robert costa. good to have you all on board this hour. the west wing continues to put pressure on the justice department with the vice president now standing behind his boss s very public criticism of the attorney general, jeff sessions. mike pence says time will tell whether jeff sessions has a future in the administration. i know the washington way is to talk behind people s backs. but that s not president trump s approach. one of the great things about this president is you always know where you stand. his express disappointment is sincere. he said we ll see what happens in the future, but at least the american people know, and every member of the cabinet can know you ll always know where you stand can president trump. and jeff sessions stands on a very bad place, especially after being so loyal to the president for so long during the campaign. he s now on the outs with the
in the breitbart wing of the republican party, sessions is, for nearly a decade, the hero, and if you take out the hero from the cabinet, you ll have perhaps a political cost. fascinating. the wall street journal s editorial board writes about trump s session s abuse. mr. trump s suggestion that his the attorney general prosecuted his defeated opponent is the kind of crude political. mr. sessions had no way of knowing when he accepted the a.g. job that the russian probe would become the fire storm it has or that his belated memory of brief public meetings with the russian ambassador in 2016 would require his recusal from supervising the probe. he was right to step back once facts were out. not the least to shelter the trump administration from any suspicion of a politicized investigation.
if mr. trump wants someone to blame for the existence of special counsel robert mueller, he can pick up a mirror. mr. trump prides himself as a man above political convention, but there are some conventions he can t ignore without destroying his presidency, and kasey, republicans on capitol hill are i would i would contend they might be at a risk at this point if they don t take a look at what s happening here and decide whether or not they want to go their own way. i think we may be at that point. how often are the washington post wrote an editorial that sounded a lot like what you just read. when the editorial pages are on the same page, that s pretty surprising. and look, i think i have been surprised by the just complete directness with which republicans have been going at this issue private slly, public. it doesn t compare to other situations where you get people walking onto the subway train
he backed off investigations into the police departments and said he would restore mandatory minimum sentences. and in response to all of this, the tweets about transgender troops and president trump seems to be turning up the conservative rhetoric on the menace of undocumented immigrants at his recent rallies as well. you ve soeen the stories abot some of these animals. they don t want to use guns because it s too fast and it s not painful enough. so they ll take a young, beautiful girl, 16, 15 and others and they slice them and dies them with a knife because they want them to go through
very raw. with us this morning we have from ms nbc mark pal person, and president test council on foreign relations and author of the book a world if disarray richard haase and national political reporter for nbc news carol lee, political editor for the daily beast and host of the podcast candidate confessional sam stein and nbc news capitol hill correspondent casey hunt. joe, of course, has the morning off. does anyone here know who gary kasparov is? he s the russian grand chess master turned political activist who has spent years speaking out against vladimir putin. he knows a thing or two about autocrats and yesterday he wrote on twitter, quote, autocratic distraction, who do my supporters hate? who can i get them to hate? how can i make this hated targets angry so they lash out? he was referring to donald trump s tweets yesterday,