we have a fantastic triple crown, tripleheader lineup this morning, people who were in the chamber who are helping league the news and are going to eliminate it for us. axios is smart and faster on the areness matters, and they equipped for this format. we start with what happened and why it matters. that is what you get on axios.com. one screen starts as on what is new, what is happening, and why it matters to make you smarter faster. i would like to thank my event colleagues for pulling together this fantastic event. i thank all of you for being here. .e are going to start we have three guests. hasfirst guest this morning seen 35 addresses to congress or states of the union, the representative from the fifth prince george's county, maryland, the house democratic whip, congressman steny hoyer. mr. hoyer, what an honor. thank you so much. you were talking with sen. collins: stage, and you have seen 35, 36 states of the union, addresses to congress, but this is the first time the president has ever -- >> he was the direct to of clapping. he likes to do this. he comes out clapping. he should have an applause sign. of course, he got the reaction he wanted. but i thought it was a disappointing speech. it was billed as a bipartisan, bring us together speech. the first, maybe, quarter of the speech, that was true, but then it turned pretty dark, i thought. to president said he wants make us safer, stronger, prouder. i am not sure he is a couple is any of those things in the world or the country. i think he spent almost all of last year doing two things with the republican congress, trying to repeal the affordable and pass the tax bill, which we think does not really help the middle class working people of this country. in fact, will pass credit card debt along to our children. moderator: tough talk, a call for unity. "new york times" headline, a pill for unity in the state of for unity -- appeal in the state of the union. it is a more positive tone than we have seen from the president and the past. >> it was more positive at the beginning but then got darker. points in is talking the beginning, talking to his base at the end. i think he was tried to cover himself. the positive was interests of immigration reform, one of the principal issues we need to pursue, that he offered signing 1.8 million daca protectinggibles, them and providing them a path to citizenship. but then he pointed out a sort of bipartisan proposal to the congress, which i do not think any democrat sitting there thought it was bipartisan. no democrats have signed onto a bipartisan proposal. proposalsbipartisan by mr. german and mr. graham in the senate and a couple in the house. hopefully we can pursue those. hopefully his statement about how far he wants to go and who he wants to include will predominate. there was a memorable line from the speech aimed at his base. there were reports this morning that it is something the president has said before and private. the president said americans are dreamers, too, and you tweeted -- you have it backwards. >> well, americans are dreamers, but his comment was, well, we understand you are dreamers, many of them came with us -- i had a young woman, gabriella fernandez -- i did a facebook live, and she is a wonderful 19 yield a came from all salvador at the age of four. she has got to elementary school, middle school, high school, and she is now in college and wants to be a social worker, delightful young woman. at 19, i had no were near the poise that she has. she is a dreamer, and she dreams of making a life here, which is why most people can to this country. they dreamed of a better life for themselves and their families. i think what he was doing -- well, we're dreamers, too -- of course that is the case. americans are dreamers, and americans have made a great country because of that vision and willingness to work hard. the overwhelming number of americans are saying that these young people who came here through no conscious effort of their own and are americans in every sense of the word and are dreaming of what they can do to make their lives better and americans' lives better. we thought it was an attempt to diminish their perspective. moderator: as someone close to the white house, you have sent the message, set the tone for discipline.he party democrats are looking angry as the president talks about unity and that optics -- that was said and were you concerned about that? there was some booing and hissing. >> there were very little demonstrations. we sat there stoically and quietly. we think the president's go with hiss not actions or what he has done. he spent most of the year trying to repeal the affordable care act, which we think was damaging to some 20 million people, maybe more. a big cheer on their side. moderator: one that he chaired for, too. people not having access to affordable quality health care. what you saw was a very quiet, not happy, and disappointed democratic majority on our side. moderator: very quiet, not happy. your statement after the state of the union, you set the state of donald trump's presidency may be perilous. what did you mean? ande said stronger, better, safer, proud. ironically, when he says that we are a better standing in the data, every polling throughout the world shows that is not true. in fact, respect in the u.s. and confidence in the u.s. has plummeted. that is dangerous for the united states and also for the international community. they do not think they can rely the leaderdy hand of of the free world, which is the united states of america. stronger,f savor and you are not stronger if you do not have health care. you are not stronger if you do not have some stability in your economy. overstated vastly the results of his presidency. after all, six years prior to that, there was more job growth. greatest economic growth, that is not true. that the hispanic and african american unemployment has gone down, but it has been going down for some number of years. bys president is advantaged inheriting a growing economy, an economy that was less than 5% unemployment, as opposed to his predecessor, president obama, n economy ind a peril. he brought it up, and it has continued to grow up -- go up, and that is good news. hopefully it will continue. it will bex bill, very detrimental to the economy. and terms of the middle-class working people they talked about, and he talked about that, as well, those taxes will be phased out. the taxes on the upper 1% will continue. moderator: since you came to congress as a young man in a special election in may of 1981, you have seen the majority change hands three times. 