Transcripts For MSNBCW Morning Joe 20170217

Think of Nuclear Weapons of other things. The greatest thing i could do is shoot that ship out of the out of the water. Hillary clinton made the stupid black button that made us all look like a bunch of jerks . They are a very powerful Nuclear Country and so are they. Ive been briefed as Howard Cosell said. I love this. Im having a good time doing it. The public doesnt believe us any more . Willie happy friday. Willie, as we were walking in, you know what would have been really funny . That would have been a really funny hour or so of television if you werent president of the United States. Yeah. That was right off the campaign trail, call it summer of 2015. A man in his element saying whatever crossed his mind, throwing out things that were verifiably false and the key line we played at the end, i love this. Im having a good time. He did not want that press conference to end. He felt like he was back. He had watched other people try to defend him for a month, Kellyanne Conway, sean spicer, steven miller. It wasnt working. He wanted to put himself out front and center and speak for himself and if the idea was to convey there is no chaos in the white house, im not quite sure it had that effect easement it was one of the most chaotic press conferences that anybody has ever seen. We have Mike Barnicle bus. Bus and mark halpern. Before we pick out all of the falsehoods, a gut check. He may only be 39 in the poll, according to the pugh poll and 40 in gallup and the hardcore supporters i talked to yesterday and all of my friends they were in front of the tv set and they were laughing. They werent laughing at donald they were laughing athemedia. So hes going to have his 37, 38 hardcore support, mike, and hes playing to his crowd. And you know what . It is a great 38 strategy for him. No doubt about that, joe. No doubt about that. The base of his support, whether its 35 , 40 , they are not going anywhere. The first 30 minutes of that press conference is watching a president of the United States who has lost his grip on reality. It was as if he performed yesterday for himself because he needed to perform like that to convince himself that he was president. Because we have said this before, we will say it again, mark halpern, he has absolutely nobody inside that white house. Clearly. That will walk up to him and will tell him the truth. And so he lives in an alternate reality. He says things that are verifiably false and called out on it yesterday by Peter Alexander who we have with us, he will say that was just information i was given. No, that is the information he says. He just talks and makes up things and repeats them until he believes them. What is the impact of yesterday . The impact of yesterday, from my take, and id love to hear what you think, is we are going to talk to kasie hunt later on. Kasie nt and everybody i a lot of republican senators and congressmen, were scared to death by what they saw and more than one said, this just isnt going to last long because he just doesnt have control of reality. And you actually saw something extraordinary after the press conference. A guy who was given the opportunity to have the most powerful job in National Security said, no, thanks. Saw that press conference. No, thanks. If you look at the arc of American History and the presidency and you look at the arc of Donald Trumps life that press conference was totally shocking and totally unsurprising. Yeah. Exactly. Its going into a time capsule. If trump is a successful president that is a time capsule this is what he was about and what he was like. If its a failure, its going in a time capsule. If you watch the campaign, not one thing he said yesterday, lies, exaggerations and bullying and bragging and not one of those things was shocking. Its only shocking now because he has a president ial seal. In his own party. Hed like some democrats but at least in his own party to be inspired by him. Not one republican outside of his core of kourptersupporters anythingut freaked out about that. We have to get to that which is massive in itself but headlines that broke right after as well. Sort of the reaction almost. We want to gets to Peter Alexander as well. The. This morning did Michael Flynn mislead the fbi . The Washington Post reporting that trumps former National Security adviser denied to fbi agents during an interview last month that he had discussed u. S. Sanctions against russia with their ambassador before the president was sworn in. The paper cites current and former u. S. Officials who says that contradict intercepted communications. Lying to the fbi is a felony offense but several officials said its unclear whether prosecutors would attempt to bring a case, in part, because flynn may parse the definition of the word sanctions. A spokesman for flynn said he had no response. Here is President Trump speaking yesterday about flynns departure. Michael flynn is a fine person and i asked for his resignation. He respectfully gave it. He is a man who there was a certain amount of information given to Vice President pence who is with us today, and i was not happy with the way that information was given. Did you direct mike flynn to discuss sanctions with the Russian Ambassador . No, i didnt. Prior to your inauguration . No, i didnt. Excuse me. I fired him because of what ed to mike pence, very simple. Mike was doing his job. He was calling countries and his counrpart. So it certainly would have been okay with me if he did it. I would have directed him to do it if i thought he wasnt doing it. I didnt direct him, but i would have directed him because thats his job. Im wondering what, like, the intercadre is thinking back stage. Are they excited or wringing their hands because they know there is an unraveling happening . I would be willing to bet you some amount of money that mr. Bannon and jared kushner, his soninlaw, thought that was a wonderful performance yesterday. That is correct. That that is donald trump. Trump being trump. They are suspended from reality which is why donald trump is suspended from reality because the people closest to him think that he is lie all he wants and the people love it. It was hard to count the lies. People love it. You talked to several people yesterday in washington, as did i, as did mark and willie. Yeah. The flynn story, whether what Michael Flynn did or may not have done, we dont know yet. That is now far down the bar in terms of important stories. The number one story is the stability of the president of the United States. And his top pick for National Security adviser saying no, thanks, i dont want the job publicly . How does that happen . His performance yesterday is done without a real crisis on the front burner. What happens when there is a real crisis . You know what is interesting, mika . Youre right. The man that he selected to be his National Security adviser said no. That is shocking. This is a welloiled machine . Its not. This is a welloiled machine . And what makes it especially a junk yard sanford and son truck going toward the cliff is the fact that they offered a job to someone and they didnt know the answer. You would always say perry mason would never ask a question he didnt know the answer to . Well, if that is the truth in the courtroom, the truth for a president ial office, willie, is you unless it is amateur hour of the first degree, you never offer a job and give the person a chance to say let me think about it. Right. We dont even do that around here. If we say would you like working here, they say let us think about it, you say, you already did and thank you and we move on to the next candidate. They let a guy keep them twisting in the wind and then at this time of crisis. After that crazy press conference going, hes too unstable im not going to do it. Makes him look terrible and they may have thought they knew the answer and he may have watched that News Conference and said i dont want to walk into that. This is Kellyanne Conway yesterday said after the press conference, she had she reminded everyone j he became president and speaking his mind and taking his case to the american people. That was the reaction from the front row. I wanted real reaction. The truth easement good luck. At the center of the nmike flynn story, flynn was doing his job i fired him because he didnt tell his truth to Vice President mike pence. Donald trump knew the truth and everybody in the white house knew the truth, why didnt they tell mike pence the truth when he went on face the nation . He said i was upset he didnt tell the truth, that flynn didnt tell pence the truth. No one in the white house told pence the truth either. Trump denied in that anyone from his campaign had contact with russian officials, quote, to the best of my knowledge. You know, you can talk you will you want about russia which is all, you know, fake news fabricated deal to make up for the loss of the democrats and press plays right into it. In fact, i saw a couple of of the people that was supposedly involved with all of this, they knew nothing about it and werent in russia and never made a phone call to russia and never received a phone call. Its all fake news. When i was called out on mexico, i was shocked, because all of this incredible phone equipment. When i was called out on mexico, honestly, i was really, really surprised. Same thing with australia. I said, thats terrible that it was leaked. But it wasnt that important. But then i said to myself, what happens when with im dealing with the problem of north korea . What happens when im dealing with the problems in the middle east . Are you folks going to be reporting all of that ry,ery confidential information . I didnt do anythingor russia. Ive done nothing for russia. Hillary clinton gave them 20 of our uranium. She did a reset with the stupid plastic button that made us all look like a bunch of jerks here. Here, take a look. He looked at her, what the hell is she doing . Remember i said reset . If i do that, oh, im a bad guy. Hillary clinton may have used that stupid plastic button and i agree it was a stupid plastic button, it was embarrassing, but she never accused american heroes that fought in iraq of being killers when trying to defend vladimir putin, which is exactly what donald trump said. He said, oh, yeah, we killed a lot of people too. You remember the walker in iraq . So, i mean, yes. Hillary clinton screwed up and but, again, you look at that press conference and he is wondering about the leaking. There werent these leaks inside the bush white house. There really werent these likes inside the Clinton White house to this degree. You could have calls with foreign leaders, but once again, this points to the need of giving Reince Priebus complete control or finding a chief of staff that he feels like has complete control, because say, josh bolton was chief of staff and there were two of these leaks, he would call everybody in and say, listen. If that happens again, everybody around this table is fired. Everybody. And he would. Hell, that guy came in and two weeks later, you had rumsfeld fired. You had i mean, you could go down the list of he went in and he cleaned the place up. When leaks happen, you know, trump is not going to be able to figure it out because he is at war with everybody. When youre i keep saying this. How stupid do you have to be . If youre at war with everybody, if youre at war with the intel agencies, if youre at war with the state department, if youre at war with the d. O. D. And if youre at war with everybody, everybody is going to come at you. You can be on populist that wants to change washington and still develop relationships with all of these institutions. He has not. And does not seem to have asked himself why are these leaks happening and what is the motivation of the people . For a lot of them, its not political. Its not personal. It is because they are worried about what is happening and trying to get the word out. He and the people have to recognize this will not stop. Even as the Obama Administration fades, this will not stop. He wants change. If he really wants to make intelligence stronger, if he really wants to change relationships with other countries, he need to work with the existing bureaucracy or hell lose. When Newt Gingrich who had a similar temperamental approach to speaker of the house and had to dole with something everything day, it wasnt a coincide that Newt Gingrich game after some of us that, suddenly, every day a different story was in the new york city. Every day, there was a different story in the Washington Post. It just nicked and nicked and bled him. Finally, it was very easy to run him out of town. What do you suppose they were thinking watching this performance yesterday in places like riyadh and london . What were they thinking . A tale of two press conferences. In bond, they were extraordinarily nervous. In birmingham, they liked it. In riyadh, they were very nervous. In raleigh, north carolina, a lot of people were cheering at it, say, way to give it to the press way to go so, again, lets not pretend that his 38 . Its there. Didnt love him. He is horrifying the rest of the globe. At the end of the day this will bring him down if he continues doing this. But, for now, he has nobody around him that will tell him the truth. Nobody. Let me underline this. He has nobody around him who will tell him the truth. And so he can lie all he wants to about the Electoral College and everybody goes, great job, boss. By the way, willie, who else was on the front row . Little miller. The 31yearold, who actually went on all of the sunday shows, lied through his teeth about the 3 million illegal votes and then he had donald trump say, great job. Donald trump rewarded his lying. Donald trump rewards kellyannes lying. So who is going to go to donald trump and say, hey, listen. You really are undercutting your credibility and catch up with you if you dont stop lying. Mike pence. Mike pence. Not happening. He is waiting to be president. I dont know. Hes got things to do. Another theme of that News Conference yesterday was how backward looking it was. We talked a lot about Hillary Clinton. He talked a lot about the election and how he won. Here is President Trump misstating the size of his Electoral College victory. I put it out before the american people. Got 306 Electoral College votes. I wasnt supposed to get 222. They said no way to get 222, 230 is impossible. 