Transcripts For MSNBCW The 11th Hour With Brian Williams 20170722

Accepted the nomination. Sean spicer was ordered to berate the media on how we reported the crowd size. Well talk about his tenure and replacement. First to our friday night breaking news story. This centers on attorney general Jeff Sessions. This one comes from the Washington Post. The headline tonight, sessions discussed trump campaignrelated matters with Russian Ambassador, u. S. Intelligence intercept show. Thats just a headline. Quoting here, russias ambassador to washington told his superiors in moscow that he discussed campaignrelated matters including policy issues important to moscow with Jeff Sessions during the 2016 president ial race contrary to public assertions by the embattled attorney general according to current and former u. S. Officials. This goes on, quote, one u. S. Official said that sessions has provided misleading statements that are contradicted by other evidence. The former official said that the intelligence indicates that sessions and the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak had discussions on russiarelated issues and prospects for u. S. Russia relations in a Trump Administration. The article and several National Security experts tonight do caution russian and other diplomats have been known share false or misleading information to brag or try to confuse our intelligence community. The post adds kislyak has had a reputation for accuracy. It is impossible to ignore the timing of this story. It comes days after trump told the New York Times that he does not think sessions should have recused himself from the russia investigation. Trump said if he had known that, he wouldnt have picked sessions for the job. As for sessions, heres what he has said about talking to the russians about the campaign. I have been called a time or two and i did not have communications with the russians. Let me be clear, i never had meetings with russian operatives about the trump campaign. I dont recall any discussion of the campaign in any significant way. It was in no way some sort of coordinating of an effort by doing anything improper. The Justice Department released a statement saying in part, the attorney general stands by his testimony from just last month before the Senate Intelligence committee when he specifically addressed this and said that he never met with or had any conversations with any russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election. Some people have noted theres room in that statement. Joining our lead panel tonight, White House Reporter for the wall street journal eli stoeckles, Shannon Pettypiece is back and peter baker, who was, of course, one of the trio of journalists who took part in the interview of President Trump we mentioned and, peter, thats going to earn you first question status tonight. The post piece uses the word tenuous to talk about sessions hold on his job. We know how he is regarded or not by the president because of your interview. Im interested in why this . Why tonight . This is a hit on Jeff Sessions and if you dont want to discuss it in specificity, you dont need to, but can you remember other times when something was leaked that maybe hurt the greater good and continued a bad narrative but was targeted as one individual. Oh, sure. Thats been part and parcel in the last few months. Pleasant bey of stories that came out about steve bannon, jared kushner. I dont know personally where all of them come from. Certainly suspected by people inside the white house and in the greater body poll particular in washington that some of those are the result of internal feuds or internal power struggles. I cant say thats the case in this instance but youre right, the timing coming two days after the president s comments is pretty striking. What the president was saying is not a new thought. It didnt just come up. He mentioned it a few days earlier. Its clearly something thats nawing at him, on his mind even though the recusal took place months ago. Hes been holding grudge ever since. He blames, as you pointed out, everything that followed for the recusal because of the recusal to the attorney general. Thats exactly right. Jeff sessions recused himself. Rod rosen steen was in charge. When james comey was fired by the president as fbi director, it came out that he had had this conversation or says he had this conversation with the president about whether to stop the investigation into mike flynn, thats when Rod Rosenstein as the acting attorney general decided he had to appoint a special counsel, that would be Robert Mueller. From the sessions recusal in the president s view comes the investigation that he now faces from a special counsel who is now looking at all sorts of things the president doesnt want him to look at. Eli stoeckles, what we havent done yet is talk about the story in chief, very serious if true, secondarily confirms the russia obsession early on in the campaign. And the third area here is if this is, indeed, a hit. Well, right. The irony if it is or even if it isnt is that what trump was mad about was that he recused himself in the first place. This story, even if it weakens sessions position or stature atop the Justice Department, this story