watch book tv on c-span2. senator susan collins, house minority whip steny hoyer, and house intelligence committee ranking member adam schiff, who discussed president trump's first discuss president trump's for state of the union with mike allen of axios. >> good morning. thank you for coming out to the state of the union post game. we appreciate the bank of america for making these conversations possible. we have a fantastic triple crown, tripleheader lineup this morning, people who were in the chamber for helping make the news and are going to illuminate it for us. axios makes you smarter faster on topics that matter, business tech, media, politics and our events follow the same format. they are quick and we start with what happens and why it matters. that's the formula you always get in the axios stream when you go on axios.com. every story starts as one phone screen, and in that what's new, what is happening, why it matters to make you smarter faster. i'd like to thank my axios events colleagues for pulling together this fantastic event, and thank all of you for being here. we're going to start. we have three guests today, and our first guest this morning who has seen 35 addresses to congress states ofunion representative from the fifth district prince george's county maryland house democratic whip congressman steny hoyer. what an honor. thank you so much. >> thank you, mike. >> so we were just talking with sen.or college that -- collins: stage. -- we were just talking with senator collins back stage. you have seen 35, 36 states of the union addresses to congress but this is the first time the president has ever -- >> he was director of flapping. he likes to do that. he did it in all his speeches and he comes out clapping. he leads the clapping, tells you, he ought to have an applause sign, time to applaud. he got the reaction he wanted, but it was i thought a disappointing speech. it was billed as very bipartisan bring us together speech, and i think for the first may be quarter of the speech that was true the thin it turned pretty dark i thought. the president said he wanted to make us safer, stronger, prouder. not sure whether he is accomplished any of those things either in the world or in our country. in many ways he has spent most of last year, almost all of the last year doing two things with the republican congress. trying to repeal the affordable care act and passed the tax bill that we think does not really help the middle class working people of this country. in fact, will pass a credit card debt along to all of our children. >> so a call for unity, "new york times" headlineappeal for -- headline appeal for unity in the state of the union. this is the more positive tone that we've seen from this president in the past. what do you make of it? >> a more positive tone at the beginning. i think it turned pretty dark towards the end. >> why do you think that is? who was he talking to at the beginning and the end? >> his talking points in the beginning he was talking to a -- talking to his base at the end. i think he was trying to cover himself, the positive of course was in terms of immigration reform which is one of the principal issues we need to pursue, that he offered covering 1.8 million daca signees and eligibles, and protecting them and providing them on a path to citizenship. but then he pointed out that he put a bipartisan proposal to the congress, which i don't think any democrat thought it was bipartisan. no democrats have signed onto that bipartisan proposal, though there are bipartisan proposals i -- by mr. durbin, mr. graham in the senate and holy we can and hopefully we can pursue those and hopefully his statement about how far he wants to go and who he wants toinclude will dominate speculative tweet yesterday from the president's memorable line from the speech and very much aspace, something axios jonathan swann reports this morning is something a president has said before in private. the president said americans are dreamers, too, and you tweeted you have it backwards. >> well, americans are dreamers but what his, and, of course, was, we understand you dreamers, many of whom came with us, i had a young woman, gabriella hernandez. she is a wonderful 19-year-old. she came from el salvador at the age of four and has gone to elementary school middle school, high school. she now in college, once to be a social worker. delightful young woman. at 19 i had nowhere near the poise that she had, but, and she's a dreamer and she dreams of making a life here which is why most people into this country. they dreamed of a better life for themselves and their families. and i think what he was doing, we are dreamers, too. of course that's the case. americans are dreamers. americans have visions, have made a great country because of that vision and willingness to work hard. but the point is, the overwhelming number of americans almost 90% of americans are saying and identifying these young people who came here through no conscious effort of americans ine every sense of the word and are dreaming of what they can do to make their lives better and america's lives better. pics we thought it was an attempt to diminish their perspective. >> read you a text i got last from someone close to the white house, mr. hoyer, as the house democratic whip you help set the message, set the tone for the party, party discipline and texted somebody, somebody said democrats are looking angry as the president talks about unity. and bad optics. were you a little concerned about that? there was some hissing. >> there was very little i think demonstrations. as a matter fact, specifically i think stoically and quietly. one of the problems is we think the president rhetoric does not purport with his actions, does not purport with what is done. as a city aspent most of you -- as i said he spent most of the year trying to repeal the affordable care act which we think was damaging. the big cheer on their side was -- >> the ones he cheered for, too. >> repealing the mandate. that will result in 13 million people not having access to affordable, quality healthcare. we don't think that is a sheer line. what we use was a very quiet, not happy and disappointed i think democratic majority on our side. >> very quiet, not happy. >> very quiet and not happy. >> so in your statement after the state of the union you said the state of donald trump's presidency may be perilous. what do you mean by that? >> i think he said stronger, better, and