Information thats i was given that information. When all in starts right now. Good evening, from york im chris hayes. At the very start of the Trump Administration on day one, sean spicer made clear what posture the white house would take towards the press. This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period. Both in person and around the globe. These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong. That moment, that remarkable moment in which a representative of the president , the press secretary himself yelled demon extraively false statements that everyone knew to be lies set the tone for this white house. A president who decried unflattering story as fake news and flat out lied over and over again. The Trumps Administration on the repeated attacks on the rights of the american citizens to know the truth about their government did not have its intended effect. The press was not cowed. It was invigorated. Well talk to the journalists who helped bring about one of the most remarkable years of american reporting in memory covering one of the most hostile administrations in american history. We begin with National Security contributor michael schmidt, franchesca chambers. Franchesca, let me start with you. What is that dynamic like . It seems different than previous Briefing Rooms to me watching it but youre in that room, whats it like . A sharp shift that weve seen here in the Briefing Room behind the scenes is that previously you would always count on the Associated Press to be called in in this Briefing Room first and you could count on there being a policy question and news of the day first and thats something that this administration has done away with so thats why youll see them going to other outlets all across the room and you never know if youre going to be the first one to get called on so you have to be very, very prepared in this administration because what if they come to you and its your day, you got the top question and every network in america cameras are rolling. Michael, one of the things that when i was in washington, there would be certain kinds of information that would be released by a white house that even though youre sort of trained as a journalism to question erg, theres certain things you would question, they would put out a schedule and say, the president s going to be here this time or the president s going golfing or not and i feel like with this administration, really even the most basic logistical information sometimes just isnt accurate. Yeah. I think thats a fair thing to say that theres a lot of sort of basic things, white house logs, people coming in to see the president , things like that, the stuff thats on his schedule, under obama you uftd to get a readout of every person who he played golfs person were. Weve never seen that with trump. Thats a good example of how thats a little different. This is a white house that has really tried hard to make it more difficult to find out things like that and it has set the tone for the rest of the relationship with the press. And yet theres an irony here which is at one level theyve been less transparent, things like the white house visitor logs and who the president played golf or if hes playing golf which they insist on lying about, which we can all see golf carts in social media, but they just talk a lot. This White House Leaks and talks more to reporters than any white house ive ever seen. Would you say thats true, michael . In some ways they werent very transparent but in other ways they are. The president seems to always be willing to tell you what hes thinking in ways previous president s wouldnt. He will stop and talk to the press. It seems like we get more of that than in Previous Administrations and it seems like the president will tell you what hes thinking. It may be sometimes hard to understand or deconstruct but he seems willing to do that. And it is a very accessible white house. People do talk a lot and it doesnt seem like there are incredible consequences for people that talk too much. There had been sort of a push to find the leakers and we need to out the leakers and stuff, this continues to be a pretty leaky and accessible white house. Do you find that, fraen chessca that for all of the bluster, people talk . Yeah. And thats how we get all of our stories so i dont know houp reporters are encouraging the white house to stop talking and the president himself is getting on twitter every single morning and i think thats been another big change. President obama was not speaking as theyve said directly to the American People that way which has been both i think a blessing and a curse for this white house because you do have the president being able to get his message out there in a way thats unfiltered. Eve seen some of those tweets that have managed to generate quite a lot of news. When he said that barack obama had wire tapped him in trump tower and that generated news cycle after news cycle and derailed from the administrations priorities and you mentioned how they always seem to be talking, theyre on television quite a lot. In the Previous Administration you didnt see the chiefofstaff or even the National Security advisers on television as much as were seeing now. Were getting direct information from senior white house officials in that form that we did not before. Of course, behind the scenes theyre also talking quite a bit without putting their name on it even as they accuse the press of making up sources when they say that people said on background or anonymously. Thanks to you both. With me now, veteran of white house reporting former cbs