basically, you know, lace bear anew the reasons why he basically had to recuse himself, because of these conversations and because of the kind of constant amnesia and for getting that weve seen from sessions, from kushner, from all of these people that want remember their interactions until theyre reported by the media. This is the case. Sessions did speak about specifically he answered this question. What his answer was we heard on the tape was i didnt have any conversations about interference in the campaign. Thats not what is now at issue. What is at issue here is did he speak with kislyak as the reports based on this information that the post has tonight, did he speak with kislyak about a potential Trump Administrations positions on issues related to russia. Thats a question that i dont think sessions specifically answered on the record. Shannon, how serious is this during a serious week for Jeff Sessions . And i have a followup. Is there anyone in the white house with a stomach for a confirmation fight over a new attorney general right now . Losing Jeff Sessions as your attorney general would be such an enormous political distraction, so politically toxic. If he is fired some people in congress are saying it would not be survivable politically, but trump is also now sort of backed in a corner where he has undermined him, hes taken away a lot of credibility he has. How do you go in every day as the attorney general with the president saying, well, i wish he wasnt there, damaging leaks in the media, who knows what else is going to come out there. So at the same time, sessions is sort of in a corner where he might not have much of a choice but to actually step down and i almost feel like im starting to have seen this before, not a complete parallel and piece after piece on flynn came out and finally flynn was essentially forced to put in his letter of resignation. So maybe this is the last and things will die down, but i feel the storm clouds gathering around Jeff Sessions here. And then were at a point where either we need another attorney general to go through a tough Senate Confirmation fight or the president s going to have to fire him or hes going to resign. Neither of those situations is good at all. There are going to be enormous political distractions from any other piece. Not to beat a dead russian. Lets continue with the options shannon gave us. If sessions is dismissed, that is weirdly a tacit confirmation of the underlying story and the underlying Campaign Russia preoccupation out of nowhere. Yeah, although hed be dismissed for the opposite reason as eli pointed out. The thing is you said at the opening which i think is important to remind us again is that this information, this assertion comes from what the Russian Ambassador is telling his home office as intercepted by american intelligence agencies. We dont know. We dont have a transcript as far as we know publicly about the conversation. We dont know from anybody other than the Russian Ambassador about what was said. Take that with a grain of salt. There are only so many rocks you can put in a sack before it becomes too difficult to move forward. You know, whether this president would go ahead and push out the attorney general, who can say . One thing we learned in six months is that anything is possible in this administration. Who would have thought he would have fired the acting attorney general that he had inherited just one week into office. You would have thought he would have fired the fbi director. Again, you know, we talk about want being a tough confirmation. That was the case. It would depend on who was selected. Look at chris ray. We would have thought, gosh, whoever he was going to put up is going to go through a tough confirmation. The senate wont go along with it. He just got advanced by the Senate Judiciary unanimously. We have some other Personnel Matters in the news tonight. Eli, your paper in particular is out in front with some reporting on jared kushner. Weve heard a lot of forms and a lot of disclosures. Which one is this and what new have we learned . This is a form that, you know, when kushner took the job in the white house had to disclose all of his Financial Assets to disclose potential conflicts of interest. And what came out today is that he amended it. Talk about the sort of a. M. Near amnesia that we see. Kushner inadvertently overlooked 70 financial things, investments, holdings that he hadnt put on his form. Were talking about millions of dollars of 3er7b8 wealth. Theyre trying to clear the deck of any potential conflicts. Theyre trying to manage it and be a little more transparent but why did it take six months to disclose all of these things . And how do you forget that large i mean, that is a lot of money and a lot of holdings to just inadvertently forget. It seems like it does fit a pattern of folks joining the administration and saying after years in the business world, we can fudge it. Skirt the rules a little bit and it will be fine. Theyre finding out that in public service, in public life, its public. People are going to find these things out and it doesnt make them look very good. Shannon, i watched you at 4 00 on Nicole Wallaces show. It was almost like you needed catchers mitt. So many