Im chris hayes. So we have considerably more information today than we had friday about what exactly the Mueller Report concludes, though crucially it is far less than we need. You have probably seen the top line conclusions as filtered through the president s chosen attorney general who quotes only three sentences, two of them partial, from the actual report itself, a report whose length like nearly Everything Else about it remains a mystery. But before getting further into what william barr says the principle conclusions are, it is probably worth taking a step back to ask the question, what exactly was the goal of this undertaking . Here is how i have seen it and still see it. For a million reasons having to do with polarization, the internet mono culture as a social media and a Widespread Campaign as sustained foreign intervention, the 2016 election was, i think, a uniquely disorienting moment in american history. It was an election defined by disclosures and secrets and informational sabotage at every turn. We learned things that had been secret, that were wrenched into public light through criminal theft and sabotage by russian intelligence, revelations that ended up generating enormous amounts of coverage and having genuine realworld effects. Heck, the chair of the dnc lost her job on the first day of the partys convention to name one example. It was also a campaign defined by what we did not learn. For instance, there were active fbi investigations into both candidates at the same time including a counterintelligence investigation into Donald Trumps campaign and that, that was never leaked or disclosed during a time when the fbi ignored protocol twice to give updates on its investigation into Hillary Clintons emails. Theres always been a very simple question that really needed answering about 2016. What happened . What are the facts of the matter . Who did what when . In answering that deceptively interesting question was difficult for a number of reasons. You had a professional Intelligence Service attempting to manipulate and hide its track, and, of course, the Trump Campaign, an administration we know will just about lie about everything all the time. This is the reason for the Mueller Investigation in the first place, to create some entity with sufficient authority, access to intelligence, subpoena power and search warrants and political independence, the authority and resources to make a comprehensive finding of fact. And the completion of that task is an important one, which is why it is rather ironic for the biggest critics of the entire undertaking to take a fourpage summary of what could be a 1,000 page report for all we know as total vindication. It is also more than a little ironic that a president who spent months berating mueller and those who worked for him and covered him, who tried to fire the man himself takes a summary of a report that explicitly stated it does not exonerate him as, of course, exoneration. Even as the investigations public activities have demonstrated conclusively, the president was the beneficiary of two separate criminal conspiracies undertaken for his benefit during the campaign. It is a good thing it was done, whatever it shows. Because the whole point here is that we need to know what happened. It has always been my personal investment and our collective one i think as a democracy, which is why of course we need to see the full report, the facts are what matter here. Joining me now, Julie Ainsley who has helped us navigate the submission of the Mueller Report. Where are we in terms of the negotiations between the white house and congress about next steps in seeing more of the actual report itself . Well, chris, we know tonight that Congress Wants to see, at least the house side where the dems are in control, they want to see the report by april 2nd. That seems a little fast. From what i understand inside the Justice Department, the attorney general is reviewing what he can put out to the public, but a lot of that depends on Robert Mueller who will still have to continue working as he identifies for the attorney general what pieces of information are subject to grand jury testimony exclusivity, meaning they cant be given out, also what pieces might be used in other investigations. Just because Robert Mueller is finished with him doesnt mean other investigations that spun off of those, even some we might not know about, dont need a lot of the information he collected to stay protected. So theres a lot of back and forth. Today was asking officials, are we talking weeks, are we talking months, are we talking a year . I was told, gosh, not a year, but we cant tell you weeks or months hat this point. It certainly doesnt tell me it is coming any day soon, but youre right. Theres so much information, especially if you get down to what they say about obstruction, but even on the collusion question when william barr said that the Mueller Report lays out many different ways the russians attempted to get in touch with the Trump Campaign to meddle in the election and that they were not successful. But we know of so many interactions between Trump Campaign associates and people with known ties to the kremlin, and what about those interactions didnt rise to the level of conspiracy . We need more facts. We need more evidence to figure out why mueller ultimately came to that decision. And then, of course, why barr is characterizing that decision and the nondecision on obstruction the way that he does in that letter we got yesterday. Do we even have one basic question here. Theres three different you