evening news anchor dan rather, and the author of what unites us. You have some perspective here. Theres a desire i think all the time or rush to say things about trump that are completely unprecedented, its never been like that before and thats a bit historical. How would you characterize this president s relationship with the press as compared to other president s youve covered and watched . First of all, im one of those who has said that this is unique in the history of the american presidency. The closest weve had was presidency of Richard Nixon and, of course, during the period of quote, watergate, widespread criminal conspiracy led by the president himself, president nixon disliked the press, he hated the press, he was very hostile to the press and he systematically tried to undercut reporters and press institutions, no question about that. However, never in the nixon administration, particularly from the opening of his presidency, his first term was the kind of unrelenting, i would say, unethical im searching for a word because i want to be careful here from the president himself. President nixon often used surrogates or he quietly had assistants do things with the press but in terms of the president without exception, i dont think theres ever been a president who right from the opening has so unrelentingly and forcefully personally attacked individual reporters, present institutions and he has threatened to use the full force and power of the presidency against such institutions as the washington post, the New York Times and others. Now, when i say president nixon was the closest we came, i dont think, frankly, theres very much comparison to be made, two different eras for one thing. You are right about one thing that sometimes we overstate things but i think thats a really interesting distinction. Nixon, of course, hated the press. He like trump both hate the press and was obsessed with the press which is another similarity here. Thats an interesting distinction. He at least tipped his cap toward some basic appreciation of the First Amendment and free press in a way this president never does. Thats the reason i say its unprecedented. For all he did and didnt do, the president nixon never tried to say, look, this institution is worthless and never used the kind of language that the press, everybody in the press and media, enemies of the people, which echos through awe theyre tearion regime. President nixon, i dont think he believed that that all press people are enemies of the people. We havent seen anything like this but i will say that President Trump by using the full power and prestige of the presidency has undercut president credibility some. Hes been a complete failure convincing some people, that would be a mistake. When he constantly talks about fake news. He knows the value of repeating propaganda and lies. It needs to be noted. And you have noted it, one fountain of fake lies is the president of the United States himself. Time and time again. But hes made some headway with this and those of us in the press who make mistakes, we all do, ive made my share, every time we make a mistake it fuels his ability to convince some of the people that all of the press is not worth a damn and quote, enemies of the people. You mentioned the mistakes and i do want to ask you about this incident that you had under the Bush Administration in which there was a document which you guys ran down, you reported it, you vetted it, it was quite well i think faked essentially, appears to have been the case, and it was used in precisely the same way, not just against you dan rather but against all of the news in a way that is somewhat parallel to the way that this administration will use press errors to fully discredit the media. I dont want to go over the whole thing but let me say that the documents that we used to support the story we reported a true story about president bushs george w. Bushs service was a true story. The process by which we arrived at that truth was the only vulnerability he had with in the document. The documents to this day have never been proven anything other than authentic but i agree that the burden is on the press to prove the authenticity. Your point is very that incident, which again, was i think the entire thing was conducted in good faith would be my point. The process was done in good faith and sometimes in reporting you conduct things in good faith and they turn out to be wrong and theres a difference between good faith error and bad faith error which i feel has been erased very much in this administration. Thats true. But this started a long time ago. It started before president nixon but basically from 1968 forward, theres been a whole sense within the body politic that the press is vulnerable, that the public can be convinced that the press is not what it sets out to be. What i will say, chris, when we talk about these things, i think its very important to know, what everyone thinks of the press tharkts press is absolutely essentially to our system of checks and balances, it is the red beating heart of freedom and democracy and if you dont have the press as a watch dog youre unlikely to have the kind of government we have. Dan rather, thanks for being with me. The president under investigation. The birth of bombshell oh, clock next. Patients that i see that complain about dry mouth. They feel that they have to drink a lot of water. Medications seem to be the number one cause for dry mouth. I like to recommend biotene. It replenishes the moisture in your mouth. Biotene definitely works. [heartbeat] months before the appointment of special Council Robert mueller to investigate potential collision between the Trump Campaign and russia there was a crucial nugget of information in a january 12th column by David Ignatius the washington post. It was one of the first dominoes in the russia story and centered on trumps pick of Michael Flynn. Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador kislyak several times, the day the Obama Administration announced the expulsion of 35 russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking. Nearly 11 months later flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi about those very contacts. Since that initial reporting on flynn many more dominoes have fallen in the Russian Investigation at a pace and volume that seems astonishingly. Joining me is the David Ignatius, a columnist for the the washington post. David, let me start with you. I was going back over that column and in a nugget of news its like in seven graphs down and i wondered if when you reported that piece if you were aware of the significance of what you were reporting . It didnt make sense and it seemed implausible that they had not talked about the very sanctions that were being announced that day, but that was that was the claim that was made when they finally responded the next morning after the column appeared. In retrospect it is strange to lots of people including me that it was not written as the lead but the other thing the column noted and i think its still a good question is why did it take president obama so long to respond to the russian meddling in our elections . That was the other issue i was exploring and i think its still a big one. That one source, so david went with one source in that and it proved to be accurate, profoundly accurate, but its one anonymous source is dangerous. Both of you are walking a high wire act in this reporting, no one is going to go on the record about investigation thats happening, thats just not going to happen. Youre dealing with anonymous seernsz youre dealing with Anonymous Sources who may have agenda and trying to mislead you, how has it been to report this story, michael . Very difficult. Its not how many sources you have, its who the sources are and how they know the information theyre imparting to you and if its somebody who has direct knowledge who was involved in a conversation or saw a memo or readout that spelled it out, thats a lot better than having five sources who could tell you they heard about such a memo. Right. I dont get hung up on the number of sources, im sometimes amazed by some of these stories that say weve talked to 30 sources inside the white house who have corroborated this, i think thats a little bit much, you know. I dont need to know that youve talked to 30 people, i just need to know as best you can who you were talking to. I would say one source is a really big risk. Generally one source say really big risk unless its one impeachable source and thats rare in this sort of reporting. If jack kelly tells you something off the record that would be considered very impeccable source. You have to think about what peoples agenda. Its not just how many many sources you have or how good they are but what their agenda is, why theyre telling you this, what they have to gain from this and thats a challenge particularly in this story and its becoming a challenge because youre seeing instances where there are people who want to set reporters up to fail now and thats a concern i think a year ago some of us didnt really have in the way we do now. That seems like an active thing that you have to look out for in reporting the story at this point. There is an obvious desire to discredit everything having to do with the investigation and, you know, one of the things that is happened is the press has in some ways been out ahead of actual investigators. The best example of this, david, the best example of this is that trump tower meeting. When that trump tower meeting, the emails about that are disclosed which are the biggest breaks in the case, the reports didnt i cant speak to the timing of that disclosure. I agree those emails referring to the june 9 meeting in trump tower with don jr. And the russian lawyer were a crucial turn. Just to be clear about my january 12th story, i would not have published that allegation unless i was confident that it was true. Right. You talk in detail about sourcing. But when i was an editor i used to say that my reporters would say, i have six sources, my response as editor would say, i want to know how you know its true . Theres a difference. And i was confident this was true. Do you think what has it been like with the Mueller Investigation which my sense has been incredibly tight lipped . Yeah. For those of us who have covered bob mueller over the years from his days at the Justice Department and fbi, he is not a leaker. This is not a guy who feels any need to play kate the press or work with the press at all. Anything he says to the press is begrudging. He never wanted to do public appearances, tv appearances when he was fbi director. He had to be dragged to do it. So i think its i think we can assume that most of what has been reported about the Mueller Investigation is not coming from mueller or people directly reporting to him, but, you know, look, there are lots of people who can pick up aspects, witnesses, get interviewed, there are lawyers are in contact, theres lots of ways to gather bits and pieces of the Mueller Investigation but i should say we still dont know the thrust of where hes going. Yes. What his intentions are. 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