pieces of the administration was falling. The legal team is undergoing big changes. Donald trumps legal team and a lawyer we came to know and wrote profiles of is kind of fading into the background. Yeah, mark kasewicz, his personal lawyer, can haonfidant. He was set to lead the legal team. He has had some controversies. Hes a very, you know, colorful person i guess is a good way of putting it. Good euphemism. Is being moved to the side and john dowd who is a very seasoned washington lawyer, he knows these washington cases. Hes not a real estate lawyer, not a transactional lawyer, hes a very seasoned lawyer. And then mark karalow who was a crisis communicator trump liked and brought him on to handle the outside communications, he on thursday announced he was resigning. They say it was becoming too chaotic. He did not feel like he was in the know. He felt like he was being left out of the loop and he didnt need this essentially and moved on. Peter baker, in addition to being a longtime washington journalist you are of all of us here the only former Moscow Bureau chief. I have to ask you a closing question. What do you think they make of all of this . They see and hear people like you and me and all of us in our coverage. Yeah, look. This is the kind of thing that would never happen in russia. The state controls the media. The narrative that is put out to the public is pretty more controlled. They have access to the internet, they have access sometimes to foreign news sources but i think that they look at this as a joke about american democracy, that they have caused great disruption here. They have managed to stir the pot, get us fighting with each other and investigating the president. So from that point of view, they look at this as a win. Now if the other point of view, if the goal of meddling last year was to create a glib environment in which the sanctions that have been put on them under the Obama Administration would be lifted, thats been a failure. Right now even if President Trump wanted to do that, its politically impossible. The president put it 970. The house would presumably follow suit, perhaps. Especially if the president tried to go the other way. In some ways theyve had a winloss. This is where somebody like me says the senate seldom agrees on anything. What a terrific end to our initial panel. Peter baker, our thanks, eli and shannon, thank you. Coming up after our first break. The legal questions that this raises with three of the best legal minds in the business when the 11th hour continues. Is this a phone . Or a little internet machine . [ phone ringing ] hi mom. It makes you wonder. Shouldnt we get our phones and internet from the same company . Thats why Xfinity Mobile comes with your internet. You get up to 5 lines of talk and text at no extra cost. [ laughing ] so all you pay for is data. See how much you can save. Choose by the gig or unlimited. Call or go to xfinitymobile. Com introducing Xfinity Mobile. A new kind of network designed to save you money. Welcome back to the 11th hour with tonights big news focusing on attorney general Jeff Sessions. We want to welcome in three attorneys, richard painter, chief ethics lawyer to former george w. Bush. Kerry cordero is back with us. Welcome back. You are one of the three most recently a fed. With that framing, you get the first question. That is, what do you make of this Jeff Sessions story tonight with the reminder that he may have been a republican senator, keep in mind this is the attorney general of the United States were talking about. He has. Hes got a few questions raised. First of all, hes got some legal exposure. Folks in congress are going to be going back and looking at every word that he spoke in his confirmation hearing and in a subsequent hearing and comparing that to what they read in the news tonight. He probably is going to get more letters and questions and perhaps being requested to come back to congress and clarify things that he said. He has some legal exposure there. Hes also got some issues with respect to maintaining the independence of the Justice Department. Were really seeing an effort by this white house and by this president to basically lay on justice and influence an investigation, shut down the special counsel investigation if they can. He has a challenge if he does end up staying in his position to find a way to insulate the department of justice from political interference by the white house. Brian wiseiss, the Justice Department has at its disposal broad powers and the ability to remind the white house whos boss at times. You know, we talked about the separation of powers in the executive versus the legislative and judicial, but this is one of these times when bob mueller, the special counsel and the full mind of the Justice Department really are the toughest kids on the block. You make a great point. This situation doesnt involve vinnie on a car phone from fort lee. This is the attorney general of the United States, someone who is the highest ranking Law Enforcement officer, period. And to suggest as we are today that they may be dusting off the hot seat for him because of perjury or any other related crimes really is mind boggling. Whod of thought that only on day 183 that we would