know, theres two principle conclusions that they did not find evidence theres any u. S. Person or a member of the campaign that coordinated with the russian governments attempts to influence the election, and an inconclusive finding about obstruction with arguments presented on both sides, barr ultimately making a unilateral decision about that. Do we have any sense of the length of the thing . Is it you know, like ken starr, these reports that were stacked this high, thousands and thousands of pages . Is that what were talking about . Are we talking about 100 pages . No one knows, right . No one knows. I asked that question. In fact, from the very beginning we were told they werent going to tell us the length. I dont know if we will ever know the length of the Mueller Report because we would want to know how much theyre condensing here, but they do layout how many subpoenas there were, how many interviews there were. I mean it was hundreds, thousands of pieces of information that theyre collecting to assemble into this report. So to guess that it is anything less than i mean i will be very conservative here, like 20 pages, that would be pretty obscene for it to be less than that. Right. We know that the attorney general had to do a lot of condensing. The one thing i was told today was that the attorney general did get a lot of information about this report before friday. Yes, the full thing came to him friday afternoon. We all scrambled out to the cameras. But there had been meetings between muellers team and with barrs team for weeks now. The special counsel actually came over to the Justice Department march 5th and then told the attorney general that he wouldnt be making a decision on obstruction. I was told that really took barr and rosenstein both by surprise. All right. Julie ainsley, thank you. We will talk more about that. Joining me now Democratic Congressman of rhode island, a member of a committee that launched a sweeping investigation into the president , his associates. What is your game plan now, congressman . I think at the beginning of your show you laid out an important reminder what it is about and how essential it is that the American People know the results of the investigation. We have forwarded a letter to the attorney general, signed by the six chairs of the committees of relevant jurisdiction, requesting the production of the full Mueller Report and all of the supporting materials and setting april 2nd as the deadline. That is sort of the next step, is hopefully the attorney general will comply with this request and the report will be furnished. If not, obviously the committee has the authority to issue a subpoena to compel its production. But the bottom line is the American People have a right to see the conclusions contained in this report. The congress has a responsibility to see the report and continue its oversight work. So weve now seen the barr report, which is a partial summary or his take on one piece of it and then his conclusions on another. That is not a substitute for the full release of the Mueller Report weve been waiting two years for. I want to be clear about something here and get a clearance from you, which is are you satisfied for a process perspective that the report had everything it needed, it had the authority it needed, the political independence it needed, the budget and resources it needed to pursue this Factfinding Mission and ergo whatever is contained therein, once you get your hands on it you are prepared to accept as the facts of the matter without there being some countervailing revelation . Yes, i think thats generally right. Obviously we fought hard to protect the special counsel, to protect his independence and make sure he was permitted to complete his work. Some of the events at the very end of this where prosecutor barr made some conclusions about fact and law that were not made by the special counsel are curious. It is also curious that the special counsel didnt render a judgment on the obstruction of justice provision. One of the reasons the special counsel was created and tasked with this was because of their independence from the executive branch so he could make judgments based on fact and law separate and apart from the president and the administration. To then shift that responsibility to the appointee of the president who essentially auditioned for the job by preparing this memo saying that essentially a president cant be charged with obstruction of justice because hes in charge of the Justice Department caught the president s eye, he said, youre the man for the job and he delivered on it in 48 hours. So i think theres some concern about that process, but i think we respect the integrity of mr. Mueller, the professionalism of his work. We want to see the evidence he relied upon, the judgments he made, the conclusions he came to, and the American People have a right to see that as well. I want to play you something that the chair of judiciary, jerry nadler, had to say about testimony before committees which obviously will be something. This is what he had to say about the attorney general. As much information as can be made public should be made public without delay. I intend to fight for that transparency. We will ask the attorney general to testify before the house Judiciary Committee. We will demand the release of the full report. Do you imagine there will be more testimony on this . Oh, no question about it. I expect that mr. Barr will come before the Judiciary Committee. I expect we will have mr. Mueller before the Judiciary Committee to answer our questions about