He is an unbelievable politician. I love the president. I know hes picking up about 300,000 followers a day, god bless him. People love him. It has been a very successful Life Experience for President Trump to be President Trump. Thank you. The newly minted White House Communications director communicating his love for the president on friday Anthony Scaramucci. Also hit the sunday shows and jumped into the dangerous waters of trying to manage a message in the middle of a president ial tweet storm. Were going to see how he d meanwhile, just off this morning, Jared Kushner is said to answer questions today from staffers of the senate intel committee. But he just released a very long statement detailing his encounters with russias ambassador and kremlin linked lawyer. Were looking through it right now. John is reading it. Can you give us a nugget yet . Its very long. Its quite long. Jared kushner seems to be saying here the following things, one, i was in charge mostly with contacts with foreigners and foreign governments and foreign contacts during the campaign. Almost all of those were in response to incoming calls and emails not me reaching out to those people. He gives an account of when he first met kissly as at the Mayflower Hotel. He says briefly meaningless. Then he gives an accounting of the meeting that is in contention which he essentially says i dont know what it was b i showed up a little bit late. They talked about adoptions a little bit and i didnt really want to be there and no big deal. Again that, is a very, very rough account. It is many pages long. Im still absorbing. This was just put out moments ago. I guess theyre preparing for this meeting but also potentially preparing this all night. Good morning, everyone. Its monday, july 24th. Its always action packed on morning joe. Joe has the morning off. With us we have analyst for nbc news, john heilemann, associate editor of commentator magazine, clint watts, former White House Press secretary to president obama now msnbc political analyst, josh earnest. And nbc news capitol hill correspondent casey hunt joins us and David Ignacious is with us as well. President trump put his message out on twitter sending 19 tweets from his personal account alone. And among the ten he sent 8 30 on saturday morning was this one. While all agree the u. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is leaks against us. Fake news. The president s lawyer had denied any accusation of pardons as nonsense. After the Washington Post reported trum Health Care Plan asked advisors about pardoning powers. A member of trumps outside legal team continued to make that argument yesterday. The new Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said the president had discussed the issue with him. We have not and continue to not have conversations with the president of the United States regarding pardons. Pardons have not been discussed. And pardons are not on the table. Im in the oval office with the president the last week. Were talking about that. He says he brought that up, he said, but he zdoesnt have to b pardoned. There is nobody around him that has to be pardoned. He was making the statement about the power of pardon. Why is he tweeting about pardons . Well, i think the unfortunately he may have had a conversation in the oval office or somewhere about it and then people rush out to leak that information to people. Its very unprofessional and very harmful. I think that the gist of that leak basically or that tweet, i should say, is that hes not going to pardon anybody. He just doesnt like the fact he has a two minute conversation in the oval office or in his study and people are running out and leaking that. All right. Josh, first of all, how is Anthony Scaramucci doing . You can see how what a careful dance it is. It is a careful dance. I think we learned and hopefully anthony learned on sunday morning the difference between being an outside advocate for the president of the United States on Cable Television and being responsible for managing the entire messaging operation of the white house. Its a real problem when youre out there saying Something Different than either the president is tweeting or the White House Press secretary is also taking on television on just a different channel. Remember, they had conflicting messages as it relates to whether or not President Trump would approve of and sign this russia sanctions bill that is making its way throughout congress. And i would say you have to pace yourself in that job. I mean, you know from being in the position of press secretary the incoming is unbelievable. This president could change on a dime in the middle of your speaking on tv is what we learned over the past six months. One way or another, look, there are a variety of things that made shawn spicers job really hard. Certainly one of them is constantly income a position and being worried about being undermined by the president without any warning. On twitter. And the question really is shawn spicer never had the kind of relationship with President Trump that mr. Scaramucci clearly has. And so the question is what kind of how will that affect the dynamic of his ability to lead the operation . And how effective will anthony be in using some of that good will he has with the president to give sarah a better shot here. Anthony scaramucci had quite a career before this job. And it was not necessarily connected with trump. I will say his tone appears to be i just hope he hasnt taken any type of loyalty oath. I mean, i dont know if that ever really exists. But there certainly was discussion of that. David, im going to go to you. Im curious, we have a lot of other things to talk about with you, but what you thought about the president s tweet about pardoning. I felt the fact that he confirmed that there had been a discussion as reported last week with his aides by saying my pardoning powers are absolute, clearly told us that he is extremely agitated about this investigation. He then called it a phoney russia witchunt. He isnt able in his own mind to get free of it. It nags at him. He has i had soninlaw going to testify this morning in a crucial bit of testimony which were still trying to unravel what he wants to say. I thought the tweet showed us that president , however much he talks about governing and getting back to his agenda, is himself personally preoccupied. Hes trying to get order out of the chaos of his white house with scaramucci. Good luck with that. The initial day scaramucci was disagreeing with his own press secretary. Its clear that the splits in this administration and this white house, in fact, go much deeper. These are really now quite bitter rivalries. The white house chief of staff is clearly undercut by at pointment pointhe appoint ma appoint. Of scaramucci. So its a white house that really is the cracks are showing more now. I agree. Ill talk more about this later. But Anthony Scaramucci has a huge opportunity here to do the right thing. I feel like hes missed a few opportunities in ee raisirasing tweets and love for the president. How about love for the country . How about because i love the country and i want to do the right thing and leave it at that . I feel this repettive obsession with saying he loves trump is concerning although it is just the beginning and we will see how it plays out. Clint, with the testimony that is happening today, Jared Kushner releasing a huge statement. Were pouring through it. What are your big concerns heading into this week . I think what i want to know with kushner is if you remember back, its hard to remember all the revelations. We were talking about a secret Communications Channel with russia. Why would we need to set that up . Why would kushner need to set that up . If i was in the intel committees that, is the top thing i drive on. The other one is the financial connections. Whether he has personal connections or not, how much debt, how much money transactions, what kind of real estate deals do we have with this country . Theres an account as you get deeper into this statement by Jared Kushner, theres an account of that matter. His version again, ill summarize. His version is meaning with kislyak in december, a meeting he claims kislyak wanted, asked for repeatedly. He did not. He said he didnt have time to schedule it for about a week. Finally got on the calendar. He went. They talked. Kislyak told him that he wanted, he, kislyak, had information from russian generals about the situation in syria that he wanted to convey to the incoming administration. And he, kislyak, asked if there was a secure line into the transition that they could use in order to convey that information. Kushner and Michael Flynn who was also in the meeting replied to him that, no, there is no such secure line. At which point kushner says he then asked is there a secure line that you might have so we can have this conversation . He then claims kislyak said no and that was the end of the conversation. Just reading you the kushner version. This all came out in the past hour. So were doing our best to get through it. Clearly Jared Kushner is looking to clear his name and move on. Today kushner expected to answer questions from staff of the Senate Intelligence committee as we mentioned investigating russia. The interview will be conducted behind closed doors and kushner will not be under oath. That june 2016 meeting at trump you to we are donald trump jr. And a russian lawyer expected to be at the top of the agenda. As weve been saying just in this morning is a copy of the statement to congressional investigators. Hes expected to say that trump jr. Invited him to the meeting but at that time he did not know who else would be there. And didnt read the entire email. The only concern about that is the subject line was pretty clear. The first word was russia. The first word was rush yachlt a rifd at the meeting a little late. When i got there the person who has since been identified as a russian attorney was talking about the issue of a ban on u. S. Adoptions of russian children. I had no idea why that topic was being raised and quickly determined that my time was not well spent at this meeting. Looking for an excuse to leave, kushner says he emailed an assistant to call his cell. He claimed there were ten minutes or so and that he had never met with the russian attorney before that meeting nor has he spoken with her since. Kushner could also face questions over transparency. We learned late friday that his financial forms were revised to include almost 80 assets that were omitted in previous disclosures. Kushner has also had to update his security clearance forms several times to include previously undisclosed meetings with foreign nationals. Hes expected to tell the congressional panel, i did not collude nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded with any foreign government. I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on russian funds to finance my Business Activities in the private sector. I have tried to be fully transparent with regard to the filing of my sf86 form. Above and beyond what is required. Hopefully this puts these matters to rest. Casey, anything else standing out to you . Im just trying to wrap my head around this entire statement and what it means in context. I would say that this is essentially the chaos and sloppiness defense. Essentially Jared Kushner is explaining away point by point all of the concerning things and we just ticked through some of them. And offering his version of events that essentially makes things that may seem to be problematic simply the result of somebody overlooking something, of the chaos of the campaign in the case of the sf8 6. He said the assistant hit too soon because they misinterpret the his instructions and that resulted he is entangled in trying to explain yes didnt list the contacts. You just mentioned in that statement him wanting to leave the meeting with the russian lawyer. There was an email that was sent so there is a paper trail where he says can you please call me on my cell . Need an excuse to get away. He said thats because he walked into the meeting and immediately decided it was a waste of time, not that he decided there was something that was potentially problematic and that he needed to remove himself from the situation. And i will say from my reporting on how this is going talking to members of the committee privately, this is to a certain extent i think the opening that republicans who want to find a reason to defend the president are looking to give them. Theyre essentially saying, look, there couldnt be a collusion here because nobody was in any position to collude. Everybody was drinking out of a fire hose. So i think thats the direction youre going to see this go over the course of today. Clint, the sf86 . Yeah. One of my bigger problems with all of this is the sf86. That is your essentially your own personal testimony about your qualifications, you know, your history, work history. I just know from having worked in government, i probably have filled out a dozen sf86s in my career. If i made those kinds of mistakes, id be immediately flagged or, you know, held out for review. And probably rejected. And so i think thats a major oversight. And now were looking at someone who has been tasked we normous responsibility in this administration to solve what are supposedly many different Foreign Policy technical issues. We put it all to rest on this one person and now were finding out that this are hundreds of contacts, lots of Financial Disclosure forms that have not been filled out yet were putting this person in charge of this. So were reading a really long statement put out this morning by Jared Kushner who expected to answer questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee Staff today. Noah, you write in kmen taker yish kmen taker yishgs you write this, if the 2016 president ial election cycle demonstrated anything, it was that republicans suffer if a crippling lack of imagination. The ordeal should have established that the unprecedent the is not impossible. Even now republicans seem as though theyre trying to convince themselves that their eyes are lying to them but theyre not. The tempo of the investigation into President Trump is accelerating and the nightmare scenario is eminently imaginable. Only could Congressional Republicans overt disaster and then being clear about the actions theyre prepared to take if trump insti gates a crisis of constitutional legitimacy, they have to summon them publicly. If theyre so concerned that norms and tradition thats preserved the rule of law in this republic for 240 years are in jeopardy, they must say so. Know yashgs you kn noah, one more move like he fires mueller, Something Like that, are republicans ready to step up . Is that question youre asking . That is the question im asking. Im not sure of the answer. That New York Times interview suggested he threw kind of a brushback pitch at the special counsels office and in order to make a move against thash he has to move against the department of justice, suggest that rose enstein would have to fire mueller. If he is not so inclined, then he would have to ask for a resignation from the department of justice. Then we get into a territory where were talking about the 1973 analogy