270, which you need, that was laughable. We got 306. I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan. You said today you had the biggest electoral margin since Ronald Reagan with 304, 306 electoral votes. In fact, president obama got 365 in 2008 and president obama 332 and george h. W. Bush 426 when he won as president. Why should Americans Trust you when youre misrepresenting information . I was just giving we had a very, very big margin. Reporter why into Americans Trust when you say the information youre providing is fake and i was provided that information. Actually, ive seen that information around. And joining us now from the white house the man on the end of that exchange, Nbc News National Correspondent Peter Alexander. Good morning. You were on the front page, sir, of the New York Times in a large photo with your exchange with donald trump with the front row of the Trump Administration sort of glaring back at you at what you asked. Talk a little bit, peter, about that moment. Reporter i think the bottom line is what we were trying to get across in that simple moment was this issue of trust that really goes to the heart of the credibility of this president. The point that you want to make and im not sure if it came out as clearly as i wanted is why should Americans Trust you on big things if you cant even tell the truth on Little Things . And that seemed like a very fundamental little thing, the Electoral College victory, the margin, the numbers i provided him. He said he was talking about republicans. As you saw, i told him what george h. W. Bush got 426 when he won as president. And it was sort of one of those rare opportunities where youre able to fact check the president in realtime but i think it spoke to a larger frustration, not among reporters, but really among americans. I heard fromrump supporters, individuals i met when i was on the campaign with donald trump from as far away as iowa in the early days of the campaign, who told me then as they tell me now, they love all things about donald trump, but they wish he would cut out this sort of stuff. They said just stick to the facts we like you, we like what you stand for and like what youre doing, but why are you making up things . I think that was sort of the bottom line of a lot of frustration the americans, republicans and democrats, shared, but it really was sort of a unique moment there. Peter, its very interesting saw that. Ive been calling Trump Supporters from the first week when almost all of the coverage has been negative for good reason. And ive been asking after the e. O. And after one mistake after another that he has made inside of there, i said, are you with trump . Are you with trump . Ive reported on the show every week. We love he is giving it to the press and love he is giving it to congress and love all of that stuff. Im starting to hear now three and a half weeks in what youre saying, which is im asking are you still excited . That is my first question. Now its kind of like, well, you know . Maybe im 4 out of a 5 . I really like what he is trying to do and i like that he is shaking things up. I just wish he would stop with they call them distractions. They dont call them lies. I just wish he would stop with all of the distractions and i had one guy i talked about the other day, he said i just with wish he would shut up and work like that old frank zappa album, shut up and play. People want him toi shut up and play. Do his work. They seem to like the agenda a lot and same with the guys on the hill and the women on the hill, cant he just be quiet and push regulatory reform, tax reform . Education reform . Thats what we are here. I think that is exactly right. Thats what we hears well. I think mark halpern it on the head and we were on the campaign a lot. This was equal part shocking and totally unsurprising if you saw the way donald trump conducted himself over the course of the campaign but one of our colleagues described it perfectly. It was sort of the verbal equivalent of a tweet storm. We watched in realtime over the course of what was a free wheeling jaw dropping 77minute News Conference. Donald trump, as he is. It was a unique peek into him not through twitter, but facetoface where youre really staring at him now as president. And i think it was as telling as anybody we have seen over the course of the last 18 months. The only way i i was watching it. Obviously, all of us were incredulous. You also could see please correct me if im wrong but he could never really go deep on a thought. He never actually takes it a step further on issues and policies. Everything is just a huge problem. But, mika and he cant, like, take it to the next level. He cant get his head around anything. I dont think he has the ability. The thing is so he throws out shiny objects and lies to distract us. He could have gone out yesterday with a script, with ten position papers and he could have gone out and he could have talked about Keystone Pipeline. Im talking to the unions. This is what we have decided. This is the schedule. This is when we are going to start building. We are working with this these u. S. Steel companies. We are moving forward. Im having a followup conversation. Yesterday, i spoke with the retailers and explaining what is he going to be doing. Let me continue, please. He said this is what we are going to do on education reform. I just spoke. I just got off the phone with Mitch Mcconnell and paul ryan, we are moving forward with i mean, he has so many things that he could talk about. He could talk about his good summit with justin trudeau. He could have talked about his very good weekend with the japanese Prime Minister. He could have talked about middle east peace. There were so many things that any other president that wasnt addicted to chaos, could have gone up and filled up an hour and a half worth of instead of me, me, my, my, im the greatest ever, no president ever. Come on, just be quiet look at fdr. Because right now, he is doing a lot of stuff by himself that he can do. Hes not going to do anything that fdr did or anything that gingrich even did in 95 if he doesnt shut up talking about himself and start working with other people on the hill. Now, see, youve put your finger, i think, on one of the ultimate puzzles of right now of donald trump. This afternoon, he will get on marine one on the south lawn of the white house and a fleet of marine one helicopters will take him to Andrews Air Force base where he will Board Air Force one. He is the president of the United States and he doesnt realize he is president. He doesnt behave like a president. Why. Peter, what he doesnt understand, he has been this kid from queens that moved into manhattan and has been scrapping every day of his life to get into newspapers. Because that has been his life. No one has told him, youre president of the United States. You could put out a wellconstructedentence once a day and you would be making all of the headlines you ever need to make. Reporter youre right. I tried to punctuate that very point at the end of my exchange that you just played. At the end of it President Trump looked at it, peter, at least youll agree it was a significant margin, it was a big margin. As i sat down, i said, youre the president. And i think that just speaks for itself. Right . This guy is in charge. If he chooses to do with this opportunity that so Many Americans have given him that americans of all sorts are now investing in him and hoping for the safety and security of their families and for the future of their own lives, that this guy is going to handle this office and this opportunity in a way that benefits everybody. I think he still has an opportunity before him but, yesterday, i think posed a lot of real challenges. If he wants to get his agenda through, if he actually wants to get things done and be the great president he believes he is already he is going to have to get help from congress. If you go up there and that press conference yesterday and you call Chuck Schumer a lightweight again you need him to get your Supreme Court pick through. You need him to get anything you want done. You cant just write executive orders for four or eight years and get your agenda. He has to see the field better and understand he needs some of these people he is insulting. Did you see that restraint he didnt call him a clown . Maybe is an upgrade from clown. The thing is, ari mabnuel talks about the management good. You have to be a great war time leader and at the end of the war you have to be a great peace time leader. He is still at war. As somebody else told me this past week, we have heard our entire lives about sore losers. This guy is the first sore winner we have ever seen. You know, at this point in everybodys presidency, they have reached out to the person who lost and they are working with them. Michael besh tweeted a picture yesterday and the picture had Dwight Eisenhower reaching you to who i didnt need. And they were trying to reunite the country. Here we are into the way of first month of Donald Trumps presidency and he still so insecure he cant accept the fact he is president of the United States. He is the 45th president of the United States and still being a sore winner and still nursing past wounds, and he cant just say, wait, i won. And move forward. He still is trashing Hillary Clinton. Its a problem. How sad. Its more than that. Peter, thank you very much. We have much more ahead this morning on the president s News Conference. We are going to bring in two other reporters who asked him questions. April ryan and julie pace. Kasie hunt will bring us the reaction from capitol hill. Youre watching morning joe. He is president. He should accept he is president. Enjoy it. Why do so many businesses rely on the u. S. Postal service . Because when they ship with us, their business becomes our business. Thats why we make more ecommerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country. Here, there, everywhere. United States Postal Service priority you a mihappy birthday, sweetie oh, millies. Trick or treat were so glad to have you here. 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Circuit has been overturned at a record number. [ boink ] construction of the Keystone Pipeline and Dakota Access pipelines. Thousands and thousands of jobs. [ boink ] you have a lower approval rate than congress. I think that is right. [ boink ] we couldnt show half of it but got some of in there. I liked the music. The music is soothing during Turbulent Times when the president spits out lie after lie and hes president. A song that the year that the beatles invaded america and had like all of those number one songs in 64. What a joke. Thats good stuff. Like the grammys, they dont get it right all the time. We are back in a moment with the post eugene robinson. We got the music. Should have won a grammy. 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Looks beautiful there, but under that peaceful, peaceful view. Turmoil. Turmoil. You would think i mean, i know in our circles, everybody was watching this News Conference and if you werent watching the News Conference, you texted someone who said turn it on. It was epic. Time stood still. Our entire newsroom. We were trying to have a meeting and kept rushing out because we kept hearing laugh sistter and screams and fright quite frankly. Kasie hunt on the hill. Can you imagine every Office Around the tv . She went around and asked women and congressmen their reactions to the trump News Conference. See if you can see the theme that developed among republicans versus the democrats who watched. What is your reaction, one word for the president s press Conference Today . I didnt get to see it. Did you see it either . No. One word reaction . Terrifying. Unfocused. I didnt see the press conference. Im sorry. Nonending. Any of those a committee hearing. Lacking. Unbelievable. Ive been in Committee Hearings all day. I didnt see it. I havent got to watch it. I was in a committee hearing. What is your one word reaction to the president s press conference . Prayer. Im not ducking it but ive heard its entertaining but havent seen it. What is one word reaction to the president s press conference . Im in the chair the past two hours so i didnt see it. Growth in tax reform and getting the economy going which is, obviously, more than one word. Well, so most democrats saw it and its interesting. They were so busy working hard. Freakish coincide. All of the republicans were in committee meetings, i guess by themselves. Alone. Alone, yeah. Alone with their boss. Lets bring in Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and associate editor of the Washington Post, eugene robinson. Kasie confirmed what i was hearing and what she heard from republicans off the camera was that they were terrified by what they saw. Republicans on the hill telling me, were telling kasie and telling anybody that would listened how terrified they were by Donald Trumps erratic performance. It was terrifying. And it went on and on and on. I had never seen anything like that. I know about you, but every once in a while, i said, this is the president of the United States . This is the president of the United States . This is you know . Just that phrase. Just kept coming back because its, at this point, unbelievable. I dont know where this goes from here, joe. Where does this go from here . He is who he is. He showed not the slightest inclination to change. And if this is a finetuned machine, you know, its one of those crash tests simulators, right . That is the kind of machine it is. Its just its just unbelievable. Ive never seen anything like that in my life. Our country is being tested in a way its never been tested before as far as the constitutional system goes. Its working. The courts are rising up and doing what James Madison and Alexander Hamilton and Andrew Jackson expected them to do. The press is working. Intelligence is working. The way the First Amendment is written for it to work. The intel communities are working the way we wanted to work but he doesnt listen. And so he is shocked. I thought it was very funny yesterday morning. He attacked im going after those dirty Rotten Scoundrels and three hours later, the Washington Post mike flynn lied to the fbi. You go after those dirty rotten leakers. Might not help out mike flynn too much. Could end up in jail. The quote for me of the week is Mitch Mcconnell saying to me in the interview, you know, there are some other people in washington, d. C. That are pretty good in politics too. Donald trump is going to find that out. And i know people dont like when i bring up barack obama. He came to washington thinking he was the only one who was pretty good in politics. And you asked democrats on capitol hill and the senate, mike, they told us all the time, he thought he invented politics. He thought he was smarter than everybody else. You ask foreign leaders