that s more dangerous than the psychopathy that we know to be donald trump. james clammer, former director of national intelligence. mr. clapper, thank you so much for joining us. what did you think of tonight s performance by president trump. well, don, it s hard to know where to start. it is so objectionable on so many levels. i toiled in one capacity or another for every president since and including john f. kennedy through president obama and i don t know when i ve listened and watched something like this from a president that i found more disturbing. having somed youing of the levers of power that are available to a president if he chooses to exercise them, i found this down right scary and
point two points, one this is a president focused on a narrow base and secondly that kind of returning to those divisive themes, you know, pardoning sheriff arpaio would send a clear signal to the most restrictionist forces in the republican party he is standing with them. but many other americans who started off ambivalent about president trump would look at this again as someone who is focusing more on dividing. this is inherently a fragile move in the history of the company. a majority of our under ten population is nonwhite. there are forces at work. what is unusual is that we have a president who is systematically jumping up and down on every one of the fault lines and i think a pardon of sheriff joe would be another example of him speaking to that
the new york times is reporting tonight about the falling out between the president and mitch mcconnell over the investigations of russia s interference with the 2016 election. the president was furious that mcconnell failed to protect him. you called the accusations of collusion between the trump c e campaign and russia worse than watergate. why is this such a hot button for him? first, to be clear, don, when i left on the 20th of january, i had not seen any evidence of direct collusion between the trump campaign, the trump camp, and the russians. there may have been collusion, but i didn t have any evidence of it. so i don t understand, frankly, the president s fascination and
jeff zeleny reporting live from florida this morning. thank you. so as jeff said with trump in a statistical dead heat in a state that s essential for him he s raising eyebrows by leaving the campaign trail. for his brand new hotel in washington, d.c. his campaign pushing back saying it s just a brief respite from his breakneck schedule. well in florida in 2 1/2 days. nobody accuses donald trump of taking time off. believe me the guy. we don t even know when he sleeps or if he does. he s indefatigable. he is nobody asks hillary clinton why do you have five days off before the debate. but he s coming to open a hotel that s under budget and ahead of schedule. it s a great illustration to america what he does. but he opened the hotel about a month and a half ago the official grand opening. but the hotel s been open now for at least a month this is the grand official opening and it s been scheduled this way for a long time. and we re very excited to show america what th
going to do this [ bleep ] for anybody, including ivana. oh, geez. he couldn t take it. that i could do something better than he did. reporter: for trump, everything is a competition. especially business. i never had a failure. because i always turn a failure into a success. reporter: the theme weaves through his interviews. refusal to acknowledge any business failures. i bought something and thrown it into a bankruptcy. made an unbelievable deal. wiped out a lot of the debt. came back. the next day i read the story, trump files bankruptcy. i get all these people that don t understand business saying oh, did you go bankrupt? do you understand that? i tell you what i do. i always do because i ll tell you why i do. what always bothers me is false stuff. untruths. that bothers me. reporter: fame.