24 hours. On monday morning, the fbi began raiding the new York City Office and hotel room of Donald Trumps longtime attorney and confidant Michael Cohen. Prosecutors from the Southern District of new york obtained the search warrant after getting a referral from special counselor Robert Mueller. Some of the material seized in the raid is related to the 130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election. But both the New York Times and Washington Post report prosecutors also seized documents related to other topics as well as communications between cohen and his client donald trump. According to the post, cohens computer, his phone, personal financial records were alls confiscated and hes, quote, under federal investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and Campaign Finance violations. In a statement, cohens lawyer hit back. The decision by the u. S. Attorneys office in new york to conduct their investigation using search warrants is completely inappropriate and unnecessary. It resulted in the unnecessary seizure of protected Attorney Client communications, between a lawyer and his clients. The president of course is not happy about any of this. Sources close to the white house tell nbc news he found out about the raid after it was under way but before it broke on the news. Those sources saying he was furious and stewing over what is being perceived as mueller forcing a provocative confrontation. That fury came through as he spoke to reporters before he met with his war cabinet to discuss americas response to the atrocities in syria. So i just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, good man, and its a disgraceful situation. Its a total witchhunt. Ive been saying it for a long time. Its a disgrace. Its frankly a real disgrace. Its an attack on a country in a true sense. Its an attack on what we all stand for. So when i saw this and when i heard it, i heard it like you did. I said that is really now in a whole new level of unfairness. They found no collusion whatsoever with russia. The reason they found it is there was no collusion at all. No collusion. All right, lets start with nbcs jeff bennett at the white house. Weve read those tweets the president did, one after the other this morning. What else are you hearing from inside the white house . Good morning, chris. Were told the president is seething following these fbi raids on michael we hcohens ho suite and law offices. Including the one where he referred to it as a total witch hunt, in all caps. Heres the state of play were told is sort of coloring the president s reactions. First the raid on Michael Cohen. Youve also got the fact that his former National Security adviser has pleaded guilty. His former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has been indicted. Theres the scrutiny surrounding the president s soninlaw, jared kushner. All while former Trump Campaign aides are said to be cooperating with the special counsel and the president himself we know is the subject of an fbi investigation. So even as the president takes steps to delegitimize, to politicize, the special counsel, remember, the process for getting a search warrant on a lawyer requires many layers of approval at the department of justice. And then it has to go to a judge. There has to be efld of a fresh crime. Beyond that, the u. S. Attorney who signed off is a republican. Hes a donald trump appointee. Hes a former law partner of rudy giuliani. Add to that, chris, he was also a top donor to President Trumps general election campaign. One other thing to note in terms of the white house response, you heard the president yesterday not rule out the fact that he might take steps with Robert Mueller. In the past when hes said that, the white house has taken steps to dismiss all of it. Now the white house is saying nothing. Theyre saying the comments stand on their own. Which i think is certainly notable. Geoff, thanks. My panel, ned price, foreignformer spokesperson. Midwin charles. A. B. Stoddard, for real clear politics. Mike petska, the host of the daily podcast, slate, the gist. The oped in the Washington Post this morning which says, when your lawyers need lawyer, its usually a bad sign. Richard blumenthal called the raids a seismic event. Probably one of the most significant moments in the investigation. How big is this potentially . Its extraordinary because Michael Cohen as we all know was Donald Trumps personal attorney and confidant. We also know Michael Cohen acted in many ways as more than an attorney for donald trump. He also acted as what many will call a fixer. He went around and became sort of a strong arm and spoke to people and told them, you know, dont write that article, dont do this on behalf of donald trump. This is extraordinary because as you know, an attorney and their client have privileged communications. Now so lets go to what the president said. Attorney client privilege is dead. Under what circumstances could that not apply . This is the something when it comes to privileges. Privileges are not absolute. An Attorney Client privilege cannot be waved. There are many instances when it does not apply. For example, if an attorney is not acting within the scope or purview for the client at that time, then arguably documents or anything obtained with respect to that are not Attorney Client prive. With the Stormy Daniels case, both trump and cohen have said they didnt know about it, donald trump didnt know about it, Michael Cohen did this on his own accord. He paid 130,000 out of his own pocket. No one from the Trump Organization authorized him or asked him to do this. If he entered into that nondisclosure agreement without Donald Trumps knowledge, without telling donald trump, if he paid that money without telling donald trump, then arguably there