1994 with the newt revolution. democrats in 2006. republicans in 2010. what is your optimism that in january 2019, you will be majority again? rep. hoyer: i think the environment is such that you see it all over the country. you see two phenomena. number we have a lot of one, candidates who want to run. our campaign chairman said weost 100 districts now that have really good candidates and. are all of them competitive? maybe not. a large number are competitive. enough to take back the majority. second, on the republican side, you see retirements, particularly in swing districts. republicans not running for reelection. and in elections in virginia and new jersey, alabama, wisconsin, you see an energy on our side and, i think disinterest would overstate it, but you see a lack of enthusiasm on the republican side. you saw significant swings. i see this election as being in that context. i think we are on the upside. the president's popularity is very low. historically,hat, you see a significant shift of membership in the house of representatives. moderator: what is the likelihood you get the majority? rep. hoyer: i think it is 90%. very positive. moderator: how many seats do you pick up? we're: i think we are going to pick up 30-plus. by the way, that is pretty close to the average turnover in a second-year election of a president. it is not always that way. we need 24. moderator you are projecting a : good cushion. think sixr: i do not is a new cushion. i am the whip. having six as a cushion is not a good cushion. moderator: will you have a narrow majority? . lawyer: it depends on where we are six months from now. in the summer, first of all, you see people having made up their mind. when you saw the alabama election, the president tried to energize his base down in pensacola, to bring somebody who we thought in the majority of alabamans thought was not prepared to be a member of the united states senate. the president urged his election because he needed it. they went to the polls. our base was very energized. they went in big numbers. it was not that trump's people voted for doug jones. it was they simply did not come out. i think you will see that in virginia. moderator: you think republicans will not turn out in midterms? yer: yes. a depressedill be turnout. they are not energized, and i think a lot of republicans who are somewhat disappointed with trump not changing. they expected him to be more presidential. in the two speeches he has given, he has been presidential because he was locked in to the teleprompter. but when he is not locked into the teleprompter and he is freewheeling, he has not done well. moderator: i have covered you since i was a metro reporter at "the washington post." you have voiced pushed the idea of the government being more efficient and customer-friendly. what is the biggest change that needs to happen in government to be considered customer friendly? said we need have to get technologically more able to communicate, and to be responsive to the public. the public has more information available to them. moderator: what would be an exhibit of the type of information? lawyer: for instance, one thing the constituents have is a window on the confrontation. they really do not see congress or the government working in a positive fashion, because that is not really news. if it is working, ok, it is working. i think they need to have greater access. i think c-span gives them that coverage. moderator: thank you, c-span. rep. hoyer: gavel to gavel coverage. even that, particularly in the house of representatives, there a few times when there are large members on the floor voting. but on the debates, it is the confrontational debates get people to pay attention. in terms of just responding, having questions, having a problem, having information they want, being able to get that, just as they can get it -- moderator: axios.com. rep. hoyer: yes. the back-and-forth. we are working to make sure we are more technologically available. moderator: you have a number of federal workers in your district. how optimistic are you about avoiding a shutdown two? is there any chance there will be a shutdown? rep. hoyer: any chance? yes here there is always a chance. i do not think we will have a shutdown. we do not want a shutdown. moderator: i think you kind of learned your lesson? rep. hoyer: not so much we learned our lesson. maybe in a certain sense. but the other sense is that we are a party that thinks government needs to operate to serve the people. it has been shut down five times consciously, purposely over the , last 20 years by republicans who have use that as policy. that is not our policy. what happened this last time is we had two major things we needed agreement on. we are now a quarter or a third into the fiscal year. we still don't have a single appropriations bill sent to the president of the united states to fund any agency of government. not one. i think that is unprecedented. it is particularly unprecedented when you have the presidency, the house, and the senate majorities. republicans refuse to compromise on what the spending number is going to be. the irony of that is, we have had the same agreement we are asking for the for the last four years. senator murray and