dont seem so hyperbolic anymore. Republicans are free to, very eager to criticize this president on background, on condition of anonymity. What will they do when it matters . David, on the russia angle, you had kellyanne conway, not sure why but she was interviewed talking about the russia story being just a joke or something. I forget her words. I dont really listen to them. But also Anthony Scaramucci talking about the president not sold on first of all, just characterize for us, do you it this russia story is a big story . I think it is one. More to the point, its a story thats being investigated by a special counsel highly respected lawyer robert mueller. He is now commanding the resources of the fbi, of a staff of top investigators and prosecutors that hes assembled. So its very real. Its an on going investigation. I last week was at a conference in aspen, colorado, where almost all of the top current and former National Security officials were in attendance. Almost every one of them said emphatically that they endorsed the conclusion of the u. S. Intelligence committee that there was russian meddling in the 2016 president ial election. Thats president something that President Trump even now is uncomfortable doing. In one of tweets over the weekend he referred again to the phoney russia witch hunt and scaramucci said in one of his interviews that when he talked with the president the president says it may have happened. It may not have happened. They may have done it. They may not have done it. Its still this ambiguous uncertain tone not reflected by any of his intelligence aides. So, yes, this is something that the top analysts of intelligence say is real, thats being investigated by our congress and by the special counsel. The president really stands alone in his insistence that this is a witchunt and phoney. Yeah. Im hearing from the white house as well that Jared Kushner is really working on trying to be transparent. There are a lot of different forms that hes addressing in this statement. Which youre still reading. How many pages is it . Its about 11 pages at least. And i think i want to go back to the earlier thing that i said. I was a little confused about one thing. The first meeting with kislyak was not problematic. He gets set up and set up quickly after trump had won. The meeting with the russian banker was the one that kushner claims he kept trying to put off. Kislyak meeting took place and the account i gave of the question about the secure Communications Channel that i gave before is accurate, at least to what Jared Kushners version of it s the gorkov meeting, he claims in the statement that he does not say explicitly, at least that i can find, that he never met or knew of sergei gorkov. He suggested strongly. The way he talks about it is if he were a stranger and he claims the reason he took the meeting was because kislyak kept wanting him to take the meeting. And he was bothering him, badgering him to get it on the calendar and saying you have to see him. You have to see him. He has a direct line to putin. If you met him, youll have insight into how putin sees things. Jared kushner said he relented and the meeting got on the schedule. Nothing was, again, kushner claims, no discussion of business of his businesses. No discussion of finances, his finances. Only a sort of general discussion of u. S. Russia relations and some giving of gifts including a bag of dirt. So im communicating with several people who are hopeful that we get through all of jarrJared Kushners statement. Hes looking at full transparency. My biggest question is how he doesnt know what this don jr. Meeting is about had when its in the subject line of the email. That i guess he is saying in this statement and he will say today that he didnt read the email. You see subject lines when you open up your you cant help but to read them. Right. Im just so curious as to how they get around that. It raises questions. The other part of this that has to be unraveled is for all of the efforts on the part of Jared Kushner and others to explain away all the conversations, whats very difficult to explain away are the policy decisions the Trump White House has made in the First Six Months with regard to russia. Right. Weve seen all along, even, you know, Jared Kushner appears to acknowledge that there were conversations about relaxing sanctions against russia. Right. Davids up into reported at the end of last week that Trump Administration made a policy decision to withdraw support that they previously been providing to syrian rebel whos are fighting the assad regime, something the putin regime sought a long time. Theyre coordinating on a ceasefire in regions of sear yashgs something that putin has sought for a long time. And we know that Trump Administration is openly considering returning the diplomatic facilities that were closed by the obama administration. These are facilities that were theyre described as diplomatic facilities. They were closed because we know the russians used these facilities on american soil to spy on americans zbhchlt right. So this is the thing that is difficult to explain away. The policy decisions are not going in the direction of getting tough on russia. And for someone like clint, theyre not explained away, they raise questions. So i think kushners statement is good. We get this sort of transparency. I believe his account of these things. If you look at it from the other side, which is more dangerous . That they were knowingly being influence order unwittingly being influenced . If you look at this and these meetings that he described, if im on the russia side, im going to look at diplomatic, information, intelligence, military, economic. I have kislyak in a diplomatic meeting. I have the chief banker on the other side. I have flynn and talking about syria coordination and now i have a lawyer showing up in trump tower doing intelligence activities. From the russian perspective this is a full spectrum influence separation and n. That six month period. They contacted kushner and he may very well not even realize whats happening to him with all these meetings. I know. I wonlder if he didnt know what was meeting is about, isnt this the kind of meeting where, and i know its easy to say things in hindsight, i would say, you know what . We shouldnt be having this meeting. I think your point im out of here. I think the point about the subject line of the email is going to come up. He does say that, you know, common practice, don jr. Asked him to come by the meeting. We often swung by each others meetings. It came at the end of a long email chain which he did not read the email. That i get. He says he looked at his he went back and reviewed the calendar and the calendar says the meeting was calendared as meeting don jr. Jared Kushner with no other names of the attendees. Im not disputing. That he has a paper trail. But to your point, the email subject line was itself said something about the topic of the meeting. Thats all i read sometimes. Yes. He does not address that in the statement. Im sure hes going to be asked about that today. Still ahead, we have so much to get through. Still ahead on morning joe, were continuing to pour over Jared Kushners 11page statement ahead of his meeting with the Senate Intelligence committee. Members of the Judiciary Committee, democratic senator Richard Blumenthal of connecticut is calling for attorney general Jeff Sessions to testify under oath. But first, lets go to bill karins track something fast moving storms. Bill . Good morning. We may have a tornado overnight in maryland of all places. I want to show you the picture from bay island. This is near kent island out in the chesapeake. There are numerous homes that have significant roof damage. Power is out to the area. There was one house fire. Were still waiting for confirmation it was a tornado. It was definitely radar indicated. This was 1 00 in the morning. Well get better pictures at day break. Still one Flash Flood Warning outside of philadelphia. A Flash Flood Watch has been dropped now for trenton and philly and much of new jersey. New york city still under a Flash Flood Watch. 18 Million People included. The heavy rain is now ending in new york city. So thats good. But out on long island, a lot of heavy rain. All the heavy rain on i95 now from southern new york and connecticut and rhode island and boston. Well have trouble at the airports to day. I dont think new york is going to be too bad now that rain is exiting. Near boston and harvard, thats where the heaviest rain s other weather stories, the big heat wave is over. Its not chillly. 92 in st. Louis is bearable. 96 oklahoma city. Unusually cool air in the great lakes. Enjoy it, chicago, detroit. That will be in areas of new england come tomorrow. Not a lot of big weather stories after the heavy rain this morning. Were actually watching a pretty quiet weather week. Nothing forming in the tropics either. Remember the peak of the Hurricane Season is soon approaching. Washington, d. C. , you have the strong storms roll through last night. Were even seeing breaks. It will be a hot and hue my dmi. Hello, discover card. Hi. Can you tell me about these new Social Security alerts i keep hearing about . Sure, just sign up online. Then well alert you if we find your Social Security number on any one of thousands of risky websites. Wow. Thats cool. How much is it . Oh, its free if you have a discover card. 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Were going through this statement put out by Jared Kushner who is obviously answering a lot of questions before staffers and the Senate Intelligence committee today. And were pouring through where he focused on where the questioning is going to come from. Casey hun kasey hunt, you were reading it. What stands out you to at this point . There are a couple things where he denies essentially instead of offering a defense or an explanation, he is denying he did something that is potentially questionable. We touched on this earlier. But setting up that back channel with the russians, its reported that is his idea. He in the statement denies it was his suggestion. He says that this came at the request of the people with whom he was speaking. That they did not have a way to securely speak to him. He was asked did they have a secure line into the office thats they were working out of at the time . He says that didnt happen. And it was put off until after the inauguration. I think that is a potentially important detail. He also denies that he spoke on the phone with ambassador kislyak between april and november of 2016. So while the campaign was going on. That, of course, was when he did meet kislyak in person at that Mayflower Hotel meeting. He says that lart he couldnt even remember the ambassadors name and he had to ask staffer whats the name was so that he could then eventually reach out once the timing was more appropriate during the transition period. There is also a little interesting new tidbit here. He says he received during the campaign in october of 2016. An email from somebody going by guchafer 400. He said that email existed and he also said he showed it to a secret Service Agent who told him he shouldnt do anything about it. He should just ignore it. So that tells me that perhaps the committee is asking questions around this and the reason i took no action upon being con fronted with this at the time, he was very much in the news as being an agent of the russian government potentially meddling in the election. And he essentially offers an explanation and says i asked Law Enforcement about it. They told me to do nothing, so i d these are the key points poinlly that you can see him pressed on today. David and then john, well go to you. But, you know, just in right in the past few minutes some communication with the white house, im hearing this is really an effort for full transparency and to really clear his name. Does this raise more questions or help clear things up . Well, i think it does give a clear account of the key dates and meetings in question. Compared to what we got from the President Trump and from some of those in the administration. This is relatively straight forward. It is clear he is being counselled to deliver testimony. The testimony is today in secret. But heres a fairly detailed prepared statement as it were by Jared Kushner. Just a couple things that have struck me as ive quickly read through this morning. First, on the question of his contacts with the russians after the election. As i read this document, hes saying that Russian Ambassador kislyak said that he had some special information from russian generals from Russian Military officials about the war in syria. That he wanted to convey to kushner russias views about the military situation that was so sensitive that it couldnt go through other channels so can we have a secret channel. That is a puzzler. This is information that presumably you want to check with the u. S. Side with secretary kerry. There were extensive u. S. Russian discussions going on at that time. The second point that comes clear in this is he says that his failure to disclose his foreign contacts, contacts with kislyak and other russians was inadvertent when he first filed this sf86 form. One of the things he uses to justify that, gosh, i left off a lot of other stuff, too. Right. I had no foreign contacts, for example. He tells us that in this period after the election he met with b. B. Netanyahu, the prime minister. He had a lot of secret conversations going on. He is using those other secret conversations to justify the fact that he didnt talk about this. Thats not making me more comfortable. How about you . Not more comfortable. This characterizes him as a man who is acted on by others. His dad wanted him to manage all these contacts. Kislyak called him up. He didnt do that. So hes portraying himself as the person helping his dad who others are calling or requesting bringing the meetings. I think this point that david is making is very important in both of the post election meetings on the secure Communications Channel and on the meeting with gorkov, what kushner is saying is kislyak did it. He suggested the Communications Channel. Kislyak wanted me to meet this russian banker. Both those things may or may not be true. But the one person who is not going to be called before a congressional to give congressional testimony is Sergey Kislyak. Whether there this is a true account or false account, it is a convenient account for kushner to lay off initiating the meetings and bringing up potentially problematic overtours and putting it all on the former Russian Ambassador and saying, hey, you know, i was just listening. Go talk to kislyak who is now back in moscow. Conveniently left last week. Yeah. I wonder, does the awe shucks i forgot it and didnt see it, i just didnt include it inadvertent zshgs that wo inadvertent, does that work when youre an fbi investigator trying to put all the dots together and the question of russia and whether or not this president putin has some sort of influence over him is prevailing during the campaign . Its really it exploded on our show quite frankly when donald trump the candidate talked so kindly about putin and could not pull back from it. Yeah, i think the question i have is which is more dangerous . Somebody who knew what they were doing or somebody that wasnt aware of what was going on around them . I think what were seeing here is this family style business is being run like a Mortgage Company and yet were funneling all the National Security efforts of our entire country on one guy who admits and n. The very first page here this was new to him. He had no real experience with him. So i think the more important question for america is why didnt someone in the trump team say, hey, lets get some experienced ambassador, a veteran, a Foreign Policy person to work with Jared Kushner so hes not stepping into a diplomatic meeting, an intel meeting, military engage ment and economic meeting with putins banker within the first four months . Good question. The last segment josh said a variety of things that were disconcerting when it comes to this administrations approach to rush yachlt the totality of this administrations approach is a little more confusing. The cutting off of support for Syrian Rebels which was decision was made fewer than 24 hours after they met putin is concerning. You also have an administration that is saying the conflict in ukraine is a russian ukrainian conflict. That is providing missile interseptemberors to poland. Theyre doing a lot of things that russia doesnt like. So you have a conflicting image here. It seems to me that communications crisis in the white house thooz do with how the president feels like hes being perceived on russia and throes do with what theyre actually doing when it comes to rush yachlt. Russia. Can the president be indicted . A memo says yes. It was written when bill clinton was president. New york times reporter has details on that straight ahead on morning joe. When this bell rings. It starts a chain reaction. Thats heard throughout the connected business world. At t Network Security helps protect business, from the largest Financial Markets to the smallest transactions, by sensing cyberattacks in near real time and automatically deploying countermeasures. Keeping the world of business connected and protected. Thats the power of and. 