no question about it. talk to your doctor about chantix. ♪ ♪ welcome to "kasie d.c." i'm kasie hunt. we are live in washington from 7:00 to 9:00 eastern. tonight the president lashes out against robert mueller claiming conflicts of interest. plus russia gate travels to the worst airport gate in america. don junior and robert mueller treated to the lucid nightmare that is gate 35 x at reagan national airport. at the same time the president's inner circle is fighting it out in federal court and the court of public opinion. later we'll talk to senator chris van hollen about matters foreign and domestic. he floetsz new sanctions for months could you as tariffs start to turn politically toxic at home. but we begin with a series of tweets from the president late today including a greatest hits of grievances against special counsel robert mueller. quote, is robert mueller ever going to release his conflicts of interest with respect to president trump, including the fact that we had a very nasty and contentious business relationship? i turned him down to head the fbi one day before appointment as special counsel and comey is his close friend. michael schmidt in "the new york times" reported back in january that amid the first wave of news media reports that mueller was examining a possible obstruction case, the president began to argue that he had three conflicts of interest that disqualified him from overseeing the investigation. joining me now to talk about all this is ken vogel of "the new york times" and also the law firm of butler rocca and dershowitz, former federal prosecutor georgetown law 0 professor and legal analyst paul butler. former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york also an msnbc legal analyst mimi rocca, and professor emeritus at harvard law school, alan dershowitz. he is the author of the book the case against impeaching trump. thanks to all of you for being with us on this sunday night. ken vogel, i want to start with you just in terms of what we've been seeing out of the white house from this president today. what prompted this flurry of tweets? >> well, clearly he's fairly under a lot of pressure. michael cohen is coming out publicly and releasing the tape of the conversation regarding a payoff to a woman who alleged he had an affair with her, has seemed to set him off in a way we haven't seen him really, you know, focusing quite so much anger towards his former associates as he is now. and then it's additionally just the building of this case that the mueller investigation is biased and we saw him as you put it airing a greatest hits of grievances including what i loosely call the nonsecond wh s. >> we can't figure out who the extra four are. >> the claim a number of prosecutors have donate today democrats. that is true. mueller is a republican. no doubt he is pursuing this in a matter that is dictated by the law and facts as opposed to any political grievances. >> sure. mimi rocca, to pick up on that point, this is a situation where robert mueller, first of all, is a republican, was registered republican and can't use party affiliation in hiring his attorneys to make a decision about hiring them. >> absolutely. it would be impermissible, perhaps even illegal for him to have done that. and the mere point here, something that donald trump and people who see things only through a political lens can't seem to understand is that fbi agents and prosecutors for the most part -- i'm not sailing there are -- saying there are no exceptions, people who are punl servants who dedicate their lives to service like this don't do their work through a political lens. that doesn't mean they don't have political beliefs, but they are not out to get donald trump because of his politics. they are doing an investigation and following the facts and they will go wherever that takes them. and it doesn't matter who it is that you're investigating. it matters what crimes you're looking at and is there evidence of them. >> alan dershowitz, one of the claims in one of these tweets is that he says he had a very nasty and contentious business relationship with robert mueller. there has been other reporting that says that this may be around mueller's purported membership at the trump national golf club and a dispute over fees. why is the president elevating this like this? >> well, first of all, has nothing to do with cohen because cohen is not in mueller's camp. cohen is in the southern district of new york. his whole case is based in the southern district of new york. the case has nothing to do with mueller so i don't think it's correct to say that it was the cohen issue that stimulated him to write the tweets about mueller. look, if the president thinks that mueller should be recused, his lawyers have a right to go to court and seek recusal. i have strongly urged that that be done with rod rosenstein. rod rosenstein has the clearest possible conflict of interest if there is an obstruction of justice investigation against the president. because he wrote the letter and becomes a major witness in the case. >> does he have a leg to stand on in calling for the special prosecutor to recuse in your view? >> it does not sound like a strong case to me, but it sounds like an credibly compelling case to ask to have rod rosenstein. i don't even see the argument on the other side. you cannot be both the major witness in an investigation and heading the investigation itself. i don't know why rod rosenstein hasn't recused himself. i don't know why strzok didn't recuse