they tell you all of the time, barack ama thght he was smarter than everybody in the room. Donaldrump in a much more erratic frightening way, has the same attitude. He thinks he is the smartest guy in the room. That never ends well. Another thing they had in common they both thought they would be the first one to change washington. We are going to come in and change the way business is done in this town and they learned very quickly in this case in the first four weeks, its not as easy as you think it is. Gene, you write in the Washington Post how could things get worse for trump . So, gene, what are the implication of that performance . We can say its crazy, unhinged, all over the place, he was counterfactual. What does it mean to have a president stand for 77 minutes and give a performance like he did yesterday . Well, ive heard earlier in the show, ive heard the word terrifying used. I think that is basically the impact. I mean, imagine watching this in berlin, imagine watching it in london, imagine watching it in paris. Imagine watching it in peoria, you know . You realize that this is the man in the most important and most powerful job on earth. And hes just at the beginning of his term and you try to project, try to imagine where we will be after four years of this, and its just its almost unthinkable really. And then you say, well, okay. At least i see a learning curve. Except i dont see a learning curve at all. Nobody sees a learning curve. Its as if he regresses at times but he never gets beyond the point that the minimal point where a president needs to be. Gene, somebody did like the press conference yesterday. Its important. The reviews are in. The reviews are in. Donald trump has tweeted it out. This is the only one you care about. This is his 38 . Read it. Im manicing the tweet trump desk here. Thank you all for the nice statements on the press conference yesterday. Rush limbaugh said one of the greatest ever. Fake media . Not happy. This is the sort of tunnel vision he has and maybe even some parts missing. He is 38 . Seriously. There is no humility. He has no curiosity and doesnt want to know about the issues. He doesnt attempt to even grasp them. And ultimately no humor. This is a guy ive never seen laugh. And i heard from a guy on the inside that they had an alfalfa speech prepared for him with jokes. They were crowd sized jokes and they were really good. The speech was read to him. Dead silence. He said he didnt get it. One of the first jokes he was going to the alfalfa dinner. Thank you so much. I understood you were having trouble with tickets and i looked at this audience and there must be 80,000 people in here. He said, thats not funny. I dont get it. Even a joke about himself he thinks diminishes him in some ways and he cannot handle that. In a way that is impossible to actually do anything constructive. Hell hear Rush Limbaugh say it was a great speech. He will say to himself and his advisers will say keep doing what you keep doing. They didnt like you during the campaign and you won. Dont go back. Jimmy carter gets elected. Everybody, for two years, says no way a peanut farmer from plains is going to get elected. So he gets elected and suddenly tip oneill and people who know how to run washington try to explain it to him. He doesnt want to hear it. And so he spends four years fighting his own party, as well as the other party. And it goes badly. You had the same thing barack obama came into the white house and he was smarter than everybody else and his people were smarter. We always said, we had it on the air, you would try to explain to them, forget about the republicans. You need to spend more time talking to Democratic Senators on the hill. We always said, it was like, oh, joe thats what we heard in the campaign. We are different. Were outsiders. Everybody every insurgent campaign, gene, youve been in long enough and i have been around washington long enough to know, bill clintons campaign, democratic professionals tried to go and going, you have a chaotic white house. Have you got to bring order to it. And they are like, oh, those are just the old democrats. They dont understand, we new we new. We different than anybody else. That is the old people. We beat the new people and we are in here. Well, they werent. Sorry, james carville, the best imitation i got for you. Finally, after a year of chaos, congestive to bring in gerringin a gergen and panetta. Once you get inside the white house, you are, in fact, inside guess who else is there in the insiders. You have to work with them. You cant continue to attack them at every turn and to refuse to work with them or even to refuse to understand how the place works. And thats a mistake, one of the many, that the Trump Administration is making, and he cant continue to take a reductive strategy, appealing only to a shrinking base and attack the Intelligence Committee. How is that going to work, the Intelligence Committee . How is that going to work out . Its not going to work out well. Right now he is thinking ive acted this way my entire life and ive been rewarded for and that is what every president going in thinks. They never realize youre in a completely different reality, that they have to adjust to. Those who adjust to like bill clinton after his 1994 loss, do extraordinarily well. Others dont. By the way, barack obama, i know a lot of people said he got reelected. Yes, he did but he lost more democratic seats than any president , i think, in modern American History and i think that President Trump ought to have a lot of News Conferences genetic this over with. Oh, no, this is different. And get it over with. Four most dangerous words for the trump right now is let trump be trump. That is what he is thinking. Just let it go. Let it play out. Eugene robinson, thank you very much. Thank you, gene. Let gene be gene. Gene is gene, the dancing machine. Still ahead on morning joe. That is the gong show. I dont have to tell you what im going to do in north korea. And i dont have to tell you what im going to do with iran. You know why . Because they shouldnt know. Right. No, nobody said they should. President trump might quite on military matters but somebody in the pentagon is talking about sending more troops to syria. We will have more from the defense secretary straight ahead on morning joe. 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Can you address the recent missteps in your administration . Look. Its not my problem. We inherited the mess. It is such a mess. Not even a giant roomba could clean it up and its confidential and secret and im going to leak it in about 15 minutes. The reports say you knew about mike flynns corresponds with wooush thrrussia three wee. What did you know . He knew that i knew and he didnt know that i knew that he knew that i knew that he knew that i knew that he knee. So you know. Next . Yeah. Im just going to fold my starve. Ahead, much more of e reaction of the president s unforgettable News Conference. One for the books. Put that one in the time capsule. Apparently, russia is real and leaks from the white house is real. But the news is fake. We will will be talking to two White House Correspondents who were forth the entire 77 minutes and actually lived to tell about it. April ryan of the american urban radio network, she was asked to actually get together with a coccus. 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I do get good ratings. You do have to admit that. Trump rants. Im not ranting and raving. Well, there you go. Thats it. Welcome back to morning joe. Its friday, february 17th. Its friday. He got one thing right. He gets good ratings. I guarantee you, a lot of people that stopped dead in their tracks and wated that yesterday. Absolutely. Including republicans. You little sneakers. You cant say you werent watching that. You just cant everyone was. They were scared. Mike barnicle is still with us. The president of the Aspen Institute best selling author Walter Isaacson and White House Correspondent for the associated press, julie pace. We want to start with what happened after . Which is probably the still the lead, i think . Yes, it is. Michael flynn, big question. Is he going get arrested . Did he mislead the fbi . Yes, he did. Its interesting. This report just sort of came out right after the president stuck his thumb in the face of intelligence and the press yesterday. The Washington Post reporting that trumps former National Security adviser denied to fbi agents during an interview last month that he had discussed u. S. Sanctions against russia with their ambassador before the president was sworn in. So the post is reporting that Michael Flynn lied to the fbi. Which that is, what . A felony. Thats a felony. Okay. The paper cites current and former u. S. Officials who say that contradicts intercepted communications lying to the fbi as we said, is a felony offense. But several officials said it is unclear whether prosecutors would attempt to bring a case, in part, because flynn may parse the definition of the word sanctions. A specksman for flynn said he had no response. Here is President Trump who im thinking at this point flynn is saying, please dont talk. Just please dont talk. Speaking yesterday about flynns depart tour. Mike flynn is a fine person and i asked for his resignation. He respectfully gave it. He is a man who there was a certain amount of information given to Vice President pence, who is with us today, and i was not happy with the way that information was given. Did you direct mike flynn to discuss sanctions with the Russian Ambassador . No, i didnt. Prior to your inauguration . No, i didnt. W y have fired him if the information had not leaked out . Excuse me. I fired him because of what he said to mike pence, very simple. Mike was doing his job. He was calling countries and his counterpart. So it certainly would have been okay with me if he did it. I would have directed him to do it if i thought he wasnt doing it. I didnt direct him, but i would have directed him because thats his job. Walter, donald trump has been saying that Michael Flynn was fired because of fake news. Of course, everything is fake news. Its an excuse for everything when he is actually the one making things up. We find out that Michael Flynn not only lied to the Vice President of the president but he lied to the fbi during an investigation. At the very least, its not smart. If the fbi is asking you this question, they might have information. People go to jail for lying to the fbi. And also if youre going to lead the lock her up chant at the convention, maybe you ought to say maybe i not lie to the fbi within a few months. Lets not commit a felony. The fbi never actually had Hillary Clinton dead to center committing a felony. This is, if he lied to the fbi, is felony . Yes. Lying to the fbi is definition of a felony. When you listen to Donald Trumps explanation for why he fired general flynn, it was not because of what he said, it was because of the way he communicated with the Vice President. Everyone in that white house had that information for two weeks. It wasnt like general flynn was holding it and he didnt tell the Vice President. The president and senior level strategist and senior level advisers new that general flynn had talked to the russians. Why didnt they let the Vice President go on tv and lie . They kept him in the dark for, what, over a week . Two weeks . Almost two weeks. Also i walk in and say do that again, i will leave and it will be ugly. That is unbelievable that they lied to him for over a week. They didnt even do that. The Vice President of the United States may as well have been a coffee cup on the table. Sally yates tells steve bannon and the president of the United States and the council they know and they wait two weeks. You dont tell the vpt of ic president of the United States . Can you explain what happens when he puts his thumb in the face of the Intelligence Community . I have. Say it again. How does it work usually . This is getting old but we could do a nice little matchup of actually doing this since november, saying when you attack the Intel Community, they always win in the end. George w. Bush, people dont really piece it together, but, walter, george w. Bushs presidency was identities heels from the very beginning of the iraq war, because every claim he made, the Intel Community would leak out whether it was about the yellow cake uranium, no, actually, thats not true. Whether it was about wmds, they would leak out, actually, that is not true. Sm Something Else, then that is not true. Then they decided to leak out the enhanced interrogation sneaks a techniques and waterboarding and leaked it out and chopped him up in little pieces. Again, we have been telling donald trump this now for four months, five months, and he just doesnt get it. Yesterday, he goes im going to get those dirty Rotten Scoundrels and three hours later, we get another leak on the fbi. And the truth, getting the truntruth out that Michael Flynn lied to the fbi. When you start fighting leaks its errant especially in a place like this. A nice old country and has leaky pipes. If you want to fight leaks, form a Plumbers Union and we know how that one ended. It just doesnt work. And the fighting of the leaks usually becomes a little bit worse than the leaks itself. We are not talking about leaks in this case that gave russia something russia didnt know. Russia already knew what mike flynn had been saying to its ambassador. It was only a leak that gave it to the Vice President of the United States what he didnt know. You know the phone is tapped so why would you lie to the fbi about what you said when you know they know what you said . Any way. A bunch of fools. Julie pace, you inside that extraordinary press conference yesterday. By the way, he is so concerned about leaks coming from inside america. He celebrates leaks coming from russia. How twisted is that . Right. In fact, he encourages leaks from russia in the middle of the campaign. He loves wikileaks. He did then. Julie pace, yesterday, you asked the president inside that press conference for a straightforward answer on his campaigns ties to russia. Lets listen to that. Yes or no answer on one of these questions involving russia. Can you say whether you are aware that anyone who advised your campaign had contacts with russia during the course of the election . Well, i told you, general flynn, obviously, was dealing that is one person but he was dealing, as he should have been. Reporter during the election . Nobody that i know of. Reporter youre not aware of any contacts during the course of the election . How many times do i have to answer the question . Reporter can you