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. 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The most common side effect is bone and muscle ache. So why go back there . If youd rather be home, ask your doctor about Neulasta Onpro. Finding the best hotel price is now a safe bet. Because tripadvisor searches over 200 booking sites so you save up to 30 on the hotel you want. Lock it in. Tripadvisor. Whats Critical Thinking like . A basketball costs 14. Whats team spirit worth . cheers whats it worth to talk to your mom . Whats the value of a walk in the woods . The value of capital is to create, not just wealth, but things that matter. Morgan stanley good afternoon. Good afternoon. This was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period. Youre shaking your head. I appreciate it. With respect to over the one second. You dont get to just yell out questions. Were going to raise our hands like good boys and girls. Denmark points. With that, ill take some questions. Steve . Collin . Collin is not here. David jackson. David is not here. Okay. This is silly. Okay. Next. Stop shaking your head again. Shawn shawn shawn come on saen. Thats just he will be missed. But at the same time, josh, its not an easy he was put in a bad position from day one. He was put in a terrible position from the first day before he had a chance to get started. You go at him in a position and making false claims about the inauguration that were disproved and then walking out without taking any questions. There are so many challenge thats we can sift through that sean faced. One thing that i think they need to try to fix is their body language towards the press. Right . So much of what sean engaged in was hostile back and forth and then he would flee the room. They ended that sort of comedic montage of him fleeing aevensnsg questions. That vignette about him answering the questions among the bushes and insisting the lights turned out this whole trend of insisting on off camera briefings, it makes the press team and the Communications Operation look like theyre scared to defend the president. Its a bad look. And nobodys going to be successful in defending the president if you look scared to do so in a public setting. And that is one thing i thought was effective about anthonys performance on friday. He was willing to go out there and he basically said, im going to take as many questions as i k went out there. He was announced at 10 00 a. M. 2 00 p. M. He was out there on the record taking questions. He dodge md of them. But, you know, hes been in the job for four hours. Thats one thing that will make their performance better. It also will be good for our democracy to see this back and forth. That is what we need from people who are in this job is a commitment to publicly airing and litigating and defending and arguing what it is the add smgs doing and why theyre doing it. Go ahead, noah. The scaramucci appointment seems to be an effort to deescalate the president , right . The Communications Shop is aimed squarely at pleasing the president. And the president s strategy is to antagonize the press. I have to say, what worries me about this and i was hopeful when i heard about the scaramucci change, it seems like when sean spicer walked out there he had taken a loyalty oath. That was beyond loyalty to country when he walked out there and talked about things. It went down hill from. There youve got to be able to say this is not in the best interest of the country or the president. And with all this i love him, i love him, i love him, im concerned. There is some sort of spoken or unspoken loyalty pledge. Koib wron i could be wrong. Loyalty oath appeared to go in one direction. Yes. President trump didnt have confidence in seans ability to handle the job. When i first got offered the job, president obama said im not going to watch your briefings. Is there any information you need for your briefing, come and find me. That is an indication he had confidence in my ability to use my discretion to go and do the job in the way that i thought was most effective. It is clear that trump never gave sean the opportunity to exercise his own discretion. Were forgetting the third thing that president obama told you, do not hold briefings in the shrubbery. That was outlawed from the beginning. Republican donors are prepared to cut big checks in the mid terms and one of the top targets, members of their own party. The Washington Post robert costa has new details about serious fractures in the gop. Well be right back. bell rings with my moderate to severe crohns disease,. I kept looking for ways to manage my symptoms. I thought i was doing okay. Then it hit me. 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Wait, what, what happened . I was having a good round, and then my friend, sheila, right as i was stepping into the tee box mentioned a tip a pro gave her. No. Yep. Did it help . It completely ruined my game. Well, the truth is, that advice was never meant for you. I like you. You want to show me your swing . Its too soon. Get advice thats right for you. Investment Management Services from td ameritrade. New deep hydrating eye gel with hyaluronic acid born to outperform the 1. Prestige eye cream for better hydration. And your best look yet. Olay eyes collection. Ageless. Is to always keep track of your employees. R micromanage them. Make sure theyre producing. Woo employee of the month you really shouldnt leave their side. Vita coco coconut water, hydration comes naturally. All right. President trump tweeted a moment ago. He said drain the swamp. Should be change to drain the suer. Its actually much worse than anyone ever thought, and it begins with fake news. But Andrew Mccarthy wrote trump has themselves, not sessions to blame for the littleless mueller investigation. President trump accomplished island one thing by railing on attorney general sessions. He added to the growing. No one with selfrespect wants to work in a place where the boss not only wont back you up but will turn on you with a vengeance. Especially when theres a need to divert attention from his own shortcomings. Whether were talking about the shoddy behavior that intensifies calls for a special counsel or about the selection of officials who made key decisions that have armed the special counsel with limitless jurisdiction, the president only has himself to blame. Deb ignatius, your thoughts on that and trumps latest tweet which just happened . I think mccarthy has summarized something thats crucial. The president is the person who keeps reigniting this fire that bothers him so much. His pressure on comey, his ultimate decision to fire comey. His misstatements about why he fired comey. Hes correcting them with a bomb shell he fired for russia. This latest round of tweets coming back again and again to the phony. This is a coming out of Donald Trumps cell phone. It is not an outside imposition on him. Its something hes creating. One indication of the point that hes making that this environment trump created makes it hard for him to hire quality people is the situation surrounding Reince Priebus. The appointment of anthony scar much chi was a direct rejection of pre buss advice, interests. Hes really kind of standing out there alone, and its speculated, ive been told that one reason is the white house has not been able to find a quality person to be an effective chief of staff that had been willing to do it. Theyve knocked on many doors but people dont feel comfortable working for this man. Coming up, Jared Kushner doesnt deny he discussed back Channel Communications with moscow but insists it was russias idea. Thats one of several take aways from his newly released statement. Well go through it next on morning joe. Whoooo. Going somewhere . Heres some advice. Tripadvisor now searches more than 200 booking sites to find the hotel you want and save you up to 30 . Trust this birds words. Tripadvisor. How to win at business. Step one. Point decisively with your glasses. Abracadabra the stage is yours. Step two. Choose laquinta. Where youll feel like the king of the road. Check out our summer rates now at lq. Com. For her compassion and care. He spent decades fighting to give families a second chance. But to help others, they first had to protect themselves. I have afib. Even for a nurse, its complicated. And it puts me at higher risk of stroke. That would be devastating. I had to learn all i could to help protect myself. Once i got the facts, my doctor and i chose xarelto®. Xarelto®. To help keep me protected. Oncedaily xarelto®, a latestgeneration blood thinner. 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Do not take xarelto® if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. Tell your doctor before all planned medical or dental procedures. And before starting xarelto®about any conditions, such as kidney, liver, or bleeding problems. Its important to learn all you can. To help protect yourself from a stroke. Talk to your doctor about xarelto®. Theres more to know™. Welcome back to morning joe. It is monday, july 24th. Joe has the morning off. With us, National Affairs analyst john hailman. Hes heading up the tweet desk this morning. The president tweeting this morning, again we have a new tweet. After one year of investigation with capital z ski zero being found we should blame ourselves, not russia. I would be prized if that were a quote from chuck schumer, but well see. Knnoah rothman is with us, clint watts, josh earnest, kasie hunt, David Ignatius and robert costa. Thank you so all for joining us. Well start with the latest news this morning. The president s soninlaw and Senior Advisor Jared Kushner is out with an 11page statement ahead of his meeting with the Senate Intelligence committee today. The meeting will be behind closed doors. In his Statement Released very early this morning, kushner denies colluding with russia. And says he is unaware of anyone in the campaign who did. He says he was swamped with emails from foreign officials during the campaign, and even more so during the transition. He details four meetings during that period including two with Russian Ambassador kislyak, none of which he requested. He writes on november 16th, my assistant received a request from a meeting from the Russian Ambassador. I could not even recall the ambassadors name previous to this request. He insists he did not set up a secure back channel with russians, though he acknowledged he asked about an existing Communications Channel in order to try to keep open dialogue with the russians on syria. On the june 2016th meeting with a russian lawyer, hes expected to say that trump junior invited him to the meeting but at the time he didnt know anyone else would be there and did not read the entire email about that meeting. The statement reads, quote, i arrived at the meeting a little late. When i got there the person who has since been identified as a russian attorney was talking about the issue of a ban on u. S. Adoptions of russian children. I had no idea why that topic was being raised and quickly determined that my time was not well spent at this meeting. Looking for an excuse to leave, kushner says he emailed an assistant to call his cell. He claims he was there for ten minutes or so and had never met with the russian attorney before that meeting for has he spoken with her since. And not to nitpick, but when you read that, hes on email in that meeting. So he does look at his email, and you cant miss subject lines on your phone. Thats the only thing you see. Im a little bit i mean, listen, youre the one who made a life of asking questions in your mind about does that i dont know if that washes missing the subject line. I dont think it does, but i think its also just emblematic of how loose this entire operation ran up to inauguration and how it still runs today. Im not sure anyone in the team knows on a daily basis what theyre getting themselves into, and collectively, im not sure any one part of the Trump Team Knows what somebody else on the team is doing. David, looking at this statement and remembering the questions about russia that were raised in the campaign and early in this administration, is it possible that he just sort of didnt know what was going on . Well, russia was a big issue at the time that these meetings were taking place. It was regularly brought up in the campaign. Kushner has concluded that the evidence that hes presenting is sufficient to clear in the mind of a prosecutor the idea that he with criminal intent sought to violate the law. Ive just learned since we began our view of these documents that in addition to the 11page statement that weve received, kushner is going to turn over all of the email traffic he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak which will presumably support his argument that it was disk kislyak who proposed the meetings and is going to turn over 10 years of contacts with foreign officials which will be a trove of material that im sure people will pore over. Disclosing that much information, lawyers dont let clients do that unless they have some confidence that the information will survive, and if you get caught unless your don juniors lawyer. Thats a