was no Attorney Client relationship with respect to that transaction. And the Attorney Client privilege does not attach. Ned, why wouldnt prosecutors just issue a subpoena first . Well, chris, in this case, it could well be that prosecutors didnt believe that Michael Cohen would adhere to a subpoena and that there was suspicion on their part that he could be engaged in destruction of evidence. Is suspicion enough . Isnt the bar pretty high to do what they did yesterday . The bars extraordinarily high. But this is an extraordinary set of circumstances and set of events. This was, as we are led to believe, a referral by bob muellers team and a referral that was acted upon by the u. S. Attorney for the Southern District of new york. What is notable about that, chris, is the fact that this u. S. Attorney was selected personally by donald trump. He was a former law partner of rudy giuliani. He was a maxed out donor to donald trump. He contributed to Donald Trumps campaign. Hes a registered republican. He was installed in this position only after donald trump personally interviewed him, which is as far as i know unprecedented for the selection of the u. S. Attorney. And yet this u. S. Attorney was still convinced by the referral by bob mueller and his team. But its more than just this u. S. Attorney. Its also presumably rod rosenstein. An action like this would have been to be approved by the highest levels of the justice department. Youre exactly right. This would take much more than mere suspicion. Given the fact this transpired yesterday, we know theres a heck of a lot more than that. The search would require the approval of senior members of trumps own justice department. Heres what he had to say about attorney general Jeff Sessions and special counsel Robert Mueller. Lets listen. This is the most conflicted group of people ive ever seen. The attorney made a terrible mistake when he did this and when he recused himself or he should have certainly led us know if he was going to recuse himself and we would have used a put a different attorney general in. So he made what i consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country. But youll figure that out. Why dont i just fire mueller . Yes, just fire the guy . Well, i think its a disgrace whats going on. Well see what happens. But i think its really a sad situation when you look at what happened. Many people have said you should fire him. So, a. B. , thats probably a step further than weve heard him say before, giving indications and making people like senator bloomblumenthal ne that he is now seriously considering getting rid of Robert Mueller. The president cant get rid of mueller but he can kneecap this investigation pretty powerfully by getting rid of sessions the attorney general or rosenstein who oversees the probe. That would be the fear, you put in a lackey that would come in and cripple the probe, take away his power and resources, give him an order thats much more narrow than the broad one hes operating under and make this go away. The president made clear in his remarks yesterday that he has always believed Jeff Sessions is just like Michael Cohen, a personal attorney, not someone whos the nations top cop, who took an oath to the constitution and the rule of law, to protect it for all of us. He believes that putting Jeff Sessions in was a mistake and he actually articulated it in public because hes believed all along his job was to protect him from the russia investigation. So hes furious that rosenstein and sessions and his comments about them yesterday should make everyone alarmed. So hes furious, hes spending his whole afternoon yesterday watching the cable News Coverage of what has just happened. He only heard about it after it had already started which im sure also made him, to your point, a. B. , unhappy. He probably thought maybe i should have been, you know, given a heads up that this was even going to happen. And axios is reporting hope hicks would have been the person to calm him down a little bit, give him a little perspective. Talk about the president s state of mind and what this means. Whether or not hes thinking about doing something that, in a. B. s words would kneecap Robert Mueller, or anything else, that he has some pretty Big Decisions to make on the news front. This might be too pop culture but i have this picture of black widow calming down hulk. Hope hicks trying to be the trump whisperer. Anyway, lets put that aside. Heres why this is important. Most of what trump is saying has nothing to do with the actual law. They found no collusion, said in the present tense. Thats why the investigation is going on. Michael cohen might have Information Way beyond stormy. We may be distracted by Stormy Daniels. I mean, thats her lawyer. Thats to her lawyers credit. Michael cohen knows about potential deals trump was pursuing in russia. What trump is trying to do, what hes trying to communicate is not just trying to frame what the leg investigation is. Hes also playing politics and so far his political play has been to frame this as this is terrible, this is terrible, not just for me this is terrible for america this is overstepping the boundaries. We just saw a report that republicans might actually run on the idea, well, if you elect democrats, theyre going to impeach President Trump. If youre a person in america weighing this not as read in, not as an expert as you are and you are, does the president say, the president s lawyer has just been investigated, does that person say, thats really a bad thing for america, or does that person say, that seems really bad for donald trump. I would think its the later, but maybe hes right. Whats so frightening about what he said is his Lawyers Office was broken in. For people not following this as closely and know all the