Washington anchor for bbc world news america, katty kay, and cofounder and ceo of axios, jim vandehei with us. Were going to begin with the testimony from the former director of the Central Intelligence agency john brennan. Speaking yesterday before the house intelligence committee, he said under his watch investigators have uncovered troubling information about contacts between russian officials and americans in the Trump Campaign. By the time i left office on january 20th, i had unresolved questions in my mind as to whether or not the russians had been successful in getting u. S. Persons involved in the campaign or not to work in their behalf, again, either in a witting or unwitting nafashion. Did evidence exist of collusion, coordination, conspiracy between the Trump Campaign and russian state actors at the time you learned of 2016 efforts . I encountered and am aware of information intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between russian officials and u. S. Persons involved in the trumpcampaign. I dont kn whether or not such collusion and thats your term, such collusion existed. I dont know. But i know there was a sufficient basis of information and intelligence that required further investigation by the bureau to determine whether or not u. S. Persons were actively conspireing, colluding with russian officials. Ive studied russian intelligence activities over the years and have seen it manifest in many of our counterintelligence cases and how they have been able to get people, including cia to become treasonous, frequently individuals who go along a treasonous path dont realize theyre along that path until it gets to be a bit too late. Very carefully, what dots can we connect . First of all, trey gowdy. First of all, if somebody could get him a little powder, to put it across the top. The shine is unbelievable. I speak actually for america, because thats all people notice when youre on tv. Now well go a little deeper. Secondly, here is the deal trey gowdy should know this. Wasnt trump talking about name him intel god or Something Like that. Hes in line to be like whatever. The cia, the collect intel. Thats their job. They get intel and figure out they get the information usually to president s who arent insulting them and they work together. The fbi, trey, they gather evidence. So please do not ask an fbi director when he or she is before your committee about whats happening in pakistan, on the pakistanafghanistan border. Dont ask a cia director about, quote, evidence. Not his job and you know that. Bush league stuff. Why are republicans making fools of themselves like this . I will say that trey gowdy knows better. Theres always a distraction. Theres always something to try to say look over here like james carville, look at the bird, look over here, look over there. I saw that yesterday. I was so frustrated. He knows that. He was intent on getting john brennan, the former director of the cia to say there was not collusion between the Trump Campaign and russian government. Hes not going to say that. Its not his job. Just like its not my job to solve physics problems on this set. Fortunately. Fortunately. And youve tried. I have. Its not his job. Its so stupid. Not his job to say it, and even if he suspected there was collusion, hes not going to talk about that in an open hearing time and time again. What they did get yesterday is that russia interfered, us. Officials did communicate with russians. Hes not going to connect the dots for congress. Thats up to the people prosecuting the case. There was a bit of chilling testimony, Mike Barnicle, when he talked about people who betrayed their country and sometimes did it unwittingly because they were so far down the road that they unwittingly betrayed their country. Brennan had a very good day. Trey gowdy did not have a good day. He had his big boy prosecutor pants on but it backfired on him for the reasons you alluded to. Brennan did point out that the russians are expert at en vagaling you, involving you as a potential source and you wouldnt know it. You would be unaware of it. Donald trump and republicans had a terrible day. I think its just more evidence that youre in for probably months if not years of investigation. What hes hitting on is this idea its largely flynn he seems to be talking about, these contacts. There are only one of four big things that get picked out the next four months. The firing, the oneonone conversation with the fbi director, all the activities with russia and the turkish government and flynn. We have republicans saying they think theyll come back from september from the recess wh no a single legislative accomplishment. Thats whats really at the end of the day, thats what republicans are going to be judged on. Were sitting here worried about little things, the distractions. Were worried about the constitution, worried about the rule of law. Were worried about separations of powers. Were worried about somebody going to the office and bumbling around and doing grave violence to a constitution that has held this republic together for 240 years. These are distractions. What people in Middle America are focused on are jobs and the performance of this president and the performance of this republican congress. Of course, people in america care about all that. I say at the end of the day, somebody is not going to go to a voting booth and go, hmm, lets see, he said something bad about a judge in hawaii. Theyre going to say what have they done to get me back to work. Trumps biggest figure, what will hurt republicans most, is getting nothing done. Hes a rank amateur. And creates so much chaos that theres just absolute dysfunction. You have a candidate that promised to make America Great again, to rebuild the military are you tired of wting so much . Im exhausted by whats going on. He said hed get so tired of winning, wed be exhausted. I speak for america when i say were exhausted. Its exhausting. I think everybody, americans who really are hurting out there were expecting more from this president and probably are feeling a bit uneasy, whether theyre ready to say it or not. If you listen to what