the contents of the report and mr. Barr to answer questions about the decisions he has made and the judgments he has made with respect to the obstruction of justice charge in particular. Yes, it is important that the attorney general be prepared to come before the Judiciary Committee, to produce the report and answer questions. Final question on the april 2nd deadline, given two sets of concerns about grand jury secrecy and classification, do you think it is a realistic timeline and do you have a sense of what length of material were even talking about . We dont have a sense of the length of the report. I do think that it is a reasonable timeline. Presumably they have done a fair amount of review of this already and certainly i think if they need additional time to scrub, classify or protect methods or sources but, look, we need to push hard to get this as quickly as possible. The American People have been waiting for 22 months for the conclusion of this report. We have fought hard to protect the special counsel to complete his work, but the American People have a right to know what happened. This was an attack on our democracy. Everyone has a stake in understanding what happened and make sure we prevent it from happening again. Mr. Barr made a pledge during his confirmation hearing he was going to be as transparent as possible. It is time for him to make good on that progress. All right, congressman. Thank you very much. Joining me is marcy wheeler, an independent journalist and nic akron, an msnbc legal analyst. Marcy, let me start with you as someone who followed this extremely closely. What stuck out to you about the encapsulation of the asyet to be disclosed length report by bill barr . As it was presented in barrs memo, it just focuses on the part thats not on obstruction, just focuses on the two ways that the russian government interfered in the election, the trolling and the hack and leak. Thats really curious because as julia mentioned, when rosenstein hired mueller he said, we want you we want to know if theres any coordination between the campaign and the russian government, and this memo, by the way, is limited at least as on its face to the russian government, not to people like Konstantin Kilimnik who doesnt work for the russian government but was in the loop between Paul Manafort and handed on polling data to others. So thats one issue, but the other issue is when rosenstein hired mueller he said, go find out the nature of links between muellers people and these russians, which is exactly what julia raised. It is like what is the nature of the link between Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik or oleg darapaska, what is the link between trump family and nitskaya. It is not in the barr memo. Even if the information is all exculpatory, i am still curious about it. After the trump tower meeting, maybe they said, man, that was weird, what the heck was that . Never deal with them again and theres an email sitting there shows them being, you know, boy and girl scouts about the whole thing. Well, we should have also, we should see that as well, right . We should know what the standard is robert mule per applied. I assume he said he wasnt charging because he didnt have proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It is like a client of mine has been acquitted and says, the jury found me innocent. Right. No, they didnt find you innocent. They just didnt find you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. So what is the evidence . Right. It is also possible, i want to be clear, it is possible the evidence in there is quite exculpatory. Possibly. Possibly, sure. We dont know what the evidence is. It is the point of the need to read the thing. Is it precisely on all of these questions. Even marcy questions having nothing to do with the Trump Campaign, something i have been thinking about and focused on, it is just about, you know, when we got the indictments on the russian side there was a lot we learned but it was fairly limited, about like what exactly they were up to and how they were doing it and how the information got its way into wikileaks. All of that stuff seems useful for everyone to have access to. Right. And by scoping the coordination between the campaign and the russian government, it ignores the entire question of wikileaks which, of course, roger stone is going to trial in november on. It is not a crime necessarily to coordinate with wikileaks, but we know that the campaign was very actively involved in asking stone to optimize the release of the emails. Is that in there . Thats not included in the scope of what barr described as the read. Again, coordinating with wikileaks may not be a crime at all unless you lie about it as roger stone is accused of doing. Right. But it is something that i think is important for people to understand. How do you see in terms of this you know, the grand jury issue is an issue that has been faced before. How do you see the methods for sort of making sure as much of the report is produced as possible . Well, to me what barr is doing right now is a big scam. Hes basically put out a statement to exonerate trump. The fact of the matter is he could take this entire report, bring it into the grand jury, have them approve it and ask the chief judge and the district of colombia to send it over. Which has happened before. We did it in watergate. Right. This idea of waiting any kind of period for this is nonsense. They could do this immediately. There is no reason for people to be waiting around in the Judiciary Committee for this report. It also seems