But you heard there, his veiled reference to it, willie. And it seems that hes keeping a pretty good attitude about the chaos thats going on all around him. Hes right in the middle of it. Perhaps a reference to the president yesterday morning tweeting about a quote criminal deep state. Good morning, its thursday, may 24th, welcome to morning joe, weve got msnbc contributor, Mike Barnicle, the chair of the africanamerican studies at princeton university, eddie glaube junior, former treasury director and economic analyst, Steve Rattner, columnist and associate editor for the Washington Post and Washington Capitals fan, a very happy fan this morning. Huge game seven win and nbc news capitol hill correspondent, host of kasie d. C. On msnbc, kasie hunt. I want to chime in that every time i hear this kasie d. C. ac dc thing. I think about the battle between westi westinghouse battle between when we should have ac current or d. C. Current. Holy moly, ladies and gentlemen, playing the role of jon meachum today, Steve Rattner. Where we started, steve said, listen when you introduce kasie, i got something i want to say. I wonder whats coming in here. It was about Thomas Edison and westinghouse. I think we should devote 15 minutes of the show, its been bothering me. Mika is attending her Daughters College graduation, we look forward to seeing her back in a couple of days. Big stuff, man, big stuff. Of all the things yesterday that concern me the most, and theres so many things that are concerning me, i think we need to talk to ignatius and ask him if hes going to be an apologist for russian conspiracy, thats being launched in washington, d. C. In front of our very eyes and they dont even apologize for it. Or whether hes just going to take the win, i guess winning justifies everything, doesnt it in. Four more games were going to let the russian chief conspirator, the guy who has made it happen, alex ovechkin, the great greatest player of his generation, finally was able to put away the seventh game win and go into the stanley cup times, were going to give him four more games to totally dominate. Wow. It was a heck of a game. You have to understand the caps have been a lot of bad things in washington, our poor hockey team and its perennial failure to get to the finals of the stanley cup has been bothering us, its a happy city last night. You know, david, another aspect of the caps win that we all should celebrate and there will be other stories i think this morning about owners of sports teams in another league, but the owner of the Washington Capitals, ted leonsis is one of the truly, truly decent people in American Sports today. Really and truly is. Youre absolutely right. Hes also the owner of the wizards basketball team. He has consistently supported the team. He paid enormous amount of money to get rights to ovechkin. For many years the caps have been the top team in hockey. Havent got ento the next step. And leonsis stayed with them. We like our owner, we like our team, but we really like ovechkin. A late development, intelligence briefing for the Bipartisan Group of congressional leaders has been added for later today on the fbis secret source during the 2016 campaign. But it will come after republicanonly briefing for the president s appointees and congressional allies. The first meeting at noon will include President Trumps chief of staff, john kelly, whom the white house earlier said would not attend. Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, fbi director christopher wray, dni director dan coats and devin nunes and trey gowdy. The second meeting, scheduled for two hours later will have all the same participants with, the addition of congressman nunes seven colleagues in the gang of eight intelligence leaders, including four democrats, adam schiff, mark warner, nancy pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Earlier pelosi and schumer wrote to rosenstein and wray that the briefing was improper in its proposed form, calling it the dissemination at the direction of the president of investigative information to the president s staunchest defenders in congress and ultimately to the president s Legal Defense team. Speaking to reporters on the south lawn, President Trump describeds meeting as a necessary exercise in transparency. I want them all to get together and i went them, because everybody wants this solved. But a lot of bad things have happened. We now call it spygate. Youre calling it spygate. Theyll sit in a room. Hopefully theyll be able to work it out among themselves. Theyre going to all be in the room tomorrow, were going to see what happens. What i want is i want total transparency. This issue supersedes the party. It supersedes republicans and democrats. So what i want from rod, from the fbi, from everybody, we want transparency. And you know what . I think in their own way, they are obstructionists, but even the democrats, i really believe on this issue, its supersedes i think they want transparency, too. And coming up on morning joe, reaction from the Ranking Member of the Intel Committee in the house, adam schiff. Joe, so this was added yesterday. After there was outcry from democrats on capitol hill. Public outcry about this being the politization of intelligence. Its remarkable listening to the president of the United States going out there lying about quote spygate and saying thats what you all are calling it. Nobody is calling it that. Because there was no spygate. Everybody knows what happened. And david