But first its hard to believe that this time last week we were previewing the president s meeting with Vladimir Putin. But, of course, we are apparently living in a different space time continuum here in 2018 where even gravity works differently. But more on that in a moment. All of that happened before friday when the New York Times dropped that bombshell report about Michael Cohen and his recording of President Trump. Then came saturday when the d. O. J. Made the documents about surveilling former Trump Campaign aid carter page public. And dont forget about Paul Manafort whose trial begins this week in virginia. Along with a reminder that the president s former Campaign Chairman has been sitting in jail for over a month as he prepares to face a jury. But back to that part about gravity. The president s Approval Rating is ticking up, not down. A brandnew poll from nbc news and the wall street journal conducted before and after the helsinki summit shows the president Approval Rating at 45 . That is up 1 point from june. Among republicans, that number is 88 , the highest ever his entire presidency. With that, i would like to welcome in my panel. Joining me on set national nbc news julia ainsley. Bbc world america and msnbc contributor katty kay. And principal at cogent strategy kevin mclaughlin. Thank you all for being here. Kevin, i would like to start with you. Yes, maam. I would like you to explain why it is 88 of americans approve of President Trump considering what saw contradicts republican orthodoxy for years. President trump has shown throughout his campaign and polling what i took away from the 2016 election is the American People want authenticity. May not like what authenticity is, what hes saying or how hes doing it, but he doesnt back down from it. When he goes out and does these events, i will call them, it actually helps him in fly over country. The outrage you see is in the corridor where we all live and work. When we get out of here people say hes a knuckle head and stuff like that. We understand what hes doing can hurt us personally, but we have to make sacrifices. When he says he could walk down 5th avenue and shoot somebody he defies political gravity. I was thinking the exact same thing. The poll number that struck me was the poll that came out earlier last week, reuters poll that said only 32 of republicans believe russia meddled in the 2016 election. They do not agree with the assessment of the intelligence community. For republicans to say we dont believe the cia, fbi and nsa, we are siding with the president on this is fairly remarkable. I think the one thing that is the divergence, the prospect of tariffs. You see signs Republican Voters are still not comfortable with that and the Republican Party is still not comfortable with that. If the tariffs start hitting the president , its not going to be russia, its going to be the economy. I would say thats very true. When you look at tracking, russia doesnt register on the radar for what people care about. It is literally not even close to the top 15 issue. Julie, this is the strategy the Trump Campaign has been running as well, to cast doubt on whether this meddling ever happened. Absolutely. Were used to seeing republicans go to war with democrats but not their own justice and intelligence community. What youre talking about, the polling, reuters poll, is showing that people are not trusting the intelligence community. Theyre not trusting the Justice Department. Theyre trusting the president s tweets. Exactly. Theyre trusting that instead. They think theyre living under a new time when it comes to the Justice Department. I hear that sometimes. What happened to the Justice Department we used to know . The majority of those career investigators are still there and theyre continuing the same investigations. But we are looking through it through a different prism now. Were looking at it through trumps prism, at least a lot of republicans are who believe they have a president who wants to meet with people, reach across to people who used to be adversaries like kim jongun and Vladimir Putin because they think it can help them in the end without actually looking at how this president is able to stand up to someone like Vladimir Putin amid all of these accusations not just accusations, documented evidence of 12 russian Intelligence Officers and the specifics and how they hacked into the Democratic Party. It strikes me that this is sort of the end game for talking about fake news and casting doubt repeatedly on the media, right . This is a situation where he has created a universe where nobody believes anything any of the Fact Checkers say. Every single time the president tweets fake news or witch hunt, all of the polling suggests its working. This is a very smart strategy from the president s point of view. He is leading Public Opinion in a different direction. One of the more startling shifts in Public Opinion that we have seen we havent seen it on tariffs, but we have seen it on general attitudes with russia, with more republicans generally more favorable take the Mueller Investigation aside, take election meddling aside. Views have changed in the Republican Party. That is almost entirely due to donald trump. But i think it is larger than that. I dont think this is an end game were at with trump. Its a lack of faith in institutions. Its not