safer, proud. ironically, he says that we are a better standing in the world. every polling data throughout the world shows that's not true and, in fact, respect to the united states and confidence in the united states has plummeted. that's dangerous not only for the united states but it's dangerous for the international community that they don't think they can rely on a steady hand of the leader of the free world, which is the united states of america. and in terms of again safer and stronger, you are not stronger if you do not have health care. you are not stronger if you don't have some stability in your economy. we think that he vastly overstated the results of his presidency. after all, for six years prior to that there was more job growth. so when he says his greatest economic growth, that's not true. we are pleased that the hispanic and african-american unemployment has gone down, but it's been going down for some number of years. this president was advantaged i a growingriting economy. an economy that was less than 5% unemployment as opposed to his predecessor, president obama, who inherited an economy in peril. and he brought it up as continued to go up and that's good news and hopefully it will continue. the tax bill we think is however in the long-term going to be detrimental to the economy. and certainly in terms of middle-class working people that they talked about and he talked about that as well, those taxes of course will be phased out. the taxes on the upper 1% will continue. >> mr. hoyer, since you came to congress as as a young man and -- in a special election in may 1981, you have seen the majority change hands three times back and forth and back 94, you had a newrevolution, -- new revolution, democrats got it back in 2006. republicans of course took the majority back in 2010. what is your after going back and forth and back, what is your optimism that injanuary 2019 you will be for the majority against? >> i think we will win. i think the environment is such that you see it all over the country. you see two phenomena. number one come with a lot of candidates who want to run and a lot of districts, almost 100 districts now we're we really good candidates in. are all of them competitive? maybe not but a large of a, charlie cook's is a larger number that it is enough for us to take back the majority. secondly, what you see on the republican side, use retirements particularly districts that are swing districts figures and republican members decide not to run for reelection. you see throughout the election we've seen in virginia, in new jersey, alabama, in wisconsin just two weeks ago, you see a real energy on our side and a dis-interest would overstated but a lack of enthusiasm on the republican side. that kind of context which happened in 2006 on our side positively, and on 2010 positively for the republicans side, you saw significant swings. and i see this election is being in the context, and i think we're on the upside. the president's popularity is very low, in the '30s. and when you see that historically, you see significant shift of membership in the house of representatives. >> what is the likelihood that you get the majority? >> i think it is 90%. >> how many seats do you pick up? >> i think we would pick up 30 plus, which is, by the way, pretty close to the average turnover and a by election if that is, the second you election of a president. now it's not always that way but it's an average. >> what do you need? >> we need 24. 24. >> so you're protecting a good cushion. >> i don't think good cushion. it will be tough. >> you are going to have a narrow majority? >> i think 30 is a minimum frankly. depends upon where we are six months from now. i think in the summer, first of all, you see people pretty much having made up their mind. when you saw the alabama election, president went down to pensacola to try to energize his base, to bring somebody who we thought and obviously the majority of alabamians thought was not prepared to be nor should he have been a member of united states senate. but the president urged his election because he needed it. they went to the polls and our base was very energized and went in big numbers. wasn't that trump's people voted for doug jones. it was that they simply didn't come out. that happen in virginia as well. >> so you think in the republic -- you think in the midterms, republicans will turn out? >> i think there will be a depressed turnout because i think they are not energize and i think there are a lot of republicans who are somewhat disappointed with trump's not changing. they voted for him but expected him to be more presidential. now, on the two speeches he's given to the joint sessions of congress he's been pretty presidential because he was locked in to the teleprompter. but when he is not locked into the teleprompter and he is freewheeling, he hasn't done very well. >> mr. hoyer, i've come to going back to the top i was a metroreporter at the "washington post" and over the course of your career you boys push the idea of the coveting more -- convenient and efficient and customer friendly. what is the biggest gap, what is the biggest change that needs to happen in government for it to beconsidered customer friendly? >> i said we need to get really technologically much more able to communicate and to be responsive to the public, and the public is much more information available to them. >> what would be an example of the type of information? >> well, for instance, i think one thing the constituents have is a window on the confrontation. they really don't see congress or the government working in a a positive fashion because that's not really news. it's working, okay, go a long, it's working but i think they need to have greater access. i think c-span gives them that, gavel to gavel coverage. >> thank you to c-span, we have c-span with us today. >> but, unfortunately, even that come tickling the house of representatives, there's very few times when there are large members on the floor voting and milling around. but on the debate it is with the confrontational debates that really get paid attention to. but also in terms of just responding, having a question, a problem, having some information that they want and being able to get that. just as they can get it, you have -- >> axios.com. >> right. can move back and forth. we are working to make sure that we are more technologically available. >> you have a number of, a lot of federal workers in your district. how