ignatius, talk about, if you will, just how peculiar, how strange and i think many people would say how dangerous this is that the president of the United States has pressured the fbi and the department of justice, to launch an investigation into the investigators, investigating wrongdoing that the president and his team may have committed and then making it a partisan exercise. Joe, based on what we know, the president is taking the normal function, the normal counterintelligence function of the fbi, and the Intelligence Community, and treating it as if its a criminal conspiracy. Its the strangest thing i can remember. This reference to our intelligence agencies as the criminal deep state. Kind of language that frankly that the russians would apply to us, not our own president would. Based on everything we know, there were credible reports of contact between people in the Trump Campaign, and people who were known to be russian intelligence operatives or contacts. And those were pursued. There was no implantation campaign but there were informants who gathered information, it was sent in mid summer of 2016 and subsequently. Thats the way our intelligence agencies operate. Thats their job and the idea that its now being criminalized, described as a conspiracy, is just a strange new turn in this. I think its good that the gang of eight, the broad oversight body is going to have a chance to listen to this and set it in context as opposed to just cranking the right wing machine with devin nunes and the house republicans. So kasie hunt, how did this play out on capitol hill . Obviously nancy pelosi, Chuck Schumer and others were not happy about the idea that devin nunes and trey gowdy were the only members of congress to get a look at this intelligence. What kind of pressure did they put on the white house . And how did the white house sort of cave to that in a way we dont always see . I think you heard a little bit from the president himself there, kind of indicating that perhaps you know, opening the door to this idea that democrats could want some transparency, i think, clearly the policies behind the scenes at the white house can kind of change on a moments notice, based on the president s own words. But the reality is this was so clearly being conducted outside the normal, normal lanes and protocols for how you do this. I mean senators bur and warner, who run the Senate Intelligence committee together have thought that this errand in a nunes has been on is basically a threat to National Security. They didnt want to sign on to these document requests, because they are so typical careful about protecting they say, sources and methods, we hear it over and over again. Sources is what devin nunes has been trying to expose. So they have tried to steer clear of this. Until now of course, and the sense was, this was so outside the realm of the way the Intelligence Community and the Oversight Community on capitol hill works, that i think everybody took a step back and john kelly was very involved in this and back and forth throughout the day with Mitch Mcconnell in particular. Who was expressing some discontent. I mean the idea that this information would only be in the hands of devin nunes, to be presented to the American Public in whatever way, only he was going to decide, was so clearly going to give a skewed view of what happened, that i think everybody in both parties quietly behind the scenes said uhuh, were not going to do it that way. Carol, these two meetings were the big story of the day. But the extended damage done to the institutions being represented here, at these briefings, the fbi today, but the c. I. A. In the background, the National Security agency, the constant damage being done to the institutions by the president s clearly intended Deception Campaign has got to be taking an enormous toll. This is the question is what is the longterm damage to these institutions, not just the fbi and the Justice Department. And the cia, but all sorts of institutions that the president has decided hes going to challenge and try to undermine. I dont think we know. You know if you listen to director wray or anyone else who is in Law Enforcement will say that this is going to send a Chilling Effect out broadly and undermine this very significant tool that Law Enforcement has to try to gather information about investigations that are critical to National Security. You know if youre thinking about becoming an informant or someone is trying to recruit you or groom you for Something Like that youre going think twice after seeing what could be possible in terms of having your name out there or whether the president with the blessing of some senior officials in congress could out you in that way. In terms of what comes out of the meeting, you know, if theres, you dont use an informant like this in a counterintelligence investigation, unless theres significant evidence so this could have the effect like the nunes memo of backfiring on the president. It could show there was good reason to use this tool. And on the other side if every letter of the process wasnt followed to a tee, that could give fuel to republicans. You know, its pretty unbelievable that Steve Rattner, you have the intel agencies before the election, saying to both campaigns, the Clinton Campaign and the Trump Campaign. Theres been a multiyear effort by Vladimir Putin to try to influence our democracy. Were very concerned about it. If you see anything, if you have any suspicions, if they approach new any