May be the fact that muellers investigators are asking questions about mr. Kushners interactions with potential investors from overseas. Kushners internal foe chief of staff john kelly displayed some humor today in the Homeland Security department. I would just open by saying i have almost no right to be up here on this stage. I was in the department you have every right. I missed every one of you every day. I went [ laughter ] [ applause ] truly, six months, the last thing i wanted to do was walk away from one of the great honors of my life, being secretary of Homeland Security. But i did something wrong and god punished me, i guess. [ laughter ] youre not alone. All this as the white house may be getting ready to say goodbye to one of its other generals, multiple sources familiar with the matter confirmed nbc news that general mcmaster may be departing his role as National Security advisor as early as the end of this month. One of the leading candidates being discussed as a possible replacement for mcmaster is steve biegun, National SecurityCouncil Staff under condee rice who coincidentally joins us later this hour. Lets get to all of this. From the Washington Post phil ruck ir. At the table, jeremy bash, chief of staff at both the cia and pentagon now an msnbc National Security analyst. John heilman, nbc news and msnbc National Affairs analyst. Sam stein, politics editor for the daily beast and msnbc contributor. Its the first time youve been here. What a pleasure. Where are you been . I have missed you. An open invite. So glad youre here. One of my favorites, Princeton University professor also an msnbc contributor. Neil, i wanted to start with all the chaos. I saw you nodding that steve biegun would be the third advisor to the president. General mcmaster may be moving on to a different role as early as the end of march. General mcmaster may be too substantive for his boss. What a way to put it. He comes at this, general mcmaster, three stars on his shoulder, Army Lieutenant general, books hes authored, a studious approach to National Security. I think hes done a good job. In the National Security council in the wake of mike flynn. For some reason he has not clicked with the commander in chief. The president doesnt countenance his overly substantive approach to Foreign Policy, nicolle. Lets take some elegance off the answer. The president doesnt like him. Never has. And the president has put him in some pretty unseemly positions. The first big flash point was when the president had Sergei Lavrov and kislyak in the oval office and he said, you know, the pressure is off me now that i got rid of comey. And it was reported out of that meeting that he had revealed some sensitive classified information from another countrys intelligence service. Right. That was the first time that mcmaster really he took to the white house driveway. He defended his boss and that was the first time that longtime military reporters, folks like tom ricks and others felt like mcmaster had crossed an ethical line. It was actually also the first instance of something weve seen among a lot of people. There is a whole group of people the adults we put a lot of faith in when trump came in. You looked at tillerson, you looked at kelly, mcmaster, those are generals mostly, but some big ceos. These guys are there to be the adults in the room. And one by one they have all compromised themselves in various ways. Mcmaster was really the first instance of that. He was someone everyone looked at. Not just military reporters. I think a lot of people. It was not the only time hes done it but on a variety of occasions he had to go out, his boss put him in an uncomfortable position. Rather than staying quiet or let alone pushing back on trump, he has capitulated, has backed up trump in ways that for people who are members of the washington establishment, people who are familiar with a lot of these people, for years and years, were disappointed and countered what happened. I think maybe mattis is the only one left who has not besmirched i am himself in the last year. If we could book end the mcmaster era, sometimes donald trump sees stories in the news and changes his mind. No. You know, this is our understanding. But let me put this to you. I mean, this may have started there at least publicly. But as recently as the weekend before last, mcmaster and the president showed some daylight on the question of russian meddling in the 2016 election. Mcmaster was in munich. He said its beyond dispute that russia meddled. And the president didnt like that. Rapidly responded to his own National Security advisor. The day after the mueller indictments come out, the russian indictments came out that saturday, i believe. Right. I think his word was incontrovertible. Beyond debate. Donald trump didnt like that. Tweeted back at him, you know well, theres two things here. One is that trump is very much on an island when it comes to the question of russian meddling. Virtually everyone at this point has conceded that in some form except for the president. Although he will occasionally give credence they may have meddled. Hell say its a 400 pound kid in his mothers basement. Who knows. The second question i want to tie in to what happened with Jeff Sessions, too, which is that this president is either alienating deliberately or not his key advisors, including people who have been loyal to him or who have besmirched themselves for him. And it points to what is a truly existential staffing problem that this administration will have. I mean, they have a bad one now. It is going to get infinitely worse once you lose the people who are loyalist like Jeff Sessions, hope hicks. When youre on your third chief of staff and so on and so forth. So, i