just say yes or no on it . Eye know you have to get up and ask a question. So important. Russia is a ruse. I have nothing to do with russia. Havent made a phone call to russia in years and dont speak to people from russia, not that i wouldnt. But i have nobody to speak to. Julie, didnt give you that yes or no answer. And youre very important. He did not give a yes or no answer. He did say one phrase that i think was important. He did say that nobody that he knew of from his campaign was in touch with the russians during the course of the election. He also later said that there was no contact to his knowledge. It was almost a lawyerly answer, though. You observe here that not to my knowledge when people are on a witness stand. I think its important to note that i was the fourth reporter. My question came deep in that News Conference, to try to pin him down on this Pretty Simple question. Were you aware that anyone on your campaign was in contact with russian officials during the election . Intercourse of most of his answers, he really tried to push this in a different direction to focus on the leaks and talk about the broader relationship with russia and it became almost impossible to just get a simple yes or no answer to what should be a pretty straightforward question. That would be the big narrative, though. It all started with the campaign, the manafort and working with the wikileaks people and all of the trolls and everybody else trying to get things. Then it leads into policy and then it leads into what flynn did. So i think, you know, what we are looking at is a question of can they stop that narrative from forming . Joe, are we approaching special prosecutor time on this . No. They are not going to do that. I mean, Mitch Mcconnell said they are not going to do that. People always ask how long is this going to go . Because we are all hearing people saying, this cant last. Even the republicans are saying this cannot last. No. I think Jeff Sessions isnt going to do anything. What about a special committee or a select committee in the senate . No. Mitch mcconnell doesnt want to do anything and that wont happen. You talked to him. He said no, i think right now roy blunt has it under control. I was listening to your interview and he is a careful man. I always said Mitch Mcconnell doesnt give up anything he doesnt want to give up. He doesnt care whether you or i like him or people think he is being straightforward. Three times in that interview, and i think you picked this up, where i stopped asking a question and i was about to ask the next question, and then he would Say Something like, hey, and by the way, the president the president is subject to judicial review. Just like we are subject to judicial review. He wanted to make sure he got that out. Then he added the thing about we are getting a little tired of the twitter stuff. Its distracting us. That was something also that he went forward to say. Can you imagine him today . Im sure very upset. This is simple. In the house of representatives donald trump is still popular in a lot of these districts. Donald trumps Approval Rating whether he wants to believe it or not is 39 , 40 . Most people think it doesnt count. They look at pugh and gallup have him at 39 and 56 disapprove. He can angry at the Pugh Research center and republicans on the hill those are real matters. When the 39 gets to 35 or 34 and when his numbers collapse in the republican districts and especially in the states. See it in the senate first and it starts going down, then, suddenly, youll have the howard baker step forward. Do you think that press conference yesterday hurt him really among the people he is counting on to it does two things. The first thing it does, it solidifies and hardens his base support. The 34 , 35 is even more entrenched, more hardened. What it does is it peel off that 5, 6, 7, 8 who voted for him because they couldnt stand Hillary Clinton. The choice was donald trump or Hillary Clinton. Now the choice is donald trump or elizabeth warren. Or mike pence. Donald trump are the mainstream media. Dont go there. When they get to the point they say, wait a second, the choices between donald trump and mike pence . Looking good. We trust mike pence. For mike pence. And we dont have to put up with our children seeing somebody lying every day on tv and we dont have to putp with a horrific example. Like the democrats thought we either have bill clinton or Newt Gingrich so we will put up with the lying. Right now the republicans have the choice of we have donald trump or mike pence. When that starts to solidify you have two types of people in the white house now. Those like a mike pence or perhaps secretary costa looks that way and judge gorsuch who completely grounded people, whatever you may think of Mitch Mcconnell, completely grounded person. And they have the unhinged people, people who look like that just not focused or grounded. They are all over the place and i think that is the more worrisome divide. Its who is by his side and that little miller is from everything we have heard he is relentless and at him all the time in his ear and relentless. This 31yearold very disbalanced dishonest individual is at his side. Flynn was at his side throughout the campaign. And he didnt want to fire him. Steve bannon is at his side in the evening. His intercadre are here and they dont have access. We talk about donald trump we have known a very long time and people have known him for a long time are all saying the same thing. Donald is very charming in person and hes got some very good traits. He also has some traits that are not very good. The people that he is surrnding himself right now with are bringing out the very worst of donald trump. Nixon had very good people that appealed to his good side and then and brought out the worst of nixon. Yeah. Are scared they cant move. Here is more from President Trump yesterday. I didnt do anything for russia. Ive done nothing for russia. Hillary clinton gave them 20 of our uranium. She did a reset with the stupid plastic button that made us all look like a bunch of jerks here. Here, take a look. He looked at her, what the hell is she doing . Remember i said reset . If i do that, oh, im a bad guy. If we could get along with russia, a positive thing. We have a very talented man, Rex Tillerson who is meeting with them shortly. I said i know politically its probably not good. The greatest thing i could do is shoot that ship that is 30 miles offshore right out of the water. Everybody would say that is great. Its not great. James mattis continues his meeting with key allies in germany today and speaking yesterday at his meeting with nato allies, secretary mattis rejected the possibly of increased military ties between the United States and russia. He also would not commit to putting combat troops into syria and iraq to fight isis. But nbc news has learned a proposal to put forces on th ground could soon beresent to President Trump. Ining us from munich, germany, nbc news Foreign Correspondent hans nichols. What can you tell us about this proposal . Mean troops on the ground . Reporter it could mean combat troops on the ground in syria. We are hearing back in washington, munich is here at the conference and talking about having apache military helicopters and already some artillery in syria but basically the campaign in syria would look like the campaign in iraq where you have 5,000 u. S. Troops training and assisting and a little more forward presence in a support role in syria. But, guys, here is the basic question here. No one really doubts in security circles that mosul and iraq will fall. The question here and debated here at this conference is what do you do after iraq falls and what does it look like . That gets to the key question of what kind of force do you want to take the city of raqqa . Want it a sunni arab force or have the kurds involved . That gets to the other big question is do you arm the kurds . Remember ash carter, his pentagon, they wanted to arm the kurds and they were that way. The white house said, no, too implicated on the diplomatic front and some of the diplomacy mattis is doing here today and pence arrives as well. They have a lot of explaining to do. Hans nichols in munich, thanks. That was clean. He didnt do any samples or anything like that. No random dirty things at the end. He was flinching and i thought he was going to do something. He did Something Else yesterday and youre just, come on, man. He always adds a little spice. You need to clarify something. Yesterday, i was talking to jim vandeh vandehei. We were trying to recall the glory days. I was trying to remember something that was before the committee that tom lantos was so frustrated with the Clinton Administration official that he suggested he kill himself. Tom lanto on s was a unique character to say the least. There were gasps. I was reaching for words, im not sure, but i think it was david jon. I shouldnt have said that but its a threehour show and no teleprompter. Apparently this guy was a top notch. David, im sorry it ended up. I googled it afterwards. Somebody called me up, nsc adviser, so and so is really angry about what you had. I said, i didnt say anything. What . And they say, he is really angry because you accuse no, i didnt. Then they said, then they explained it was a segment. So i said, okay, you got to help me out. Who was the guy . It was a guy that had taken all of the fbi personnel files and was reading through them improperly and they thought they passed it. The name you may remember, craig livingstone. We have a winner. Craig livingstone so David Johnson, a pretty common name. He does my hair johnstone. All of the David Johnsons out there we apologize and we especially apologize to the David Johnson who was an nsc spokesman and Deputy White House press conference for the Clinton Administration. We are clarifying this morning that congressman, former congressman from california, tom lantos did not ask you to commit suicide. Tom had a wonderful family and took his family down to swim in the house gym. A vecolorful character. I think he survived the holoust. A great man. On his wall he had my favorite picture when youd go into his office and it was the line of tanks in Tiananmen Square and one kid standing. With the flower . No, no, no. His hand is up. And for the rest it was Time Magazine and we wanted to make him person of the year. We tried to find the guy standing in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square and never could find him. What a great idea. It was one of the most powerful visuals ive ever seen in my life. Walter isaacson, thank you. Julie pace, stay with us. Chris collins still ahead. He says senators and congressmen should not secondguess the president . Yeah, sure. That is what they do. Checks and balances. He can tell us what his job is and probably too late for that. We will bring in katy tur and april ryan. Its not an antiaging face cream. Its realizing beauty doesnt stop at my chin. Roc®s formula adapts to delicate skin areas. My fine lines here . Visibly reduced in 4 weeks. Chest, neck, and face cream from roc®. Methods, not miracles. ™ mattress firmness . Enter sleep number. She likes the bed soft. Hes more hardcore. You can both adjust the bed for the best sleep of your life. Save 50 on the ultimate limited edition bed, plus 24month financing. Go to sleepnumber. Com for a store near you. Sfx engine revving silence the people get it. Much of the media doesnt get it. They get it but dont write it put take tthat way. A new poll came out just a short while ago and it has our Approval Rating at 55 and going up. Unfortunately, much of the media in washington, d. C. , along with new york and los angeles, in paicular, speaks not for the people, but for the special interests and for those profiting off a very, very, obviously, broken system. I put it out before the american people. Got 306 Electoral College votes. I wasnt supposed to get 222. They said no way to get 222, 230 is impossible. 270, which you need, that was laughable. We got 306. I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan. You said today you had the biggest electoral margin since Ronald Reagan with 304, 306 electoral votes. In fact, president obama got 365 in 2008. Im talking about president. Reporter and president obama 332 and george h. W. Bush 426 when he won as president. Why should Americans Trust you when youre misrepresenting information . I was just giving we had a very, very big margin. Reporter why should Americans Trust when you say the information youre providing is fake and i was given that information. Actually, ive seen that information around. Its very hard, mika. You got to cut him some slack here. Its very hard to stay focused when you know the crime rate and willie and i talk about this all the time. The presint told us. Crime rate is the worse it has been, willie, i think since 1973 . Most people are being murdered. In chicago 80 of the people are being murdered. How can you focus on the Electoral College . The attack on fake news. While delivering fake news. While delivering information and lies. Its wonderful ironic. This doesnt feel real. When you say this feels like a fake presidency . A fake presidency. Im at that point. I dont know exactly what this means. Someone tell me what is going on here . We have a president who goes out in front of mechanic for an hour and ten minutes rifting and just making up stuff and throwing out lies right and left. Our president. This is our president. Thats what we saw during the campaign. Its the same. He is literally the same exact person that we saw during the campaign. Nothing changed. Anyone who said he is going to become more president ial believed him when he said that. They are wrong. This is who he is. He won off this. He is going to continue to act the way that he does. It fundamentally is who he is. He did that press conference yesterday because he was itching to spar, to get out there to talk, to defend himself. This is a man who spent the entire Campaign Going on television and holding a rally every single day. He was on National Television saying whatever he wanted to say every single day. This is what he cared about. These are the things he cared about with everything that is going on in our world and in our country, and all of the different jobs that have yet to be filled and other countries are looking at our country, going what is going on there . This nation seems to be destabilizing. He cares about what . But hes giving off the appearance that he doing something by signing the executive orders and by holding these round tables and having the photo ops with the Business Leaders and talking