way, please notify us. Because this is a direct threat to our democracy. Its very interesting that they only approached Donald Trumps campaign and even after being given this warning, not only did donald trump and his Campaign Team not report those contacts, not report the meeting between the russian lawyer connected to Vladimir Putin who says i have dirt on hillary clinton, not only did they not do that. But you had other associates, of course getting information about wikileaks and getting information about cutouts from russia. And they didnt say a word. So of course. When information came in that one of Donald TrumpsForeign Policy advisers, according to donald trump, was getting drunk and talking to the australian ambassador about their contacts with russia, and when other intel agencies get that information, thats, those are some very, very bright red lights. And what intel agency worth its weight in salt at least, is not going to do something about that, and send people to check out these contacts . The correct answer is none. So the question is, why arent we hearing more about this . Why arent we hearing more about why the Trump Administration just sort of let this sit . The fact is, they, they were told that they might be approached, and if they were approached, it was imperative that they Say Something. They were approached, they said absolutely nothing. In fact, donald trump is running around during the campaign, telling the russians publicly. Hey, get some more information. Hack some more of Hillary Clintons emails, find the other 30,000 emails. I wonder how, how donald trump goes on the lawn and says, you know, talks about spygate. How do republicans allow this to continue . I think two things, i think first, i think first when we get to the bottom of this and i think having more of these discussions and so on will lead to that. Were going to find out that the fbi and the other intelligence agencies acted entirely appropriately. As you just said. When you have a pattern of indications of bad behavior by the russians and so on, if youre the fbi, your job is to follow it up. I think with respect to why the Trump Administration didnt do anything about it. There are two possible explanations, one is just they were incompetent. They were amateurs, they didnt know what was going on. So it drifted by them in the heat of it all and the other is a much less benign explanation, which is that they full well knew what was going on and chose not to report it because they wanted this information, they wanted help from the russians, they wanted whatever they wanted. As far as the rest of the republicans, i think we all have a good idea of whats going on. Theres not a lot of courage among the republicans on any of these kinds of related issues. The ones who are still up for reelection are afraid of trump and what he might do to them on twitter and everywhere else. I think the person, i think the person whose conduct is most questionable in a way about this is paul ryan. Because hes retiring. So why he would not choose this as a moment for a profile in courage, ive always thought paul ryan was a good guy. I dont really know. I have absolutely no idea whats happened to paul. But whatever it is. Is not good for protecting americas constitutional norms. Eddie glaude. If you see something, Say Something. Thats what the fbi, thats what, the justice, thats what everybody told the Trump Campaign and the Clinton Campaign. They saw something, not only did they not Say Something, they started quietly setting up meetings between russians and their own Campaign Team. And then donald trump lied, i mean he concocted the lie on air force one to try to cover up that meeting. I mean, again, this is so patently obvious, i guess if you see confusion in my eyes, its just i cant believe that this is not so patently obvious that even republicans are embarrassed by this spectacle that donald trump is trashing our intel communities and the fbi and the Justice Department simply because hes been caught. So now hes investigating the investigators. Joe, i think youre absolutely right in questioning the premise of Donald Trumps efforts to delegitimize the russia investigation. It seems that when we lend credence to what hes doing and we follow his direction, we find ourselves going down these rabbit holes. And this is not quite analogous. But i think it will help put, bring the point, make my point clear. Remember when he said that the Obama Administration wiretapped his campaign . And remember all of the stuff that happened as a result of that wildly ridiculous claim . How congress had to then try to figure out all of the machinery of government, followed him down that rabbit hole. And then we realized it was just nonsense. Here we are with spygate. All of us know its wildly ridiculous. Not only are we seeing the flauting of democratic norms, institutional erosion. Were seeing orwellian doublespeak send us everywhere. While donald trump is literally orchestrating the circus to distract our attention and delegitimize what we think, what we know is coming. Last night i was speaking to a former intelligence operative who has briefed two of the last three president s, not this specific president. And he got into one of the detours, currently being taken by the present occupant of the oval office. Each president learns things differently in their intelligence briefing. Some liked to read at length, like president obama. Others like george bush liked to have an audible briefing. But this