intricacies of the law, they are going to believe the tweet that privilege is dead and theres no crime fraud exemption, its not been overridden. And actually believed there would be probable cause that once they did the raid they would find evidence of a crime and therefore there is no privilege. These are details hes relying on people not to know, and thats whats so extremely reckless and dangerous. And to use that language is flagrant and sort of flaunts the fact he says hes a law and order president. But to say they broke in when, in fact, this is a legally obtained search warrant is incredibly dangerous. Because shes right. There are Many Americans who dont know how this process works. Who dont know that the fbi or these prosecutors had to go to a judge and articulate and make the showing. Let me tell you, ive had to do this before. Its very difficult to get a judge to agree with you. You have to set forth facts and tell them why this is, we understand, your honor, that there are less intrusive ways to get at this evidence. But we dont believe, we do not trust that this person will adhere to our request if we just send a regular subpoena. We think this is the best way to get this evidence. We must have the element of surprise. Were out of time, ned. I want to give you the last word here. Where does this go next . If i might just follow up on midwins point there. Yesterday was a very bad day for donald trump but it was a very good day for the rule of law. It underscored the key point here that no man is above the law, not even donald trump. In terms of where this goes next, look, the u. S. Attorneys office in the Southern District of new york now has a trove of information that theyre sifting through. They will first sort out any privilege documents. But there is a very real possibility, i would suspect, that they have recovered and now in their possession further information that could feed back into muellers probe. That would be further bad news for trump in the days ahead. We want to thank you all really quickly. And get some breaking news about the president canceling a scheduled trip that was planned later this week. Lets go back to the white house, to nbcs geoff bennett. President trump was set to make his first visit of his presidency to latin america later this week. But weve just learned from White House Press secretary Sarah Sanders that that trip is now called off. Heres the statement she sent out moments ago. President trump will not attend the summit of the americas in lima, peru or travel to colom a colombia. The Vice President will travel in his stead. The president will remain in the United States to oversee the american response to syria and to monitor developments around the world. Now, you remember yesterday, the president sent out set out a time line of 24 to 48 hours as to when he would make his decision known as it relates to the u. S. Response to the crisis in syria. We could get some more clarity on that today. Sarah sanders is now pinning the fact that this trip is canceled on some of that decision making, chris. All right, thank you for that. We want to get to another big story that demonstrates how wideranging the Mueller Investigation has become. This morning the New York Times reports that the special counsels office is looking into a donation from a ukrainian billionaire to the trump foundation. Thats according to three people briefed on the matter. In exchange for the money, then candidate trump agreed to appear via video link. This is in the fall of 2015. So why is that significant . It appears to be part of a broader look of foreign money sent to trump and his associates in the months leading up to the election. According to the times, neither the Trump Organization, nor the president s lawyers would comment on the report. Let me bring in New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt who coauthored that article. Michael, we usually hear about alleged ties to russia. What more can you tell us about these ties to ukraine . Well, this was a ukrainian steel magnet that made this donation to trumps foundation. Hes not someone that is closely aligned with putin. Hes not someone who has done work with Paul Manafort we know about, the president s former campaign chairman, whos been indicted. This is someone else. What happened was in september of 2015, donald trump gave this sort of awkward talk through a video link to a conference that was going on in the ukraine. Michael cohen, the same Michael Cohen thats in the news for the search warrant that was executed on his office, had the group that mr. Trump gave the presentation to, donated 150,000 to his foundation. The Trump Organization in response to a subpoena that was given to them by mueller earlier this year, has handed over documents about this payment. Now, the interesting thing, if we remember, is all the controversies about President Trumps foundation. The foundation being accused of essentially being a piggy bank for the president. The president using it for his own personal needs and, you know, political things. So that is what were looking at on this particular issue. Something that looks bad or something that could be legal jeopardy . We dont know. Thats a fair thing. Its a similar issue that came up with the Clinton Foundation. These are donations that are going into the foundation in exchange for speeches from foreign donors with a lot of money. This person this steel magnet, victor pinchhook, gave millions and millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation over the years. Hes someone who has deep business interests, who has issues in the United States. He hes been accused of dumping his steel and undercutting american steelmakers. Hes a big player in the ukraine. But the difference is that this is not someone we know with direct ties to russia. It raises a sort of larger question which is what is mueller really looking at in terms of the flow of money . Remember, the president said there was a red line. The red line being if mueller looks into his finances beyond russia. This is sort of in the reddish area. Michael schmidt, as always, thank you so much for that. And coming up, word of the cohen raid nearly erased all of the rally in the final hours of trading monday. But futures are way up. After a speech about tariffs from chinas xi jinping. The opening bell is just minutes away. Plus, get ready for some fireworks. Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg prepares to face off with senators in just hours. A preview of what hes expected to say is next. But first, late nights seth meyers on the growing fears of a trade war between the u. S. And china. President trump tweeted this morning that americas trade deal with china does not sound like free or fair trade but, quote, sounds like stupid trade. And then china responded, i know you are, but what am i . Nothing says spring like fresh flowers, so lets promote our spring travel deal on choicehotels. Com like this. sneeze earn one free night when you stay just twice this spring. Allergies. Or, badda book. Badda boom. Book now at choicehotels. Com. You know whats not awesome . Gigspeed internet. When only certain people can get it. Lets fix that. Lets give this guy gig really . And these kids, and these guys, him, ah. Oh hello. That lady, these houses yes, yes and yes. And dont forget about them. Uh huh, sure. Still yes xfinity delivers gig speed to more homes than anyone. Now you can get it, too. Welcome to the party. Just hours away now, Mark Zuckerbergs highly anticipated testimony on capitol hill before a rare joint session of the Senate Commerce and Judiciary Committees. The laundry list of tough questions expected to cover everything from data privacy to political propaganda to foreign interference in elections and why hasnt facebook taken more substantial action sooner . Weve got a team of reporters on capitol hill. Nbcs jolene kent and nbcs Garrett Haake joining me now to lay out what we should expect. Jo, youre actually in the hearing where zuckerberg will testify. Hes already issued this big mea culpa in his statement from yesterday. He did it in some interviews. What else are we going to hear from the ceo today . Well, chris, good morning to you. Were live here in the hearing room at heart. I want to show you around. This is where Mark Zuckerberg is going to be sitting. This is the hot seat. As you can see here, we widen out our shot, in addition to the dais where senators usually sit, theres actually another layer of tables and chairs added for this and thats because Mark Zuckerberg is going to be taking questions from 44 senators. Its expected to go on for hours. To answer your question, chris, all of your questions that will be put at him wral ill be focus not just on the scandal but looking at disinformation campaigns and of course the very lucrative Business Model and that is something senators have been telling us they want to hear from Mark Zuckerberg. How are you going to change your advertisingled Business Model to protect user privacy . Zuckerberg says hes willing to put profits after privacy, but hes also not been showing any changes in the Business Model other than some advertisers fleeing. So we have seen some new tools get unveiled over the past couple of weeks in reaction to cam britain analytica. But a lot of users still unsatisfied. They dont feel like they can trust zuckerberg. His number one mission, when he sits right here, at least for the company, is going to try to rebuilt that trust but its a very tall order, chris. Zuckerberg met with the heads of the Senate Commerce and Judiciary Committees yesterday. You followed him around. Via tv, we followed him around. But id make the argument that was behind closed doors. Today, its a major tv event. Hes facing 43 senators, of whom 27 are lawyers or former prosecutors. Six of them, former attorneys general. They know something about prosecuting a case. So if what Mark Zuckerberg is trying to do is rebuilt trust, what are they trying to do and how are they going to go about it . Well, theres a couple things to watch here, chris. The senators who zuckerberg met with yesterday are the Top Democrats and republicans on the two combined committees where he will be appearing today. Its their prerogative to get more time with him. They can ask more in depth questions. What they learned in those settings may come out in the hearing room today. But, remember, each of these senators questioning zuckerberg today is only going to have four or five minutes to get their point across. After a while, youre going to get to a point where those questions are less about extracting information and more about holding zuckerbergs feet to the fire. And i think how this hearing goes will depend in large part in how forthcoming hes willing to be. If we get 20 or 25 senators into this and theres the appearance that zuckerberg is stone wall organize not answering questions, theres a couple more junior senators down on that list that are worth setting your tivos for now. If tammela gharris gets up and hasnt gotten the answers she wants, or the senator who shows ability to take apart witnesses in these settings without being particularly aggressive about it, but just by asking very probing questions. So, again, how forth coming he chooses to be early could set the stage for how this goes as we get into the Late Afternoon and evening with senators who might get frustrated if he chooses not to answer direct questions about what facebook will proactively do to address the issues that got us to this point. Garrett haake, tivo, does anyone have tivo