obviously i mean, marcy, in a moment of rare public consensus on anything, you had a 4200 vote in the sense of congress think it should be made public. Chuck schumer attempted unanimous consent in a resolution today and was blocked by Mitch Mcconnell who objected. It doesnt seem theres bipartisan interest in what actually happened. Yes. I mean one of the things i wrote before the report came out is, you know, whatever is in this report, it would be nice for the left and the right to be able to move beyond russia as their area of contention, because if we dont do that we wont be prepared against the next time russia tries to interfere or attack the country. We have plenty to disagree about, left and right, without russia ripping the country aside. I think by the way in which barr wrote that memo and the way barr inserted himself in what should be the role of congress to decide whether the president s actions amount to a high crime or misdemeanor i think only exacerbates this this tension and this problem over russia. Thats really unfortunate because i think both sides have said, show us the report. Instead, barr has thrown more fire on to the we will see. We will see if we get more from him. I suspect we will get some more, just a question of how much and in what short order. Marcy wheeler and nick ackerman, thank you both. Coming up, from collusion to construction, why Robert Mueller punted on the question whether or not the president obstructed justice and why William Barrs conclusion on that matter raises red flags. Neil joins me in two minutes. According to the attorney you know reliable support when you have it, and that dependability is what we want to give our customers. At comcast, its my job to constantly monitor our network. Prevent problems, and to help provide the most Reliable Service possible. My name is tanya, i work in the Network Operations center for comcast. We are working to make things simple, easy and awesome. According to the attorney general Robert Mueller did not find that the Trump Campaign conspired with russia to disrupt the 2016 election, did not find evidence that established that. The special counsel didnt come to any conclusions one way or the other about whether the president committed obstruction of justice. Instead, evidence was presented on both sides and the decision was left to two individuals who were not exactly disinterested in the matter, Deputy AttorneyRod Rosenstein who wrote the letter giving the president a pretext to fire thenfbi director james comey and attorney willian barr who appeared to audition for the job he has by writing a memo last year by arguing that muellers theory of obstruction was fatally misconceived. Thats whose judgment we are asked to accept without seeing the underlying evidence. Im joined by a former active solicitor general under president obama who wrote special counsel rules in 1999 with a new open ed in the times the many problems with the barr letter. Is it then the attorney generals role to make the decision florida the special counsel . I dont think it is the attorney generals role. Yesterday if you read Donald Trumps tweets he would think, oh, this report by mueller clears trump of any wrong doing and that is not what the barr letter we dont have the Mueller Report, but the barr letter even says. With respect to obstruction of justice, mueller basically couldnt decide. He said he laid out the evidence on both sides. Now, barr then takes it on himself and inserts himself into the process and says, oh, i will decide. Now, it is not at all clear that mueller wanted that result. Indeed, if mueller thought that the attorney general should decide this matter, i suspect that would be in the report and be one of the very first things barr would have quoted since that letter of four pages was really an advocacy document yesterday. We saw nothing like that, so i think barr put himself in this process. I have no indication whatsoever that mueller wanted that result and the result is a really scary one. The idea you can have a 22month independent investigation and in a matter of 48 hours have that just cut short with an attorney general who says, oh, i dont see anything there. We should note that he says he was briefed on that part of it three weeks ago. Thats the word from the department of justice, that theyve been making that decision for a while. Thats not in the letter. Theyve been leaking that today, that they knew about three weeks ago muellers conclusion he wasnt going to reach a conclusion. Thats really nice. All that meant is that, you know, they knew that. Theres no indication even in these leaks that they had all of the evidence and the like. Right. And so, you know, here barr says in his letter, i see no evidence that trump had a corrupt intent and therefore theres no obstruction by justice violation. Now, i dont know how quickly he was able to review all of the reams of evidence, but the one thing i do know is that they didnt interview donald trump. Right. And any reasonable prosecutor i think when faced with a question, does someone have corrupt intent, the first question is the first thing you do is ask that someone. Maybe im dumb here, but the weird thing about the whole structure to me is this. We have been talking about the guidelines about indicting a sitting president which says you cant do it. We have largely, i think, people think that mueller would follow those guidelines. The question is like what is even the determination being made here, right . If the department of justice cant indict sitting president and they say they dont know if he committed