happened on capitol hill yesterday, it doesnt make things better. Former cia director brennan had an interesting reaction when questioned about possible reasons for individuals from the Trump Campaign hiding their contacts with russia. Director, there is what is referred to as consciousness of guilt evidence. Thats when somebody lies about a material fact and that fact the fact of them lying can be used against that person because it would be, in essence, an effort to cover up what happened. If you were telling the truth, you wouldnt have anything to cover up. With respect to some of the contacts that you referred to between russia and Trump Campaign officials, are you aware of any of those u. S. Persons who had contact with russia either making false statements about those contacts or failing to disclose those contacts . I think thats something that you can pursue in closed session. Lets add to the conversation the Washington Post reporter covering National Security, devlin barrett. What was your headline from yesterday regarding brennan. The headline is basically brennan fills in a lot of the gaps of the early stages of this investigation. The dance that keeps going on with the white house and a lot of republicans is, theres nothing to see here, theres nothing to see here, just move on. What you keep getting from the intel community, both current and former officials is actually theres a lot to look at here. We dont want to tell you everything we found and we arent ready to reach a conclusion about it yet, but theres a lot of pushback to the notion that theres nothing to see here. You saw brennan sort of underline that over and over in the things he said yesterday. We havent really spoken about coates testimony and coates who is close to the testimony declining to take the opportunity to say the president did not put pressure on him in any way to back off from the investigation. I thought that was a pretty stunning stand for independence from dan coates and not one that will win him very many favors from the president who prides loyalty above all it seems from the people around him. Right. This is an interesting test for all the people who still work in this business and work for the president. How much are you willing or unwilling to publicly contradict him when the facts are what they are . Obviously weve reported that the president reached out to him and asked him to publicly say there was no collusion, and he wouldnt do that. He didnt want to talk about it yesterday under oath, and its obviously a difficult political situation for him to be in, but the reality is, these questions are going to get answered publicly eventually, and i think it just creates more problems from the administration. Devlin barrett, thanks so much for doing a lot of good reporting on National Security in the past few weeks. Katty, what about the drip, drip, drip impact this is having on the republicans every single day . That has to be the big to what jim was saying about not getting anything done, and ive spoken to Senior Republicans who have said what are the president s Approval Ratings . The gallup poll back down at 37 . Hes fallen back down again. I reckon if the president falls to 35, 36 , youll see more voices coming out certainly in the senate critical of the president. Youll see more republicans who are looking more vulnerable. Ed gillespie is one of them in virginia, saying we have nothing to show. We cant go to people and say look what we have achieved in the last two years because we havent achieved anything except signing a bill which is deeply unpopular. Ed gillespie is down double dts. You go to georgia, ossoff is down several points. There are a lot of republicans looking at those numbers and talking saying this guy is taking us down. Im in a swing district. Im only one by 5 last time. Im going to lose next time. Yes, their numbers individually are worse than they were before, but his numbers, he never drops below 36 or 37, never goes above 42 or 43. Thats been true for more than a year regardless of what he does. When they look at the polls and they say the percent tam of trump voters would vote for them again, and the polling shows most of the base is still with trump, its going to take a lot more. Theyre going to keep doing this rationalization. Theyre going to say this is sloppy in a way that looks shady as opposed to shady that looks impeachable. Thats how they keep rationalizing this. Do you find it striking that a lot of republican senators, at least to my view, and a lot of members of the house, theres no striking defense of the president . They dont like him. Very few of these members have any relationship with them. Almost none of them would describe themselves as trump republicans. They feel like he is the head of the repubcan party and theyre not ready to throw him overboard because they know there would be a mad backlash from the far right. There are two republican caucuses though. We talked about this on the show yesterday. Theres twothirds of the caucus that comes from rural areas, and theyre still pretty much in trumps background. Mika, theres onethird thats suburban, and theyre scared every single day. By the way, onethird of the republicans who talk about these budgets, when trump puts out a budget that is hateful. Dead on arrival. As mean spirited as this one is, you dont need nancy pelosi talking about it out front without onethird of the republican caution in the suburban areas. I heard from a couple of them yesterday, scared at hell. That sort of budget where youre slashing health care, youre slashing education, slashing funding for cancer, youre slashing funding for research and development, that actually has a huge more than what brennan says on capitol hill, that has an impact back in their districts. You have republicans in charge and the president is sending them, and ill coin a phrase from a popular morning show prognosticator, a steamin pilef yeah, Something Like that. A steaming pile of garbage. Thats finnish to. To take you kids back that are too young, that was my interpretation of the president s stimulus bill. Vintage 09. Thats even kind for this