about rolling back regulation, promising obamacare. He is giving off at least for now. He is giving off the appearance that things are getting done and that is what is resonating with the people that voted for him. Its a bit of a presidency. They are setting these things up and not actually getting out and doing anything real. Its all about press. But, mark, one of the things we have noticed certainly since he has become elected president. When you campaign, you campaign seven days a week and an excuse to go to rallies every single day. Some of his worst tweets have come on saturday morning. He is so addicted to headlines that on saturday morning, he starts panicking because the swirl of activity and the controversy is gone and if you want to dig into his brain, that is what you do. When things get quiet on saturday morning, he starts freaking out and he starts sending out nasty tweets about john lewis or you pick the worst subjects for him to send out socalled judges. He will do that on saturday morning so the swirl continues. For thepresident , winning a war against cnns 10 00 show or the latest the New York Times story is the way he judges whether he is a success or a failure. Does he know he is only helping cnn . Does he know he is only helping the New York Times . I dont think he does. But he. His 2017 will be judged by does he pass either tax reform or repeal and replace obamacare. Not for him. That is what history will judge and Congressional Republicans will judge. The biggest thing about yesterday his passes of passing Health Care Reform was set back yesterday. People on capitol hill view what happens no longer are the tweets and the attacks and the pettiness and the lies a side show, he made them the main event. Willie has some news. Im looking at. We can report this now. Senior white house official has confirmed to nbc news that there is now a White House Communications director. His name is mike and one of the founders of crossroads media, a conservative firm. According to some of the reporting out there, people inside the white house are not terribly excited about this pick because they believe crossroads tried to stop trump during the campaign. And this is one of the founders of the campaign. But mike dubke will be the White House Communications director. They have that in place. They didnt have one for the first four weeks of the administration. Julie pace a lot of fighting inside the white house. We had somebody tell us early on that knows washington better than most that is what trump wants. Fdr on a much different level would have four or five, six people constantly fighting and that allowed him to pick and choose his allies from battletobattle. Donald trump appears to be doing the same thing. You hear these stories from aides who will talk about how trump in meetings will praise one aide in an attempt to try to take a jab at another aide and next time hell do it and he reverse those roles. It is part of his style. He did this during the campaign. He did this in business. But one of the challenges in doing that when you are governing is that you have so many things that you have on your plate. So many things that youre trying to push that are a pro active agenda. Then this is what i think is just going to be so fascinating to see in this white house. So many things happening out of your control. We have not had an actual crisis yet. Any of these problems that the president is dealing with are basically selfmade at this point. A poorly written executive order. These problems with mike flynn. He is not had to deal with a Big International crisis yet, a big domestic crisis yet. If your team is fighting amongst themselves and not working in a coordinated fashion, it makes all of those crises and things that can hamper a presidency that much more difficult to deal with. We are in month one and they have an opportunity to have a course correction here but i didnt see a lot in that press conference yesterday that showed that the president is aware that that would even be needed at this point. But, katy tur, he doesnt think he needs a course correction. There is one difference between trump now and trump during the campaign. When things started to go very badly for trump during the campaign, that trump would listen to people around him after wisconsin, for instance. He treated. He went back. The last ten days of the campaign. He got scared. He got scared, exactly. The campaign went on a teleprompter. He got scared then and he got scared a couple times. Right now, he actually thinks everything is going great. Hes listening to the rasmussen poll. People on the hill pay absolutely no attention to rasmussen. Listen. I think that we are still early on. Its been, what is it . 26 days . Oh, gosh. Its been 26 days. Oh, my god. It can get worse in there before he starts to see how bad its gotten. And before you know, bannon got him on track during the campaign. Im not sure how much he is going to be able to corral him in this new role. This is just completely different. He doesnt have the same controls any longer. Hes not living in his house. He is suddenly responsible for, you know, an entire government that he doesnt quite understand. He cannot control people with nondisclosure agreements. So these leaks keep coming out. This is the first time in his life that he has employees by the way, he has all of these agencies. Rex tillerson has absolutely nobody under him working at state. You could go agency by agency by agency. Not only does he not know how to run a government, hes got the people arent filling up the spots right now. Tillerson, they are not even having state Department Briefings yet. We found out that tillerson is meeting with lavrov through the kremlin and no press shop. But look at the news surrounding bore h bob harwood and he was not taking the National Security adviser role. The reporting he could not fill the nsc with the people he would have wanted in place. If you exclude the never trumpers who were very many in the campaign, often the ones that were the most qualified and now you try to lure in the rest and they do not want to be a part of it youre left with a thin staff that doesnt understand politics and doesnt understand government and doesnt understand washington and will continue to allow the president to go off on these tangents and get nis ohis own w. When they see this bumping up and getting reforms in that they want and getting obamacare repealed and replaced, et cetera, then there is going to be more of a problem between the republicans and trump. The president needs to do a speech and it cant be written by a 31yearold tyrant or a media obsessed clothing seller and it cant be written pretty much by anybody in there at this point because they are all so worn down and scared, that they are all stautstuttering around calling him mr. President , mr. Trump. It needs to stop and he needs to get some real men apple wnd wom there who know what they are doing and actually tell him what they think and its going really badly. You cant lie to the american people. And you cant lie about your National Security adviser. What was so fundamental about the mike flynn stuff, he thinks it was a problem that the media treated him unfairly. Ultimately Michael Flynn doesnt lie to the administration but he lied to the American Public and Donald Trump Backed him up yesterday saying he would have ordered him to do the same. That is an astonishing circumstance set of events that gets almost its so jaw dropping and eye opening. Its hard to see it in the ongoing daily hurricane that is the news coming out of this white house. That is why the loss of harward is so significant. He was respected by republicans and democrats alike. You heard from republicans in the Foreign Policy establishment and also people from the Obama Administration who said if this guy gets in, its a great thing for the country. When he pulled out, that was a huge loss. Lets just put that on the president. That is on trump. Katy tur and julie pace, thank you. Coming up an apology from the white houses ghochoice on ambassador to israeli during a heated hearing. We will talk about that when we continue. We have a question about your brokerage fees. Fees . What did you have in mind . I dont know. 6. 95 per trade . Uhhh and i was wondering if your brokerage offers some sort of guarantee . Guarantee . Where we can get our fees and commissions back if were not happy. So can you offer me what schwab is offering . Whats with all the questions . Ask your broker if theyre offering 6. 95 online equity trades and a satisfaction guarantee. If you dont like their answer, ask again at schwab. This is thstory of Green Mountain coffee and fair trade, told in the time it takes to brew your cup. Lets take a trip to la plata, colombia. This is boris calvo. Thats pepe. Boris doesnt just grow good coffee, boris grows mindblowing coffee. And because we pay him a fair price, he improves his farm to grow even Better Coffee and invest in his community, which makes his neighbor, gustavo, happy. Thats blanca. Yup, pepe and blanca got together. Things happen. All this for a smoother tasting cup of coffee. Green mountain coffee. Packed with goodness. Start here. At fidelity, we let you know where you stand, so when it comes to your retirement plan, youll always be absolutely. Clear. Its your retirement. Know where you stand. Conflict between us and the palestinians is not this or that settlement or this or that community persistent or enduring palestinian refusal to recognize jewish state in any boundary. The issue is not this or that settlement. The issue is do you accept a jewish state for gods sake and i think the main issue and i said that to president obama and i said it to President Trump as well. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking yesterday with msnbc, greta van s sustern. During his remarks, which were disrupted by multiple protesters, friedman apologized for some highly controversial comments he has made in the past. Notably when he called president barack obama an antisemite. I provided some context for my remarks but that was not in the nature of an excuse. There is no excuse. If you want me to rationalize it or justify it, i cannot. These were hurtful words and i deeply regret them. Okay. Yes, they were. So we will see how that goes. What matters any more . The president , himself it was as we feared it was said, donald trump will not accept the outcome of the election. Gets back to hes a sore winner. First sore wner in president ial history. You know if he didnt go back and relitigate and complain about and give out wrong numbers, it would be an extraordinary historic amazing president ial win. And now its dirty. Because it was but he wouldnt stop talking about why it wasnt. He wont shut up and take the masters jacket he wants to talk about hole 3. This happened after iowa. He kept talking how iowa was stolen. It took him about three or four days to shut up about that because his poll numbers were collapsing like this in new hampshire. But, remember, he kept saying, ripped off in iowa, ripped off in iowa and his numbers kept going down like this. Mike barnicle has a story. No. We have to follow. Mike, quick. Its a big one. Trump travels come at a high cost and about the cost of providing security for the president of the United States and his family, including his two sons who are, today, overseas in the middle east. And the post reports that barrel a month into the trump fressy the unusual elaborate lifestyle of the americas first family is strange the secret service and Security Officials and perhaps based on past assessments of president ial travel and security costs could balloon into the hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of next four years. They are doing business over there for Trump International . Yes. They are opening up a new golf crse day in the middle east. Great. Secret service has to be with them . Yes. They got to do what they got to do. You want people protected. Lets start there. Meeika, the white house need an injection of calm. Peggy noonan. Trump is an individual character and his staff included conventional ones. Words of wisdom as always from peggy noonan. Still ahead on morning joe . Mr. President . I know its a bad question. Yes it is. I enjoy watching you on television. Thank you, sir. That very Awkward Exchange between the president and our next guest where it began right there, we will talk about that. April ryan celebrated 20 years as White House Correspondent last month. But, yesterday, definitely a first for her. April joins us next to talk about it. We will be right back. With every early morning. Every late night. And moment away. With every click. Call. Punch. And paycheck. Youve earned your medicare. It was a deal that was made long ago, and aarp believes it should be honored. Thankfully, President Trump does too. I am going to protect and save your Social Security and your medicare. You made a deal a long time ago. Now, its congress turn. Tell them to protect medicare. Dont ever let anyone tell you you cant change. That is what life is. Change. Its not some magic trick. Its your will. Your thoughts become your words become your actions become your reality. Change is your destiny. Now go chase it. [ alarm weather. Eping ] [ laughter ] cartoons. Wait for it. [ cat screech ] [ laughter ] [ screaming ] [ laughter ] make everyday awesome with the power of xfinity x1. Hi grandma and the fastest internet. [ girl screaming ] [ laughter ] are you going to include the cbc, mr. Esident, in your conversations with the urban city agenda . Am i going to include who . The Congressional Black Caucus . Well, i would. I tell you what, dumt to set up the meeting . Are they friends with yours . Why would he set up a meeting. Why does he assume what decade is this . Does anybody know . 