the crime, theres evidence for and against, what is the role in making the determination . Had he found the other way, what does it amount to constitutionally . Exactly. It is a great question. Theres basically two ambiguities and we dont know because we dont have the Mueller Report to decide between them. One is this question about whether or not a sitting president could be indicted influenced muellers thinking. The barr letter said it didnt influence him but for mueller you can see him saying, look, obstruction of justice is a crime, i cant indict a president under these olc opinions therefore im leaving it up to congress, not the attorney general. Is it in the Mueller Report . We dont know. It is a crucial question because it will guide how the next months should unfold. The second thing is has the office of legal counsel, the Justice Department, effectively given the president a get out of jail free card, not on the cant indict a sitting president but the bizarre interpretations of criminal statutes william barr laid out in that 19page ridiculous memo last summer. So, you know, even if they put aside the question of whether a sitting president could be indicted, they havent put aside this ridiculous barr theory. It does look like thats part of what is going on in the fourpage letter. It seems in the terms of precedent, right, when articles of impeachment have been drafted against two the last two articles of impeachment both included obstruction of justice as one of the impeachable offenses. Both of those cases, thats the determination the congress made. It wasnt a determination that someone in the doj made. Yes. Chris, youre 100 right. In both of those cases the special prosecutor, both jaworski in the nixon case and starr in the clinton case, expressly refused to decide whether or not there was an obama enough evidence for obstruction. They said it is a call for congress to make. Here youve got the attorney general jumping into the process in a way that hasnt been done historically before. It really i think smells bad and i think we need to see the Mueller Report to know just how bad this is. Yes. Theres always this question too i have when i was reading about the evidence being, you know, difficult questions. The report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the special counsel feels are difficult issues of law and fact. One of the questions there is theres a lot of reporting on this, right . A lot of publicly known things. My question to you is what are the other things . Is it just that what weve publicly saw presents difficult questions of law and fact, which they do, or is there other stuff that was found in the course of doing this . Theres indication in the barr letter in which he says, i reviewed the evidence of obstruction and some of it is public and some not and then he said theres evidence on both sides that mueller found. We dont know what the nonpublic actions are. Thats another reason why were so in the dark at this point, and it is outrageous that the president goes on air and the press secretary and says total exoneration and stuff like that. If it is a total exoneration, then they should be the first ones to say, let us see the report. You know, before they had this argument, oh, it is a witch hunt and so on. All of a sudden now theyve said, no, mueller is great, the president said he is an honorable man. They said the investigation worked the way it should. If thats the case, let the American Public see the report, decide for themselves. I would love to close the chapter on this book as much as anyone. Yes. But the only way to close that is to actually know what hatched. All right. Thank you, neil. Next, the issue at the heart of it all the unprecedented russian interference in an effort to get trump elected. What they make on the barr memo next. Cvs pharmacy. Ed gets copays as low as zero dollars on Medicare Part d prescriptions. Ed gets labels clear as day. And, lily. Lily gets anything she wants. Ed knows he could just have us deliver his prescriptions. But whats the fun in that . Switch to cvs pharmacy. Few reported on russian interference in the 2016 election and the connection to donald trump as comprehensively or as early as my next guest. David corn was first to report on the steele dossier in october 2016 a week before the election. Michael isikoff reported on u. S. Intelligence officials looking between ties between carter page and the kremlin. Isikoff interviewed Michael Flynn asking about his paid speaking engagement and the book russian roulette and the election of donald trump. Joining me now michael isikoff, misnbc analyst, mother jones political chief david corn. Gentlemen, having immersed yourself in the story, and starting with you, david, your reaction to the barr letter . I think the main point is that this is not the full story. I mean we have this tossed ball on obstruction and it is interesting that the prosecutor, that is special Robert Mueller, could not put it to the side. He couldnt come up with enough information to say there is no case here. It is very unusual for Robert Mueller or a special counsel to end up in a tie. So theres right . So theres more to be gotten from that and the public deserves to know. And on the coordination front, i mean i have to say that that was never a big part of the book russian roulette in fact, on the last page we say collusion or no collusion it is clear that donald trump and his campaign aided and abetted the attack, the russian attack on the election. We still need to know more about that. I watched your opening, your introduction to