budget. Nbc news learned that President Trump will retain his longtime did we get a trademark on that . Alex . We asked trumps lawyer to issue us one. Thats great. He wont get it done. Do we have somebody that speaks russian . You can ask trumps lawyer to do it. I think theyre the Number One Law Firm in russia. If you or a friend of yours has money laundered with russian oligarchs over the last 20 years, call the law firm tell us who it is, mika. Youre not going to get it done if you look at the track record. Nbc news learned President Trump will retain Marc Kasowitz as his private counsel on matters related to the russia investigation. Kasowitz is mostly known as a litigator and his website lists white collar defense as an area of practice. When the president threatened to sue the New York Times for like bell over an article that featured two women of accusing him of inappropriately touching them, it was kasowitz demanding a retraction. The retraction never happened. When the times published trumps 1995 tax records last year it was kasowitz who threatened, quote, prompt initiation of appropriate legal action. Ing in ever happened. Joe lieberman who is in contention to be fbi director has been with that firm since 2013. The attorneys most recent highprofile case, defending russias largest staterun bank. I love this stuff. In a civil lawsuit. Whats so great about this, trump makes it so hard to connect to dots. He really does. Seriously. You dig through all of this stuff and wait for a smoking gun, and its kind of like the end of oliver stones jfk where garrison goes in and cries. Its all connected, honey. Its all connected. It takes us forever this is trump right here. Hold on one second. Its so sad. Trump here, russia over here. He makes it unnecessarily hard on himself. Didnt he get some other firm that was like the number one raided law firm in russia, Something Like that. Even the lieberman element of it. Do we have that tweet . Let me see if we have that twee were not on tv here. Dont do it. What are you doing . Ive got three hours. Dont tweet. Im not tweeting right now. I have to show you this picture that jack did of lbj giving the pope a bust of himself. Look at that. Can you do that . Hold on. Here we go. Lieberman. Im not sure whats your point here. This is advertisement, theyre at the same firm. Hes got the same guy defending him, the same guy with joe lieberman, working at the same law firm since 13. What is it . Is it just consistent loyalty above yes. You always go for the guy who has been with you even if everybody else told you this is not a good idea because its going to raise red flags over two issues, lieberman and russia. In the words of aristotle, this is just a whole lot of dumb or was it stupid. A whole lot of stupid. You look at the things hes done and everybody is hes so evil. I dont know. Maybe hes evil. I dont see it. I s a guy who is glueless. Hes like mr. Magoo, but mr. Magoo trying to shred the u. S. Constitution. We can go back over what hes done the past couple days. I did not mention israel. I did not mention israel. I just revealed the fact that i did screw israel but i did not mention israel. Then hes in israel. I just got to tell you guys, i just got back from the middle east. T it was lovely. Poor ron dermer. It happens every day. Choices like this. Thats his defense . Stupidity . Ignorance. Since he started his campaign almost two years ago he has enjoyed and gotten off in some ways on pissing everybody off. There are people who said joe lieberman, a guy you mentioned might be a pick to be the fbi director is a partner here, that might not look good, and that might be a problem. It may be comfort and he may want to stay in his little cocoon he was in. Here is the problem, hes facing legal jeopardy now, and hes been told by everybody around him, you better get a good lawyer. Youre in legal jeopardy. People very close to you are in legal jeopardy. Are you told hes been told this by people around him . Yes. The group around him looks kind of who are you talking about . Jared, ivanka, steve bann . Are you talking abo spaicy . Everybody in there knows that things got a lot more serious last week and theyre getting lawyers. I dont think so. I honestly dont think theyd be posting instagrams of themselves modeling, honestly. If they knew they were in really big trouble they wouldnt be Walking Around blowing bubbles. They dont look like they think theyre in any trouble. Jared looks pretty good. Yes, theyre saying that. Theres nobody that listens to in his life. Thats why he goes back to thats comfort foods. Do you think he he openly talks to staff about how hed like to get flynn back. Comfort. Jim, do you not think that he understands have you not heard reporting that he understands he could be in legal jeopardy . He understands it for a second and then he moves on, gets filled with grievance and he cant be controlled. Theres nobody around him, not a single person, not jared, not ivanka who can sit him down and get him to be consistently he won against all our conventional wisdom. I think he Still Believes, despite the chaos of the last four months, that he should defy conventional wisdom if hes going to be successful because it was doing that that got him the presidency. When he says you should do things properly and systematized, he feels thats not what works for him. He likes doing things differently. The last four months dont seem so far to have told him a certain amount of conventional wisdom might produce the only thing is, when you have bob mueller going to his desk every morning and doing what bob mueller is doing every morning, getting information, turning over every single stone, you better realize the game has changed. If he doesnt, hell end up he or people close to him will end up in as tenuous a situation as general flynn is in right now because general flynn i dont think theyre going to give him immunity. I think theyre going to squeeze him and squeeze him and squeeze him. Somebody was on hardball last night said dont give him immunity, dont do an ollie north deal. Squeeze him. Theres a lot of squeezing to be had with general flynn when it c