still . Yes. Thank you. Ill fax myself the reminder. My panel, tony rom, policy reporter for the Washington Post. Malcolm nance, the author of the plot to hack america. Zuckerberg even put on a suit and tie yesterday and presumably again today. But hes up against a lot of very experienced firepower. And those senator, constituents presumably, are some of the millions of people getting that notification theyre among those whose information got to Cambridge Analytica. Whats the biggest risk for zuckerberg today . This is the political hot seat for zuckerberg. As your folks pointed out, its the first time hes testifying on capitol hill. Hes going to walk in there and those cameras are going to go off and hell stare at members of congress who for many years now have asked questions about facebook and whether its doing a good enough job at protecting his privacy. Many times over the course of the past decade zuckerberg has found himself in a similar place, apologizing for the way facebook collects data. But lawmakers want to know about this instance about Cambridge Analytica and some of the revelations about scraping. Its more than just the hearing. Even after we get past the hearing today and the one in the house tomorrow, there are federal investigators that are looking into the Cambridge Analytica mishap. If the federal trade Commission Finds that facebook didnt do enough to protect consumer privacy, we could see facebook hit with huge billion dollar fines as a result. Everybody is keeping an eye on zuckerberg. The stakes are high. Its more than just politics. I want to go to wall street, what the dow is doing. Up 380 points after it took the big dive yesterday because of the raid on Michael Cohens office. And overnight then, chinese president xi jinping spoke at an international summit, easing some fears apparently of a trade war when he announced china would, quote, considerably reduce auto import tariffs and, at the same time, reduce import tariffs on some other products this year. Let me bring in cnbcs dominic chu. Looks like wall street sees that as a win. Whats going on there . You just hit really the two main important driving factors that many traders cite about todays market and what the market has been over the last few weeks. And what is which is more important. The trade rhetoric from both President Trump and his chinese counterpart xi jinping or the special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into President Trump and any alleged malfeasance that could have come about it. All those things coming together is the reason why this is a market thats struggling to find record highs again. That trump and his administration have been touting as the markets real verdict on his presidency so far. As we see the developments happen with the trade front, whether or not theres progress on the nafta side of things will be a big factor. But so will all of that investigation by Robert Mueller as well. Is there a third . Will investors be closely watching facebook and how Mark Zuckerberg does in front of the senate today . Chris there is no doubt. Our network will be airing that Senate Testimony and q a period live. The reason everyone is focused on it, because facebook is one of the biggest corporations by market value in america. Its also a stock at a company that has lost at its low about 20 of its value as a corporation from its record highs to kind of where we sit right now. A lot of that is on concerns about whether facebooks Business Model can sustain itself given the kind of scrutiny were seeing both from lawmakers and regulators potentially and what that means going forward. A lot of the prepared testimony from zuckerberg we know already. What we dont know is how zuckerberg, ceo of facebook, will sustain or stand up to that real hard questioning coming from lawmakers out in washington. Thats the reason why all of us are paying attention. This has a market impact. Facebook is, by far, one of the biggest influences out there. Malcolm nance, author of plot to hack america, what are you looking for today . We have to be prepared zuckerberg is going to come out and try to do a giant infomercial for facebook. I think there are going to be several senators who are going to go at him directly and they want to know, and i want to know, was facebook complicit in any way with Cambridge Analytica . And Sheryl Sandberg also said last week on nbc, there may be other Cambridge Analyticas out there. We know there are. Cambridge analytica itself is side winding into another corporation that will probably go right back into this political dirty works. But the whole question here at hand, is the American Public itself was the target of a hack, their mindset was hacked. Was facebook aware that this is how it could be used or did they did cambridge come up with something unique . Its not advertising that happened here. It was a real engineering of an american process. The entire electorate. And we have to determine whether theyre going to try to do something about that before 2018 or theyre just going to let it happen again. I mean, tony, one of the interesting parts of this is sort of the whole appearance of it. You know, yesterday he went ahead and he met with people ahead of time. The key members of those committees. You just heard malcolm say hes going to try to appear casual. Somebody you know, the founder of rico, cara swisher wrote this, quote, hes one of the richest people on earth. Hes an adult. He can answer questions if hes the ceo. He founded this company. Stop juveniling men here in Silicon Valley. This is a 33yearold whos a billionaire. Hes a husband, a father of two. But how much will his demeanor matter today and how much of a tough time do you think senators are going to give him . Lawmakers are kind of out for blood here