speaker ryan agreed that the increase in domestic and defense spending would be equal. that is all we have asked for. but we have not gotten that agreement, and therefore, the republicans have been unable to get -- in the house, they simply roll less. in the senate, they need 60 votes, and they have been refusing to compromise to move appropriation bills forward. moderator you are a big : moviegoer. you recently sought "the post" about the pentagon papers. what is the lesson of the post what is the lesson of "the post" for today's america? rep. hoyer: i thought it was an excellent movie. any movie with meryl streep is excellent. i think the message is, the more transparent we are, the better decisions we can make in a democracy. this is a perfect example of where, internally, there was a lot of consternation and reservation about the vietnam effort. but externally, information the public was getting his we are succeeding and doing well, the light is at the end of the tunnel. experts inside did not believe that. had the american public had more information sooner, perhaps we would have corrected our actions before we did. : congressman steny hoyer, you have seen it all. thank you for sharing it with us. have your secret files with you. rep. hoyer: my secret files. moderator: thank you so much. now it is my honor to welcome somebody who played a vital role getting the government restarted recently, consistently ranked as one of the most effective senators, someone that is always at the top of lists of republicans and people who make things happen in this city, senator susan collins of maine. what an honor. thank you so much for coming here. senator collins and i often see each other on a thursday night. it is on our americans flight to maine. a place out there, and senator collins, when you get off that plane, you go to a place that most people would call a cabin. they call it a -- collins: a camp. it is on a beautiful, pristine lake in lincoln, maine. it is my favorite place in the world. but i have not seen you out kayaking. i do not understand this. moderator: it is because i'm surfing. collins: [laughs] on the huge waves. moderator: what was it like to be in the chamber last night? you have a complicated relationship with this president. sen. collins: it was a fascinating evening. i kept thinking that the speech was so eclectic. on the one hand, you heard him pitch for immigration reform, for controlling the high cost of prescription drugs, for a brand-new infrastructure package. and then you heard him saying we have to crack down on drug dealers, which appeals more to my side of the aisle. so he covers a lot of territory, and you couldn't pigeonhole the speech. it was neither liberal speech or a conservative speech. it really was all over the place and touched a lot of important areas. >> is donald trump, is president trump growing on you? >> the president is the president and -- [laughing] i accept that. and i say that actually in seriousness. i think it has been difficult for many people in this country, still a year later, to accept the fact that donald trump is our president. he was not my choice for the republican candidate, but i respect the fact that he is the president and i work with him. >> senator collins, i mentioned in the introduction your commonsense coalition helped get the government reopened. the commonsense coalition has its roots in 2013. could you tell us literally what it is, how many members you started with, how many people come to your meetings now? >> well, we started the coalition back in 2013 when government was shutdown, and it was obviously extremely harmful to the economy. it happened during the peak tourism season, so it had an especially adverse impact on my constituents. and it represented to me the ultimate failure to govern. so when government shutdown, when it was obvious that friday that we were not going to have the votes to keep government open, i reconvened the group. there been a lot of changes over the years, but 17 senators, democrats and republicans and independents, angus king, showed up in my office in response to my e-mail, and the group kept growing so that it's now about 26 members. and we worked night and day. we work friday. we met saturday. we met sunday. >> this is senators, this is no staff, right? >> that's correct what you think was a key to our success with all due respect to the wonderful staff that we have. but people, and as a former staffer myself. but people have to talk more frankly and give their more candid views if there are not other people in the room. so i had to keep feeding them girl scout cookies and dunkin' donuts coffee and that sort of thing. the girl scouts sent me three boxes of cookies. they were so happy about it. >> you tweeted a picture the other day. >> exactly. but to me it's very encouraging that there is that large a number of senators who are willing to make government work again. and that's what we really need. >> so over the years that are always stories about how we'll have a sudden flexing of the muscles in the center, and after the government reopened, front page story in the "l.a. times" pick up and actions can they see our meetings in your office, offered a glimpse of how a new senate could break from the hyper partisanship in washington to govern. how optimistic are you that we're going to head in that direction? >> i am encouraged. we're continuing to meet. i can't believe howgood the attendance has been, whether we meeting deep in the evening or early in the morning. people are coming. people are calling me and wanting to join the effort, all of a sudden. and in all seriousness, i think that that's a good sign for our country. we have to get away from the hyper partisanship that has led to gridlock on far too many issues, and lowered the public's confidence in our ability to get anything done. >> there's no question about that. the ratings for center like the ratings for