different case. He just unloaded the most incriminating email ive ever seen anyone unload. He did that because kushner had disclosed the meeting. It was kushner who put that meeting out there. Anyway, its this material is out there now, and whether its accurate or not, if you supply this material to a Congressional Committee under subpoena, youre in trouble if it turns out to be false. Yeah. No. Absolutely. What did the don junior subject line say . Subject line was russia clinton private and confidential. I dont know how you get around that. Kasie hunt, jump in. To kick up on what david was saying and youve been saying this as well throughout the morning. This is clearly a concerted effort on the part of team kushner for transparency. The statement says kushner doesnt want to be somebody who leaked to the press to defend himself and argues this statement that hes making now amounts to that defense, and David Ignatius is right. This meeting was disclosed, the don junior meeting and thats whats caused all this snowballing around these questions. But i think that there are some portions of this statement where its clear that there isnt email traffic. They have been poring through over the last months records. They delayed this testimony before the committee to try to identify everything they had so they could come and say hey, look, here it is, but the account of that secret back channel, for example, relies on kislyaks account of the meeting. Its unlikely the committee will receive it. There are some points of this that are he said she said even if the stuff that can be backed up with documents ends up being totally nailed down. All right. Clint, so, looking through it . Look at the leverage that russia has on us. I mean, both in terms of this and if yo you go back to the g20, were going back to the russian version of accounts and contacts and they seem more reliable than our country. That puts us in a dangerous position. Much like kasey said, when you look through this, its either incompetence or they have a lot influence over this administration. Im asking what other country did we have four or five meetings with in the runup to Inauguration Day . Im not aware of any with this sort of focus. Thats troubling to me. Also this administration has had no russia policy. Put together nothing tangible with russian metaling, and a sanctions bill went through that the congress overroad our president on. He would not coop to. Given the fact that kushner release third down statement and hes going to be meeting with Staff Members privately, refresh how would you characterize kushners role in the trump universe . He remains a true confidant, and in spite of some of the controversies and struggles over the russia questions, he remains close to President Trump. There is a gaffe between how the white house is trying to support Jared Kushner and how Congressional Republicans are approaching this. Congressional republicans are frustrated privately and often publicly with how the white house is pursuing russian policy. They are pursuing their own sanctions legislation. Theyre trying to push this administration to move in a more hawkish direction when it comes to russia. When you look at the bipartisan leaders of the Intelligence Committee, theyre trying to be right in track with muellers special counsel. They seem to be pursuing tougher questions of kushner. President trump spent much of his weekend putting his message out on twitter sending 19 tweets from his personal account alone. Among the 10 in the morning was this one. Well all agree the u. S. President has the complete power to pardon. Why think of that when only crime so far is leaks against us, fake news. The president s lawyer denied any discussion of pardons as nonsense after the Washington Post reported trump asked advisors about pardoning powers. A member of the outside legal team continued to make the argument yesterday, but his new Communications Director, scaramucci, said the president had discussed the issue with him. We have not and i continue to not have conversations with the president of the United States regarding pardons. Pardons have not been discussed, and pardons are not on the table. Im in the oval office with the president the last week. Were talking about that. He says he brought that up. He said, but he doesnt have to be pardoned. Theres nobody around him that has to be pardoned. He was just making the statement about the power of pardon. Why is he tweeting about pardons . Well, i think that unfortunately, he may have had a conversation in the oval office or somewhere about it, and then people rush out to leak that information to people. Its very unprofessional and harmful. And i think that the gist of that leak basically, or that tweet, i should say, is that hes not going to pardon anybody. He just doesnt like the fact that he has a twominute conversation in the oval office or in his study, and that people are running out and leaking that. No. With all due respect, hes tweeting about it. If you could bring the tweet up again, its fascinating. Its absolutely fascinating, and i cant imagine any member of the press that wouldnt have ten, 20, thirt30 questions abous tweet. While all agree the u. S. President has the complete power to pardon. Why think of that . Why are you thinking of is what one might think. One might ask why you are thinking about it so much to tweet about it and why are you talking about it with your Communications Director . These are really important questions that members of the press have every right to ask and possibly if they are responsible, possibly one might think they should ask those questions. What was the tweet over the weekend . I have a question for noah about it, about disloyalty or loyalty among his party . Im going to read that tweet and then after noah, i want to come back to the president s tweet from five minutes ago. I believe this is the one you were referring to from 14 hours ago where he said its very sad that republicans even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their president. I think thats the one youre referring to. The question one might have after a tweet like that is why does he need to say that . What do they need to protect him from . What do you need protection from . And what in the world has he done for any republicans at this point . What could they say . Whats on their long list of favors that they need to return to this president . Those are all good questions. Its hard to identify a republican carried over the line by President Trump. Just a hand full you could make a good argument for. Secondly, we think this has to do with the russian sanctions bill. And that is probably going to be passed by a veto approved majority. The president is hindered by this. It takes some authority away from the white house ten as extraordinary and almost unprecedented. Thats something the president has a right to be frustrated by. I dont think we do loyalty ple pledges to people. I think its for the country. I think theres that concern that perhaps maybe theres a delusional quality to some of these tweets that some might argue is not the best for the politicians who are working to try and make this country better whether theyre democrats or republicans and the president. Theres a Cottage Industry of Fact Checking the tweets. 90 of Congressional Republican candidates in the 2016 election outperformed President Trump in their district. This is also true of most republican senators who are in Battle Ground states. Rob portman, john mccain, pat toomey, ron johnson. They did better in their states than President Trump did. If anything, it was them carrying President Trump across the finish line. The second thing is, and this relates to the sanctions we were just talking about. President obama when he was negotiating the iran deal, it was controversial, and we did rely heavily on democrats and some republicans to give president obama the latitude so he had leverage with iran to negotiate this deal. The problem is republicans dont trust President Trump to use that leverage and that latitude effecti effectively. Im going to get to talking about the tweet. Back to the pardon tweet. Not the pardon tweet. I raised the tweet where this one from 20 minutes ago where he talked about schumer saying that democrats should blame ourselves not russia. In this instance, the president is reporting accurately. In fact, schumers quote over the weekend in the Washington Post, very interesting as the democrats have put out their new agenda and slogan, this was a schumer quote over the weekend. Worthy of discussion on the show later today. When you lose to somebody, this is smumer. When you lose to somebody, referring to trump who has a 40 popularity, you dont blame other things, comey, russia, you blame yourself. What did we do wrong . People didnt know what we stood for, just that we were against trump and still believe that. Senator schumer taking a pretty strong shot there, i think, in a not vailed way to hillary clinton. The president s tweet on schumer, accurate. Okay. Bob costa, republicans trying to navigate toward the midterms. Take it. Mika, to build on joshs point, this perhaps is not only about russia sanctions and the white houses frustrations with how Congressional Republicans are handling it. Its about the stalled agenda with regard to health care. Health care is something the president and his advisors have been trying to check off for months. They want to move onto infrastructure or at least tax reform over the next few months. The vote are not there yet on capitol hill. And you see a white house that just hasnt been able to make it happen with health care. And those tweets are revealing of the president venting about republican senators not falling in line. He believes he has Political Capital with the partys base in spite of being outperformed in some states. He thinks that capital means something. It seems like some republicans senators dont share that same view. Is it possible that theres anybody in the white house, anybody in the Republican Party, ill just lee it to that, who thinks the president tweeting is a good thing and that he should continue to do so . Yes. Who . I think its steve bannon. I see this, the tweet thing as what we should call american active measures. This is actually the russian play book in russia. Which is you isolate your base to a set of news stories and news opinions, and you push that to them, and youre starting to seedy v see divergence. When youre looking at a war on the media and the war on the opposition. Hes bubbling his base so theyre only looking at his information sources. And schumer is the new susan rice. Honestly, his base hates it. His base dislikes it when they tweet, majority of them. We dont have a poll to suggest they support him when he tweets. Youre not on twitter. The people on twitter enjoy it. It creates a war where hes the one thats the victim. One other person who i think at least based on the comments hes made so far at his new job, and this is not insignificant, it sounds like scaramucci likes it that the president tweets. He says the president is a great communiq communiq communique or the. I think he likes the approach that trump has going directly to the people and using twitter. David, clint is talking about something that could be incredibly dangerous. Its dangerous. Its disruptive. The disruptive part is what some of trumps closest advisors like about the tweets. They recognize the damage they do to the normal conduct of policy, but they think keeping people on edge, having these surprises, having this unpredictable, erratic person in the white house gives them an advantage. Theres less and less evidence that thats true. Im struck by the way in which the president in this latest tweet and in his comments last week with the New York Times about attorney general sessions puts so much focus on personal loyalty. This complaint in the latest one that republicans do very little to protect their president , this anger that theyre disloyal, and i think that theme is going is getting more and more powerful in his mind. It seems like thats one reason for scaramucci with his almost slavish, i love this guy. This guy is great. I love him. Its the cult of loyalty for somebody who is embattled. Yeah. Im very worried about that as you watch these new names come into the white house. Youd hope they would bring a fresh perspective. Kasie hunt, on capitol hill when members of congress and republican senators, especially the republicans on both the house and the senate, they see a tweet like that, do they go oh, id better be more loyal . I mean, is that what weve got there . At some point are they going to, perhaps, have to separate themselves a little bit . No. This is the kind of thing that makes them very angry and makes them feel as though the president doesnt understand the imperatives of governing. It doesnt make any sense for their president of their party to be attacking them, and, look, can i say one thing as well on the scaramucci, the turnover question . Remember, sean spicer was never of trump world in kind of the keepseeded way that Anthony Scaramucci. I, other reporters who worked in washington for a long time have known spicer for years. Thats not true of scaramucci, and the same can be said for members of congress. Sean spicer was somebody that a lot of members of congress knew. Reince priebus is somebody they talked to all the time. That was very little unit in the white house. That is under siege, and david was talking about the difficulty in trying to figure out what to do about Reince Priebus if they want to take him out of the white house. If they were to break that link, then it would further emphasize this split that bob costa has been reporting this. This distance between Congressional Republicans and the white house. Every step that the president and his administration take away from people like sean spicer, away from people like Reince Priebus and toward this idea that theyre now going to punish elected republicans whether its dean heller, these other people that the president was tweeting about over the weekend, that is very much underscoring the divide. I dont think its going to make it any easier for the president to govern the country. Real quick, ill add that sometimes its best to step back. Because this Trump Administration, this trump year were all living, because of the cadence and the approach of the president , it can seem strange. Yet, if you look at president obama in the early part of his administration, his battle with democrats, president clinton, his battle with his own party in 1993 over health care. George h. W. Bush battling with conservative republicans, its always been a trend for firstterm president s to really have problems with their own party, especially if they have the majority. So these tweets are unusual because of how theyre done. Carrying republicans on their back, all of that. Of course its out of the mainstream, but the actual action n this tension is something weve seen in history quite a few times. Yeah. All right. Ill just be the Joe Scarborough voice for this on this topic. Which is the difference is that republicans know that donald trump is not a republican. And part of the reason why i agree with bob, theres this is not totally without pres deb dent, but its more severe and extreme and the break is more understoodment tall. The president doesnt care about the party. Republicans know that the president doesnt have the longterm interest of the party in mind because hes not really hes not a conservative by ideology. Hes not a past member of the party or a donor of the party. Theres a different culture and ideological orientation between the Republican Party and President Trump. In the past when theres been splits, democrats looked at president obama and said hes one of us. The same is true about george w. Bush. This is a different thing and portends something poshlly mo fundamentally in the fracture. Obama was trying to manage 59 senators. The problem was not with the democratic majority. It was the moderate senators where they had some tension with president obama whether it was with regard to the size of the stimulus, whether a public option should be included in the Health Care Plan, how to handle Climate Change and some of those votes. The friction. Exa exactly. It was whether or not the president could succeed in bringing people on board. Robert costa, thank you very much. Still ahead on morning joe. Ahead of kushners meeting today with staffers from the senate intel committee, were learning new details about the russian lawyer at the center of the june 2016 meeting with kushner. Trump junior, and Paul Manafort. We are joined for that next on morning joe. Bp developed new, industryleading software to monitor Drilling Operations in realtime, so our engineers can solve problems with the most precise data at their fingertips. Because safety is never being satisfied. And always working to be better. Im the one clocking in. When youre clocking out. 