think people think of this current moment of the white house as chaotic, and we dont think it could get even more so. But i think you will have more disorder when we get to the next round of hires because they are not loyalists. They are also not the top professional that you can recruit. It makes it all the more stunning, this news that mcmaster may be on his way out by the end of the month, that john kelly won this round against jared. This was a very public, a very tense chapter for the white house. It began with the publication of the photos of rob porters former wives who alleged that he abused them. There was a very, very strident brazen effort by jared and ivankas allies outside the white house to lay all of this at the feet of john kelly. That john kelly survived this, and by the end of this chapter Jared Kushner ended up being the one stripped of his clearances. Puts john kelly in a perhaps temporarily so, but puts him in a newly fortified spot right now in that west wing. All the while we have north korea, we have russia, we have all of these world problems. We have serious domestic issues. We know robinson used this phrase on morning joe. He talked about what we have is chaos and corruption. Selfevident and cascading corruption. This is just an example of the chaos of this white house. And for everyday ordinary citizens it has to kind of generate deep anxiety about whats happening in termds of just the nature of governance, right . So, it seems to me that to have mcmaster on his way out, to see the kind of to see michael wolff, the book playing itself out in real time as jared and ivanka go down and the like i dont think people quite comprehend how little capital donald trump has with professional republicans. He wanted to recruit a whole new round of senior advisors to help him out in the Foreign Policy portfolio, to sort of streamline his trade portfolio. One, he would have to choose from a limited pool because he wont pick someone who has ever been critical of him in the past which makes it limited to begin with. And, two, they look at the stuff and see the chaos, too, and they dont want to be part of this. Let me bring phil rucker in on this. Phil rucker, your paper has among the best bodies of reporting on the personnel challenges in this white house. And just personally, half a dozen people in the last 20 months since the election have reached out to me when various people have said, come in, come meet him, come talk about being the Communications Director. When they asked my advice, and ive given it privately, im happy to reveal this on tv, i said run. A man who bumz president heres why. If you become the leader of the free World Without someone with a title of Communications Director, you can never be convinced someone with a title of Communications Director can do a better job than you. But speak to, one, if youve heard if you have any sources sort of with the same things that nbc news is reporting about mcmaster looking for the exits by the end of march, and just this backdrop of not just chaos, but the way axios put it, an unraveling. Yeah, well, certainly there is a broader unraveling with the mcmaster specifically there have been indications over the last several months that the tensions between him and the president have become worse, and a feeling that his days are numbered to some extent. I dont know that it means hes going to be leaving tomorrow or even next week, but hes not going to be around for the long haul. I think hes considering his options. I think there is a desire inside the white house to place him somewhere sort of give him a nice landing spot somewhere and have a smooth transition here. But the tension with mcmaster is not only with the president , but also general mattis and secretary tillerson and other officials. They dont always see eye to eye with mcmaster and thats been a subject of some discord inside the administration as they look at these issues. And that discord, as you know, nicolle, is throughout the administration, throughout the white house. There is so much chaos. The dormant rifle rivalries hav alive. There is so much back stabbing. I talk to and you talk to and other reporters talk to theyre trying to knife one another. I dont know how they get work done on behalf of the American People it is unbelievable how much time they spend talking about each other to people like us. But, jeremy bash, i havent seen you since this story broke. This week for kushner seems like somebody trying to finish him off. The Washington Post reported that kushners overseas contacts raise concerns that foreign officials seek leverage. The piece listed how officials from mexico, the uae, israel and china all had interactions with him that i guess rose to the level of pretty serious concern among u. S. Officials, that he was made vulnerable because of his naivete and or his eagerness to mix business with governing. You had some people coming into the administration with the president , nicolle, who were unprepared, they couldnt get the credentials. They couldnt get the clearances. They should not be in that job. Its one of the reasons why in our country we have not had nepotism as a standard policy. Other countries have chosen it, by the way. It doesnt work because you dont have the best person positioned for the job. The fact that other countries are trying to manipulate and work u. S. Officials, i kind of think thats standard course. This administration has had a for sale sign outside the white house that made it a little more inviting, if you will. However, i think the bigger issue in that story and this ties back to mcmaster issue, mcmaster had to receive intelligence reports about Jared Kushners unilateral Foreign Policy. And how do you have an