himself. you know, you make decisions on your own. you don't have to wait for anybody else to do it. strzok knew, notwithstanding the fact, yes, people see the case not through the lens of their own bias. but when you write messages saying, we have to stop this president. we need a guarantee, we need a life insurance policy. you do not continue to investigate that person. so i think self-recusal should have been the way to go for both strzok and rosenstein. but i think as far as mueller is concerned, i don't think it's a very strong case for recusal. >> paul butler, weigh in on this. is there? >> i'm going to agree with my former criminal law professor alan dershowitz there are concerns about rod rosenstein. but his answer is he's checked. he's discussed those issues with the ethics office of the department of justice and they say there's no reason for him to recuse himself. with regard to mr. mueller, again, what the president says is that he's a good friend of james comey, that they had this issue with regard to a country club or golf club and fees, and that mueller worked for the firm that represented jared kushner. under guidelines of the department of justice, none of those by themselves mean that there has to be a recusal. what the department rules are is if there is a close personal or financial relationship with a subject, then the prosecutor has to recuse herself or himself. here there is no evidence of that. mr. mueller would have been vetted extensively by rod rosenstein and other people at the department of justice before he was selected. >> good to have that perspective here. but meanwhile, we also want to make sure we touch on the other big story today which of course is michael cohen. you will be surprised to learn rudy giuliani tells abc news the joint defense agreement between the president and michael cohen has officially ended. of course, it comes as the p.r. battle between cohen's lawyers and the president's continues to play out in plain sight for the world to see. or in the case of audio recordings, to hear. and right now this much is clear. cohen has already released one potentially problematic tape involving the president. and he says he has more. >> we know of something like 183 unique conversations on tape. one of those is with the president of the united states. that's the three-minute one involving, involving the mcdougal payment, ami/mcdougal payment. there are 12 others, maybe 11 or 12 others out of the 183 in which the president is discussed at any length. >> cohen apparently has a story to tell as well. according to a knowledgeable source, he's prepared to tell robert mueller that the president knew in advance about that 2016 trump tower meeting between his son and a russian lawyer. ken vogel, my sources are telling me that if this is cohen telling the truth and obviously you can imagine that it breaks down a little bit along partisan lines who thinks cohen was lying to them and who thinks cohen is lying now, but at the very least we know that he was asked in these congressional situations whether or not the president knew about the trump tower meeting beforehand. >> right, and our understanding is that he said no, which was the party line at the time. so for him now to be coming out and saying that he has this bit of evidence, that just so happens to be really the closest thing to a smoking gun that you could have for building the case that he had advance -- both the collusion case that the president had advance knowledge of an offer by a foreign power to provide something of benefit, potentially in violation of campaign finance laws, to his campaign. and then additionally, the obstruction charge this would be the closest thing to the smoking gun there because the president, as we now know, helped don junior compose and put out this statement that said something very opposite from what michael cohen is saying now about trump's advance knowledge or at least sort of contemporary knowledge of this alleged -- of this alleged meeting or of this meeting. >> right. alan dershowitz, you have written the case against impeaching trump ahead of, of course, knowing exactly what robert mueller is going to find. who do you believe here? if cohen is telling the truth and that he knows and can provide evidence of the idea that the president did know about this trump tower meeting ahead of time and proceeded to, you know, write a statement on air force one that was given to the public that expressly said the opposite, how is that not problematic? >> well, three things. first of all, i wrote the book, case against impeaching trump, because i wanted to layout the criteria for impeachment. and in my view they require the commission of a crime. controversial, people disagree. but obviously if there were evidence of a crime, there would be a case for impeachment. second, you're not correct when you said, quote, cohen has already released one tape. if cohen had released that tape, he'd be disbarred obviously because it was ruled by the -- >> you mean rudy giuliani wasn't correct? okay, i'm following. >> you have to get the facts straight. let me be clear. so, cohen didn't -- certainly doesn't acknowledge he released the tape because he'd be disbarred if he did. the tape leaked as i understand it and only then did rudy giuliani after the content of the tape leaked did he say that he waived that tape. but if cohen, in fact, leaked the tape, he'd have a real problem because the judge has ruled -- the judge who was appointed -- the former judge has ruled