the show, chris. The one thing i would take issue with you is that it was never Robert Muellers job to give us the truth, to find out the whole story and present it. It was his job to look for crimes and also to investigate the counterintelligence side of this. Right. Which is never going to be made public if it is classified information. And so we always needed congress, an independent commission, to kind of pick up where the book left off and dig deep and figure out what happened and what those interactions meant if they werent a crime. They were certainly acts of betrayal i think on the part of the Trump Campaign, but those might not have been criminal. You know, michael yes, go ahead. No, i was just going to say, picking up on what david said, hes right that it was not muellers job to tell us the truth, to layout everything hes learned. Hes he was hired as a criminal prosecutor, but it was his job to make the tough calls. Right. Thats why i find it completely baffling that on what was the most crucial decision he had to make he punted. I mean nobody has ever described Robert Mueller as a hamlettlike figure who has trouble making decisions, and yet here he is, his biggest decision he had to make, it bucks it to the political appointees at justice. It seems to me baffling on so many levels. The whole purpose of the special counsel is to insulate the process from, you know, political appointees who could be perceived as having conflicts of interest. Right. Here, thats exactly the opposite of what mueller did. Until we hear from mueller i am just flummoxed about that part of the letter. Here is one set of factual matters i think is fairly established, even with the thin gruel that we have gotten, david and michael, i will ask you both. Starting with you, david. In the dossier, say the most lurid ideas of collusion conspiracy are not true definitively. The idea that Michael Cohen went to prague and there was an extended and coordinated backandforth happening as they were running the operation handinglove that comes through in some of the dossier, like that just did not happen we know pretty definitively at this point. Would you be comfortable saying that . I think more or less. I think there was never a need for there to be that direct, you know, a collusion or coordination as i think is the term mueller prefers. Right. The russians knew how to attack the dnc. They knew how to dump documents. They knew where the swing states were. They had that Research Agency knew what issues got American Voters riled up. They didnt need to sit down with donald trump and have donald trump tell them how to get into the dnc servers. I always thought the collusion or what was wrong here was that while this is happening trump keeps and people connected to trump, they keep meeting with the russians and they keep signaling to the russians they dont mind that the russians might be intervening, and trump is even out there after it becomes a public issue, after hes briefed on this by the u. S. Intelligence community and saying, theres nothing going on. Right. If youre the russians it is like, this is a green light. Right. There were specifics like the trump tower meeting, the meet between manafort and a ukrainian russian business colleague that may be connected to russian intelligence that are particularly suspicious, trump not telling anyone about the trump tower project in moscow. All of those things add up to i think the biggest scandal in american political history. Right. Without there having to be direct coordination. Mike. All right. That said and i agree with everything david said except that the dossier did set expectations and it did shape what people were looking for, what they thought might have happened. You know, it was endorsed on multiple, multiple times on this network, people saying it is more and more proving to be true, and it wasnt. In fact, i think one of the reasons people were so surprised by the mueller finding is that it undercuts almost everything that was in the dossier which postulated a welldeveloped conspiracy between the russians and the Trump Campaign. Thats what got people worked up initially and we do have to acknowledge that, you know, that yes. Which was alleged has not panned out. The first appearance in the public domain, the document that, you know, first begins this sort of real coverage of this during the transition, was that he was briefed on the document shortly after buzzfeed publishes it, postulates in a series of memos, a well coordinated set of memos with the russians and a back and forth with the introduction that sets a framework. Chris, a lot of this was we could have we did see, some of us did see just in the Court Filings that mueller was making, take the roger stone indictment. Everybody got worked up about the fact that the Trump Campaign was trying to use stone to find out what wikileaks had. Right. Well, go back to what the original allegation was in the dossier. It was that it was all a welldeveloped conspiracy. Exactly. And the Trump Campaign was in on it from the beginning. Right. Which means they wouldnt have needed roger stone to find out what wikileaks had if the allegations in the dossier were true. They already knew what they were. Right. Those allegations were not true. There were a lot of different pieces to this, and the first memo that steele sent he said that russians had had a longstanding campaign to coop and cultivate trump. That was one of the big takeaways when i was one of the first reporters to write about that. That seems born out in general, the russians were trying to cultivate