politically speaking. Not just because of Cambridge Analytica, by the way, but because lawmakers have tried to speak with Mark Zuckerberg in settings like this in the past including with russia with the 2016 election. Lawmakers invited all three companies to come testify and facebook, google and twitter didnt send their executives, they sent their top lawyers. They think he hasnt been so forthcoming in the past here, but, you know, i talked to a bunch of lawmakers on capitol hill yesterday and they said some of the same things youre proje projecting. Senator blumenthal said he thought this was the unsafe moment for facebook, with respect to some of the same troubles Car Manufacturers had back in the day over safety standards. Facebook has to answer questions and assure him its taking steps to address this in the future but he said he wasnt even confident facebook could do this on its own. I think the issue isnt so much will zuckerberg handle the lights, its will zuckerbergs testimony fuel new efforts by capitol hill to regulate here . Will this be the turning point for the Tech Industry in washington, d. C. That finally gets congress to put in place new rules governing collect and use that ninformation and that well beyond Cambridge Analytica. I cant wait to see what the viewing levels are in Silicon Valley and the other top levels of tech and social media companies. Theres an article in the times that focus on questions they think zuckerberg should be forced to answer. Their answer is nothing. The idea is that lawmakers need to come up with legislation to protect users from these sorts of attacks. But a. B. , look, youve been around. How likely is it were going to see something significant . Some people question whether the senators really understand whats going on. Thats actually thats a good question. Because people are really just becoming familiar with this conversation. How facebook was so instrumental through Third Party Apps or Cambridge Analytica in changing the course of the election. Its a very difficult first of all, the bipartisanship is, you know, on its death bed and they cant come up with they cant walk across the room together to switch on the lights is this something for bipartisanship, you think . It would be very tough in the year to go after new regulations for facebook. I feel sorry for anyone coming before the congress right now because there are 2020 contenders in the room. There are people that are going to take a whack at this because it is part of the national conversation. Parents are concerned about their kid because people who invented these platforms saying this is the end of democracy again, people are seeing pop up on their Facebook Page today, you are one of the people that got Cambridge Analytica got a hold of your information. Yes, and the question tony asks, will anything happen, were talking about the hot seat, were talking about the markets reacting. Were talking about the scrutiny on zuckerberg. Will anything happen . I fail to see how. Because theres no actual legislation thats being championed. Theres this fair ads act. That does almost nothing. I just think you couldnt create a worse mechanism for getting at real reform then the then a hearing and four minutes of testimony and zuckerberg talking to people who might not understand what he does. Lindsey graham brags about not ever having sent an email. Tom tillis, whos on the Judiciary Committee, ran ads that cam britabridge analytica underwrote. Theyre conflicted. Theyre confused. The issue goes what you write about, malcolm, couldnt be more essential to democracy. Yet the threat of facebook goes way, way beyond that. Its rewiring how we think. This is why ive called zuckerberg well, yesterday, i did a piece, i spent some time out in Silicon Valley with a guy who was one of the authors of a study at m. I. T. And what it showed is that false news is retweeted, is liked, is far, far more, as much as 70 more, than true stuff. Yes, and that makes sense. And in addition to that, its coming its not just coming this isnt just bots. Bots are a problem, you have these mechanized statements coming out. But its people. Because they get more likes on their Facebook Page. They get more retweets. Because fake news is more sensational. We have a human problem. In addition to a technical problem. Having said that, do you see any circumstances under which if Mark Zuckerberg does not do well today, he doesnt keep his job . No. I mean, he owns facebook. He has the largest shares in facebook. Whats going to happen is whether he just creates a new industry for other competitors who will come out and say they can do the things facebook refuses to do. Some people would use the example that folks thought nobody could challenge uber and then lyft came around. If youve got 2 billion people who are used to your system, and we dont know how many people have left, right . We dont know how many people have gotten off because theyre worried about what has happened. That seems like a High Mountain to climb. The structure of his shares says that only zuckerberg can fire zuckerberg. So theres no mechanism to remove himself except auto. If he thinks it will save his company. I used to like napster too. All things are up for grabs. Whats the one thing youre watching for today . I think the onus is on him. Even if it might technically be on congress to come up with some remedy. To say were not just complicit, but to really get into some teeth about what the platform can do to mitigate this threat. If he doesnt do that, i think hell have a tough day. Its going to be an interesting day. Cominge ing up, President Trump the u. S. Has several military options for syria and will act soon. Is a strike imminent . Plus, an nbc news exclusive. Russia has figured out how to jam u. S. Drones in syria. Those details next. [burke] at farmers, weve seen almost everything so we know how to cover almost anything. Even close claws. [driver] so, we took your shortcut, which was a bad idea. 