that it was privileged. as far as the smoking gun of collusion, it's a wonderful smoking gun. the problem is there is no such crime as collusion. even if the president colluded with the russians, and even if he knowingly went to the meeting -- no evidence of this -- hoping to get material that had already been acquired by the russians that was dirt on hillary clinton, that would be as constitutionally privileged as "the new york times" going to a meeting and getting material from the pentagon papers, from snowden, from manning. you're entitled to use under the first amendment material that has already been obtained. what makes it a crime is if you tell one of the sources to go and do something illegal, hack the democratic national committee. so, as i argue in my book, we have to make a sharp distinction between political sins and actual crimes. and collusion is not a crime. and the case for obstruction of justice based on tweets and public statements is about as weak a case as i have ever seen laid out by "the new york times." >> we want to just point out to our viewers that you just watched the president get onto marine one off of air force one at joint base andrews. he is returning from a weekend at bedminster. we'll keep an eye on all that and ski if he takes questions for press waiting for him at the white house. ken vogel, your response to what mr. dershowitz was saying. >> yes, if you think that is a violation of campaign finance violation, knowledge of campaign finance violation, and an effort to cover that up by mischaracterizing and miss reporting on a federal election commission, filing that there was something of value, sought or received, from a foreign power. >> okay. now that's a good question. 9 answer is that something of value is first amendment protected information. then the campaign finance law has to be construed as it was intended, to cover money and other material payments. but if it were construed to cover information to be used in a campaign, it would violate the first amendment. >> a foreign power spent money to develop and then provide that was not public information. >> i don't understand that. what money -- >> that's what i mean. you don't think that russia spent money to try to develop this case against bill broaderror the zip brothers or whoever this information? >> don't you think the people from wikileaks and the people from manning and don't you think they spent money and the pentagon papers? it costs money to get information. >> that was not provided to the campaign. that was provided directly to the campaign. >> if you're trying to target a person, you can stretch the law that way. but that's not the way civil liberties lawyers should approach a problem of criminal law. the concept of it requires that you define the criminal law in the narrowest possible way, not the broadest possible way. you don't search for skriecrime. show me the man and i'll find you the crime. you have to find crimes that are obvious and apparent, not based on an accordion-like stretching of the laws. that's what worries me as a civil libertarian. i'd make the same arguments if hillary clinton were charged with obstruction and the tapes and iphone, all of that. it's the same argument. >> paul butler, what do you think? >> if donald trump knew in advance about this meeting where allegedly the russians were going to provide dirt on hillary, three other crimes in addition to the campaign finance ones, obstruction of justice because he dictated a memo about this meeting are that was a lie. it was obviously an intent to throw people off, including the prosecutors. if he knew that the dirt was coming from hacked e-mail, he would also be guilty of computer fraud under federal laws. >> no. no. no. >> conspiracy to defraud the united states. >> none of that is true. >> jared kushner -- jared kushner said under oath in congress that the president did not know about this meeting. so what mueller does with that is possibly -- >> i'm not sure kushner was under oath. >> i'm sorry, don junior. >> lying to congress is a crime. >> don junior testified under oath the president did not know about this meeting. what mueller might do is charge don junior with perjury and use that to squeeze president trump, possibly to get him to resign or to agree not to run for reelection in exchange for the prosecutor going easy on his son don junior. >> we're going to put pause -- hang on, i'm sorry. >> i'm very proud of that. >> everyone is trying to jump in. we're going to push pause on this conversation briefly. everyone is going to stay put. manafort's trial is set to begin tuesday. it a full preview as they name 35 witnesses who could be called on to testify including his former deputy rick gates who has already pleaded guilty to fraud. and later our series on women to washington. my interview with katie and days later was critically injured in a crash with a drunk driver. i join her as she returned to the campaign trail. alright guys let's go! let's do this directions to the greek theater (beep) ♪can i get a connection? ♪can i get can i get a connection?