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Former direction of National Intelligence, James Clapper saying trump juniors meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu w Natalia Veselnitskaya textbook message. Veselnitskaya represented a military unit founded by the Russian Federal Security Service in 2002. The service known as the fsb as the successor by the kgb and was once headed by the president vladimir putin. The report says there is no evidence that Natalia Veselnitskaya works with them. Julia, tell us more about this. Youre finding out more about this russian lawyer that jarod had no idea he was meeting with. Well, whats interesting about this report is that it fills out a little bit of the background of Natalia Veselnitskaya who, again, was not a very wellknown figure even in moscow. And what this report indicates is that she was a participant in the other activities that the fsb is wellknown to engage in at least to russian. We think of it as a den of spies. Russians often think of it as a den of thieves. Its a big, corrupt empire with fsb agents, with the power of the state at their back exappropriating businesses, land, running extortion rackets, and it seems like she was part of this kind of world where she was helping fsb officers rest away control of a valuable piece of land in the moscow region. So this is a story more about corruption than espionage, but it kind of shows the circles she ran in in moscow. Julia, also at the Aspen Security Forum on friday, you asked the current director of national a question. Well play a bit. I dont know if you know about an hour and a half ago the Washington Post broke a story saying that u. S. Intelligence intercepts show that attorney general sessions spoke to russian then Russian Ambassador kislyak about campaignrelated issues. This is some of the collection you were talking act. Do you have any comment on this . I just learned about it also. I saw the headline. I have come to the point where i no longer put any stock in headlines or breaking news. First thing im doing [ applause ] im sorry. Wow. So update us on the situation with Jeff Sessions. And how he plays into all of this. That was a great dodge, i guess. When all else fails, fake news, i guess. Well, attorney general Jeff Sessions, it seems like, has been repeatedly misleading the public, congress, about when he met with kislyak, what they talked about, in what capacity they were speaking. We had a report about this back in june about how nobody was meeting with senators j then senator sessions during the 2016 campaign. So he was in march 2016, he was it was announced that he was going to be head of the trump campaigns National Security advisory board, and then immediately he starts meeting with all these ambassadors whereas before march he had not been meeting with anybody, and nobody meeting with him thought he was meeting thought they were meeting with him as a senator. Everybody was meeting with him to talk about the campaign. He has been Misleading Congress and the american public. It seems hes lost, David Ignatius, some of the support of the president. What is exactly happening with Jeff Sessions right now . Well, he seems to be, as the old water gate saying goes, twisting slowly in the wind. Hes hanging onto his job, whether the president is thinking about firing him, we dont know. I wanted to ask julia, i was there with you, julia, at that session in aspen where we heard almost all of the leading National Security figures both current and former. We listened to a remarkable smackdown of President Trump by James Clapper, and john brennan, the former directors of National Intelligence and the cia. What was your feeling about the views of the current intelligence officials . Do you think theyre prepared to stand up to donald trump if he tries to lean on them to try to get them to be loyal in the way hes clearly leaning on Jeff Sessions . What do you think . Thats a great question. I think it was striking to hear these officials talk repeatedly about how food the people working for them are, how they know what the ruefle of law is. How theyre dedicated to serving the constitution. How they know theyll do the right thick and continue to do the right thing. And they would never really talk about the president so much. There was some really masterful acrobatics going on. But what wasnt said was, you know, this guy were not sure he can be relied on to do the right thing, and that he knows what the rule of law is, so were going to rely on the kind of staff of all these agencies to plug ahead and keep doing the right thing. It was quite stunning what wasnt said, and when you have some of the top when you have dhs secretary general kelley saying i wasnt part of the campaign, thats quite a stunning distancing of yourself from the commander in chief that you serve. Clint watts . Yeah. Same with what you were saying, julia. In terms of standing up to the president , whats your take away from what we heard last week in aspen where we saw everybody. We heard the trumps generals talk. We heard the intel officials. Where do you think the system breaks . Weve seen the president batter all of his intel agency at one time or another. Who is the backbone, do you think, or where does it stop inside the administration . Reporter i think everybody is trying to tread water. This is what it sounded like. Theyre trying to tread water and inlate their staff as much as they can from the politics of it. Which is, again, when youre inlati insulating yourself from the administration you serve, they were trying to say business as usual, but it was clear it was not. Right. I thought it was fascinating when we were there watching how the military leaders, they responded to some of the questions versus the appointees. It will be interesting to see where it goes in the future. It is incredible. Julia, thank you so much. Still ahead this morning, a top government scientist spoke out on Climate Change and says he was sidelined by the white house for doing so. Joel clint calls himself a whistle blower, and he joins us just ahead. This is a story about mail and packages. And its also a story about people. People who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams theyre handing us more than mail theyre handing us their business and while we make more ecommerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country, we never forget. That your business is our business the United States postal service. Priority you got a minute . New aveeno®. R you. Positively radiant® 60 second in shower facial. Works with steam to reveal. Glowing skin in just one minute. Aveeno® naturally beautiful results® if youve got a life, you gotta swiffer when this guy got a flat tire in the middle of the night, so he got home safe. Yeah, my dad says our insurance doesnt have that. What . you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™. Liberty mutual insurance. For me, i would tell people thats the president. Hes 71 years old. Were not going to change him. Hes our guy, and so learn how to work with and operate with him. All right. The latest wave of National Polls has shown President Trump struggling in favorable and Approval Rating. A tracking poll shows him around 39 . The president averaged a 38. 8 Approval Rating in the second quarter, lower than any other president over the same terms since gallop began polling in 1945. Now, a new usa today poll shows the nations split over whether he should be removed from office. 4242. Theres no credible effort to impeach the president as of this point. I guess the first thing i find interesting is theyre asking that question, noah. What do you make of the polls were seeing . Its not the first poll to ask that question, and i think its a credible question to ask at this stage, because republicans in congress seem eager to handcuff the president ahead of their own party. Theres a reason for that, and its a noble and justified reason. Secondly democrats are working on an economic message. It doesnt really exist yet, and their pitch has been were going to constrain this president , and the top of that list is going to be an impeachment threat. Its an important and valid question. Josh, ill put you in a terrible position. If you were working in the white house right now and saw the poll numbers, what would be the first three things you would tell this administration to do to turn these numbers around . Right. The first thing they have to do is they have to go and repair the relationships on capitol hill. They have to figure out a way to get Political Capital. Maybe that means trump traveling for to demonstrate his show of force and his influence with the electorate and maybe thats going to congressional districts that are represented by democrat and being tough on them or maybe a place represented by republicans and bucking them up. The second thing is i think he has a find a legislative win. He has to find a way to deliver. He spent a year and a half making a bunch of promises. Hes been in office six months and has nothing to show for it other than a Supreme Court nomination. Whats the win on the horizon . I dont know. Noah . I dont know what the win is. It could be infrastructure. Infrastructure . But the white house thats the back of the list. The white house isnt leading on it. Everything is backed up behind health care. By the white houses own choice. This would be an opportunity for them to get a win. The president is going to make a statement at 3 15 today on health care. All right. Up next, a senator didnt support Jeff Sessions nomination but doesnt want him to be forced to quit. The connecticut democrat weighs in on the president s dressing down on his own attorney general. Thats next on morning joe. Blumenthal. Blumenthal. Hey youve gotta see this. Cmon. No. Alright, see you down there. Mmm, fine. Okay, what do we got . Okay, watch this. Do the thing we talked about. What do we say . Its going to be great. Watch. Remember what we were just saying . Go irish see that . Yes im gonna just go back to doing what i was doing. Find your awesome with the xfinity x1 voice remote. Joining us now member of the Armed Services and Judiciary Committee, Richard Blumenthal of connecticut. Great to have you on the show this morning. As of friday last week, also this week, donald trump junior and Paul Manafort were coming to capitol hill to speak, but thats changed . They are no shows for the committee hearing. The expectation was they would testify voluntarily. And publicly . And publicly and under oath. Which i think is vitally important. Jared kushner will be at the Intelligence Committee today, but it will be privately, and it will not be under oath. I think subpoenas are going to be necessary for trump junior and for Paul Manafort to appear and the other witnesses who were at that early june 2016 meeting. And possibly subsequent meetings, and i will support chairman grassley for the witnesses and documents. Kasie hunt has a question. What can the Judiciary Committee accomplish that the Senate Intelligence committee cant . Theres been conversations about how the Senate Intelligence committee is doing it job. What can you on the Judiciary Committee accomplish that they cant . Great question. What we can do and its our mission to do, is to get to the bottom of any obstruction of justice that was involved in comeys firing and other events surrounding it. What we can do is make sure that there is legislation if necessary to more adequately protect the fbi director. As you know, Christopher Ray was approved unanimous sly, but my feeling was our obligation now is to safeguard the independence of the fbi and bob mueller. Before we go to David Ignatius, you mentioned subpoenas might be necessary. What would it take to issue a subpoena to Paul Manafort and donald trump junior and would it have the support necessary to happen . I believe it would have the support, and whats necessary is that simply the chairman and the Ranking Member approve a subpoena, enforcement of it would require a vote of the committee, but i think there is very strong bipartisan support for subpoenas, compulsory testimony if necessary on the part of donald trump junior and Paul Manafort and every member of the meeting. And possibly Jared Kushner. I think mandatory, kushner. I want to see about President Trumps assertion and his tweet over the weekend about his pardoning power. Is he right in claiming that its absolute . What do you think about his ability to pardon himself, and then finally, if you just give us your sense of what the reaction would be if the president took this next step and sought to fire special counsel robert muleeller . First great question about pardon power. Any of us who have dealt with the constitution, there are few powers if any that are absolute. Theres never been a court case on the pardon power as it applies to the president himself. And theres nothing in the constitution that specifically deals with it. My feeling is the better argument is on the side that he lacks that power to pardon himself. And. If he pardons assistants, it could well be regarded as an of for improper reasons. I feel he lacks the power to pardon himself. You know, he could be pardoning himself for all kinds of crimes that do not even relate to his official duties, and i think there are some limits on the pardon power. What would happen if he fired bob mueller . I think there would be an absolute firestorm reaction on both sides of the aisle, and i would hope to lead efforts to establish legislation that put in place a special prosecutor, much has happened in watergate, with