The state department has 120 million to spend to combat russian meddling in future elections and reportedly spent none of it . But first, we could start tonight with hope hicks departure a day after acknowledging he sometimes tells white lies for the president or Jared Kushner losing top secret access. We could start with new lines of questioning from bob mueller or the freezing out of Jeff Sessions. We could talk about that remarkable guns meeting with the president s seemingly making democrats points for them. Or we can talk about the uncertain future of h. R. Mcmaster. Heres the president at the gridiron last night. He said, so many people have been leaving the white house, its been really exciting and invigorating. I like turnover. I like chaos. It really is good. Now the question everyone is asking is, whos going to be the next to leave . Steve miller or melania . Thats terrible, honey, but you love me. Right . With that, lets bring in the panel. Msnbc political analyst, the Washington PostWhite House Bureau chief and analyst phillip i like turnover. I like chaos. It really is good. Now the question everyone is asking is, whos going to be the next to leave . Steve miller or melania . Thats terrible, honey, but you love me. Right . With that, lets bring in the panel. Msnbc political analyst, the Washington PostWhite House Bureau chief and analyst Phillip Rucker and former press secretary and ken delandian. Thank you for coming in tonight. Lets start with the gridiron dinner because this is the president to say that the president has had an uneasy relationship with the town of washington with the press i think is something of an understatement. How did ken, you were there. How did it come across in the room . Well, you know, it was a moment of suspense because donald trump avoided the black tie suares. He would have to sit here where they do skits and we should probably explain that. Gridiron is one of the odest clubs in washington. Black tie or white tie . White tie and tails. For men. And there are as you point out skits from journalists, especially people who, you know, are new to the club and the president traditionally attends and makes a spech. Thats right. President obama from what i know was a hit in the past. And george w. Bush and many president s before him. So donald trump passed the test of sitting through the as the journalists including colleagues of nbc poked fun at him and then make a speech and be funny himself and of course everyone knows the key to this is is to be self deprecating and thats hard for donald trump and he actually succeeded up front. I would say. For the first few jokes he got a lot of laughs in the room. But then he start seemed like he started to veer off script and ad lib. He got a little mean. He said that he needed to take an iq test for congresswoman maxine waters. He called nancy pelosi crazy. I feel like he lost the room a little bit. People were rolling their eyes and shaking their heads. Phil, you have quite a story in the Washington Post this morning detailing kind of whats going on behind the scenes and how rattled the president and those around him really are right now. Thats right. I was surprised given what we know from his mood over the last week and so frustrated and angry behind the scenes and private with his friends, staff, really upset about the russia probe, the negative stories of Jared Kushner and then there he was for four hours having dinner in front of 1,000 journalists and ambassadors and senators and the swamp creatures he loves to hate and seemed to be in good spirits about it. He laughed at a lot of the jokes. The speech wasnt perfect but it was pretty good. He seemed to kind of roll with the punches at least . He seemed relaxed last night. Mark, were you surprised the president decided to do this . He didnt want to play this game. Not really. I think he went there with good spirits. And he had some fun with it. Ill tell you while i didnt go to this years dinner, i was there last year when he spoke and gave the keynote republican. One of the most challenging speeches to do every year. One thing to talk policy but to be funny as a politician, theres a lot of pressure on that. Ask the House Speaker paul ryan. We were working on for many days. I want to dig into what phil wrote this morning along the colleagues ashley park e and josh dausy. Inside the white house the aides describe an air of volatility with an uncontrollable commander in chief at the center. These are the darkest days in at least half a year, they say, and they worry just how much further President Trump and his Administration May plunge into unrest and malaise before they start to recover. As one official put it, we havent bottomed out. So, phil, and i want your take, how much further does this go . If we cant bottomed out, what is next . All about russia or more than . More than russia. Russias at the center of it. We know for months that the russia investigation bothered and rattled the president. But he is frustrated with attorney general Jeff Sessions. He wasnt prosecuting as aggressively as he would have liked to see. He was mad about that dinner that the photograph of the dinner that leaked. But its more than that, too. It is the scrutiny that his soninlaw Jared Kushner is under. The white house Senior Adviser for the web of sort of business entanglements he has and the foreign contacts made in the white house frustrated with other things, too, including the loss of the communication director hope hicks so much more than a communication director and describe her as a defacto therapist for the president and an emotional support and stabilizing force for the president and she is going to be gone. I think my producer would be mad if i made a pun about her being his only hope. When where does this leave President Trump . If he is unmoored from many of the people he trusts and was closest to . Its hard to look back and