be having this discussion in addition to discussions about things like president ial pardons . I mean, viewers might think they have stumbled into the Season Finale of house of cards season five. Im glad you raised president ial pardons. No, trump cant pardon himself. The constitution tells us so. Heres a quote from the body of the piece. The pardon provision of the constitution is there to enable the president to act essentially in the role of a judge of another persons criminal case and to intervene on behalf of the defendant when the president determines what would be equitable. Richard, two things, number one, as a layperson, i look tat the president s ability to pardon himself. If it were absolute it would include murder and any other kind of terrible behavior. Number two, do innocent people start asking about pardon powers . I would think that innocent people would not be thinking about who could pardon them. And we are in an extraordinary situation here. I have to say with respect to the attorney general, either he had been lying about his relationship with the russians and what he talked to the russians about, flat outlying, or hes being framed by somebody who is leaking this information, false information to the Washington Post in order to get him fired. We know that the president wants to replace a lot of the top management at the Justice Department in order to derail the mueller investigation. And so im very, very worried about this situation. I wrote that op ed this morning before that development because President Trump had already apparently contacted a number of people looking into the question of pardons and whether he could pardon himself. Those questions are being asked in the white house and the answer is categorically no. There is not an example that i can find in Human History where a person has been able to pardon themselves. And the president for this is the royal pardon, im not had a situation where a king has been able to pardon himself and then avoid prosecution by subsequent kings. Many deposed kings have gone off to the chopping block and would have avoided that if they had been able to pardon themselves. Even the pope says confession to another priest. Pope francis did so quite recently in public. Not a single example of a selfpardon anywhere that i can find. The concept makes absolutely no sense. The office of Legal Counsel advised in the Nixon Administration years that you could not do that. The president could not do that. So thats off the table. He should look into other options. You know, maybe, i dont know, go join mr. Snowden over in moscow or something. But this is not going to work. Carrie, also in the legal realm this week, the report that the Trump White House is doing in effect Opposition Research playing defense against muellers team. By all accounts, if you lined up all thee erjerseys of the team mueller is assembling, they would be on an allstar team. Do you think Robert Mueller and his cocounsel are pressurable in that way . No, i dont. Former director muller has put together an Exceptional Team of lawyers. This is another aspect of the president and his white house trying to influence and potentially obstruct this investigation. Whatever they are supposedly conducting Opposition Research of the lawyers who are on that special counsel. I view this as another part of the pattern of this white house trying to obstruct the investigation thats being conducted. The difficulty is or sort of the irony is that every time the president has done Something Like this, it backfires. He hired an attorney general that he thought was going to be favorable to him and then that person recused. He tried to lay on the fbi director and that resulted in the fbi director writing memos that now memorialize those conversations. He fired the fbi director and that led to bob muller becoming the special counsel. Every time they take a step to obstruct this investigation because he wants it shut down, it ends up back firing. I think this effort to discredit the staff is going to end up the exact same way. Brian, how much of the sum total of mistakes made thus far by the administration can be chalked up to ignorance, ignorance of how washington works, ignorance of the law, ignorance of all matters integrity related and even ignorance that the world contains people like Robert Muller who see this as a calling and cherish their integrity . Well, im going to check probably number d, all of the above. Look, brian, you make a great point and i actually caught a repeat of a movie i hadnt seen in a long time, all the president s men the other day. Theres a great scene where woodard and deep throat were in the parking garage and how hull bert tells redford, you have to understand these guys in the white house. Theyre just not all that bright. I think, you know, history repeats itself is a farce and maybe its a tragic. These guys are aamateurs. Weve said it before, youve got to act like youve been there before and they dont. Youve got to ask yourself in terms of the Jeff Sessions story, who benefitted. I think carrie makes a great point. This may be a situation where they are setting Jeff Sessions up to fail and it seems to me that donald trump has an exit visa with his name on it. We