1952 . That goes in the capsules with womens difficulties. I think hes going help us with cramps. Thank god you have to give a little background. Help me out here. The Washington Post reported this morning that when asked what melania was going to do, shes going to help with womens difficulties. Hes known her a long time. Shes classy. Shes going to help with womens difficulties. Lets go to baltimore and forget what mika said. April ryan. Im curious, why did the president assume you were friends with members of the Congressional Black Caucus more so than say, jim acosta, i dont know. Im friends with jim acosta, but i dont know the new incoming secretary, the nominee. I cannot assume what this president was thinking. I just cant. I want to believe that i just want to believe he wasnt thinking what everybody is thinking, you know, right now. I just want to believe a better day in 2017. What do you think erveds is thinking . What im reading and seeing. Twitter and facebook are blowing up. Maybe because i people assume that i do work with the dnc. I would do work with the rnc if they called me. I know people in the rnc. I know democrats, inow republicans. I kn peoe in the chc. Do you think it had to do with whether democrats or republicans but because he saw you as a black woman and said, oh, do you have friends in the Congressional Black Caucus . It kind of looked like that. Thats what im saying. I just want to believe i want to look at a better day and hope we all want to believe, but its getting harder by the day, isnt it . You cant believe. You have to look at what you see. What you saw yesterday was a show. Theres no other way to put it. Yes. We need to be more real. You know i have written two books on race, so, it was a moment. But, you know, i was struck more he really hit me really was the fact he asked the first thing because i consider myself a journalist, like everyone else in that room. I wasnt looking at im a black woman, im a journalist asking questions. Would you convene the meeting . No, no, no. Thats crossing the line. When you talk about fake news, thats fake news. If they would invite me to be in the room when the members of the cbc and president meet, i would love to report on it. To convene the meeting, no. Members of the cbc were watching yesterday. Yes, i do know some. They are sources. I kno some of them. Congressman congressman elijah comings, i used to be with him. I have a formal introduction and conversation yesterday with the heads of the cbc. Just for the record, the cbc did send donald trump a letter seeking a meeting. Trump said we have been trying to get a meeting and cant. They looked for a meeting before he was sworn in. He never got to your question about the agenda for helping inner cities. Did you lean anything other than what he told you and him trying to get you to set up a meeting . He has this idea about health, about education, about crime, but he was warm to bringing in he warmed up to the idea of bringing in the people who had been carrying these issues for inner cities for decades, since 1971. So, also, because of that exchange that question and answer session with President Trump, the white house did reach out to the cbc and they are trying to work out a date and time for a meeting to talk about hbcus, to talk about the fix to inner cities. So, thats what i gleamed mostly from the whole piece, however many minutes it was with my discussion with the president yesterday. April, thank you so much for being with us. We appreciate your patience. Mark halperin a quick update before we get a break. What are the kids saying . Not everyone agrees with Rush Limbaughs analysis of the president. All right. That was one of the most bizarre moments of the press conference with april. Still ahead, no more double duty. I know, i know. A lot of members of the Congressional Black Caucus are my friends. Why not ask me to convene the meeting. Elijah, i think im sitting with him during the state of the union address. He could ask me. You could book that in a new york minute. In a moment. Sean spicer announcing e hiring of a new Communications Director momentsgo. More on that breaking news and much more on this. I want to find a friendly reporter. Are you a friendly reporter. Watch how friendly he is. He said he was going to ask a very simple, easy question and its not. Its not. Sit down. Quiet, quiet. Thats what i call a nice question. That is very nice. Who are you with . Liberty mutual stood with me when i was too busy with the kids to get a repair estimate. I just snapped a photo and got an estimate in 24 hours. My Insurance Company definitely doesnt have that. You can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™ Liberty Mutual insurance on mattress firmness . Fortunately theres a bed where you both get what you want every night. Enter sleep number and the ultimate sleep number event, going on now. Sleepiq technology tells you how well you slept and what adjustments you can make. She likes the bed soft. Hes more hardcore. So your sleep goes from good to great to wow only at a sleep number store. For 5 days only, save 50 on the ultimate limited edition bed, plus 24month financing. Go to sleepnumber. Com for a store near you. Why do people have eyebrows . I. Why do people put milk on cereal . Oh, are you reading why people put milk on cereal . Why does your tummy go grumbily, grumbily, grumbily . Why is it all mimics a stomach grumble no more questions for you ooph, that milk in your cereal was messing with you, wasnt it . Yeah, happens to more people than you think. Try lactaid, its real milk, without that annoying lactose. Good, right . Mmm, yeah. I got your back. Lactaid. Its the milk that doesnt mess with you. With the media present, which is an honor to have you. The press has become so dishonest. Some of the media is fantastic, i have to say. The press is out of control. The leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake. I know how good everybodys ratings are. They are pretty good right now. I do get good ratings, i have to admit that. Where are you from . Bbc. Another beauty. Quiet, quiet, quiet. The public doesnt believe you people anymore. I didnt win by listening to you people. I inherited a mess at home and abroad. I inherited a mess. This administration is running like a fine tuned machine. The rollout was perfect. Zero chaos. This is a fine tuned machine. Russia is fake news. I dont want to be hacked. You know what uranium is, right . Things called Nuclear Weapons. The best thing i could do is shoot that ship out of the water. Hillary clinton did a reset with the plastic button that made us all look like jerks. We are a powerful Nuclear Country, so are they. Im really not a bad person. Im not ranting and raving. I love this. Im having a good time doing it. The public doesnt believe us anymore . Willie said it best happy friday. Willie, as we were walking in, you know what would be funny, that would have been a really funny hour or so of television, if he werent president of the United States. That was right off the campaign trail, call it summer of 2015. A man in his element saying whatever crossed his mind, throwing out thing that is were verifingly false. The key line, i love this, im having a good time. He did not want that press conference to end. He watched people try to defend him for a month, Kellyanne Conway, sean spicer. He wanted to be front and center and speak for himself. If the idea was to convey theres no chaos in the white house, im not sure it had that effect. It was the most rambling press conference anybody has ever seen. I just re we Start Talking about this and pking it apart and picking out all the falsehoods, i just he may be only 39 in the polls, according to the pugh poll and 40 in gallup. I tell you, the hard core supporters i spoke to yesterday and all my friends were in front of the tv set laughing. They werent laughing at donald trump, they were laughing at the media. Hes going to have his 37 38 hard core support. Hes playing to his crowd. You know what . It is a great 38 strategy for him. Theres no doubt about that, joe. Theres no doubt about that. The base of his support, whether its 35 , 40 , they are not going anywhere. They are going to stick with him. Yesterday, the first 35 minutes of that press conference was watching a president of the United States who has lost his grip on reality. It was as if he performed yesterday for himself because he needed to perform like that, to convince himself that he was president. Because we have said this before and will say it again, mark halperin, he has absolutely nobody inside that white house that will walk up to him and tell him the truth. So, he lives in an alternate reality. He says things that are viably false. When he got called o on it yesterday by Peter Alexander, he will say thats just the information i was given. No, thats the information he says. He talks and makes up things and repeats them until he believes them. What is the impact of yesterday . The impact of yesterday, from my take, i would love to hear what you think, casey hunt and everybody i talk to on the hill, republicans, senators, congressmen were scared they were scared to beth by what they saw. More than one said this is not going to last long. He just doesnt have control of reality. You actually saw something extraordinary after the press conference. A guy who was given the opportunity to have the most powerful job in National Security said no thanks. I saw that press conference, no thanks. If you look at the arc of American History and the presidency and the arc of Donald Trumps life tharks press conference was totally shocking and totally unsurprising. Yeah, exactly. Its going in a time capsule. If trump is a successful president , its going in a time capsule. If hes a failure, its going in a time capsule. Its going in. Unraveling. Yeah. If you watch the campaign, not one thing he said yesterday, lies exagration, bullying, bragging. Not one of thosehing was shocking. Only shocking because he has a president ial seal in front of him. In his own party. He would like some democrats, but at least his own party to be inspired by him. Theres not one republican outside his core, core supporters that are anything but freaked out. Embarrass zed. Freaked out. We have to get to that, which was massive in itself. There were headline that is broke, sort of the reaction, almost. The question is did Michael Flynn mislead the fbi . The Washington Post reporting the former National Security adviser denied to fbi agents during an interview he discussed u. S. Sanctions with russia with the ambassador before sworn in. The current and former u. S. Officials say that contradicts intercepted communications. Lying to the fbi is a felony offense. Several Officials Say its unclear whether they would attempt to bring a case because flynn may parse the definition of the word sanctions. A spokesperson for flynn had no response. Here is President Trump speaking yesterday about flynns departure. Mike flynn is a good person. I asked for his resignation. He respectfully gave it. He is a man who there was a certain amount of information given to Vice President pence who is with us today. I was not happy with the way that information was given. Did you direct mike flynn to discuss sanctions with the Russian Ambassador. No, i dnlt. No i didnt. Would you have fired him if the information hadnt leaked out . I fired him for what he said to mike pence, very simple. Mike was doing his job. It certainly would have been okay with me if he did it. I would have directed him to do it if i thought he wasnt doing it. I didnt direct him, but i would have directed him because thats his job. Im wondering the people are they excited . Do they think its great . Are they wringing their hands because they know theres an unraveling happening . I would bet some amount of money mr. Bannon and jared kushner, his soninlaw thought that was a wonderful performance yesterday. That was donald trump. Yeah. They, too, are suspended from reality, which is why donald trump is suspended from reality. The people closest to him think he can lie all he wants and the people it was hard to count the lies. You talked to several people yesterday in washington as did i and mark and willey, i think. Yeah. The flynn story, what Michael Flynn did or may not have done is far down in terms of important stories. The number one story is the ability of the president of the United States. The top pick for National Security adviser saying no thanks, i dont want the job. His performance yesterday is done without a real crisis on the front burner. What happens when there is a real crisis . Whats interesting, mika, you are right, the man he selected to be National Security adviser said no. Thats a shock. This is a well oiled machine . Its not a well oiled machine. What makes it especially a junk yard sanford and son truck going toward the cliff is the fact that they offered a job to someone and they didnt know the answer. You know, you always say perry mason would neversk a question he didnt know the answer to. If thats the truth in the courtroom, the truth for a president ial office, really, unless it is amateur hour you never offer a job and give the person a chance to say let me think about it. We dont even do that around here. If we say would you like to work, let us think about it, you already did. Thank you. Thank you. And we move on to the next candidate. They let a guy keep them twisting in the wind. At this time of crisis. After that crazy press conference going hes too unstable. Makes them look terrible. They may have thought they knew the answer and he watched and said i dont want to walk into that. To answer your question about the front row. Kellyanne conway said, she reminded everyone of why he became president , speaking his mind and taking the case directly to the american people. Thats a reaction from the front row. Another problem i want a real reaction, the truth. Good luck. Another problem, at the center of the mike flynn story and what the president said, flynn was doing his job. I fired him because he didnt tell the truth to Vice President pence. Donald trump knew the truth. Everyone in the white house knew the truth. Why didnt they tell mike pence the truth . Because it wasnt coming out in the Washington Post. I was upset he didnt tell the truth, flynn didnt tell pence the truth. No one in the white house told pence the truth either. Ahead we are just thrilled with what hes accomplished in less than four weeks, even standing in the face of all the objections of senator schumer and the like. I would say to other republicans, though im not hearing a lot of that, i would say chill out. Hes getting a lot done. One of trumps first supporters in congress. Congressman Chris Collins joins us to talk about where things go from here. You are watching morning joe. Well be right back. When standard Cancer Treatment no longer works for patients like lynn, advanced Genomic Testing may lead to other Treatment Options that can work. Learn how Genomic Testing is changing the way we fight cancer at cancercenter. Com genomics king arthur ready washington charge empress wu charge in chinese king arthur charge let your reign begin. Evony, the mobile game. Download now. Mattress firmness . Enter sleep number. She likes the bed soft. Hes more hardcore. You can both adjust the bed for the best sleep of your life. Save 50 on the ultimate limited editiobed, plus 24moh financing. Go to sleepnumber. Com for a store near you. Except when it comes to retirement. At