say that the people around him have been that effective at restraining some of his, you know, more self destructive impulses and what phil is talking about is whats different now is the fact that the Mueller Probe is closer to the president. Theres something about the movement of that and where its heading and i think that really bothers the president more. I think this is also a person who has always worked with a pretty closeknit circle of advisors, people who he really trusts their loyalty. A lot of those people are gone now and theyre hard to replace. Weve seen, you know, when somebody leaves this administration, they slide somebody else from another spot into that spot. In Nick Mulvaneys case they have him do two jobs. There arent that many people that the president really trusts outside this administration. He still has Kellyanne Conway there and a few other people, but as some of the people that he really trusts the most are leaving, as jared and ivanka may have to eventually leave the administration, hes more and more isolated as this goes forward. I just dont know what happens when mueller gets closer to the president and he doesnt have the people that he really trusts around him. Ken dilanian, how much jeopardy is Jared Kushner in right now . It looks like significant jeopardy, kasie. That was one of a torrent of news actually last week on the Mueller Investigation that i think contributed to the ratcheting up of this pressure. One was the story nbc news did that said mueller is looking at meetings kushner may have had with foreign officials and whether those meetings during the transition affected policy. As we were sitting there in the grid iron and those foreign officials were actually sitting there thinking, how do we manipulate Jared Kushner in order to there was a story in the Washington Post that said there was intelligence, intercepts. This guy needs money for his business, we can target him. Nbc reported mueller asked if donald trump coordinated the leaks of the emails from the russians to wikileaks. There is a lot of mueller news. The ball seems to be moving forward and trump feels under increasing pressure about it. You said you were sitting at the grid iron. I didnt mean to cut you off. There was another particular line of inquiry by mueller of the United Arab Emirates and if they influenced the trump administration. Phil rucker, lets say ivanka and jared are not able to continue to function in the way that they are. Do you think that this might be Jared Kushners last month in the white house . And where would losing them leave the president . Well, losing them would mean he really would be losing his family and he would be left with a paid staff basically. Hope hicks, jared, ivanka, theyve been like surrogate he left the end of last year. There is no indication jared and ivanka are leaving any time soon, but there is one clue, and were reading tea leaves here. The clue is that their top spokesman, josh rafael, Deputy Communications director in the white house, has been the crisis manager for dealing with all of these crises involving Jared Kushner very forcefully behind the scene. Correct. He announced his resignation last week. He is going to be leaving in the next couple of weeks. Thats going to be a huge hole for jared and ivanka to fill. Youve been out of the administration for a little while. How does this feel now compared to what you saw when you were kind of behind the scenes . Reince priebus was talking a little bit this morning on abc, how when i left t wasnt quite that bad when i walked out the door. Its gotten a lot worse. Is that what it looks like you to . Its hard to tell when youre inside and seeing how its reported on the outside of what its like. Its usually not very close to what we experience on the inside. You are so focused on your day to day in terms of what is the next issue, i mean, in the white house calm press office, what is tomorrows event, the next press conference. You read about what its supposedly like and its not really resembling what you come to experience. I can tell you that team is really close. And while i dont want to under estimate the importance of hope or anyone else in the administration and shes obviously a wonderful friend and colleague, but these jobs do have high turnover, and they churn people through. And so i have no doubt that the president will have greater people four. Four, yes. But he will have not just that role, but in all the roles that he will continue to have great people serving him and moving forward. How is it vicepresident pence manages to rise above the fray . Well, the vicepresident s role is completely different in some areas. Hes out traveling the country right now. He was out on the road over the weekend. I think hes got at least one or two trips this week where hes out doing a lot of the stumping he can go a lot of places this president might not be able to go, right . Its not about where he cant go. Hes doing a lot of the campaign work. He was at the grid iron last night with the president and the first lady and so his staff there, were working right now on the political side with a lot of foreign travel. I keep coming back to all these people, including vicepresident pence and hope hicks, theyre all paying white collar criminal defense lawyers. That is not normal. Thats how you operate when thats going on in the background. John kelly still kind of in trouble, has to rewrite again this week what happened with rob porter. Where does he how shaky is the ground hes standing on . I think the thing that gives him job security is the fact there arent there are people leaving the administration, not a lot of people lining up to do that job. The president has been struggling to replace john kelly, may be forced to sort of keep him in place. Theres a lot of theres a narrative out there in shall what wash about oh, john kelly put one over on jared and ivanka the way