all know its in the piano in ricks cafe. Different language. Ive been told we have to ixnay. Cant help but think that that would be great letter head. Thank you all so much for joining us on a friday night. For another break. Coming up, he lasted six months and a day. What ended the run of sean spicer as White House Press secretary when the 11th hour continues. Positively radiant® 60 second in shower facial. Works with steam to reveal. Glowing skin in just one minute. Aveeno® naturally beautiful results® i just think it was in the best interests of our communications department, of our press organization to not have too many cooks in the kitchen. The team here that works so hard, so tirelessly to advance the president s agenda needs clear leadership and i thought it would be a bit confusing having additional people at the top. Interesting right there. That was sean spicer speaking for the First Time Since his sudden resignation as White House Press secretary earlier today. Late tonight President Trump wrote on twitter, quote, sean spicer is a wonderful person who took tremendous abuse from the Fake News Media but his future is bright. Spicer stepped down following President Trumps decision to name new york investor anthony saramucci. Eli and shannon have been kind enough to stig around with us because theres a lot to talk about. A lot of history here in just six months. Eli, take us back to that first day in the Briefing Room, a kind of stunned National Audience looked on because it was a day of moment. We had had the inauguration and then these marches filling the streets of cities and towns from anchorage to new york to london. Right. When sean spicer called reporters into the Briefing Room on saturday, the day after inauguration day, and lek 250urd them and, you know, got really aggravated and pointed the pictures and said the media was misreporting crowd size to dammen enthusiasm on the president it was a signal on the first day about the loose relationship that this administration and president was going to have with truth. Sean spicer began setting his own credibility on fire that day. He was put in a very difficult position by the president. He chose to go out there. He chose to take the heat, be a heat shield if he could be. His effectiveness diminished in that regard. Despite what he said this evening on fox news about wanting to, you know, publicly saying we want a fresh start, he was really hurt by this because he did take so many slings and arrows for the president. The president is supposed to reward loyalty. Sean felt he was loyal and it wasnt repaid. At the end of the day this was the thing he couldnt bear. Shannon, before we talk about reasons for exit, lets talk about the journey and where weve been, a sampler of sean spicer. This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe. The president himself called it bad. I understand. Is he confused, are you confused . Im not confused. I think the words being used to describe it are der50i6d from what the media calls it. You dont get to yell out questions. I think the president s tweets speak for itself. Youve got russia. If the president puts russian salad dressing on his salad tonight, somehow thats a russian connection. Every Single Person who has been briefed on the situation with respect to the situation with russia, republican, democrat, obama appointee, career, have all come to the same conclusion. At some point, april, youre going to have to take no for an answer whether or not there was collusion. Sean sean sean wait a minute. What about the sean. Shannon, the life and times of sean spicer. Forgot about Holocaust Centers in there. There is so much to get in. Hall concentration camps, Holocaust Centers. We should remind folks, kind of a career Republican Party flak, a naval reservist. As is well known now a chewing gum enthusiast. A lot of personal quirks and interesting guy. Right. There was definitely a tense relationship on display in Briefing Room between sean and the media but people had worked with him for years and years in d. C. He really had a reputation as a nice guy, a fair guy. I will say, there were a lot of really good interactions reporters had with shawn outside of this combative setting in the Briefing Room that a lot of the public saw sometimes. And among trumps base, they loved him. I was at a trump rally, i dont know, maybe two or three months in. Sean was mobbed by people in the audience. I thought it was a jonas brother or something in the crowd that people were going up to get their picture with sean, shake his hand, say great job, sean. He was seen as the president s defender and he was very popular for the space. So for all of the tenseness and the media, he did have his supporters out there. Eli, he did, i know, tell Shawn Hannity the night snl went too far in the depictions of him. Hes going to work through august and take off for a while. Enter mr. Scaramucci. A lot of things are known. Entirely selfmade. Found his way to tufts. Found his way to Harvard Law School and found his way to a fortune starting off at goldman sachs. Personal worth probably north of 1 billion. Theres a lot there for donald trump to like and a resume that no one would flinch at if it were head of the counsel of economic