ties in russia cannot be discussed in an open hearing because they relate to an ongoing intelligence investigation. that was today. and you know, day after tomorrow, on thursday, fbi director james comey was due to be back in the senate in open session testifying on the trump/russia investigation. that will not happen. today the president fired the fbi director at the direction, he says, of the attorney general. and if that timeline of events that i just laid out doesn t make it clear enough exactly what s going on here and how desperate a moment this is for this white house, the piece of it that puts this in the category not just of another trump scandal, not just of another law enforcement or national security firing that can t be explained by this administration. what puts this in the category of history tonight is whodunit.
guy kaveladze who was in the meeting with donald trump jr. shady characters a lot of. and anita, while you re not one of them, talk to us about the status of the trump agenda and a reminder this is made in america week. it is made in america week. somehow, no one seems to be talking about it. it the publicity on made in america has not been great because as you ve probably seen, people have been talking about. the trump product. right, ivanka trump products and trump products are many of them not made in america. they ve been getting a lot of questions about that. they ve been doing events. these theme weeks and they have been doing them. i haven t heard a lot of publicity about them except for the trump organization products. it s interesting because they say they can t talk about that. here they are promoting that, but they say they can t speak to the president s businesses. with great thanks to all three of our guests in our official panel and great
evening once again from nbc news headquarters here in new york. day 180 of the still young trump administration brought disastrous headlines for the white house. the day began with the focus on health care specifically this colossal defeat for the president, for mitch mcconnell and the republicans after an almost decade-long campaign, after all, to repeal and replace obamacare. they will do neither for now. and the president more on this later, says he and they will refuse to own this failure. the focus of the day then quickly shifted back to russia. that s because we learned this evening that there was a second meeting between trump and putin at that g-20 conference after their formal bilateral meeting, this one, the start of which we were able to see. this was later after the dinner that night, this dinner for the leaders and their spouses, why
on to other issues. moving on, that s the private sentiment i keep hearing from republicans. notably, i already heard a trump surrogate tonight say let s call this what it is, a mitch mcconnell failure. he s been lying to members of his own caucus. surrogates usually don t talk that way by accident. vivian, i know you know the following, but we want to take a moment before we talk and remind you and our audience that in light of today s kind of dark wording from the white house, some presidents have used the white house and their job to cheer on the american people who exhort the american people to be their best selves. that s why today was such a contrast. we ll watch this and talk on the other side. we believe in social security. we believe in work for the unemployed. we believe in saving homes. cross our hearts and hope to die.
and what part of bannon wanted to hitch his wagon to donald trump? i don t think it was bannon telling trump what to do. i think bannon flattered trump. he essentially recognized that trump has these populist impulse and told him you re not a clown, not a punch line. i have this whole intellectual infrastructure. he used tell trump he was part of a global uprising and it fed trump s ego and you can see that in the book how trump kind of fed on bannon s input the same way a boxer feeds on the pep talk he gets from the cornerman in the ring. that worked to brilliant effect in the campaign. hasn t worked nearly as well in the white house. bannon understood how to connect with trump. there s a portion of this book where you touch on donald trump s ratings on the apprentice as measured about his popularity with certain ethnic groups in this country. tell the folks what context. one of the fascinating discoveries that i had researching the book was if you