very likely a threejudge panel picking the special prosecutor. Nothing novel or unprecedented about it. That would have very strong bipartisan support. One thing for sure is this investigation will not end if it the president fires bob mueller. It will continue. John senator, correct me if im wrong, last week in the midst of everything that was happening with the trump interview with the New York Times, some of the tweets he sent, i believe last week you were suggesting at one point maybe on twitter, maybe someplace else, that the president was effectively engaged in a crime that we were witnessing unfolding of obstruction of justice playing out before our very eyes. Is that correct . I have suggested repeatedly that the specter of injustice are designed to intimidate and threaten the special prosecutor because he is engaging right before our eyes in realtime in efforts to threaten the special prosecutor by raising this issue of conflict of interest. I think the very substantive arguments, but do you think theres anything improper in the notion that both in his sbif with the tiemds and subsequently that notion that he is trying to wall off the question of his finances and say i will consider a if he starts to look at my personal finances. Whether or not you think thats the right thing for mueller to look at, do you think theres something wrong with the president suggesting thats off limits . There is something wrong about it because it is an effort by setting limits on the authority of the investigator. Now, he completely lacks Legal Authority to set limits, but raising publicly that effort is wrong in my view. Possibly evidence of what he wants to grant. By the way, financial items are very relevant because the playbook of the russians is to suborn officials and individuals by engaging financially with them. The individuals in that june 2016 meeting, included russian business associates. There is clear circumstantial connection. Zroo wow. Josh ernest. Senator, i was going to ask you about a different investigative function that the Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over, which is u. S. Attorneys. Much was made of the Trump Administration announcement that they were firing u. S. Attorneys all across the country. There is one speculation that one of the reasons that President Trump was interested in making sure that the u. S. Attorney from the Southern District of new york was fired is because he could potentially be looking into some of either the trump organizations activities or President Trumps activities himself. Where are you in terms of your conversations with the Trump Administration about starting to staff up those important professional positions in the sugs governme u. S. Government . There have been effectively, josh, no appointees for most of those positions. Its another example of lack of leadership on the part of the white house. Those positions are absolutely critical to enforcement. I was United States attorney for connecticut for four and a half years. They are the ones in the trenches. If you want to stimey the administration of justice, the best way to do it is to stop the appointment of those kinds of appointe appointees. They are critical to any investigative or prosecutorial work. A lot going on. Difficult times. Senator richard bloomenthal, always good to see you. Thank you for coming on the show this morning. Thank you. Still ahead, Jared Kushners meeting with Senate Staffers over russia may be in private, but he is making sure everyone knows his side of the story. Were going to have much more ahead on his new statement out very early this morning. 11 pages long. Plus, the president claims republicans are doing very little to protect their president. How far will he go to protect himself . Well have more on that ahead on morning joe. Backpack, check. Thats the family taking care of business. Awesome notebook check. But who takes care of them . Office depot office max. This week, these composition books are just 25 cents each. Taking care of business new deep hydrating eye gel with hyaluronic acid born to outperform the 1. Prestige eye cream for better hydration. And your best look yet. 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He really knows his wine. This is the new guy . Hello, my name is watson. You know wine, huh . I know that you should check vineyard block 12. Block 12 . My analysis of satellite imagery shows it would benefit from decreased irrigation. I was wondering about that. Easy boy. Nice doggy. What do you think . Not bad. Welcome back. It is monday, july 24th. Joe has the morning off. We have msnbc john heilman, he is heading up the tweet desk this morning. Commentary magazines noah rothman is with us. Former fbi special agent and msnbc contributor clint watts. Former White House Press secretary to president obama now an msnbc political analyst josh ernest. Political reporter for the Washington Post well start with the latest news this morning. The president s soninlaw and Senior Advisor Jared Kushner is out with an 11page statement. Ahead of his meeting with the Senate Intelligence committee today. The meeting is going to be held behind closed doors, but in his Statement Released very early this morning kushner denies colluding with russia and says i is unaware of anyone in the campaign who did. He says he was swamped with emails from foreign officials during the campaign, and even more so during the transition. He details four meetings during that period, including two with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, none of which he says he requested. He writes, on november 16, 2016 my assistant cede a request for a meeting from the Russian Ambassador. Previous to receiving this request, i could not even recall the Russian Ambassadors name. Kushner also insists he did not set up a secure back channel with russians, though he acknowledged he asked about an existing Communications Channel in order to try and keep open dialogue with the russians on syria. On the june 2016 meeting trump tower meeting with russian lawyer, he is expected to say that trump jr. Invited him to the meeting but at the time he did not read the entire email about that meeting and didnt know who else would be there. He was talking about a ban on u. S. Adoptions much russian children. I had no idea why that topic was being raised and quickly determined that my time was not well spent at this meeting. Looking for an excuse to leave kushner says he emailed an assistant to call his cell. He claims he was there for ten minutes or so and that he had never met with the russian attorney before that meeting, nor has he spoken with her since. Not to knit peck, but even when you read that, he is on email in that meeting. He does look at his email. You cant miss subject line on your phone. Thats the only thing you see. Im a little bit i mean, listen wrrks youre the one who made a life of asking questions in your mind and try to get the does that i dont know if that washes, the missing the subject line. Collectively, im not sure that any one part of the Trump Team Knows what anybody else david, looking at this statement, and remembering the questions about russia that were raised in the campaign and early in this administration, is it possible that he just sort of didnt know what was going on . Well, russia was a big issue at the time that these meetings were taking place. It was regularly brought up in the campaign. Kushner has concluded that evidence that he is presenting is sufficient to clear in the mind of a prosecutor the idea that he with criminal intent sought to violent the lay. I just learned since we began our view of these documents that in addition to the 11page statement that weve received, kushner is going to turnover all of the email traffic he had with russia ambassador Sergei Kislyak, which will presumably support his argument that it was kislyak who proposed these meetings. In addition, he is going to turnover ten years of contacts he had with foreign officials, which will be a troef of material that people im sure will pour over. Disclosing that much information, lawyers dont let clients do that unless they have some confidence that the information will survive. If you get caught unless you are don jr. s lawyer. Okay . It just saying. Thats a different case. This material is out there now, and whether its accurate or not, if you supply this material to a Congressional Committee under subpoena, you are in trouble if it turns out to be false. Yeah. No, absolutely. What did the don jr. Subject line say . Subject line was russiaclintonprivate and confidential. I just i dont know how you get around that. This is clearly a concerted effort for dem straightable. The statement ichts says that kushner doesnt want to be somebody who leaks to the press to defend himself and argues this statement that he is making now amounts to that defense and david is right. This meeting was disclosed that the don injury meeting, and thats what to a certain extent has caused all of this snowballing around these questions. They have been pouring through records. They delayed this testimony to try to identify everything that they had so that they could come and say, hey, look, here it is. The account of that secret back channel, for example, relies on kislyaks account of the meeting, which its unlikely that the committee will ever receive. There are some points of this that are hesaidshesaid. Even if the stuff that can be backed up with documents end up being totally nailed down. All right. Looking through it look at the leverage that russia has on us. I mean, both in terms of this and if you go back to the g20, we are now requesting to the russian account of versions of meetings and contacts, and they seem more reliable than our own country. That puts us in a dangerous position. Much like casey said, when you look back through this, its either incompetent or they have a lot of influence on top of this administration. If im looking at this, im asking what other country did we have four or five meetings with in the runup to Inauguration Day . Im not aware of any with this sort of contact and this sort of focus. Theres been nothing tanning ilk when we have russian meddling. Denies it. We have a sanctions bill that just went through that the Congress Actually overroad our president on, and he would not really cop to. Given the fact that Jared Kushner has released this 11page statement and he will be speaking to Senate Intelligence Committee Staff members today, privately. Refresh us on exactly where or how would you characterize at this point kushners role in the trump universe . In spite of some of the controversies and struggles over the russia questions, he remains close to President Trump. There is a gap between how the white house is trying to support Jared Kushner and how Congressional Republicans are approaching this. Congressional republicans are frustrated privately and often publicly with how the white house is pursuing russia policy. They are pursuing their own sanctions legislation. Theyre trying to push this administration to move in a more hawkish direction when it comes to russia. When you look at senator burr and senator warner, the bipartisan leaders of the Intelligence Committee, theyre trying to be right in track with bob mueller special counsel. This is not a committee that is has been watered down at least in the eyes of the public or their fellow lawmakers. They essential team to be pursuing tougher questions of kushner. President trump spent much of his weekend putting his message out on twitter sending 19 tweets from his personal account alone, and among the ten he sent before 8 30 on saturday morning, was this one. While all agree the u. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is leaks against us, fake news. The president denied any discussion of pardons as nonsense after the Washington Post reported trump had asked advisors about pardoning powers. A member of trumps outside legal team continued to make that argument yesterday, but his new Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said the president had discussed the issue with him. We continue to not have pardons have not been discussed theres nobody around him that has to be pardoned. He was just making the statement about the power of pardon. Why is he tweeting about pardons . Well, i think, unfortunately, he may have had a conversation in the oval office or somewhere about it, and then people rush out to leak that information to people. This is very unprofessional and very harmful, and i think that the gist of that leak basically i mean, or that tweet, i should say, is that he is not going to pardon anybody. He just doesnt like the fact that he has a twominute conversation in the oval office or in his study and that people are running out and leaking that. No. With all due respect, he is tweeting about it. If you can bring the tweet up again, its fascinating. Its absolutely fascinating, and i cant imagine any member of the press that wouldnt have ten, it 20, 30 questions about this tweet. All agree the u. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that . Why are you thinking about that is what one might ask. One might ask why are you thinking about it so much to tweet about it . Why are you talking about it with your Communications Director . These are really important questions that members of the press have every right to ask and possibly if they are possible one might think they should ask those questions. What was the tweet over the weekend . I have a question for noah about it. About disloyalty or loyalty among his party. Coming up, im going to read that tweet to you. Its very sad that republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their president. So why i think thats the one youre referring to. I think the question one might have after a tweet like that is why does he need to say that . What do they need to protect hem from . What do you need protection from . What in the world, noah, has he done for any republicans at this point . What could they say . Whats on their long list of favors that they need to return to this president . Can you think of any . Those are all really good questions. Its hard to identify a republican who was carried over the line by donald trump. There are probably a couple you could make an argument for. Just a handful. Next. Secondly, we i this its sufficiently cryptic, but we think this has to do with the russian saekzs bill, and that is probably going to be passed by a veto proof majority. The president is hindered by this. It takes some authority away from the white house, and its kind of extraordinary and almost unprecedented. I dont think we do loyalty pledges to people. Its for the country. I think theres a concern here that maybe perhaps theres a delusional quality to some of these tweets that some might argue is not the best for the politicians who are working to try and make this country better, whether democrats or republicans. And the president. Theres a Cottage Industry of Fact Checking President Trumps tweets. Theres an Important Note with respect to this tweet. 