♪ ♪can i get a connection? gathered here are the world's finest insurance experts. rodney -- mastermind of discounts like safe driver, paperless. the list goes on. how about a discount for long lists? gold. mara, you save our customers hundreds for switching almost effortlessly. it's a gift. and jamie. -present. -together we are unstoppable. so, what are we gonna do? ♪ insurance. that's kind of what we do here. copd makes it hard to breathe. so to breathe better, i go with anoro. ♪ go your own way copd tries to say, "go this way." i say, "i'll go my own way, with anoro." ♪ go your own way once-daily anoro contains two medicines called bronchodilators that work together to 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about the meeting. that doesn't mean that a crime begins and ends there. you have to look at everything that came before it and everything that came after it. remember, after that meeting is when trump gave that speech, calling on the russians to get more of hillary clinton's e-mails, and they actually did, we know, go in then and start fishing into her campaign directly. >> basically the day of, day after. >> yes. >> let me answer that, please. >> you can't look at it in isolation. >> mr. dershowitz? >> let me answer that, please. you are implying in a kind of mccarthy-ite way that i am somehow defending trump and that i am making his case. shame on you. i am making a civil liberties case. i am not part of the trump defense team and don't you dare accuse me of doing that. i am not making a case for anybody. i would be making the identical case if hillary clinton had been elected and they were trying to stretch the law the way all four of you are trying to stretch the law to target somebody who you disapprove of. i am the only person on the show who is trying to defend civil liberties. give me at least an opportunity to make that case and don't accuse me of making a case for somebody i'm not making ats case for. >> i'm responding to what you're saying. >> i am not responsible for what trump said earlier >> you are defending him, sir. and to your point, the president's story has changed repeatedly. >> i am not defending him. i am defending civil liberties and a narrow construction -- >> you're defending him in the name of civil liberties. >> i am defending the concept of lenny at this. i have to tell you, if the evidence were to point to crime, whether it be of hillary clinton or donald trump of or of you i am going to make that case. but i am not going to make the law stretch for an individual who is very unpopular. that's my view. get it clear. >> we are going to press because on this conversation because we want to turn to the trial of paul manafort which is set to begin tuesday in alexandra, virginia. peshl counsel robert mueller's team has named 35 witnesses that may be called by prosecutors to testify in court. among them former deputy rick gates who plead guilty to financial fraud and lying to investigators. also named is former chief strategist for bernie sanders 2016 presidential run, tad devine who helped manafort elect strong man victoriktor. 35 witnesses are set to testify. ken vogel, as we look at the layout, this is another instance where the president has rewritten history, essentially argued that manafort who was his campaign chairman, ran his national convention, was merely a peon who wasn't all that important, but he is in fact now on trial. and because he has taken to this point deciding not to plead, we're going to get a lot of information publicly. >> that's right. although the prosecutors will be walking a fine line here. there's already been some tension where the judge has seemed to come down on the side of the defense, suggesting that taking their side and their argument that the prosecution was using this to try to get into subjects like the trump campaign, like this alleged collusion with russia when, in fact, the charges that are actually at issue here relate to work that paul manafort did in ukraine on behalf of this politician, victor yanakovich and his subsequent successor party. it was, in fact, a russia-aligned party, but very different and, in fact, i would point out that it did reach all the way up, this work reach all the way up to almost the very beginning of the u.s. presidential campaign in 2016. so, you can see why the line might blur, but manafort's supporters and his lawyers argue that that work and that the effort to hide the alleged effort to hide the money that was made, the millions, tens of millions of dollars that were made from that work have nothing to do with his work on the u.s. presidential campaign. >> paul butler, it seems pretty clear in this case prosecutors have been trying to get manafort to basically tell them what he knows. they didn't necessarily want to get to this point, but manafort has dug in, perhaps holding out for a pardon. we don't know. but as ken points out, these charges are different from a potential case of collusion or obstruction on the president's part. >> they have very little to do with mueller's mandate, which is to investigate conspiracy to defraud the united states, which is the criminal version of collusion and obstruction of justice. so what manafort is charged with are financial crimes relating to his own business. it's clear, though, based on the way mueller is prosecuting this case, with his top prosecutors on the case, that he thinks that manafort has information that's relevant to his investigation, and so he's charged him with failing to register, which first of all, is very rarely prosecuted, but relatively easy to prove. and so a question is why has manafort not pled guilty. he's 69 years old, he's looking at at least 15 years in prison. the answer, i think, is, a, he's either innocent, or b, he's more afraid of the russians than he is of mueller. but there is still an opportunity. i'm sure mimi will agree. i've prosecuted many people who didn't plead guilty until the day