advisors. Trump didnt come with a resume. Its like looking into a mirror. This is the white house. When he look at scaramucci. He sees a rich man, hes selfmade and he sees somebody who has a facility with comedian. They both made their names and fortunes by accelerating in the media. Everybody is talking about us. Its going to be tough. When donald trump did this long press conference. Youre going to say im ranting and raving. He spoke to the press about their tone. Donald trump understands tone. He understands communicating. One of the things that sean spicer couldnt do is get the tone right. When he was admonishing the press, when he was flat out scaramucci, you can see it today even though hes saying things like if the president says it, its probably at least a little bit true. As he says it about might yeah bias, he says it with a smile and an easy way by it. I wont take long away. Heres the difference. He got off on a good step today. This isnt going to be all puppies and roses relationship. He is a big personality. There are a lot of big personalities and a lot of that in the white house. Someone described it to me as throwing gasoline on a tanker fire. I think it will generate a lot of drama. We went from puppies and rosed to a tanker fire. Just a pause in our conversation. After a break, well come back. If you missed some of scaramuccas work. Welcome back to the 11th hour. About the new man in charge of the calm shop at the white house, the Communications Director today, Anthony Scaramucci of new york. As you get to know him over the weeks and months to come, first of all his nickname, mooch, nickname he has participated in and a number of washingtonians and new yorkers know. His general effusiveness and his loyalty to the boss, that was already on display today. 6. I think theres been at times a disconnect between where we see the president and how much we love the president and the way some of you perhaps see the president. I think were doing an amazing job. I was in the oval office earlier today. We were talking about him being himself and expressing his full identity. People so identify with the president and they love him so were going to get the message out. I obviously love the president. I love the country. Sean decided it would be better to go. His attitude is let me clear the slate for anthony and i do appreciate sean and i love him for it. I love the president and i love the mission he has. Eli, the pope has given speeches with fewer love references than he did today. It was pointed out, anything more intimate for the audience of one he was speaking to, they would have had to have been on face time today. That is our introduction to Anthony Scaramucci. The geography, this is a man ive seen throw footballs through tires and three foot putt. Trump is going, yeah, thats right. How that is relevant to anybody else, i dont know. But i think, you know, its going to serve him well in the sense that everybody who goes to that podium is performing for the audience of one. Hes a character, but hes like he said, hes not, you know, well liked or endeared himself to other members of the staff. Its going to be an interesting experiment in this white house having him in this position. A lot of people watched him and said, hes the Communications Director. Is that the job a lot of people want . They have a title and what theyre really doing. Shannon, you pointed out some key things in the moment this afternoon. Number one, the job was kind of vacant. Number two, this job if done correctly, as Nicole Wallace did for 43, its a planning and strategic job. Its behind the scenes, planning messages, working with the press staff. Figuring out how are we going to direct certain people to certain tasks. Thats not the job that anthony is going to be in. Elwill do tv appearances. They say thats going to be left for Sarah Huckabee sanders whos now the press secretary. He seems very comfortable there. I wouldnt be surprised if that stays out there. Hes not going to be doing big picture canadian strategy. He doesnt know washington. He doesnt know how a white house operates. Its going to be a different role than were used to. Great thanks to two of the very best covering this white house. Eli and shannon. Thank you both for coming on. Another break for us. When we come back, serge Sergey Lavrov, what was he trying to say today about the president of the United States. Russias Prime Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke exclusively to keir simmons poking fun today at the amount of times President Trump interacted with Vladimir Putin at the recent g20 summit. We know about president putin and President Trump meeting three times at g20. They met obviously for the bilateral, they met at the dinner. Maybe they went to the toilet together. That was a fourth time. They met when they were photographed shaking hands. Thats my question. Did they meet at other times in the hallways . When you bring your children to kindergarten, you speak with people who are in the same room going to a classroom. The g20 is not a kindergarten. The results of a room are where they get together before. They cannot arrive all at the same time in a bus so they might have met much more than just three times. With us here