trump and make nice with him while the Trump Campaign was receptive to that, and they were receptive to that knowing that the russians were trying to mess in the election. Now, you know, we dont have them sitting down together, and in our book we dont have them sitting down together and plotting this out. Right, no. I do think that the whole focus on collusion or no collusion has distracted a lot of people from some of these core elements of the scandal which i think trump has never really been called to task for. Michael isikoff and david corn, thank you both. Coming up, did Robert Mueller just ensure 2020 will not be about 2016 . Plus the latest edition to the trump dream team, is tonights the next onetwo . Next. Tonights the next onetwo next termites. Were on the move. Hey rick, all good . Oh yeah, were good. Were good. Terminix. Defenders of home. danny after a long day of hard work. You have to do more work . Every day youre nearly fried to a crisp, professionally can someone turn on the ac . no . Oh right. cause there isnt any. Here vo automatically sort your expenses and save over 40 hours a month. Without you, we wouldnt have electricity. Our hobby would be going to bed early. vo you earned it, were here to make sure you get it. danny its time to get yours vo quickbooks. Backing you. Thing one tonight, Donald Trumps propensity to hire the wrongest people in the word, people like kevin hassett, coauthor of the book dow 36,000 which promised in 1999 the Dow Jones Industrial average would hit 36,000 mark within five years. He was only off by about 26,000 points. Now hes trumps chairman of the council of economic advisors. Then larry kudlow, the cnbc guy that famously said before the financial crisis that gop Economic Policy will continue the bush boom for years to come. Tlum made him director of the National Economic council. These guys insisted, of course, trumps tax cuts would not explode the deficit so naturally the government posted the largest deficit in history, at least in nominal terms. Sometimes being that wrong is just right for trump which would make his latest nominee a perfect fit. Thats thing two in 60 seconds. Donald trumps new nominee to sit on the board of the fed does not necessarily hold all of the credentials you would want for someone in that position, although he did coauthor a book called trumponomics and he is fairly wellknowned for getting owned on cable tv shows. Both of the rate hikes were unnecessary and caused deflation in the economy. I think theres a danger wait, wait, i want to stop you there because you said it last time i was on with you. Yes. There is no deflation. Yes, there is. There is not. That was Stephen Moore being wrong about the state of the economy, but being wrong a lot has had few consequences for moore, although he holds the distinction of being banned from the pages of one midwestern newspaper for using misleading numbers in his writing. He recently wrote an oped insisting that the fed is a threat to growth and apparently larry kudlow showed it to the president and he responded, why dont we make him fed chair. Now the man who is said to not have the gravitas for the job is up for senate consideration. He has even called for the firing of current fed chair Jerome Powell and the rest of the fed board. Now that he is poised to join them he doesnt sound so expert anymore. Im kind of new to this game frankly, so im going to be on a steep learning curve myself about how the fed operates, how the Federal Reserve makes its decisions. It is an exciting opportunity for me. For me these are pictures of the air force base in nebraska under water. Several buildings remain submerged after a large portion of the runway flooded last week. Preliminary estimates to fully repair the base are tens of millions of dollars expected to take months and often one of the many areas through americas river and plane states devastated by flooding and looking at a spring flood map that looks like this and last october, this is what the air force base in florida looks like that will take five years to repair. The damage included 17 f22s left on base during the storm representing 10 of the militarys entire fleet of f22s that cost 300 Million Dollars a piece. We are on track for an up to five degree rise by the end of the century unless we absolutely transform the way we do everything. So when people say the Green New Deal or tackling the Climate Crisis would be expenive look at the alternatives. Were hosting an event with the freshman congressman alexandria ocasiocortez. Dont miss it this friday at 8 00. Today breaking news out of new york just under a year ago. He was seen by many as a man who could bring down donald trump, but avenatti, the lawyer that form early represented Stormy Daniels was arrested charged on two different sets of federal prosecutors ask jailed on charges of embezzlement and attempt to extort nike. They accused him of embezzling a client. Prosecutors in new york say avenatti attempted to extract 20 million from nike and threaten the company if they didnt pay his client, an armature basketball coach. In one exchange recorded on audio, avenatti is demanding to be paid 10 million or more by nike in return for not holding a press conference and he said if you dont pay, ill take 10 million off your clients market cap and im not fing around. He announced hed hold a press Conference Tomorrow and then arrested. He is out on bail on 300,000 bond facing 97 years in prison. He addressed the charges moments ago as he left federal court in manhattan. I am highly confident that when all of the evidence is