90 of kjsal republican candidates in the 2016 election outperformed President Trump in their district. This is also true of most republican senators who are in battleground states. Marco rubio, rob portman, john mccain, pat toome. They all did berth in their states than President Trump did. Right. If anything, it was them carrying President Trump across the finish line. Theres that issue. The second thing is, and i do think this relates to the sanctions we were just talking about, president bottom, when he was negotiating the iran deal, it was controversial. We did rely heavily on democrats and even some republicans to give president obama the latitude so that he had leverage with iran to negotiate this deal. The problem is that republicans in their own party in congress dont trust President Trump to use that leverage and that late day tud effe latitude effecti. Bob costa, republicans trying to navigate toward the midterms. Take it. To build on joshs point, this perhaps is not only about russia sanctions and the white houses frustrations with how Congressional Republicans are handling that. Its also about the stalled agenda and particularly with regard to health care. Health care is something the president and his advisors have been trying to check off for months. They want to move on to infrastructure or at least tax reform over the next few months, but the votes just are not there yet on capitol hill. You see a white house that just hasnt been able to make it happen with health care and those tweets are revealing of the president really venting about republican senators not falling in line. He believes he has Political Capital with the partys base in spite of being outperformed in some states. He think that capital means something. It seems like some republican senators do not share that same view. Still ahead on morning joe the New York Times obtained a decades old memo about whether president s can be indicted. And its probably not what the white house wants to hear right now. Reporter Charlie Savage explains that straight ahead. First, heres bill karins with a check on the forecast. Bill. Good morning to you. There was a reported tornado overnight, and now were getting the pictures. It definitely looks like tornado damage. This is in maryland. This is kent island. Its just to the east of annapolis. You can see a lot of trees down. We have minor roof damage. A couple of homes have significant damage too. There was one injury. No fatalities reported. That was at 1 00 in the morning. Im sure thats scary to a ton of people. That storm system that produced that tornado is now racing through southern new england. New york city is out of the heavy rain, but la guardia airport, one hour delays going into la guardia, and that heavy rain will continue to move through new england as we go throughout the day. By 5 00 p. M. Notice the heavy rain primarily just up in maine. Thats it. Cloudy scattered showers behind it. Keep in mind. The ride to, who is going home. Still warm and humid from about d. C. , baltimore southward. Easily feeling like 90 to about 100 degrees. Cooler, dryer air in the great lakes, and then tomorrow behind the storm that moves through areas of new england. Temperatures will be much cooler tomorrow. Only 75, 66 today. Then tomorrow it will be just similar to that. Again, a little relief from the heat for some areas of the country, but the southern half of the country not so lucky. Youre still stuck in the summer swelter. Washington d. C. , looks like your forecast will be clearing out and heating up through the rest of the day, where youve watching morning joe. Well be right back. I no longer live with the uncertainties of hep c. Wondering, what if . I let go of all those feelings. Because i am cured with harvoni. Harvoni is a revolutionary treatment for the most common type of chronic hepatitis c. Its been prescribed to more than a quarter Million People. And is proven to cure up to 99 of patients who have had no prior treatment with 12 weeks. Certain patients can be cured with just 8 weeks of harvoni. 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What stands out to you at this point . Well, there are a couple of things where he denies. Instead of offering a defense or allegation, he is denying that he did something that is potentially questionable, and i know we touched on this earlier. Setting up a channel with the russians, its been reported that that was his idea. He essentially in the statement denies that it was his suggestion. He says that this came at the request of the people with whom he was speaking, that they did not have a way to securely speak to him. He was asked did they have a secure line into the offices that they were working out of at the time. He says that didnt happen and that it was put off until after the inauguration. I think thats a potentially important detail. He also denies that he spoke on the phone with ambassador kislyak between april and november of 2016. While the campaign was going on. That, of course, was when he did meet kislyak in person at that Mayflower Hotel meeting, but he says that later he couldnt even remember the ambassadors name, and he had to ask staffers what the name was so that he could then eventually reach out once the timing was more appropriate during the transition period. Theres also a little interesting new tidbit here. He says he received during the campaign in october of 2016 an email from somebody going by u guccifer400. He said he showed the email to a secret Service Agent who told him he shouldnt do anything about it. He should just ignore it. That tells me the competemittee asking questions about this. He essentially offers an explanation and says, look, i asked Law Enforcement about it. They told me to do nothing, so i did. I think these are some of the key points potentially that you could see impressed on today. David, im hearing this as really an effort for full transparency and to really clear his name. Does this raise more questions, or help clear things up . Well, i think it does give a clear account of the key dates and meetings in question compared to what weve gotten from the President Trump and from some others in the administration. This is relatively straight forward. It does seem clear that he is being counselled to deliver testimony. The testimony is today in secret, but heres a fairly detailed prepared statement, as it were, by gerald kushner. There are a couple of things that struck me as i quickly read through this. First, his contacts were with the russians after the election. As i read this document, he is saying that the Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak said that he had some special information the war in syria that he wanted convey to kushner russias views about the military situation that was so sensitive that it couldnt go through other channels, so can we have some secret channel . Is really is a puzzler. This is information that he would want to check with the u. S. Side with, with secretary kerry, there were extensive u. S. Russian discussions going on at that time. Zplee said he met with the king of jordan. He met with a foreign minister of mexico. He had a lot of secret conversations going on. Its interesting he is using those other secret was conversations to justify the thakt fa he didnt talk about the others. Thats not making me more comfortable. How about you . Not a lot more. The final thing is this characterizes Jared Kushner as a man who was acted on by others. You know, well, his dad wanted him to manage all these contacts. Ki kislyak called him up. He didnt do that. He is portraiting himself as the person helping his dad who others are calling requesting bringing to meetings. Coming up on morning joe is the white house choosing silence over science . Well talk about the Government Official turned selfdescribed whistle blower who says he faced retaliation for speaking out. 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Together, were building a better california. Guys, good afternoon. Good afternoon. This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period. Youre shaking your head. I appreciate it. With respect to over the one second. You dont get to were going to raise our hands like big boys and girls. Denmark as a a designated bashir al assad. David jackson. David is not mere. Amman javers. Okay. Im this is silly. Okay. Next. Stop shaking your head again. [ yelling ] its just he will be missed, but at the same time, josh, its not an easy he was put in a bad position from day one. You are making false claims about the inauguration that were easily disproved and then walking out without taking any questions. There are so many challenges that we could sift through that sean faced, but one of the things they need to try to fix is their body language toward the press. Right . So much of what sean engaged in was hostile back and forth, and then he would flee the room. They ended that comedic montage that was not intended to make him look good of him fleeing from answering questions. Thats why the vignette about him answering questions about the bushes and him insisting that the lights be turned out. This whole trend of insisting on off camera breechings. It makes the press team and the Communications Operation look like theyre scared to defend the president , and its a bad look. Nobody is going to be successful in defending the president if you look red sent or scared to do so in a public setting. Thats that was one of the things that i thought was effective about anthonys performance on friday. He was willing to go out there, and he basically said im going to try to take as many questions as i can, and he went out there on camera on the record taking questions. Now, he dodged many of them, but also he had been in the job for four hours. Hopefully that says one thing that will make their performance better. It also will be good for our democracy to see this back and forth. That is what we need from people who are in this job as a commitment to publicly airing and litigating and defending and arguing what it is the administration is doing and why theyre doing it. It seems like when sean spicer walked out there, he had taken a loyalty oath that was beyond loyalty to country. When he walked out there and talked about crowd size. It went downhill from there. Youve got to youve got to be able to say when this is not in in the best interest of the country or the president , and with all this i love him. I love him. I love him. Im concerned. There is some sort of spokesen or unspoken loyalty pledge. I could be wrong. I hope i am. One of the hard things about, again, the its hard. Position that sean was in was loyalty oath appeared to go in one direction, right . Yes. President trump didnt appear to have much confidence in it sean spicer to handle his job. When i first got this when i first got offered the job, president obama told me two things. He said, one, im not going to watch your briefings, and, two, if theres ever information you need for your briefings, come and find me, and ill work with you. He had confidence in my ability to use my discretion to go and do the job in the way that i thought was most effective. It is clear that trump never gave sean the opportunity to exercise his own discretion. You are forgetting about the third thing that president obama told you, which is do not hold briefings in the should beer sh. No stealing frigs. Coming up on morning joe separating fact from fiction in the russia probe. Our legal analyst ari melburg joins Charlie Savage at the table. They break down the terms like indictment, collusion, and obstruction. Next on morning joe. For your heart. Your joints. Or your digestion. So why wouldnt you take something for the most important part of you. Your brain. 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Bp engineered a fleet of 32 brand new ships with advanced technology, so we can make sure oil and gas get where they need to go safely. Because safety is never being satisfied. And always working to be better. Somebody said to me yesterday, and i wont tell you who, that if the rushzans actually hacked this situation and spilled out those emails, you would have never seen it. You would have never had any evidence of them, meaning theyre super confident in their deception skills and hacking. I dont know who this anonymous person is that said if the russians had done it, we wouldnt have been able to detect it, but it is the unanimous its the how about it was the president . Okay. The new White House Communications director revealing the source that he wouldnt reveal was the president. Joipgs now nbc News White House correspondent kristen welker. All morning weve been digging into the statement that Jared Kushner released ahead of his meeting in 90 minutes with the senate intel Committee Staff. What stood out to you, kristen . Hi there. Good morning. Well, i think a couple of things. First of all, Jared Kushner expected to say in no Uncertain Terms that he didnt collude with the russians and that he has nothing to hide. He is going to talk about four different meetings that he had with russians, but he is going to give new details about two of the most heavily scrutinized. The first one relates to the Russian Ambassador. He had that meeting during the campaign in 2016 at the Mayflower Hotel. He is going to say it was such a brief meeting that later after the fact he didnt even remember the name of the Russian Ambassador. Let me read you a direct quote. He says on november 16th, 2016 my assistant received a request for a meeting from the Russian Ambassador. As i mentioned before, previous to receiving this request, i couldnt even recall the Russian Ambassadors name. And then he is going to get into more details about perhaps one of the most hotly discussed meetings. That meeting with don jr. , with the russian lawyer in which she said or it was stated in an email that he would receive dirt on hillary clinton. Jared kushner says that he heard about this meeting through word of mouth and that it showed up on his calendar. He says that he did receive part of the email exchange, but he didnt read the entire exchange, so he never saw the part about dirt on hillary clinton. He is also going to say that he got to that meeting late. When he got there, they were discussing russian adoptions. He wanted to leave early. This is what he is going to say. Im looking for a polite way to leave and get back to my work. I actually emailed an assistant from the meeting after i had been there for ten or so minutes and wrote can you please call me on my cell . Need excuse to get out of meeting. He is also going to discuss two more matters. He will deny that he ever tried to set up a back channel with russian officials. That gets a little bit murkier because he does acknowledge that he wanted to discuss United States policy in syria with russian officials, and then he is going to say, look, it he initially submitted a security clearance form that didnt contain all of the details about these meetings. He will say because his assistant made a mistake and submitted the form prematurely. He will cover a lot of ground. I think he is going to be very definitive, but he will face a lot of tough questions. Important to point out, again, i know we can talk about this all morning long, but this meeting is behind closed doors. He is not going to go under oath. However, lying to congress violates the law. It is critical from his perspective and from a legal perspective that everything he goes on