the press. effectiveness is a big part of that. how does leader mcconnell to the efforts of your coalition? >> he was very complimentary of the work that we did to reopen government. in general, i don't think that leaders on either side of the aisle are particularly enamored by groups that are trying to perhaps work out compromises. but our approach ends with the shutdown to come up with the plan and give it to the two leaders, encourage them to take it, talk with them. we sent delegations to mitch mcconnell, delegations to chuck schumer. and we got them talking with one another. so if we can be a catalyst for better working relationship among our leaders, i think that matters. >> senator collins, in addition to girl scout cookies and dunkin' donuts coffee, you have a talking stick. >> this is true. heidi heitkamp of north dakota gave me come several years ago when we were negotiating a bill, a talking stick. it's beautifully beaded and i used it to control the debate in the room because as you can imagine, when you have 20-25 senators sitting around an office, each thinks that he or she should be the first to speak, and there's a lot of crosstalk. and i wanted to make sure that in addition to everybody getting an opportunity to speak, everybody listen to one another pass this stick around. believe it or not it worked. we are not using it right now, we used it for all the shutdown meetings, and it did help to ensure that everyone had a chance to speak and to be heard. >> so you got other senators to obey? >> well, i don't know whether it was so unexpected that i would pull out this stick, but people were very respectful of each other's views. >> you talked about personal to president trump during the health care debate. what is president trump like behind the scenes? >> he tends to be very gracious, and he tends to listen. he will say, well, that sounds reasonable. now, sometimes when he talks with his staff afterwards he changes his mind. what is reasonable. but we all do that in public life when we get more information, but i found that he has listen to me on some issues. >> would you say he has grown in office? yes. i think we all grow in office. i believe that he still needs at times to react to rapidly and i wish he wouldn't do early morning tweets myself, but it does allow him to reach people directly and i'm sure that's what he likes. >> and would you say the president has room to grow? >> coming into government, you have to remember that this president was the first president we've ever had who had no experience in the military, no experience in government so the learning curve has been steep for anyone who comes in with a business background and without experience in government or in the military. so he is still feeling his way as far as understanding how best to interact with congress and recognizing whose role is what. >> senator collins, maine and the bangor area in particular is trump country and trunp country took a lot of people in this room by surprise. people didn't understand what was happening around the country and like you are in close touch with your constituents, you saw it coming. help us understand trump country. >> i'm from northern maine and that definitely is trump country. maine is a microcosm of the country in many ways but we only have two congressional districts. the second district voted for donald trump by 11 votes, the first district voted for hillary clinton by 14 percent points and so there's a real split in maine. the southern part is more prosperous. the northern and western parts of the state have been hit so hard by the loss of paper mills and other traditional industries where people use to be able to work for their entire lives and have a good pension, a good life and what's happened is those hard-working people through no fault of their own have lost their jobs and often times what has happened is the paper mills have gone from being owned i traditional paper companies to being owned by private equity firms, on wall street and often times they have a much shorter time frame in their commitment to the area, but not really as involved as owners in the community and i think a lot of those people feel very betrayed. they didn't do anything wrong. they worked hard, they were the best papermakers in the world and yet they found themselves losing their jobs. so donald trump cashed in to in to that very understandablediscontent, and his talk on trade, which doesn't go over well in washington circles resonates with these individuals. >> the paper mills, up there they call it the smell of money and i heard you say that the trump country irritation is understandable. >> it is, it absolutely is. i don't think in years past that enough was done to help these displaced workers. if you are 52 years old, not in particularly good health, had what you thought was a great, secure job, showed up at work every single day. raise your family, educated your children and all of a sudden you find out you are out of work and there are very few programs to help people find themselves in that situation, and one thing that hasn't been tied to -- one thing that has not been talked about by anyone that was in the president speech last night was an emphasis on workforce training. >> why should people in this room care about the opioid crisis? >> the opioid crisis is devastating our communities and our families in this country. it is particularly a problem in rural states like mine. last night, my guest in the state of the union told me the tragic story of her own son he spent two years in rehabilitation, and is still in recovery, he's doing very well right now but it cost that family all the money they saved for decades for his college education. he's now back in school, is doing much better. senator shaheen's guest last night was the woman who had lost her child to the opioid crisis. it is everywhere, and no family is immune. >> and ultimate question, you're