of trial. >> he's got two opportunities because this is just the first trial. and then the second one coming up in d.c. in the d.c. circuit in october. and that will be the one that gets a little bit closer to some of these issues, including foreign agents registration act alleged violations. >> ken vogel, paul butler, mimi rocca, thank you for our lively conversation. next i'm joined by ken stein, maria teresa kumar. first, president trump's $12 billion bailout for the farm industry being hit hard by tariffs. apparently isn't the answer some gop lawmakers were looking for. we're back after this. >> we want trade, not aid. >> my farmers don't want aid, not trade. >> we want trade, not aid. >> give me trade, not aid. so you have, your headphones, chair, welcome to holiday inn! thank you! ♪ ♪ wait, i have something for you! every stay is a special stay at holiday inn. save up to 15% when you book early at hollidayinn.com could help them save money on car insurance? yea,that and homeowners, renters, motorcycle and boat insurance. huh.that's nice. what happens when you catch a fish? gecko: whoa. geico. more than just car insurance. see how much you could save at geico.com. i'm ok! we have one to two fires a day and when you respond together and you put your lives on the line, you do have to surround yourself with experts. and for us the expert in gas and electric is pg&e. we run about 2,500/2,800 fire calls a year and on almost every one of those calls pg&e is responding to that call as well. and so when we show up to a fire and pg&e shows up with us it makes a tremendous team during a moment of crisis. i rely on them, the firefighters in this department rely on them, and so we have to practice 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mexico, the european union and south korea are preparing to meet next week to discuss a response to the president's threats to impose new tariffs on automobiles and car parts. and as soon as september, farmers will be getting a $12 billion aid package designed to help them bounce back as a result of aggressive tariff policies. for more on all of this, i want to bring in chairman and chief strategist for priorities usa also former political director for hillary clinton, guy cecil. it and in los angeles nbc news correspondent jo ling kent. jo, i want to start with you just to take a look at the policies here and to help explain why it is that these things are getting passed along. how much are everyday consumers start to feel these tariffs in their own pocketbooks? when we saw the last quarter had higher growth, the president's been tweeting about the economy, experts saying, look, it's because we're about to turn around and fueel the economic impact of this. >> that was because of soybean applications that happened last quarter. what we can expect going forward is kind of a mixed reaction. we've been out reporting all across the country looking at the different impacts from soybeans to aluminum, to cars, even lobsters vaughn hillyard has reported on. it remains to be seen what the actual impact will be. right now there is a lot of concern about how the increased costs will actually be passed down. but some of these manufacturers and some of these farmers are are also saying they are willing to take this and stomach this because they do believe in a larger picture that would be positive for the overall economy, so it really depends on who you ask here. certainly big companies like harley davidson starting to make some pretty big changes to their production plans. >> all right. guys, we'll talk about the politics of this. there have been a lot of democrats who have seen this as a potential boon for their, excuse me, congressional campaigns whether for house or for senate. do you think that independent voters on the ground will be willing to blame the president for this? we've talked to an awful will the of supporters. jo mentioned vaughn hillyard who has been doing a lot of reporting for us. while this may be difficult for me, i think the president is trying to do the right thing. >> i think they're going to have problems. you don't have to take my word for it. look how republicans are reacting to this. republicans in iowa, in kansas, in places where -- >> do you think they're doing that because they think they're going to lose elections? >> yes. >> or because they oppose -- >> i think politicians raise alarm bells because they think things are happening that are going to cost them elections. i think two things are happening. one is you have the huge tax cuts that were given to corporations. none of those benefits were passed down to taxpayers. none of them were passed down to employees. they were passed to stock buy backs. now you have tariffs and where are all the costs being passed to? consumers. so i think you have democrats and republicans on the hill and back in their districts who are hearing in town halls, hearing on the phones that these are bringing real problems to american consumers, to farmers, to american companies. and i think ultimately they are going to pay a price at the ballot box. it's another example of the president saying one thing about caring about the middle class and the working class, and about the midwest, and doing something entirely different to throw the economy into shambles. >> jo ling kent, i think the president's team would likely respond to what guy just said by saying, well, the president does care about these farmers. he's giving them a $12 billion aid package to try to tide things