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The evolution of cancer care is here. Learn more at cancercenter. Com experts nso lets promote our springsh travel deal on choicehotels. Com like this. sneeze earn one free night when you stay just twice this spring. Allergies. Or, badda book. Badda boom. Book now at choicehotels. Com. Id like to begin by condemning the heinous attack on innocent syrians with banned chemical weapons. It was an atrocious attack. It was horrible. Well be making some major decisions over the next 24 to 48 hours. This is about humanity. Were talking about humanity. And it cant be allowed to happen. So that was President Trump around noon yesterday. Were coming up on that window for action as we speak. In syria, theyre taking the threat seriously. Putting Government Forces and their allies on alert and securing military posts in case of attack. But this morning, were learning about a new wrinkle. U. S. Officials telling nbc news that the Russian Military has been jamming u. S. Drones impacting our operations. Nbcs National Security reporter Courtney Kube got the exclusive for us. Congrats on the great reporting. What more can you tell us . Thank you very much, chris. This is something thats been happening for several weeks now, according to several u. S. Officials who ive spoken with about this story. Russia has figured out a way to jam u. S. Military drones. These are surveillance aircraft. What theyre doing is jamming their gps systems. The easiest way to explain it is theres a signal that comes from a gps satellite. Russian military has come up with a pretty technically advanced way of using that, a signal that mimics the gps satellite and con us tfuses the drones. The Practical Impact on the ground is the operators who are operating the drone either dont know where it is at the time, the drone could go off course or its even possible they could crash. The u. S. Military doesnt like to talk about Drone Operations obviously. Much of their operationings are classified. And certainly the information that they gather is usually. So we dont know exactly whether this is causing any u. S. Military drones to cash. We do know it is having an actual impact, an operational impact, on u. S. Military drones in the region in syria, chris. Courtney, thank you for that. Let me bring in admiral james, the former allied commander and professor at tufts university. Let me ask you about courtneys robe report. Because we dont know exactly what these drones were looking at. Give us a general sense of what kind of intelligence they bring. Theyre essential to our operations. But we ought to remember, chris, we have kind of lowflying small drones. We have high endurancendurance, altitude drones. We also have satellites as backup that are looking. We have special operators on the ground. We have layers of surveillance that we can put in place here. This is a development, particularly in this moment of crisis. Where the president said what, about 21 hours ago that in the next 24 to 48 hours, he could be taking action. What are the likely options that hes being presented by the military . Sure, well, the pentagons been burning the midnight oil since the chemical weapons strike. What they will show him is a range on kind of a spectrum of violence that will run from intelligence gathering really hyped up at the lower end. Thats why the drone piece is significant. But then very quickly, it will get into kinetic strikes, bombs. Those can come from aircraft carriers. Carriers are actually quite a ways away. Im sure theyre now moving towards this region. We can also use landbased aircraft operating out of turkey and operating out of gulf bases. We have special forces options. We have cyber options. Chris, we ought to be doing this as much as we can in concert with our allies, partners and friends. Israel, at the top of the list. Whos already conducted a significant strike. And then the french are talking about this very seriously. So this will begin to play out. I think over the next 24 to 48 hours as the president says. So the strikes where, what kind . You want to go after the chemical weapons capabilities. So that means going at that whole kill chain, if you will. That begins with production facilities. Transportation. Intelligence gathering. And its got to be more than the kind of pinprick strike we did about a year ago. Those were tomahawk missiles. Very low risk. They came off destroyers empty mediterranean. I think the president s going to take a harder swing at the ball using landbased air and carrierbased air this time. There was a fellow at the institute for strategic studies quoted in the Washington Post saying strikes by the u. S. Could make things worse. I want to read this. He. Strikes by the u. S. Could make things worse, i want to read this. He said, there might be a narrow selfsatisfying strike but not as long as theres no bigger perspective of broader strategy for the whole conflict. It may just fuel es escalation without meeting any octobertives. I think hes correct in one sansd correct in another. I think its incorrect to say the strikes would not have any punitive value. That reference really demonstrates to the syrians and to the global world that chemical weapons cannot be used with impunity. Where hes correct is that we have to link it to a longer term strategy in the region. That would include work being with the israelis, the saudis. We just had a crown prince visit here from saudi arabia. Bringing the coalition together that can face the coalition that assad has assembled with russia and iran. So weve got work to do. We need