the record with is trueful today. Kristen welker, thank you very much. Joining us now msnbc chief legal krbt and host of the beat which premiers today at 6 00 right here on msnbc. The beat with ari melber. I like the beach better. He wants to go to the beach. The beach was taken. Trademarked there. Now its going to be great. We look forward to watching you. Thank you. Also with us, National Security and legal reporter of the New York Times, Charlie Savage. Charlie has been digging into questions that would make any white house a little bit uneasy. Especially this one. We dont know in the president can be indicted while he theres nothing in the constitution that talks about that. The widespread consensus has been that a president cant be indicted. That no matter what bob mueller finds about trump, he cannot go to a grand jury and ask for an indictment while the president remains in the white house. Whats interesting is i used a freedom of information act request to go into the National Archives of the Kenneth Starr whitewaterl lewinski files, and they did a deep study of this question. A nearly 60page memo that takes on that Justice Department analysis and comes out the other way. It has some really strong arguments for why thats probably not correct. This raises a degree of ambiguity around this question, and as muellers Team Approaches they have to decide are we going to cooperate, are we going to stonewall, are we going to fight . How fullsome are we going to be when we talk to investigators . Are we going to put forth maybe some spin that might veer into alternative facts or just admit that things might not be great . It may be that this ambiguity affects things because even though its unlikely, i would think, that mueller would try to indied President Trump, no matter what the facts were, as a matter of prosecutorial discretion, it may be that he has that option if he decides its necessary. All right. So then to ari, obviously i want to know what you make of charlies assessment here. Do you agree, disagree . Also, what do you make of the fact that the president had a small conversation at the very least and tweeted about pardoning. Why are we even talking about this . Lets because i can ultimately probably predict this president blaming it on us or what he likes to call the fake news, says which you could argue is based on the white house often put out fake information. If you put the tweet back up on the screen, this is a classic president ial tweet for this era because of its internal logical inconsistency. I point you to the middle of it. Why think of that, the argument being we shouldnt be talking about pardons, which is a direct reference to the first few words of the tweet, it is thing he brought up, which are pardons. As for charlies reporting, digging into the archives, this is more of a theoretical constitutional question. This is our longrunning National Law School since january, and the general view of the constitution has been the only person who is not subject to traditional federal indictment is the president , and that is not because he is above the law. Its because to the extent that he commits serious crimes in office, he would be indicted by the house and tried by the senate. It is not really to say that theres no rule. Its that the rule is because of his unique position at the top of the constitutional federal system, theres a different process. Number two, hamilton and those memos from the d. O. J. From two different parties, i should mention, that charlie cited, basically refer to the fact that theres a widespread view that if removed from office, the president can be indicted afterwards. The whole point here is not that you are above the law. Its that you have a unique role during those four or eight years. Which is known as impeachment. Thats what im talking about with the house. The house indictment would be the impeachment. The senate is the trial. Josh. Well, it seems to me the other question is that the one of the basis of our constitution youre the legal expert here. So is charlie. Its the rule of law, and that nobody is above the rule of law. In some ways it comes out of the and everybody being subject to it. Theres common law on that. The whied that you cant sit in judgment of yourself, and secondly, charlie, i imagine your reporting looked into this. The memos from the d. O. J. Looking at this and the federalist papers talk about the notion of, as i mentioned, a president potentially being prosecuted when he leaves office. Obviously if selfpardons exist, and you had a criminal president , that wouldnt work or make any sense because they would have already pardoned themselves. All of that discussion from hamilton on seems to presuppose no selfpardon. It presoeupposes trk but the constitution doesnt say that. The question is whether this premise that is derived from logic, you cant be the conflict of interest to pardon yourself. What is tit that turns it into n unwritten rule that restricts this otherwise broad power granted to the president to pardon federal offenses . The Justice Department a few days before nixon resigned stated that it seems like a president shouldnt be able to pardon himself, but theres really nothing behind that sentence other than it just seems like its wrong, and its not necessarily clear the things that seem wrong are also the law. What we would need to know is for is to have a test of this. You would have to have, say, President Trump purporting to pardon himself, and then some time later someone trying to indict and prosecute him, and then the courts would finally have an opportunity to tell us whether this is what the constitution means or not. Unless and until that happens, its just law professors arguing with each other, and its one more cloud of uncertainty surrounding what you refer to earlier as the sort of long constitutional law exam that weve been living through for the last six months. All right. Its way down the road. I mean, if anything, if at all, its way too early, although the president tweeted about it. He is bringing it up where. I dont know what to do. Stop. People in joshs old job used to say no hypotheticals. No hypotheticals. The president puts a lot of hypos in his tweets. They all say he is worried about stuff. Just stop. If theres nothing to worry about. The New York Times Charlie Savage, thank you very much. Ari, stay with us if you can. Sure. Lets turn to dominik following the stories driving the market today. What are you looking at . Heres hypotheticals. The Global Economy isnt really going gang busters, but its steady. Thats the latest report from the International Monetary fund. Its keeping its hypothetical forecast for world growth unchanged for both this year and next. Things are Getting Better in places like china, japan, and europe, but in the u. S. And the u. K. , things are starting to slow down a little bit more than previously thought. Part of that u. S. Forecast cut has to do with policy out of washington where the imf says stimulating programs like potential tax reform could be offset by proposed spending cuts. Watch that. Also, european markets generally weaker today. One of the big reasons why is a drop in shares of big german automakers, like volkswagen, bmw, daimler, which is the Parent Company of mercedes. Regulators are looking into allegations that they and others have been working together and colluding to do things like agree on suppliers or even fix diesel prices on emissions systems. Bmw has rejected the allegations. Others have yet to comment. Asian ridehailing company grab is getting a big cash infusion. It said it expects to raise around 2. 5 billion in cash from big investors. That includes chinese Ride Hailing Company dd and soft bank. The company is one of the biggest rivals for, who else, uber in that region. Keep an eye on shares of anybody out there associated with ride hailing. Thats going to be a fun one to watch. Back to you. Interesting. Cnbcs dominik chu, thank you very much. Our next guest says he was punished by the Trump White House for his warnings about climate government scientist he was reassigned to another job in accounting. And now hes telling his story. He joins us next. And packages. And its also a story about people. 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Yeah its my decision to make its nbeauty last. Ix. Roc® retinol started visibly reducing my fine lines and wrinkles in one week. And the longer i use it, the better it works. Retinol correxion® from roc methods, not miracles. ™ you give us comfort. And we give you bare feet. I love you, couch. Backsweat and gordos everything. I love you, but sometimes you stink. New febreze fabric refresher with odorclear technology. Cleans away odors like never before. Because the things you love the most can stink. And plug in febreze to keep your whole room fresh for up. To 45 days. Breathe happy with new febreze. 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. Can you tell me how much warming government scientists preticket for the end of this semplery under a bitz as usual scenario . I dont think the government scientists can predict with certainty. There isnt a model that exists today that can predict todays weather. Can you tell me how much warming government scientists working for our government preticket for the end of the century under a business as usual scenario . Can you tell me, sir, whether or not china increased its co2 between now and 203 in the agreement and by what . I will be glad to give you that answer. One of those government scientist, joel clement, used to be the director of policy analysis at the u. S. Interior department. He claims he was recently reassigned to a lesser position for speaking out about the dangers of Climate Change. Im not sure why zinke was afraid to there. Just a fact that he was asked about. Anyhow, clements is now senior a visor at the Departments Office of resources revenue. Joel joins us. Also with us, author and nbc news political analyst annan. Good to have you with us. Tell us your story about why you first of all started to speak out but when you started to see a change in your job status. Yes. Well, i work on the effects of Climate Change upon in particular in this case describing the alaska native villages that are poised, on the brink of permafrost in alaska, next superstorm could take them right out. The three villages that i mentioned are about to melt out into the arctic ocean. In disclosing this information, talking about this quite frequently in public situations and to leadership and interior and the white house, this led to a retaliation on their part. And i have to say the job they reassigned me to is the office that collects royalty checks from the fossil fuel industry so it was a very blatant reassignment of the Climate Change guy. Im going to read the statement here at responding to your oped, and you can take it for the next question from there. But this is in response to interior secretary ryan zinke, spokeswoman heather swift tells morning joe, the department does not comment on ongoing matters such as whistleblower complaints. We look forward to working with the office of special counsel to address any questions they might have on this matter. In response to the shuffling of Senior Executive service ryan zinkes spokeswoman heather swit tells morning joe the purpose of the Senior Executive service is to ensure the executive management of the government of the United States is responsive to the need, policies, and goals of the nation and otherwise is of the highest quality. Senior executives are the highest paid employees in the federal government and signed up for the Senior Executive service know they could be called upon to work in different positions at any time. Congress meant for the ses to be a mobile force that are capable of taking on different assignments to meet the needs of the agency. Let me just jump in to say we all know that when we sign up. Senior executive service is absolutely meant to be a mobile workforce. Reassignments are not uncommon. A mass reassignment like theyve done at dois, that raises some eyebrows and of course doing it in retaliation is unlawful. That what do you think . Im going to ask you a question about the kind of anthropology of where you work and not just your situation but the situation of other Civil Servants, your friends and champions leagues. This is a nation of laws so we have an ideal of an independent Civil Service that works for whoever the president is. But a nation of laus you see an administration doing things that are not normal and distorting reality and going in dangerous directions, theres also an obligation to speak out and not provide consent to bad things. How are you see not just yourself but others grappling with the moral dilemmas of the trump era . This has been a big challenge for a lot of Civil Servants, people in these jobs feel very strongly about these roles and want to stay serving. Dont want to just run. A lot of them are think dog i stay or do i go . Have i been asked to do things i dont feel comfortable with and my hope is that by speaking out i can help them find a voice, know their rights, reach out and hook for help. What exactly do you say youre being retaliated for . I disclosed this information about effects of Climate Change upon these villages in the arctic and my work was to coordinate the federal enga engagement on that problem and its a serious problem. Theyre on the brink. There are some serious consequences to neglecting the federal role in this case, one superstorm and we have refugees in the country. I speak often about this and i believe they retaliated. To clarify, according to the june 15th you said you ear one of about 50 Senior Department employees who got letters saying they were getting involuntary reassignment. Not just your own experience, whats the story with the other 39 . Were they also in some way being retaliated against or moved for other reasons . I wont speculate about most of them. I will say mine was probably the most flagrant. There was clearly an intent to get me to quit. Many others were moved across the country, at great taxpayer expense. It costs a lot to move an employee across the country. Some had Health Concerns and had to come to d. C. To plead their case. They cheerily didnt plan it effectively. What what can american citizens who believe in facts do to support people like you working in our government . Last thursday the union of scientists put out a report on the systemic abuse of regulations as it relates to scientists and subject Matter Experts in the government. Read those reports. Learn as much as you can. Please understand that Civil Servant are there as you said through administrations to try and keep the ship of state going. It doesnt turn on a dime so they can take a little comfort there. But speak out. We have to have your back. Absolutely. Joel clement, thank you very much. Ari melber, well be watching the premiere of the beat. We got the beat anand, thank you so much. That does it for us this morning. Good morning. Jared kushner set to be grilled by Senate Investigators in one hour and a statement leased. How does he explain all those russia contacts . How about some friendly fire . President trump attacking republic
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