Intelligence Committee reporting on one individual to the National Security advisor and the National Security advisor has to call him and say, excuse me, were conducting Foreign Policy in an integrated way here, what are you doing . Ill say a couple things about this. One is murder, political murder is an opportunistic business in a lot of cases. Youre looking for the opportunity to take out a rival. Because kushner got in the trouble because the porter thing led to the question of security clearances. Now hes vulnerable. Think of all the people in the white house who dont like Jared Kushner. Think about anybody who is a rival power center, then think of all the people out of the administration now who hate Jared Kushner, who were around for that first year. I dont know, say steve bannon who saw a lot of stuff over the course of the year, little less than a year that he was there. All of those people who have some reason to want Jared Kushner theyre waiting for the moment. This was the moment. This is the moment where if youre going to strike at the prince, as it were, rather than the king, this is where hes we should just say it, thats what they call him. Yes, and he is vulnerable and hes buckling. Ill say one last thing quickly. We can talk about this more. The other problem is not just nepotism as jeremy puts out. His father and he run a business that has a lot of problems with it right now. Theres a building in this city called 666 fifth avenue. That has a billiontwo debt note that comes due in january 2019. When Jared Kushner came into government, people in government are rich, they have business interests, they wall them off, they have blind trusts. They dont walk in the door to top secret security clearance, jobs youre supposed to have it those for, conducting Foreign Policy, having these kind of meetings when they have a billiontwo short term debt note hanging over the family business. Let me go back to you. That in and of itself be reason why the fbi deemed him as potentially susceptible to blackmail . That is the feert ill youre trying to pass when you pass an fbi background test, making dee significants about your character, whatever his title is you would be. Theyre trying to decide if youre vulnerable enough to be a target for blackmail. That seems like or for if not blackmail, for using leverage to pay to play. Whatever the thing is. Yes. But for the soninlaw of the president , for the fbi to deny a permanent clearance, the bar is very high. It means there is something much deeper, something much more serious that they have on him, not merely that his former business has a 1. 2 billion debt note. Im not saying this is funny because its not. Its really serious. Jared kushner was handed responsibilities that are immensely serious. And not just a few responsibilities, many responsibilities. The opioid crisis, dealings with mexico, reorganizing the government, solving middle east. That is a funny laugh. Its a crazy list for one person. This person has a huge ethics cloud hanging over him, he is constantly back fighting with other officials, he has to deal with refining his personal Financial Disclosure forms because he keeps screwing it up. Investigators are knocking on his door. I think, you know, we look at it and we like the drama and its very intriguing, but serious stuff was handed to this guy and he cant do it because, in part, hes so busy with the very ethically dubious stuffer. Phil rucker, let me bring you back in on perhaps the most serious existential threat facing Jared Kushner. From news accounts bob mueller has about his businesses and about his conversations and contacts with Foreign Governments, where do those intersect and how high is that on the list of worries for kushners remaining allies in the white house . Its the huge concern, nicolle. We should keep in mind that we know very little about what bob mueller actually has in front of him at his table. We get news reports here and there. We sort of try to figure things out as best we can. But we have so little visibility into that operation, and there very well may be things, information leads, investigatory conclusions that the mueller team has drawn about Jared Kushner that we cant foresee at this moment. But the foreign intercepts that the Washington Post reported on the other day is top of mind as something that concerns a lot of people inside the administration that weve been talking to, and its affected frankly the way kushner is viewed around the world. He was seen early on in the presidency as the key conduit, the vessel, the artery to get to the president of the United States for foreign leaders. And hes now become more of a diminished figure. Just to be clear, one thing jeremy said just to clarify, i was not suggesting that the debt that the Kushner Family has was reason for him not to get his security clearance. Im sure there is a reason much more serious that he hasnt gotten the clearance. My point is when he came into the government with that kind of burden on him, you are then going to give him ostensibly a highlevel security clearance and portfolio where youre going to be out there meeting with all of the countries, all of the officials that from the countries that would be you would normally turn to to help you out of that debt hole. Its a situation that is prime for the kinds of things people now suspect might have gone wrong. And the burden isnt on those foreign leaders to not say, how are you doing, how is your family or anything. The burden is on Jared Kushner as the u. S. Government official to say, no, no, i cant have that conversation. And i think the most alarming thing about the story phil rucker talks about about the intercept, the whole reason you have no oneonone conversations wi