Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. It is now under way. The director of National Intelligence said in a recent speech that the Warning Lights are blinking red and the Digital Infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack. And here we see the incursions coming. Russian hackers have now already targeted at least three candidates in this years 2018 midterms. Reports one of the targets is missouri democratic senator Claire Mccaskill. So highway donald trump doubts much of this is even occurring, his pentagon chief does say there are secret actions now underway to combat it. What is the government doing to halt russian interference in the next elections . Yeah, im not at liberty to explain what were doing in that regard. Just rest assured there are actions under way to protect our elections or to exposeness
now the question is whether trump lied about the worst possible thing, not the pr afterward, but whether donald trump took actions or
With the black boys, you know. The black boys not players so im not going to make it there. I kept playing and playing. I said one day im going to play baseball. Tonights last word. The 11th hour with Brian Williams starts right now. Tonight, the president swears he did not know about that Trump Tower Meeting in advance, while someone close to Michael Cohen tells vanity fair cohen is sitting on top of a Treasure Trove of damaging information and theres a lot more to come. For the tenth straight time the president ignored questions from reporters and thats since the trumpcohen tape came out on tuesday. Donald trumps First Ever National Security Council meeting on the topic of election safety was convened today hours after the president was invited to moscow by vladimir putin. All of it as The 11th Hour gets under way on a friday night. On a friday night good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. Day 554 of the Trump Administration and the president escalate
On a friday night, good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. Day 554 of the Trump Administration, and the president escalates the war on his former lawyer and confidante, Michael Cohen, while denying that he had any advanced knowledge about that june 2016 meeting in trump tower. A source has told nbc news cohen is willing to tell Robert Mueller that donald trump jr. Informed his father about the meeting before it took place. Trumps son had that meeting with several russians after he was told they were coming prepared with damaging information about hillary clinton. Well, today the president responded with this so, the fake news Doesnt Waste My Time with dumb questions, no, i did not know of the meeting with my son, don junior. Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam. Taxi cabs, maybe . Well explain that one. He even retained bill and crooked hillarys lawyer. Counsel. Muellers office says it pl
Lets bring in our leadoff panel for this friday night. Franco ordonez, White House Correspondent for mcclatchy newspapers, covering immigration and foreign affairs. The New York Times katie benner, pulitzer prizewinning reporter who covers the Justice Department. And yamiche alcindor, White House Correspondent for news hour on pbs. Thanks to all of you for being with us. Katie, let me start with you. We have that reporting tonight about some movement on that issue of reunifying parents with children, at least some of them. You cover the Justice Department, the legal end of this. It sounded like there was still plenty of confusion when that Executive Order was issued the other day by the president about what that was actually going to allow in terms of reunification. How clear is that now . Absolutely. So as you say, this was another selfinflicted wound by the Trump Administration not thinking through clearly enough a directive before issuing it. So we saw a lot of confusion last night.
Trump got updates on the whole of government approach his administration is implementing to safeguard our nations elections. The president has made it clear that his administration will not tolerate foreign interference in our elections from any nation state or other malicious actors. That kind of Paper Statement is a contrast to trumps actual words in helsinki where trump sided with the russian president over his own Intelligence Agencies on the question of whether russia interfered in the u. S. Election. That was the Press Conference where putin brought back an idea these two leaders had apparently talked about, a joint u. S. russian Cyber Security group to investigate Russian Election meddling. Sort of like having el chapo join up with the dea to fight drug trafficking. Now this quite absurd plan to team up with the only country whose own agents have been charged for 2016 interference first came up you may remember all the way last summer when trump wrote that he and putin discussed