just press. Theres a lot of blame to go around from a lot of years. The most recent example for me its impossible. And i think that weve seen that on both sides of the aisle from the press, from all over the place where people say, this is it. The deficit, everything, its all going to explode. And people out where im from, minneapolis, are like, we wake up in the morning. It didnt explode. So i think we have a huge problem. This is where i go back to with President Trump and his authenticity. Whether or not you like it is not what people are judging him on. People are judging him based on delivering. He knows that. Do you think its true for so many years, when i started covering politics, the action i dont mean action i dont mean was people wanted to get things done. People ran on bipartisan ship. Here are the examples of how i worked with people on the other side. That does not seem to be what the electorate is interested in now. Meetings, but, you know, to call me an advisor i think is way over the top. Except in the 2013 letter you wrote, it says, quote, over the past half year i have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the kremlin in preparation for the presidency of the g20 summit next month. Informal, having some conversations with people, i mean, this is really nothing meanwhile, in the wake of its release, the fisa application has become something of a rorschach test on capitol hill. Yeah, i dont think they did anything wrong. I think they went to the court. They got the judges to approve it. They laid out all the information and there was a lot of reasons unrelated to the dossier for why they wanted to look at carter page. A warrant on carter page was supported mostly by a dossier that came from Michael Steele who was being paid by the Democratic Party to do opposition research. Was the surveillance justified . No, not at all in my view. My take is carter page is more like inspector gadget than jason borne or james bond. Trump never met him, never had a conversation with him. Im sure hes been on the fbis radar a long time before 2016. Well never know whether the fbi had enough without the dossier. The unvetted dnc funded dossier, because they included it. And everyone who reads this fisa application sees the amount of reliance they placed on this product President Trump issued his own response writing that they, quote, confirm with little doubt that the department of, quote, justice, and fbi misled the courts. Witch hunt, rigged, a scam. First of all, julia, to your earlier point, casting doubt on that, jake tapper came back at carter page who said, look, i was never this. Actually you claimed you were. He said he was a formal advisor to the kremlin. You cant have it both ways. You cant advertise yourself to the kremlin in one year and the other year try to completely distance yourself although we see the president do that often with his advisors as hes digs tanzaniaed himself from page and manafort. I think out of the damage done around this, especially when the president says the fbi is misleading people in court, we heard from Christopher Wray at the Aspen Security Forum when he spoke to lester holt, the fbi director saying when this becomes a problem is when my agents arent believed in court. Not just in this case, but in the thousands of other cases that theyre doing around the country, to have the president casting doubt on their evidence. And why carter page has been at the center of all of this for so long is because of how much the dossier was built around the fisa application. The nunes memo. What do you take away from getting a chance to see the application . So much of it is redacted. I think what the president is saying is no evidence to back that up. It really seems weve known this for a while. Theres a lot more behind the fisa application to carter page than the dossier. He was a target of this investigation because he was an advisor to the kremlin. That stands on its own without the dossier. And so i think what the president is saying, there really is no evidence i could glean from reading this to support what hes saying. Kevin, where do you think republicans will come down on this . This has been devin nunes cause for better or worse for the last several months alleging there were abuses that took place here. Is that a plausible arguments for republicans to keep pushing forward with . By and large i wouldnt put devin nunes in this surprised to hear you say that. I also think marco, senator rubio, i should say, hit the nail on the head. And i think that this is a 400page fisa document. There is more than just the Christopher Steele dossier in there. Although it is part of it. I also think there is a couple other things to fly over a country again on this. Number one, no one knows who carter page is, no one cares and i think theyve rooted out this guy and theyre trying to string him up. The second thing is they look at this like a Foreign Policy guy talking to a forbid government. It was russia, but isnt that their job . The third thing is i just think it doesnt resonate. And i think the last thing i would say actually, there is not collusion here that ive seen. I havent seen it, so even if carter page was colluding as a guy who ran campaigns, what would he do about it . A Foreign Policy guy on the campaign team, i have an idea, collude with russia . Frankly if the fbi