over while this kind of long-term policy plays out. how significant is $12 billion in the scheme of things? and also, i mean, this only affects certain producers. there are others who are not going to be receiving this aid package, but who are still hit by these tariffs. >> the critics say it is a band aid and it may not have been needed at the beginning had these tariffs not been put into place. but what we expect to see for the consumer, over the next couple of months, is exactly how that cost is passed down because when you do have companies like coca-cola and others starting to make price decisions based off of decisions now with the current administration and their current policies, that will eventually be passed down to consumers over the next, say, three to six months or even a year or so. that's the concern that, say, the average walmart shopper is going to have going forward, how much of that is going to be passed down and then how much of it will actually impact me. because if the attitude of the company that's producing the stuff that you're buying is getting jittery, if that anxiety goes up, that means prices will rise because they're going to be girding for the worst case scenario. >> guy cecil, from the kind of -- the big picture version of this, if everyone is looking at the worst case scenario as jo said, consumers are getting nervous, companies are getting nervous and there is a real reckoning over this in the congress, say, democrats have not exactly been on the opposite side of this issue in every case. if you talk to, say, brown in ohio, he's not going to be out there saying these tariffs that the president has implemented on steel and aluminum are a bad thing. is that going to change? >> i think there's two things. one, just on your previous point, the idea that a septigenari septigenarian waving a can of coke shows how ill prepared they are to push back on what are some real legitimate questions to pass down. >> this is a classic moment on television. >> yes. >> but fair. >> look, there are always differences on both sides of this issue, but i don't think you will find a democrat that thinks the solution to building a robust economy is providing endless amounts of aid to any community while not dealing with the underlying issues at stake, right? that's the primary issue, that there is no cohesive policy on the part of this administration. when you have sherrod brown on, he can layout what he believes are the key points of a fair trade agreement regardless of what that agreement is. when you talk to anyone in this administration, they run from point to point, argument to argument. they create problems in order to solve them. i mean, just look at the -- >> i'm still not hearing you say democrats on the whole think these tariffs on the whole are a bad idea. >> i think they think it is a bad idea. >> status update. social media. we're back after this. you've got a good record and liberty mutual won't hold a grudge by raising your rates over one mistake. you hear that, karen? liberty mutual doesn't hold grudges... how mature of them. for drivers with accident forgiveness liberty mutual won't raise their rates because of 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(vo) progress is in the pursuit. audi will cover your first month's lease payment on select models during summer of audi sales event. on wednesday the senate intelligence committee is going to hold public hearings on how foreign influences are exploiting social media platforms. it comes as facebook tries to recover from a number of scandals involving user privacy from cambridge analytica's improper use of data affecting 87 million profiles to russian operatives alleged use of the site to influence the presidential race. and during a call with reporters, facebook declined three times to answer whether there are any current attempts to influence the 2018 midterm elections. and this week, facebook saw its stock plummet by nearly $120 billion, the largest drop in value in wall street history. on friday, twitter stock slid 12% after the social media platform announced that monthly active users have fallen by 1 million since last quarter. joining me now to break all of this down is media reporter for axios sarah fisher. we still have with us jo ling kent and guy cecil. sarah, let me start with you here. what do you attribute what happened with facebook to? the incredible drop in value, is it simply because the users are down, is it concerns about privacy, why? >> it's a bunch of those types of things. definitely privacy is playing into some of its expenditures. it has to hire more people to oversee programs. really what analyst wills tell you it shows they are hitting a growth wall when it comes to advertising. facebook warned investors it would slow in the news feed. we are seeing it happened. and investors know that, which is why the stock plummeted in response. >> jo ling kent, you were on that call, and i think it was -- you may have asked -- walk us through, feel free to explain it, but you were listening to facebook trying to get answers from them about what is actually happening in the 2018 mid terms. sounds like you couldn't come up with anything. >> yeah, reporters asked multiple times and i was on the call, whether or not there is currently any attempts to meddle or influence the 2018 midterm elections, be it from the russians or any other state or nonstate entities. and the answer was basically a nonresponse. we do know that in the past mark zuckerberg, founder and ceo of