fidelity, you get a retirement score in just 60 seconds. And well help you make decisions for your plan. To keep you on track. Its your retirement. Know where you stand. To keep you on track. Dont ever let anyone tell you you cant change. That is what life is. Change. Its not some magic trick. Its your will. Your thoughts become your words become your actions become your reality. Change is your destiny. Now go chase it. Heigh ho heigh ho heigh ho heigh ho its off to work we go heres to all of you early risers, whats up man . Gogetters, and shouldbe sleepers. From all of us at delta, because the ones who truly change the world, are the ones who cant wait to get out in it. Welcome back to morning joe. More now on the president s News Conference yesterday and his denial that anyone from his campaign had contact with russian officials. Quote, to the best of my knowledge. You can talk all you want about russia, which is all a, you know, fake news fabricated deal to try to make up for the loss of the democrats and the press plays right into it. In fact, i saw a couple people that were supposedly involved in this. They know nothing about it, they never made a phone call to russia. They never received a phone call. Its all fake news. When i was called out to mexico, i was shocked. All this equipment. When i was called out on mexico, honestly, i was really, really surprised. Same thing with australia. I said thats terrible that it was leaked. It wasnt that important. Then i said what happens when im dealing with the problem of north korea . What happens when i dealing with the problems in the middle east . Are you folks going to report all of that very, very confidential infoation . I didnt do anything for russia. I have done nothing for russia. Hillary clinton gave them 20 of our uranium. She did a reset with the stupid plastic button that made us look like jerks . Remember it said reset . If i do that, oh, im a bad guy. The thing is Hillary Clinton may have used that plastic button, i agree it was stupid and embarrassing, but she never accused american heroes that fought in iraq of being killers when trying to defend vladimir putin, which is what donald trump said. He said, oh, we killed a lot of people, too. Remember the war in iraq. I mean, yeah, its if Hillary Clinton screwed up and you look at that press conference and hes wondering about the leaking. There werent these leaks inside the bush white house. There really werent these leaks inside the Clinton White house to this degree. You could have calls with foreign leaders. Once again, this points to the need of giving Reince Priebus complete control or finding a chief of staff that he has, feels like has complete control. Say josh bollton was chief of staff and there were two of these leaks, they would call everybody in, say listen, if that happens everybody around this table is fired, everybody. He would. He, that guy came in and two weeks later you had rumsfeld fired, you had, i mean, you could go down the list. He went in and cleaned the place up. When leaks happen, you know, trump is not going to be able to figure it out because hes at war with everybody. I keep saying this. How stupid do you have to be. If you are at war with everybody, intel agencies, the state department, the d. O. D. If you are at war with everybody, they are going to come after you. You can want to change washington and develop relationships with the institutions. He is not. Hes not does not seem to have asked himself why the leaks are happening, whats the motivation of the people . For a lot of them, its personal. They are worried about whats happening. They are scared. They are trying to get the word out. This will not stop, even as the Obama Administration fades, this will not stop. He wants change. If he wants to make intelligence stronger, if he wants to change relationships with other countries he needs to work with the existing gingrich had a similar approach to being speaker of the house when we had to deal with something every other day. It wasnt a coincidence after Newt Gingrich came after some of us, suddenly, every day there was a different story in the New York Times. Yep. Every day, there was a different story in the Washington Post. It nicked and nicked and nicked him and bled him and finally, it was very easy to run him out of town. What do you suppose they were thinking, watching this performance yesterday in places ke riad and loon . What were theyhinking . Its a tale of two press conferences. In bon, they were extraordinarily nervous. In birmingham, they liked it. In riad, they were very nervous. In raleigh, north carolina, a lot of people were cheering at it. Said way to give it to the press. Again, lets not pretend that his 38 oh, its there. Absolutely. They loved it. At the end of the day, it will bring him down, if he continues doing this. For now, he has nobody around him to tell him the truth. Let me underline this, nobody around him to tell him the truth. So, he can lie all he wanlts to about the Electoral College. Everybody goes great job boss. By the way, willie, who else was on the front row . Little miller, the 31yearold who went on all the sunday shows, lied through his teeth about the 3 million illegal votes, then he had donald trump say great job. Donald trump rewarded his lying. Donald trump rewards kellyannes lying. So, who is going to go to donald trump and say, hey, listen, you really undercutting your credibility and its going to catch up with you if you dont stop lying. Coming up, we fact check the claims from the news cron frens if we have enough time. Its going to take a long time. Well be right back. 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Put it out before the american people, got 306 Electoral College votes. I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan. We had Hillary Clinton give russia 20 of the uranium in our country. Drugs are becoming cheaper than cand bars. Circuit that h been overturned at a record number. Construction of the Keystone Pipeline and Dakota Access pipelines, thousands and thousands of jobs. You have a lower approval rate of congress, i think thats right. We couldnt even show half of it, but got some in. I like the music. Soothing during Turbulent Times. The president spits out lie after lie. Little known fact, the year the beatles invaded america. 64 . 64. The girl that won the grammy its kind of like its good stuff. They dont get it right. Just ahead, casey hunt joins us live from capitol hill. Are House Republicans beginning to panic after the blockbuster News Conference . Yes. Yes they are. You are watching morning joe, well be right back. I cant wait for her to have that College Experience that i had. The classes, the friends, the independence. And since we planned for it, that student debt is the one experience, im glad shell miss when you have the right financial advisor, life can be brilliant. Ameriprise oh, its actually. S your sfx short balloon squeal its ver. Sfx balloon squeals ok can we. Sfx balloon squeals im being so serious right now. I really want to know how your coffee is. Its. Sfx balloon squeals hahahaha, i had a 2nd balloon goodbye oof, that milk in your coffee was messing with you, wasnt it . Yeah. Happens to more people than you think. Try lactaid, its real milk, without that annoying lactose. Mmm. Good right . Yeah. Lactaid. Its the milk that doesnt mess with you. Lease a 2017 lincoln mkx for 369 a month. Only at your lincoln dealer. I put it out before the american people, got 306 Electoral College votes. I wasnt supposed to get 222. They said theres no way to get 222, 230 is impossible. 270, which you need, that was laughable. We got 306. I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan. You said today you had the biggest electoral margins since ronl reagan with 304306 electoral vos. President obama got 365. Im talking republican. President obama 332 and george h. W. Bush 426 when he won as president. Why should Americans Trust you i was told i was given that information. I was just given. We had a very big margin. Why should Americans Trust you when you are providing information that is not accurate. I was given that information. Actually, i have seen that information around. Joining us from the white house, the man you saw in that clip, Nbc News National Correspondent, Peter Alexander. I guess we shouldnt be surprised by what donald trump says and does. Its odd to see that specific number when you can so quickly shoot it down. Reporter here is the bottom line, the point i was trying to get across in that exchange is why should Americans Trust you on big things if you keep misrepresenting the facts on Little Things like your Electoral College margin of victory . That was the significance of that exchange there. Its notable, that wasnt the first time in the News Conference. He tweeted about it, talked about it multiple times over the course of the last three and a half months. It was a rare opportunity to factcheck the president in realtime. This is the information i have been given, which had i do it again, how can you trust any of the information you are provided if you are provided that . Did you hear sources were pleased with the president s performance, he got done what they wanted him to do . He put himself out front instead of having others do it for him. This was his decision. White house aides tell me yesterday in the ovl office, he basically said lets do a News Conference today. He wanted to fight his own fight against the news media, against all the chaos thats been described that is engulfed this white house. He annnc it on his own. When i was outside yesterday, members of his team didnt know there was going to be a News Conference when i was trying to confirm it. They said thats news to us. The bottom line is, today they feel good about it. They are praising his performance. We have spoken to aides. This is the donald trump that resinated with americans. They feel thats the real donald trump who is authentic, real, in command and appeared confident. News this morning, as well, we are learning there is for the first time, a White House Communications director, mike who comes from the conservative cross roads media, which he founded. What else do we know about him . Reporter this was confirmed by aides in the last hours. Crossroads was one of the groups that was fighting to defeat the Trump Movement early on. Theres already some frustration among some people that were with donald trump during the course of the campaign. His is the voice that will be in charge of communications here. It should take some of the heat off press secretary, sean spicer. He was trying to juggle both jobs, communications and press secretary. He gets scrutiny from the president who goes over the press briefings with him in person, im told, hell have help in terms of messaging to focus on the specifics of the day. Loo like another busy day at the white house. As if there are others. Peter alexander. If i can interrupt, i know you were talking National Security adviser. I got a call with other names. Keith kellogg is still in the mix. Just heard the other names general keith alexander, David Petraeus and general jim jones. They may be the other names the president was referring to. Some jaws just dropped. Jim jones. General jones was Barack Obamas first National Security adviser. Was basically forced out after a brief tenure. Exhibited management abilities people were worried about with general flynn. I would be shocked if that happened. Would you be shocked if general petraeus happened . I wouldnt be. I can see why he would want to do it and why trump would want him. Anybody who takes the job has to demand the ability to hire, fire and reshape the staff and work with the other departments. This is a real dangerous thing right now. This job must be filled and by somebody qualified. Russias close connection to President Trump could be cooling as the kremlin told state media to dial back the flattering coverage of mr. Trump. The decision stems from fading hopes of Senior Leadership relations with the u. S. Will improve under the Trump Administration. They justified the move saying russians are no longer interested in President Trumps transition. Lets go to the new york stock change and sarahizen. Good morning. Good morning. Shares are in focus today. President trump set to be making a tp todayo a boeing plant, north charleston, south carolina. Boeing is going to roll out the first 78710 dreamliner in honor of the visit. We are expecting remarks from there trump and the Governor Henry Mcmaster who took over for nikki haley. As for boeing, topics include manufacturing jobs a Core Campaign promise, exports, trying to make the u. S. More competitive. Boeing is one of the biggest exporters in this country, potentially talk of the xm bank, the export import bank. Important to the likes of ge, boeing and other exporters. The stock of boeing is up 20 since the election. Its been one of the winners along with other defense providers like lockheed martin. Other news, mark zuckerberg, ceo of facebook, a defensive globalism is how its being painted against the isolationist tendencies we hear from President Trump and others. Trump wasnt mentioned by name and wasnt political. Zuckerburg needs global responses like ending terrorism, fighting Climate Change and preventing pandemics. Progress requires humanity coming together as cities, tions and a global community. This serves the interest of facebook as a business, connecting people around the world for social media. I think that, at the heart of this sort of state of the union is really what its about, where social media stands in this world where its very polarized and he took on the idea of fake news saying he has responsibility in combatting it and making sure things are accurate while everybody can still have a point of vu. Sarah on the floor of the new york stock change. Thank you very much. Last night, im walking through times square. Of course you are. We dont want to know what you are doing in time square. Were you doing elmo . Extra scratch, Walking Around money im making. I walk through times square and i look up at the big nasdaq board. They have the huge screen up there. I see your gig streamed live from prohibition on the big board in times square. All of it went to the orphanage. The guy came to prohibition. I just put it up because natalia told me to and hes very good. Its crazy. 