a strategic framework but we need to tactically respond, in my view. One of the things you said ra sheer and when we had those toma hawk civil strikes against syria. I believe that this show of force could be a way of convincing Vladimir Putin that siding with assad is not worth the problems hes caused. But here we are again. Indeed, that Vladimir Putin, if youre going to look at his overall Strategic Response to this and thats just part of it, going after their chemical weapons is just part of it, where does russia fit in . What do you do about putin . We have got to recognize the fact that russia is a significant actor in the middle east now and part of that is because weve allowed that to happen by our middle east fatigue, understandable in the country. President trumps tweets of were going to pull out of syria, dont help. We have to demonstrate that we want to be at the table. When we can could doh thado tha theres time to talk with russia. Go back to the bull kins 20 years ago, that was solved by the International Community coming together working on a solution. How do you see that happening in the National Community does not have a comprehensive or theyre not on the same page on what ought to be done about this. And, look, you know, obviously theres a moral imperative here and we can talk about that all we want. But im not quite sure why we know this has been going on. But these pictures of little kids choking to death. Yes. It is just well, well play, if i can, admiral, what nikki haley had to say at the u. N. Yesterday. Weve reached the moments when the world must see justice done. History will record this as the moment when the Security Council either discharged its duty or demonstrate the its utter and complete failure to protect the people of syria. Whether its the u. N. , whether its nato, is the International Community going to come together on this . I think that we have a turning point here with this strike, but also with the drum beat of the use of chemical weapons and also with this ongoing humanitarian disaster. There are 600,000 dead, 14 million pushed out of their homes. I think for the first time the International Community really has a chance of coming together here. It will require u. S. Leadership and simply trying to conduct that by tweeting that were going to be leaving syria is not going to get it done. Why now do you think . This is something who arguably is the most prolific mass murderer on the face of the earth. So why now . In all of these crises, chris, you hit these turning points and eventually the International Community does intervene. Happened in columbia, happened in the bull kin, its going to happen here in syria. We may be at this point now. Admiral, always a pleasure to have you here and we appreciate it. Thanks, chris. In just a couple of hours weve been leading up to this, facebook ceo Mark Zuckerberg is going to testify before lawmakers. Youre going to see it live today. One of the many people to watch in that hearing, Judiciary Committee member senator chris coons. He tweeted out his frustration with the social media giant just moments ago. On today of all days i just found out that there are two fake Facebook Accounts impersonating me and guess what . Many of the friends appear to be russian accounts. Facebook, mr. Zuckerberg, this is unacceptable. You know, i used to be good at this. Then you turn 40 and everything goes. Tell me about it. You know, its made me think, im closer to my retirement days than i am my college days. Hm. Im thinking. Will i have enough . Should i change something . Well, youre asking the right questions. I just want to know, am i gonna be okay . I know people who specialize in am i going to be okay. I like that. You may need glasses though. Yeah. Schedule a complimentary goal Planning Session today with td ameritrade. No matter what, there is always good news somewhere and we think good news rules. Congratulations are in order, so today highlighting senator Tammy Duckworth who gave birth to a baby yesterday and is now the first sitting u. S. Senator to give birth while in office. Duckworth treated in part brian abigail and i couldnt be happier to welcome my little maile pearl as the newest addition to our family. Her second child. That wraps up this hour, im in for stephanie ruhle. Coming up right now, more news with hallie jackson. Hey, hallie. Congratulations to Tammy Duckworth. Chris jansson, appreciate. Lets go inside the west wing this morning and Donald Trumps raid rage. Whats being perceived as a provocative move by Robert Mueller. The president s ranting about the longtime move ofs had Lawyers Office. Hes railing at the entire justice system, and hes not really being accurate about it. Well se well tell you why and whats next and hes bailing on a trip to south america that had been set for friday. The white house Just Announced in the last hour that donald trump will stay here to fek cocn syria as we have exclusive reporting that russias trying to mess with our military there. And Mark Zuckerberg set to head to the hill in about two hours but is im sorry enough . Spoiler, nope. And another morning of market watch. Wall street looking up 300 points, according to the dow right now, thanks to new moves by china. We have our teams set up and ready to good on this tuesday morning. Lets start with Kristen Welker because the president is rattled and upset. All reporting has indicate thatd learned about Michael Cohen and the raid yesterday before the news was public, but hes basically sitting in the oval office stewing. Reporter he is still suing this morning, hallie, about the fact that the fbi raided the office and hotel room of his personal attorney Michael Cohen, someone who is seen as being very close to the president , almost like family. Of course we know it