had not looked into what carter page had been doing, they would have been negligent in their duties. The wording is pretty strong. We didnt learn much from these Justice Department papers that were released, but we did learn that they felt that the wording from the Justice Department was strong, that they really felt they did have to go after this and investigate it. And although Lindsey Graham says the Christopher Steele document is a loaded garbage, we have not had that officially debunked. We dont know it was a load of garbage. He can call it that as frp as he likes, but we dont know that. Nobody in the Intelligence Committee has been trying to figure that out. We dont know at what point draw information is what they have to base a lot of their decisions on. It could be commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign and be correct or it could be commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign and be incorrect. There is a difference between being a Foreign Policy advisor and campaign and recruited to be functionally a spy for a foreign government. Sure. When we continue, democrats are pointing at Public Comments from Brett Kavanagh and the watergate tapes as red flags as the Mueller Probe presses on. Senator Richard Blumenthal joins me live and whether its much ado about nothing. As we go to break, though, it has been another whiplash week in washington. Yes, all of this really happened in the last seven days. Dan coats came to me and some others. They said they think its russia. I dont see any reason why it would be. Several republicans are criticizing what they saw at todays press conference. The d. O. J. Charging another russian tonight. A russian national, mariah butina. They did interfere in our elections, its clear. Trumps Top National Security advisors. Instead of should have been i dont see any reason why i wouldnt or why it wouldnt be russia. Maria butina pleaded not guilty. Maria butina in the last hour has been order today remain in jail. Is russia still targeting the u. S. , mr. President . He said no, im not answering any more questions. Is russia still targeting the United States . I think we would be foolish to think theyre not. President trump is inviting Vladimir Putin to the white house. Say that again . [ laughter ] thats going to be special. A secretly recorded tape of President Trump and his onetime lawyer Michael Cohen, talking about a payment to a play boy model. The president wasnt aware he was being recorded. Michael cohen has made it very clear to me this morning that he is not going to be some sacrificial lamb. Welcome back. Last night the Senate Judiciary committee released documents related to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanagh including some of his views of the watergate scandal. According to the a. P. , a 1999 article reveals an instance in which kavanagh said u. S. Versus nixon may have been wrongly decided. Youll remember that decision led the Supreme Court to order president nixon to hand over tape recordings to a federal court. And ever since it has been referenced as one of the major cases that limits executive power. Kavanaghs views on executive privilege are being carefully looked at as he makes his way through the confirmation process. Joining me mao to talk about there and Everything Else that went on this past week, democratic senator from connecticut and member of the Judiciary Committee, senator Richard Blumenthal. Senator, thank you so much for being with us tonight. I want to start right there with this revelation from these documents that the Judiciary Committee has found about kavanaghs comments on the u. S. Versus nixon case. Do you think that should be applicable in his confirmation hearing . It is of profound importance to these confirmation hearings. The reason is very simply that u. S. Versus nixon not only stands for the basic principle that the president must provide evidence that is relevant and cannot assert overbroad claims of executive privilege, but also that no one is above the law. No president is above the law. And here we have judge kavanagh questioning whether it was rightly decided after a unanimous Supreme Court in an opinion written by the chief justice, warren berger, who was appointed by nixon, said that the president , richard nixon, must provide these tapes. It is potentially a bombshell in these confirmation hearings. There have been some indications that senator grassley is not interested in forcing the executive branch to turnover more additional documents for democrats and republicans on the committee to review, and its been reported that Mitch Mcconnell behind the scenes is potentially threatening to push the nomination vote until right before the midterm elections. Are you seeing the documents that you need to . And do you think that Chuck Schumer should fight this to the point that you are facing down that vote right before the election . Well, thats a really important question, kasie. First, we have yet to see all the documents that we need. And the recent rejection and withdrawal of the nomination of ryan bounds, he was nominated to the 9th Circuit Court of appeals, shows the importance of seeing all of the documents because his racial comments in the course of his past were extremely relevant to this nomination, and the excessive haste in that instance, the absence of adequate