optimistic are you about avoiding a shutdown two? >> i do hope we avoid a shutdown. >> is any chance there will be a shutdown? >> any chance? yes, there's always a chance. i don't think we'll have shutdown. i think that's, we don't want a shutdown. >> i think you kind of learned your lesson. >> it wasn't so much we learned our lesson. i think you may be right on that in a certain sense, but in the other sense, we are a party that thinks the government needs to be operating and serve the people. it's been shutdown five times consciously, purposely over the last 20 years by republicans who have used that as a policy. that is not our policy. what happened this last time is we have two major things that we need agreement on. we are now a quarter or a third in the fiscal year. we still don't have a single appropriation bill sent to the president of the united states to fund any agency of government, not one. that i think is unprecedented, and particularly it is unprecedented when you the presidency, house, and senate majorities. one of the reasons is because the republicans refuse to compromise onwhat the spending number is going to be. the irony of that is we've had the same agreement that we're asking for for the last four years. senator murray and speaker ryan agreed that the increase in domestic and defense spending would be equal. that's all we ask for but we haven't gotten that agreement and, therefore, the republicans have been unable to get come in -- have been unable to get in the house, obviously simply rolls, they have enough numbers. in thesenate then needs to give it refusing to compromise to move appropriation bills forward. >> mr. hoyer, as a second by, your big moviegoer. you saw the post about the pentagon papers. what your take away or the lesson of the post for today's america? >> i thought was an excellent movie but any movie with meryl streep and is it excellent i think. but it think the message is the more transparent we are, the better decisions we can make in a democracy and information that people have. obviously, 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 is we are succeeding, doing well, and the light is at the end of the tunnel. but the experts inside didn't believe that. had the american public had more information sooner, perhaps we would have corrected our actions before we did. congressman hoyer, you have seen it all. thank you for sharing it with us. >> thank you. >> really appreciate that. take the secret files -- >> my secret files. >> thank you very much, mr. hoyer. what a treat. now it's my honor to welcome somebody who played a a vital role in getting the government restarted recently, consistent rank as one of the most effective senators, someone that is always at the top of the list of republicans and people and make things happens inthe city, senator susan collins of maine. what an honor. thank you so much for coming here. >> thank you. >> senator collins and i often see each other on a thursday night, american airlines flight to bangor maine axios ceo has a a placeup there, and senator collins, when you get off that plane, you go to place that most people would call a cab in and up there it is called -- >> a camp. >> a camp. >> tell me about. >> it's a beautiful, pristine lake called a coldstream pond. my favorite place in the world. but i have seen you out kayaking. i don't understand this. >> it's because, it's because i'm surfing. [laughing] >> on those huge, crashing waves. >> maybe we should stick with the paddle boards. anyway, senator collins, thank you so much. what was like to be in the chamber last night? you have a complicated relationship with this president. >> it was a fascinating evening. i kept thinking that the president's speech was so eclectic. on the one hand, you heard him pitch for immigration reform, for controlling the high cost of prescription drug, for a brand-new infrastructure package. and then you heard him saying we got to crack down on drug dealers, which appeals more to my side of the aisle. but then he said he wanted prison reform. so he covers a lot of territory, and you couldn't pigeonhole the speech. it was neither a 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 worked friday. we met saturday. we met sunday. >> this is senators, this is no staff, right? >> that is correct. disrespect to the staff that we have. 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 how good 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 a senator are kind of 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 was 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 a 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, 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 so i would 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 a lot personally 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. on what is reasonable. but we all do that in public life when we get more information, but i found that he has listened 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 has changed his position on a few issues and has moderated his edition. i do not think that his personality has changed. i believe that he still needs at times to react too 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 trump 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 percentage 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 -- by 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. tapped in tomp that very understandable discontent, 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. raised 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 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 -- her own son who 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. , you'retimate question 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 like martha mick sally in arizona, an extraordinary woman of great accomplishment and the women in the senate span the 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 on each committee and that's not good. now we have a record high of 22, but i'll tell you a great maine 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 who showed incredible courage as they told their personal experience with sexual abuse. >> 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. and is on the way to the desk of the president, but requires anyone who is associated with the amateur athletics organizations to report allegations >> absolutely. a difference does this make? >> it sends a signal to the