the most senior republican woman in the senate this year. a record number of women at "time magazine" was the avengers, first they marched,now they ran which is quite clever. how optimistic are you that women running would be interested in that and translate into actual power over here? >> we had some excellent candidates in arizona, an extraordinary woman of great accomplishment and the women in the senate stand the ed -- ideological spectrum as you might expect and we don't think alike and i always want to push back against that stereotype, but we do bring different life experiences to the job, and that does matter. i remember when i was first elected in 1997, there were only nine women in the senate. there were not a sufficient number of women to be represented and that's not good. now we have a record high of 22, but i'll tell you a great main e fact. when i was elected i was only the 15th woman in history to be elected in her own right which boggles my mind. since it's not exactly ancient history. there were others who followed their husbands into elected office, but three of those women were from the great state of maine so we have a great record in my state. >> allie rubin have given me the hook up so we have to be quick but i have to ask you on your twitter feed, you said you are proudly standing with four former usa gymnastic team members whoshowed incredible courage as they told their personal experiences. >> that was such a moving experience and for those of us who read or watched part of the victim's statements, in doctor nasser's trial, how could you not be so angry and appalled that there were 157 women who came forward who were abused as girls by this horrible monster, and the good news is we have not just talked about this issue, which is important in and of itself, diane feinstein and i led the effort in the senate. we introduced the bill to try to prevent anyone from sweeping under the rug allegations of sexual abuse, and that bill got its final passage by the senate just yesterday and is on the way to the president's desk. it's going to require the coaches, the other intel, anyone who is associated with the amateur athletics organization to report allegations of sexual abuse in 24 hours. and that is powerful. but what was even more powerful was hearing the stories of these very brave women who come forward and inspired us to take action. >> the government can pass what -- can work fast when it wants to or needs to. will the government sign this? >> exactly. >> exactly. >> how big a difference you think that will make for government? >> i think it sends a signal to young women that they don't have to remain silent when they are abused and that they are not going to lose their chance to be which i think a lot of these girls thought, and some of them were so young they didn't even recognize what was happening to them until they were older. and it was just a horrific situation, and i was very proud that the judge made doctor nasser listen to each of these survivors of abuse. and i'm very hopeful that this tells those young girls and women that we've got their back. >> senator collins, thank you for a very powerful message. thank you so much for being with us and we appreciate bank of america making these conversations possible and now we will see a quick video from bank of america and i will be back. ♪ >> you look at the kind of things in the world that we can use, the contacts we've made, to hopefully make a better world with respect to some of the issues of today of climate change and we should be able to do it by being smart. >> we start to brainstorm how could we bring financial instruments to the table that would enable us to scale. >> have to be creative together. together. >> we partner with them to create a subsidiary onassets in -- that can own asset in concert with them and help drive down the cost of capital so that they can sell more at a more competitive price. >> because of how low-risk these investments are, the pension funds, insurance companies, sophisticated money managers, all clients of bank of america are now investing directly. i love it when i go meet with the ceo or cfo and i find the common link in how we can connect our firm to them. helping with the causes that we believe in. >> thank you very much to bank of america for that message and now it's our honor to have with us top democrat from the house intelligence committee, someone who as you see is in the thick of the news every single day, a great photo at the top of his a.m. yesterday at our next guest surrounded by media, 360. it's an honor to have with us and coming in on his way tothe -- to the capital to brief us democrats, congressman schiff from california. thank you very much for being here. [applause] >> you had your son at the capital last night. what were his impressions inside the chamber? >> my son is 15, the first time i brought him to the state of the union and i wanted to give him a chance to form his own impressions of the president. parentsusly hears his talking about the president quite a bit and in fact i remember picking him up at camp over the summer and one of the nice things about camp is you are deprived of all your electronics and during the time he was at camp the president had called me sleazy and i didn't want him to learn about this from others, i wanted to tell him but my son is like many young boys. tough on the outside maybe not as tough on the inside. so i wasn't sure how he was going to react so my wife and i went to pick him up and i said eli, i need to tell you about something thathappened during camp, it's not a big deal but i want you to know the president called your dad sleazy. and i looked for his reaction and he took a moment to kind of process this, it's not every day the president of the united states insult your father or maybe it is. [laughter] >> and he thinks about it for a moment and then he says, can i call you sleazy? to