facebook, has said, look, it's probably happening, but there's been no definitive evidence or desire to share that with journalists so far. but what we have been seeing is an ongoing -- two things people should know about. first, an ongoing disinformation campaign even happening within the u.s. we're talking about fake profile pages, tons of disinformation and stuff being shared through the algorithm. so facebook is now responding to that saying they are going to downgrade that ability to share that information, but the concern is how much does that affect elections as well. and the other issue, of course, is the growth. what we're planning to see or expect to see is more monetization of facebook or excuse me, instagram and what's app. those are two apps that have continued to grow as facebook, the main platform, continues to kind of grow a little bit more slowly. >> i want to read you this quote from alex who is the outgoing chief security officer at facebook. he says, quote, we need to listen to people including internally when they tell us a feature is creepy or point out a negative impact we are having in the world. we need to dee prioritize short-term growth and revenue and explain to wall street why that's okay. we need to be willing to pick sides when there are clear moral or humanitarian issues. and we need to be open, honest and transparent about our challenges and what we are doing to fix them. guy cecil, do you think mark zuckerberg is living up to that goal? >> no, and i think the opaque nature with which facebook approaches these things is problematic and it reveals the fact if we expect them to regulate themselves and to police themselves, it's simply not going to work. just this week, we have seen a number of reports about fashion book very slowly failing to identify alex jones and info wars as an acceptable user on their platform. these are the same people that suggest that sandy hook was a hoax. that the democrats are out to literally kill millions of mr americans. that pedalled pizza gate. this represents a real problem on their part. how do you police, judge, incorporate political activity, whether it's from russia, which they failed to identify as a problem in this election, or if it's coming from within our own country. and i think they have a lot of room to grow and improve. they say they are trying. there are hints that they are trying. i don't think it's enough. >> jo ling kent, what's your -- you've been reporting on zuckerberg and facebook quite deeply for many months now. do you think that -- i also listened to an interview he did with cara swisher where they ended up discussing people who deny the holocaust on facebook and their position really seems to be that all of this kind of speech is free speech and it's not their role to police it. is that something that you think is going to change or not? >> the spirit of it coming from zuckerberg at least doesn't appear like it's going to change any time soon. there has been a lot of pressure including from us journalists and others to really talk about the level transparency and the facebook, it likes it or not, a distributor of a lot of information in a very powerful way. and so zuckerberg has to take a closer look. right now, though, there doesn't seem to be much financial incentive for him to do so because even though the rate of users that are logging onto the platform continues to slow down, there is still quite a bit of growth there. they are still making money hand over fist right now. so for him to actually do that -- oh, and by the way, he still controls the board of directors. so him leaving isn't exactly a threat either. so looking at what should actually happen, the alex jones situation in info wars, if those two entities are actually banned from facebook, which they may be soon due to a lot of public pressure, that may set a new standard. but that's one particular case, kasie. >> sarah, what's your reporting say about this info wars case specifically, to guy's point? a lot of inflammatory material coming from there. >> sources will say that mark zuckerberg views all these problems as being more so p.r. problems, necessarily foundational problems to the platform. meaning he almost wants to take engineering like rational approaches to every single one of these problems. how can we address the widest use case or good use as opposed to penalizing someone for censorship. what we're hearing is this is actually kay ought for for some people within facebook. p.r. people say we can't have this open view on free speech if we want to maintain a business. we're going to get nailed if we don't do something. but from the top down, there is that desire to preserve that free speech base at facebook. >> sarah fisher, jo ling kent, thank you so much for your insights, guys, really appreciate it. when we return on "kasie d.c.," we continue our series, women to washington a candidate whose campaign nearly came to a sudden and tragic end. >> it's -- i sit back and i'm four plus weeks out and every friday night at 9:20 since then, i hold my breath and i say a prayer because i shouldn't be here. >> katie errington shocked the political world beating mark sanford in the republican primary only to be critically injured with her best friend days later. we join her as she returns to the campaign trail. back after this. i didn't believe it. again. ♪ ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth? 