laid bare in connection with these cases, when it is all known, when due process occurs, that i will be fully exonerated and justice will be done. Is that i dont know what the word is . Remarkable turn of vents for a man eight months ago was prodding around New Hampshire exploring a run for president in the democratic party. His attempt went nowhere because avenatti fight his role in the Stormy Daniels suit would make him a bigger star than prove to be the case, which is probably a useful thing to remember on a day when people are discussing the political ramifications of barrs fourpage summery of the report and disconnected from that investigation and certainly were in 2018 and look to be in 2020, as well. Here to talk about what will matter in 2020, two msnbc political analysts, cornell belcher, corinne pierre. My general feeling is everything is sort of a recession in the world doesnt move things that much at the margins. What do you think . That is spot on, chris. The only way to beat donald trump will be at the ballot box. That was true a year ago and last week and true tonight. We have to remember that donald trump won in 2016 Electoral College votes to be clear, not the popular vote. He won by less than 80,000 votes in three states. For all the folks who thought that the Mueller Report was going to take down donald trump, here is what i say to them. Advice i give them is just go out there, organize people, get them registered to vote, remind folks the type of things donald trump has done for the last two years is separate children from their families, which is banning people because of their religion, which is trump tax cuts and also dont forget, he tried to take Ten Health Care from tens of millions of people. So these are the things that people care about. They care about the economy and jobs and they care about health care and thats how we won in 2018 and what people cannot forget. If you go to any of the early states, the Mueller Report is not a problem for us. No one is talking about that, thinking about that. They care about the issues. Yeah, the Downside Risk again, i thought it turned on what the facts were. The Downside Risk if he would actually engage in something criminal that could have negative consequences but short of that, it was not driving conversation politically. This piece says to get to what corinne was saying, thats what ive been hearing from you over the past two years. I think we had an election, Midterm Election we had close to 10 million more people vote for democrat and republican and it wasnt just about health care. Health care was a big deal but also about sort of direction of the country and the division. The division that youre seeing in the country particularly with women voters was really impactful. Donald trump said he could shoot someone and it wouldnt move. Suburban district says dont talk donald trump. This isnt about donald trump. This is about who we are and how do we get them sat out and back when barack obama voters choose between two evils and the third party back into the fold. This is what democrats tell what they will tackle. Deglobalization, right, you saw sort of hair on fire levels of activism among a huge swath of the country a day or two, the next day there is the womens march and people showing up at airports and showing up to protest child separation and midterm turnout, special elections. The question, right, is having a Democratic Congress and leadership that doesnt want those people too active against them going to create a condition of demobilizing, folks. You see this up close. What do you see . I see it differently, chris. I see people are energized and mobilized and the thing about it is voters are smart. They are not stupid. They know what is going on and we cant treat them that way but what they want to hear from these almost 20 candidates, probably a dozen now i think is they want to hear what is their vision. What are they doing for them . When you see the small town halls or candidates in the different early states, thats the questions they are asking them. So i think the key is how do you keep that energy going and how do you keep folks continuing to Pay Attention and they are paying attention so you have to inspire, you have to show a contrast to what we have now in this presidency and where were taking the country. There has been reporting about attendance at events for 2020 candidates and they have been higher. Ive heard from folks that work the circuit that suggestion there is still a high level of interest happening here. I think thats right. What ive heard is, you know, its not 2008, which we saw interests really peak. Its moving towards that direction. Im less worried about sort of based Democratic Energy than i am about sort of how do democrats hold on . Look at the suburbs around philadelphia where they turn blue and how do we hold on to moderate swing voters while keeping the base energy high . I think that is a tough line to walk. Yeah, thats always a tough line to walk. Cornell and corinne. Thank you both for being here. That is all in for this evening. Tonight Robert Muellers work is done. Until we see it were left to debate a fourpage summary how the attorney general sees it. Tonight the president going after the media, demanding apologies while others offering a reminder what else is out there. The investigations under way now spooling out to the president , his family, business, campaigns and inauguration. Still unsolved what have we decided to do about russias involvement in our election. All of it as the 11th hour gets under way on a monday night