which i responded, only if you want me to call you sleazy junior. he found it totally fascinating. the spectacle of the state of the union, seeing the president in person, watching the reaction of people around him, these -- he found it totally fascinating. >> congressman schiff, where did you think you were going to be at this moment? >> we were supposed to interview steve bannon today. this is another effort to get answers from mister bannon. that has been postponed and we are setting another date where we hope he will come in and answer questions. >> why was it postponed? >> according to mister bannon's counsel, because they needed more time to work out privileged issues. that may be the case or it may be they didn't want mister bannon's testimony to step on the state of the union. obviously there's close coordination between mister bannon's counsel and the white house. in fact, mister bannon's counsel represents several others in the white house including don mcgann , so it's never easy to find out what the true motivation is but that was the ostensible motivation. >> and when steve bannon appeared before you, the white house said it was okay for him to talk about the campaign not about the transition for his time in the west wing. will that objection hold? >> know, and this is the dissidence of the white house. you have sarah huckabee sanders saying we are being fully transparent. at the same time you have the white house telling steve bannon's lawyer, do not allow steve bannon to answer questions about anything that happened during the transition or about anything that happened while he was in the administration and even after he left the administration, there are lots of things we don't want him talking about. that's not transparency and is not how privilege works. >> is their legitimate privilege objective to former west wing officials talking about what happened? >> there may be certainly a very limited specific executive privilege that could be claimed as to certain conversations with the president. under certain circumstances. but there is no precedent whatsoever to say this whole period of time is off-limits, you can't talk about it because mister bannon refused to answer. you can't talk about whether you were in a meeting, what you saw, you can't talk about conversations you had with others. and it's never been applied to the transition, so this is a wholly unprecedented and unsustainable claim of privilege. they will not claim this privilege before the special counsel and there's also no precedent to say that the privilege exists vis-c-vis congress even if it's waived by special counsel. >> my question on this most important thing. what you want to or need to learn from steve bannon? >> steve bannon has a lot to say about the russian investigation. these expressed concerns about money laundering, something that also concerns me a great deal. he described that meeting in trump tower is not only unpatriotic but treasonous. we like to know some of the reasons why he feels this was of bad thing but obviously he could shed a lot of light on everything from the events that took place during the campaign. mike flynn's interactions with the russian ambassador and his private efforts to undermine the sanctions imposed over russia's interference in the election and the false statement that comes out of the administration about that june trump tower meeting. he would probably have like to shed on that as well. >> the president we saw how was the microphone last night saying 100% a republican house member urged him to release acontroversial memo out of your committee about the originsof russian investigation. when you see this 3.5 page classified memo, when it comes out, what is going to be the consequence? >> it's difficult to say what the consequence is. we know obviously the department of justice and fbi feel this is an extraordinarily reckless step to take because the information has been vetted. they haven't been able to do analysis of what the impact sources and methods are and while that analysis is supposed to go on, the president hasn't even read the memo and he's 100 -- 100% certain he's going to release it. >> i can tell you the president feels the memo vindicates his contention that the origins of the investigation are tainted. is there anything in this memo that would vindicate the president? , and this is the same president who felt vindicated when chairman nunez went to the white house to present evidence that showed a vast unmasking conspiracy in the obama administration. the president said literally i feel vindicated or somewhat vindicated and of course there was nothing presented that vindicated him and the material had been obtained from the white house. i am handicapped from discussing at this point what's in the gop memo, but i think you can probably tell all you need to know about it by the fact that the chairman and even bothered to read the underlying document that characterizes. when i made a motion in the committee to allow the department of justice and fbi to come into our committee to brief members on inaccuracies in the memo, lack of context in the memo, concerns about sources in methods, if it were to be released. on a partyline vote, the gop members voted against being informed of what the context, the underlying documents were which they also haven't read with only one exception so this is not about the facts. this is about a narrative that the chairman wants to put out, a misleading narrative to undermine the fbi, undermine the department and ultimately undermine mueller and the danger in all this is the obvious one of politicizing the intelligence process is that it sends a message to the white house that you can fire rod rosenstein or fire robert mueller and there are gop members who are so vested in his presidency that they will roll over. and that will cause a considerable crisis. >> what do you think is the likelihood that bob mueller