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>> reporter: it should have been a triumphant summer for katie arrington. >> yes, yes. >> reporter: for her stunning upset victory over congressman mark sanford in the republican primary. >> we are the party of president donald j. trump. >> reporter: but just two weeks later -- >> one person is dead following a two-car crash on highway 17 south. >> reporter: arrington and a friend were hit head-on. critically injured. >> they were on the wrong side of the highway and hit someone completely head-on, going 60 mile the per hour. they need an ambulance out here as soon as possible. >> when i undid my seat belt, my hand looked like i did it in a bucket of blood. >> reporter: the other driver died, her blood alcohol twice the legal limit. arrington says she remembers everything. >> i was dying. and i went in and they were trying to put the oxygen mask in, i could taste the blood coming out of my mouth. they said can you take a deep breath? i said, no. dr. erickson came, his face, he said -- i said please don't let me die today. he said i have no intentions of that. >> reporter: she was on a ventilator, suffered broken ribs, had part of her colon and small intestine. four weeks later -- >> i freaking love him. >> reporter: dr. erickson treated her the night of the crash. >> how bad was it? >> pretty bad. pretty bad. miss arrington was without a doubt bleeding to death. >> your recovery has to be physical but also emotional. >> survivors guilt and ptsd are real, and it's hard not to think i'm the one who's out of the hospital, i'm the one who's alive. and why. that's been really hard for me. >> reporter: she has months of rehab ahead, but that hasn't kept her off the campaign trail. >> hello, everybody. how are you doing? don't mind these guys. >> reporter: arrington beat sanford in the primary by defending the president. >> president trump came out and gave a voice to us, the deplorab deplorables. i'm a deplorable. >> reporter: she still is even as she's facing a general election. backing the president up on tariffs. >> president trump wrote a book, i can't remember when "the art of the deal" was written. he's the master negotiator. i give him a lot of credit. >> reporter: looking past his personal life. does it bother you that the president is alleged to have an affair with a playboy playmate? >> honestly, you give me one -- i don't -- i'm not here to judge anybody. i'm not jesus christ. >> reporter: and dismissing russian meddling. our entire intelligence community essentially said that the russian government intentionally tried to interfoointerfere in our election. by hacking and other cyber techniques. do you believe that happened or not? >> i believe every nation that has the capability tries to do things to each other without a doubt. >> the i.c. said specifically the russians. you don't think the russians did anything worse or more nefarious than any other nation? >> i think china was way worse than anything russia could have or did. >> reporter: defenses that might have worked in the primarytough general election this fall. that was katie arrington and our extended conversation, as you can see, guy, in the wake of what happened, she's as behind president trump as ever facing down a democrat in the general election, joe cunningham. obviously ha happen lly what ha was difficult. changes the dynamics of the race. this is a district that was not as wide a margin as you might expect. >> first of all, it goes without saying if you're a democrat or republican, you're grateful that she survived the crash. >> of course. >> and that's an incredibly difficult challenge to be running for the office in that situation. it seems like the campaign is back in swing. judging from the twitter accounts of the two candidates. there are some real differences. youtariffs. last month two republican coastal mayors decided to endorse joe cunningham because of her somewhat wishy-washy opinion about oil drilling which in that district is a pretty important thing. >> right. she actually did -- in our interview, she did walk it back and we're going to make sure our viewers can watch that on twitter. it's an extended exchange. she did say finally i'm opposed to oil drilling, but you're right, that's not what she said previously. >> i always find it interesting with a lot of republicans with who are very definitive about lot of things particularly when it comes to the democrats but when it comes to things like russia, what she wouldn't actually get the words out of her mouth or when itle comes t things that are harmful to district but important to republican ideology, all of a sudden they become different, they don't cast judgment. they don't cause blame. they become clearer in their point of view. the fact of the matter is, her record leaves a lot to desire for working people in that district. joe quill make will make it a m competitive district. >> you think he's the nominee? >> yes. on this map, this environment, we're going to find a lot of districts become competitive in october that we weren't expecting. i think that could be one of them. >> guy cecil, thank you for your insights tonight. really appreciate it. we continue, i'm joined on set by senator chris van hollen. we're going to talk about the slow process of reunifying my children separated from their parentses th parents that has drug on and on. plus the kasie dvr is ahead. in its class, according to alg. better than rav4. better than grand cherokee. better than edge. make every adventure a happy one with subaru outback. get 0% apr financing on the 2018 subaru outback.