87 million views. It was a if you pulled back, it looked like the end of world war ii. It looked like new years eve out there. Really . Like the resurrection. How did your costume work . I made 11 last night. Really . And no arrests. Do your arms get tired . Its an elmo costume, for the kids. You never have to wash it. You see the guys out there across the street. You save money in detergent to never wash that thing. That 11 you kept . I have very low overhead. You own that costume or a rental . Its like a cab, you buy a medallion and share it with other people. You still dont wash it. You dont want to be the one stuck with the tide pods. Let somebody else do that. Why are you so gross . Okay. Thank you natalia brzezinski. Thank you nasdaq. Sony, spotify. Friends from spotify were there last night. Yep. Huffington was at prohibition. Fager was there. Jeff fager from my 60 minutes past. He wants you to do the 60 minutes party. Joey and kathryn, oh, and lewis. Jonathan prince. Jonathan prince was there. I had no idea. I had no idea you knew Jonathan Prince from spotify as well as you did until he showed me all the pictures you sent him of your baby. The Prime Minister of spotify. He is the Prime Minister of spotify. Great guy. It was fun. Good job. You did well. Check it out on his facebook page. You can check to see all the ople o spotify. Your band is so good. We had more people watching than ever before. Check and see. As far as bands go, we got more electoral votes than any other band in the history. What . Whats so funny . Somebody just told me that. The monkeys had more. Somebody told me that. The nasdaq thing was cool. My daughter was watching from dartmouth so that was cool. Theres a scandal breaking. Up next our bassist came from russia. Im just saying we had more electoral votes than any band in history that played on the nasdaq. Im going to talk about my chickens if you are not quiet. Its very humbling. Where were you when the president gave that epic News Conference. My next problem is womens difficulties. Thats next. Good. We really struggle with cramps. We dont care about things like equal pay or being speaking out, having a seat at the table. If you are a member of congress, it may depend on whether you are a democrat or republican on whether you actually saw Donald Trumps press conference. Well be right back. Knowing d has never been easier. Except when it comes to retirement. At fidelity, you get a retirement score in just 60 seconds. And well help you make decisions for your plan. To keep you on track. Its your retirement. Know where you stand. To keep you on track. 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And always working to be better. Because safety is never being satisfied. Scalpel. I have no idea what im doing. Im just a tv doctor. I never went to college. scream i dont do blood. But now, thanks to cigna, i can do more than just look the part. Is that a foot . We are the tv doctors of america. And were partnering with cigna to help save lives. By getting you to a real doctor for an annual checkup. So go, know, and take control of your health. Doctor poses. Cigntogether, all the way. Its realizing beauty doesnt stop at my chin. Roc®s formula adapts to delicate skin areas. My fine lines here . Visibly reduced in 4 weeks. Chest, neck, and face cream from roc®. Methods, not miracles. ™ start here. At fidelity, we let you know where you stand, so when it comes to your retirement plan, youll always be absolutely. Clear. Its your retirement. Know where you stand. In a moment, we are going to bring in casey hunt, live from capitol hill. First, a look at some of the ground we have covered this morning. That would have been a really funny hour or so of television, if he werent president of the United States. The idea was to convey theres no chaos in the white house. Im not sure it had that effect. They were laughing and they werent laughing at donald trump. Giving off the appearance things are getting done. They thought that was a wonderful performance. Imagine watching in berlin and imagine watching it in london. Why should Americans Trust you on big things if you cant tell the truth on Little Things. Do you want to set up the meeting . No, no, no. I cannot assume what the president is thinking. He could never go deep on a thought. This guy is the first sore winner we have ever seen. Lies, exaggerations, bullying, intimidation, bragging. Not one of those things was shocking. The man he selected to be the National Security adviser said no. They offered the job to someone and they didnt know the answer. They may have thought they knew the answer and he watched the News Conference. Michael flynn lied to the fbi. Thats a felony. If you are going to lead the lock her up chant, you would actually say maybe i ought to not lie to the fbi. What Michael Flynn did or may not have done is far down the bar. The number one story is the stability of the president of the United States. All right, joining us now, nbc news capitol hill correspondent, casey hunt. She was getting reaction from the hill. Yes this is different. Casey, there was reaction in front of the camera,re was reaction behind the camera when the camera was off. Talk about reaction in front of the camera with republicans versus democrats. Reporter right. So, the house of representatives has now left for their president s day recess. They are going to go home, face the music from constituents. In the wake of this press conference, what was happening, joe, you will remember well, everyone is fleeg out the halls. When the weather is nice, they go down the steps. I thought this is the last chance to catch up to the members to get reaction to exactly what happened with the press conference. It seemed democrats tended to have time to have seen it while republicans didnt. Take a look. What is your reaction, one word for the press Conference Today. I didnt get to see it. Reporter one word reaction . Terrifying. Reporter sir . Unfocused. I didnt see the press conference, sorry. Nonending. I was in a hearing. Lacking. I didnt watch it. Unbelievable. I didnt see it today, i have been in committee meetings. Embarrassing. I havent got to watch it yet, i was in a hearing. Reporter your one word reaction. Prayer. Reporter can i bother you briefly for one word reaction to the president. I have been in the chair for the past two hours, sorry. Growth and tax reform getting the economy going is obviously more than one word. Reporter so, as you can see there, for the most part republicans have not looked at it. I will point out the one congressman at the end brady, is one of the people that does have the most invested in actually being able to pass an agenda, which i think is part of the reason you are seeing republicans not come out and criticize the president. They want to get things done. The conclusion, publicly, clearly, is this did not contribute to that. What about privately . Are you hearing the same thing i am hearing from republicans which is not quite a meltdown, but almost a panic that their leader is sort of losing it. This uneven. Reporter so, what i learned after this had concluded was very different than what i was hearing while this was going on. I was texting, emailing with Many Republican congressmen, republican aides. Everybody seems to be watching with their jaws on the floor. One called it unbelievable. Another said face palm with a hashtag in front. I think there was a lot of consternation behind the scenes. The sense is this snowball around russia, in particular, is something that could threaten the administration in a fundamental way. Its a different thing than the constant tweets. They are really kind of starting to get to the point where they feel whats going on at the white house could prevent them from doing the big things they want to do. Paul ryan and Mitch Mcconnell want to be in charge, unable to do anything big, able to work around the margins. They have been willing to give the president as much leeway as they have because they want him to sign things like tax reform and the health care repeal. They feel it gets in the way of it. Cas hunt, thank you so much. Mark, its very interesting. I hear on the house side house members still more lined up behind the president. On the senate side, they say talk about their concerns. The house side, we are interested in the agenda. We are concerned about the distractions, but at the end of the day, the question is, does he pass the agenda or not . On the two big things that are going to be done, health care and tax reform, they are split. Tax reform, he is more alive on the house. Health care, more aligned with the senate. Part of the challenge for republicans is not special interest groups, can they draw democratic votes for the projects, but fighting amongst themselves. Part of republicans were unhappy with what happened yesterday. They need a focused white house that is thinking about a legislative strategy and the tactics requires to get it done. That was a planned success or failure in 2017. Lets bring in somebody that knows a lot about that republican, Chris Collins in new york. He was the first to turn toward donald trump as president. He served a key roll in the transition. Thank you for being with us. I spoke to Mitch Mcconnell and paul ryan on and off the record. They both tell me the senate and the house are working closely together and that we need to be patient but we should expect a bill on both Health Care Reform and tax reform that both sides, both chambers agree on. Is that what you are hearing . Yeah. Theres no question. We are marking up the bill. We are marking up the health bill week after next. You know, we have general agreement on most aspects. There are a few details toork out. The president isoced on this as is the Vice President. I think we are in a very good place and well follow that up a few months later with a tax reform. Again, there are details to work out, certainly on the border adjustability tax. We have overall general agreement on certainly where the rates need to go. Unlike what some of the press is reporting, i think things are going very well, smoothly, a lot of focus, certainly, Vice President pence being the key liaison between the administration thats what i was going to ask next. Can you explain how hes playing an important roll. We have been talking a lot of distractions the last couple hours. You look at policy so we can dig into this. You have the house and the senate lined up. In the white house, i was going to ask you, how big of a role is mike pence playing as the liaison to make sure everybody is talking to each other. Vice president pence is everywhere. I mean, as most people know, i was with the president yesterday for about an hour and just before the press conference. Certainly Vice President pence was there as well. We talked about health care. We talked about infrastructure. We talked about tax reform. We are hitting all of these, a small group of us, the early endorsers. A lot of focus. The president is counting on Vice President pence to be the go between the senate, the house, the administration and various secretaries. Secretary price, certainly, when it comes to the health care, secretary mnuchin when it comes to tax reform and others. They are very focused and Vice President pence is playing a key role. Hes in all the meetings. He is the legislative liaison that is going to make sure a bill that hits President Trumps desk will be signed into law. Okay, we really appreciate your coming on the show. We have been so critical in some ways. You know . I do want to kind of echo Peter Alexander and ask if you are at all concerned that this president often says things that arent true on such a small, petty scale, given the grand scheme of things. Is that at all concerning to you . No, its not. Yesterday was a unique day. As i said, i was with the president for the hour just before the press conference. Hes relaxed. Hes focused. Hes got his team working very well. What you are seeing, i think, is a little frustration or a lot of frustration with the way the news media is covering things. I mean, i for one lived through it relative to a situation that was distorted and not accurate with myself and secretary price. So, all of us are frustrated. The facts dont matter. When people are trying to fit a story into a bias like the stories already written and they have to find facts, whether they are facts or not. Its sumply frustration. Whats what you saw with the president s press conference. I can assure you he and his team are focused, working hand in glove with Mitch Mcconnell and paul ryan. Folks that think its not sho. I was told to be short. What would the headline you put on the press conference yesterday . I would say frustration with the news media. Okay. Really quickly, can you give us a time, sort of a time frame, when do you think we are going to see repeal and reform bill on the Affordable Care act . We are marking it up week after next. You are talking about the first week in march. The details coming together on some of the biggest pieces you have ever seen, including medicaid and looking at total reforms that we have talked about for decades on medicaid. These are really big things. Thank you so much, congressman Chris Collins, we appreciate you being with us here. Have a great weekend. We end this week with a goodbye to one of the longest members of the morning joe family. Its best set up with this clip. Because everybodys shoes were so wet, i ruined my carpet. This carpet was wiped out. Yeah, man, it really tied the room together. Value dollar. My rug. That rug really tied the room together, did it not . We have to get a hat laura kim, our producer. Take that one. Thank you for that. It really tied the room together x man. That was one of the hundreds of times we have said laura kims name here on morning joe. She was with us at the very start. Very start. We needed a production staff. We had a staff of three people. They were all laura kim. We were quite literally making it up as we went along. Laura has been working on the morning joe digital team and by working on, we mean she founded it and leads it nearly single handedly. Shes behind a lot of viral moments you have seen on the internet. Sorry to say, and happy to say, shes headed to the family New York Times. That takes courage. Help it not fail. She will undoubtedly shine. We are so proud of you. We are going to miss you, so much. Look, joe wanted me to say this yay for laura. We adore you and thank you so much for your service and long and putting up with joe. Its been hard, i know. Well miss you so much. We love you. Thank you, laura. You can let her say thank you. You want to say anything . Thank you so much. Its been a pleasure working here. I dont know which camera to look at. Its been an amazing ride. Thank you. Thank you. We will miss you very much. Come back. I will. Come back soon. That does it for us this morning. Its been a long week. Get some rest. Allie velshi picks up the