will be fired? >> i don't know. it obviously was something the president tried to do earlier. if bob mueller gets too close to the president, bob mueller looks at the money laundering issue and that is to threatening for the president, there's no telling what this president will do. what i'm more worried about at the moment is that he fires rod rosenstein. he knows the blowback that would accompany firing the special counsel, so he fires rod rosenstein, puts in his own person then becomes bob mueller's boss and you say to bob mueller, you can't look into this, you can't look into that, you need to end your investigation here. >> but that's not going to apply with bob mueller. >> bob mueller will only then have a choice. does he accept these limitations placed on him by the new deputy chief or does he resign? that's not a position the country or bob mueller should be put in. that would prompt a crisis. >> it sounds like we are headed towards a constitutional crisis of support. >> i don't know, but i do know that what the house is doing right now makes it more likely, not less. at a time when members of congress should be speaking out in both parties and telling the president you need to leave this investigation alone. you already fired the fbi director over russia. you did everything you could to push out the deputy director of the fbi. you have done everything you could to push out others within the department of justice including our own attorney general. all the russian investigation, you need to back off because if you do this, if you commit your own saturday night massacre, this will bring down this administration. >> what do you think the president says 100% you can put this memo out? >> here the chronology. the chairman of the gop announced they were going to release the memo. i should back up. the gop announced they will release this memo to the house. gop members of the committee say don't worry, this isn't going to become public, we are not that reckless but they had suggested to the sean hannity's of the world that this is the most incriminating things and -- incriminating thing since watergate. by the time they put this out there, they can no longer constrain the forces that have grown as a result. so the same members said we don't think it would be to make this public suddenly change their position. so now the chairman says we're going to make this public. the fbi director, the fbi and department of justice are not allowed to read this. the fbi director is finally allowed to comment on sunday, -- come in on sunday, the day before they put this out. he raises concern about. on monday he and the deputy attorney general go to the white house and say don't do this. they've already said it would be reckless. the president says, 100% i am doing it. i have not even read it at 100% i am going to do it. this doesn't surprise anyone about this president. no one had any doubt that the priority here is not national security, not the country, it's not the interest of justice. it's just the naked personal interests of the president. >> last question congressman schiff. i know your schedule is tight. on facebook and twitter you googled that you are fully cooperative. >> i would not say fully cooperative. we are waiting for facebook to produce the advertisements that were redacted. the executives of facebook committed after we had our hearing and we demonstrated for the first time some of the images that were shared with the american people during the campaign. they made a commitment within weeks to scrub them of identifiable information so we can release them to the public, that has not happened and it's been months so i can't say that they've been fully cooperative. i also asked them to produce a report together about how the russians use these platforms interchangeably and in connection with each other, something that we in congress are not in the best position to do. >> what is your lever to get them to comply? >> the companies realize that the concerns over the impact of these technologies are growing. and congressional interest in this is growing. and if they appear reluctant to work with congress, reluctant to cooperate with congress, that's not a good position to be in. i'm a proud californian, i'm proud of silicon valley and the contributions that sector has made to our economy. but we are recognizing some of the serious abuses of these platforms, unintended consequences of these platforms that need to be addressed. >> thank you very much. congressman adam schiff of california, thank you for joining us. [applause] thank you all for being with us forour state of the union post game. -- i woulde to think like to thank bank of america for making these conversations possible. staff, around-the-clock and my many other colleagues were here, margaret mitchell and neil rothschild, many others who are here, grateful to you all and all of you for coming out so early this morning and i look forward to seeing you on axios.com. thank you. [applause] c-span's washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. , david thursday morning wasserman discusses a new project on gerrymandering. and we talk about the future of the daca program and immigration policy. and we are live in montgomery, alabama for the next stop on the c-span bus 50 capitals tour with alabama senate president on the key public policy issues on his state. be sure to watch washington journal thursday mornings. join the discussion. our look at last night's state of the union continues in a minute. but first we wanted to tell you about more live coverage. sanders leads a group of climate activists in calling on the trump administration to adopt tougher policies on climate change. that is at 8:00 eastern on c-span. now house minority leader nancy pelosi, along with other democratic leaders, react to president trump's first state of the union address.

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