Elections and reportedly spent none of it . But first, we could start tonight with hope hicks departure a day after acknowledging he sometimes tells white lies for the president or Jared Kushner losing top secret access. We could start with new lines of questioning from bob mueller or the freezing out of Jeff Sessions. We could talk about that remarkable guns meeting with the president s seemingly making democrats points for them. Or we can talk about the uncertain future of h. R. Mcmaster. Heres the president at the gridiron last night. He said, so many people have been leaving the white house, its been really exciting and invigorating. I like turnover. I like chaos. It really is good. Now the question everyone is asking is, whos going to be the next to leave . Steve miller or melania . Thats terrible, honey, but you love me. Right . With that, lets bring in the panel. Msnbc political analyst, the Washington Post White House Bureau chief and analyst Phillip Rucker and former press sec
sees it on the news. he does hear it and hears it from other world leaders, too. remember around new year s day when kim jong-un said i have a big nuclear button on my desk. trump saw that. he saw the video of it. he read what was said. i think within a day he was tweeting my button is even bigger than yours. trump is very aware of what the leaders are saying publicly. he sees the commentary on television and he reacts or at least thinks impulsively in real time to what they re saying. there are still russia hawks in the republican party, believe it or not. do they think this president has blind spot that will prevent him from seeing all of this? are they sort of resigned to the fact think they can handle it themselves? i think privately a lot of republican leaders in congress will tell you that the one thing that keeps them up at night is trump s relationship with the rest of the world. specifically this geopolitical
that information could have come from lawyers and other people who have been interviewed by mueller. i wanted to put that out there. and michael schmidt is a skill of reporter, put that out there as well. peter, you re at the white house, what s the mood like lately or like today? it s every day. you know, they thought they were getting off to a nice slow start to the new year. it s opened with a bang instead. they thought they would have more time to prepare for this book as we re about to talk about in the next segment, more leeway and breathing space given the big victory on the tax cuts before the holiday. instead, boom, right out of the gun, they re facing questions about the president, his mental health, the russia investigation. so the tension is gone right back up as if there had been no holiday. the mental health question came up early this week, in fact, the first working day of this week when donald trump himself ended up tweeting about his big button, his big nuclear
tuesday morning he had a really good tweet talking about how sanctions are hurting, sort of rallying the international community to pressure north korea. then tuesday evening you have that juvenile tweet where it undos undoes all the good work because essentially we re not talking about the sanctions is, we re not talking about the campaign to really put north korea in its place, what we re talking about, of course, is button size. and so that s really been stepping on his own message. reminded me a lot of the detroit debate back in the campaign when donald trump was talking about the size or bragging about the size of his hands. in looking at the tweets this week, vivian, the big button and the sanctions tweets, how is that being how are they being received diplomatically in south korea? well, this has been an issue all along. obviously, a number of tweets that the president sends out like this, a lot of times the white house will brush off and they ll say, come on, the presid
address, there were a number of hints that way. and that sanctions pose an existential threat to the north korean state. so we re getting to them. indeed, president trump had two tweets on tuesday. tuesday morning he had a really good tweet talking about how sanctions are hurting, sort of rallying the international community to pressure north korea. then tuesday evening you have that juvenile tweet where it undos undoes all the good work because essentially we re not talking about the sanctions is, we re not talking about the campaign to really put north korea in its place, what we re talking about, of course, is button size. and so that s really been stepping on his own message. reminded me a lot of the detroit debate back in the campaign when donald trump was talking about the size or bragging about the size of his hands. in looking at the tweets this week, vivian, the big button and the sanctions tweets, how is that being how are they being received diplomatically in south kor