he sort of turned took the pressure off him with the rob porter thing. John kelly, the narrative about him is is that he imposed a process. He brought more order to the west wing and were not really seeing that. And so, you know, whether he can do hes there, but i dont know how long like mark said, there is high turnover and donald trump puts people through the ringer more i think than most. Most. Indeed. Were just Getting Started on kasie d. C. Still to come brandnew reporting just out tonight about what Robert Mueller is looking for from at least one witness. Plus, barack obama had bill clinton for secretary of explaining stuff. Donald trump has wilbur ross. Well let him explain tariffs. Plus, congresswoman Debbie Dingell on finding bipartisan ground to try and bring an end to mass shooting. And as we go to break, we let the flight of the bumble bee take us through the break neck week that was. Kasie d. C. Back after this. Trump meets with a group of governors. And united are essentially splitting with the nra. The democratic memo was releeszed. Mexicos president abruptly oh, my gosh. Hope hicks talking with house investigators. Trump announced today hes a int toed Brad Parscale as campaign manager. Gun control legislation is headed to the hill. We have some breaking news. Jared kushner will lose his access to top secret intelligence. Hope hicks admitted she tells white lies for the president. Manafort breaking right now has just pleaded not guilty. Trump and the u. S. Congress bid farewell to billy graham. Ben carson is in hot water over some lavish interior decorating choice. Mueller is asking specific and pointed questions. Javanka and kelly are locked in a death match. Hope hicks resigning shes out. Even more breaking news. Walmart announced it, too, would raise the age limit. Couldnt shut off brandnew nuclear weapons. New tariffs on steel and aluminum. The trade war that is now being launched. The dow has lost 500 points. The president dubbed his attorney general mr. Mcgoo. This is crazy. Sessions defended himself in a rare statement. General mcmaster may be departing his role. Trade wars are good and easy to win. The president s Economic Advisor reportedly threatened to quit. Breaking news to report. Muellers special prosecutor asking of kushners ties influenced white house policy. It would be a chaos president. That ended up being right. Welcome back to kasie d. C. Instead of explaining the impact of the president s tariff hike ourselves, we decided to leave it to commerce secretary wilbur ross. This is a can of campbells soup. In the can of campbells soup there is 2. 6 cents, 2. 6 pennies worth of steel. If that goes up by 25 , thats about 6 10 of 1 cent. Heres a can of cocacola. Cocacola has 3 cents worth of aluminum in it. So, if that goes up 10 , thats 3 10 of a cent. I just paid 1. 49 for this can of coke. It doesnt mean anything. So, all this hysteria is a lot to do about nothing. Joining me now, member of the Foreign Relations committee, senator chris coons of delaware. Thank you for joining me. Its nice to see you. Thank you, kasie. I hope youre not going to ask me to explain what it was commerce secretary wilbur ross was trying to explain in that clip. You dont have a coke in hand. Thats too bad. Senator, i do want to start, though, with the tariffs. There has been quite the worldwide response, both from countries like china, but also close allies of the United States including canada. What is your view of the president s decision in this regard . Was this a good idea . Frankly the president didnt do his homework on this one and this is what happens when you take Bumper Sticker level attack on the World Trading system that might stir up election rallies, but it is terrible policy and throwing it out there without having done enough work with our allies and industry and partners around the world. The tariffs that the president is threatening to slap onto imported steel and aluminum will principally affect some of our core and vital allies. Canada, south korea, some of our european allies. Rather than principally affecting china, which is the country he says hes been trying to get their attention on trade issues. I think, for example, rather than withdrawing from the transpacific partnership, if the president really wants to strengthen our hand in the world in terms of trade, getting back to the table and negotiating a strong tough fair deal with our partners in the asiapacific against china would make a lot more sense. So, i frankly think that our allies werent well prepared for it. The markets took a dive in response to it. And its not yet clear to me what exactly the president s goal is in slapping tariffs on steel and aluminum, principally imported from key allies. Still, i mean this is something that the president ran on, and there are some members of your party, people like joe manchin of west virginia, shari brown of ohio who suggested this could be good policy and essentially those who in both parties, republican and democrat who have supported free trade policies have essentially left behind the middle of america. What do you say to them . There are folks in both parties who have called on the president to impose restrictions on our competitors, whether its by punishing china for currency manipulation or going after china and others for stealing our intellectual property, this particular move, putting tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, is popular with folks in states where there is still a steel making industry that faces significant foreign pressure. And so this is something this isnt some out of the blue move by the president. He did run on this. Hes talked about it repeatedly. What im trying to suggest but saying that he didnt fully do his homework was that there is reporting that folks within the white house, within his own administration, and in some of our key allies, capitals around the world, who wer