in new york tonight because theres only one guy you want to talk about this with, malcolm nance, 35 year veteran in the trade. Special ops and homeland security. Also author of the plot to hack america. The book that preceded most of this conversation, by the way. Malcolm, whats going on there . What did we just witness there . I think we witnessed two parts of sergei lavrovs game. The second part is, russia has a strategy. We have a series of responses to their strategy so for the news media to constantly harp on, did he meet him, did he meet him, did he meet him . For lavrov, their objectives were met. They got three solid hours of discussion, and so anything else, you know, the joke about going to the balt room, being checked up. They got what they wanted. Some of these days you wake up and the president says what he says on the phone. Today the white house appeared to be in a disarray. Any given day theres a branch of our government in a lot of scrutiny. Do you ever think the neighbors are watching . Over seas governments are watching this . And what image must we be portraying. Its pretty clear the image were portraying. What 75 of the world believes, theres 25 to 36 that dont believe anymore than what they know. Look at matt chrone holding his hand and they cant care about the rest of reality. For those of us who have to live in the real world, we understand that our economic wellbeing relies on the interaks with our foreign allies. When he goes to the g20, it was a g19 plus one. Ab did i case of American Power since world war ii. Were advocating that with russia. Let me get a preview of a story that i think is going to come roaring back. Its about two residential compounds in the United States where russians living in this country by the way, very handsome homes, both of them. Russians were living and working there. We knew that. We followed them. They were thrown out at the end of the Obama Administration. Why is there talk about them being allowed back and how much damage could they have done. You know, these room recreation. But we know and have known for decades, these were intelligence collection facilities. The Obama Administration has gone too far. They may have been relay, they may also have been monitoring u. S. Reactions, not just the news media but also u. S. Military government intelligence. They cant break our approach but all of those things, the Obama Administration said were going to kick out the b in there. For the Trump Administration to give that back thats a concession that any other prid it would be more than a pat on the back. Malcolm, thank you as always. Final break for us. We are back with a look at what happened a year ago tonight almost to this moment and look at what it all led to when the 11th hour continues. Does psoriasis ever get in the way of a touching moment . If you have moderate to severe psoriasis, you can embrace the chance of completely clear skin with taltz. Taltz is proven to give you a chance at completely clear skin. With taltz, up to 90 of patients had a significant improvement of their psoriasis plaques. In fact, 4 out of 10 even achieved completely clear skin. Do not use if you are allergic to taltz. Before starting you should be checked for tuberculosis. Taltz may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. Tell your doctor if you are being treated for an infection or have symptoms. Or if you have received a vaccine or plan to. Inflammatory bowel disease can happen with taltz. Including worsening of symptoms. Serious allergic reactions can occur. Nows your chance at completely clear skin. Just ask your doctor about taltz. Got a minute . R chance at new aveeno®. R you. Skin. Positively radiant® 60 second in shower facial. Works with steam to reveal. Glowing skin in just one minute. Aveeno® naturally beautiful results® last thing before we go on a friday night. A year ago tonight at almost exactly this time the balloons dropped at the Republican National Committee Convention in cleveland and then candidate trump accepted the republican nomination for president. Its been a whirlwind six months, and look at what came out of it. As matthew newsbaum pointed out, sean spicer resigning makes six high level officials in no particular order, National Security adviser, deputy National Security adviser, deputy chief of staff, Communications Director, Vice President s chief of staff and then there are still the unfilled jobs in the administration. According to the Washington Post tally, there are 357 senior positions without any nominations. No names have been put forward. Theyre sitting vacant. Of the 146 people whose names have been put forward by other jobs by the white house, only 50 have been confirmed. That is our broadcast on a friday night and for this week. Thank you for being here with us. Good night from nbc news headquarters in new york. Spicer splits, lets play hardball. Good evening, im Steve Kornacki in for chris matthe matthews. The spicer show over t. White House Press Secretary known for his combative stance with the press was mocked by saturday night live and other late night show, they became a form of mustsee television, his performance at the podium was reportedly criticized by the president , himself. Spicers message