young women that they do not have to remain silent and will not lose a chance to be in the olympics, which a lot of young girls thought and they were so what.that they didn't say judge made that the the doctor listen to each of these survivors of abuse and i am very hopeful that this tells those young girls and women that we have their back. >> thank you for that powerful message. >> thank you. >> thank you. we appreciate bank of america making these conversations possible and we are now going to see a video from bank of america and we will return. things we canthe see in the world, the context we have made, to make a better world for issues of today and we should be smart. >> we sit down and brainstorm financial instruments that enable us and we have to be creative together. >> we partner to create this assets in that owns concert with them to get more of a competitive price. because of the low risk investments, the pension funds, the insurance companies, the sophisticated money managers, they are investing directly. >> i like finding a common link of how we connect a firm. >> thank you very much, bank of america, for that message. it is now our honor to have a top democrat from the intelligence committee and is in the thick of things every day. is an honor to have with us coming in on his way to the capital to brief house democrats , congressman schiff. thank you for being here. you have had your son at the capital. what was his impression inside of the chamber? >> this is the first state of the union i brought him to and i wanted him to form his own impression of the president and he has heard his parents talk about the president quite a bit and i remember picking him up at camp over the summer and one of the nice things about camp is that you are deprived of electronics and the president had called me sleazy and i didn't want him to learn about this from others. i wanted to tell him. my son is tough on the outside and not as tough inside and i wasn't sure how he would react. we picked him up and i said that i need to talk to him bustling that happened during camp. i want you to know that the president called your dad sleazy. he took a moment to process this because it is not every day that the president insults your father. well, maybe it is. sleazy? can i call you i said, only if you want me to call you sleazy junior. he found it fascinating, the spectacle, the reaction of people around him and he thought it was totally fascinating. >> at this moment, you expected to be somewhere else. where did you expect to be? >> we were supposed to interview steve bannon and this is another effort to get answers from mr. bannon, but that was postponed and we are setting another date. >> why was it postponed? >> according to his counsel, because they need more time to work out privilege issues and that could be a case, but they may not have wanted his testimony to step on the state of the union. obviously, there is coordination between the council and the his counseland represents several others in the white house and it is never easy to find out the true motivation, but that was the extensible motivation. >> when he appeared before you, the white house said it was ok for him to talk about the campaign, but not about the transition or his time in the west wing. will this hold? >> no. this is the dissonance you often see. you have sarah huckabee sanders saying we are being transparent lawyers you have the saying not to answer any questions about the transition that is not transparency and is not how privilege works. are legitimate executive privilege objections to certain officials talking about what happened. >> there may be a limited and privilegexecutive that could get claimed with certain conversations with the president under certain nocumstances, but there is way to say that an entire time is off limits. thecannot talk about meeting or conversations you have had with others and it was never applied to the transition and this is unprecedented and not sustainable. they won't claim this before special counsel and there isn't a precedent to say this privilege exists. >> what is the most important thing you want to learn from steve bannon? >> steve bannon talked about money laundering and that concerns me a great deal. steve bannon described in the meeting in trump tower as treasonous and we would like to know why he feels why it is of that severity, but he could shed light on the events of the campaign, mike and his interactions with the russian the privateand efforts to undermine the sanctions along with the false statement that comes with the administration about the trump tower meeting. he probably would have some light to shut on that. they urged him to release origins of the russian investigation. when this comes out, what will be the consequence? what is difficult to say this is because we know the department of justice and the fbi feel that this is a reckless step to take because they have not done analysis on sources and methods and that is supposed to go on, but the president has not even read the memo and says that he is certain he is going to release it. >> i can tell you that the president feels the memo vindicates his contentions that the origin of this investigation are -- is there anything that would vindicate the president? >> no. this is what happened one unes went to the highest -- white house. he said he felt the dictated, but the material was 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 prrity 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 would like to think -- i would 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] announcer: c-span's washington journal, live every day with >> and we will get reaction from democrats to the state of the union. a train carrying republicans to a policy retreat struck a garbage truck will stop pence spoke at the retreat. we will have bad later. conversation. bill james talks about his book, the man from the train. happen within the thing thatack and a helps identify the crime is that it happens at the intersection of a couple of railroad track and it is at this intersection because he knew he had to get and theywn before dawn are waiting for a train he could we on and the road tracks give more opportunity. sunday. history series, landmark month and wes next discuss constitutional issues and personal stories behind significant decisions. cases, weu understand have a guide. costs eight dollars and

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