Thenacting fbi director Andrew Mccabe venting about him, venting about his wife calling her a loser, slamming james comey. The reaction or lack of it from capitol hill. We start today, of course, at the white house with my colleague, nbcs kristen weller. Big day for the president. We know some stuff about this speech. We know what the president wants to try to do but we have Big Questions remaining about how this thing is going to shake out tonight. Thats right, hallie. Happy state of the union day. What we know about this critical speech that the president will be delivering later tonight, hell be trying to strike a note of unity and hell be hitting five key points, jobs in the economy, no surprise there, thats something that weve spent a lot of time talking about, trade, infrastructure reform, Immigration Reform as well as National Security. But heres what we dont know, hallie, will he stick to the script . And will he clearly outline what he wants to see on immigration . Thats going to be the big fight unfolding in washington. Will he mention the russia investigation which looms over all of this which he referred to as a hoax. What about health care . Remember republicans vowed to repeal and replace obamacare. Theyve tinkered with it around the edges but so far no replacement of that. And then how bipartisan will he, be hallie . How bipartisan can he be . Particularly given all of the divisions that will be at the backdrop of this speech and then, of course, i just reiterate the one you and i keep talking about again, to what extent is he going to stick to the script . To what extent is he going to go off script . Typically in these big moment he is does stick to the script. Will that be the case this evening . We know hes putting finishing touches on this yesterday. He went through a dry run in the map room at the white house. Im told hell be working on it throughout the day. Kristen welker at the knot lawn, see you in a little bit. Its not just a question of whether the president will stay on script tonight, he probably will, theres also a question of what is happening in the backdrop to the state of the union. You have the administration potentially preparing to release this controversial congressional memo. You know this memo. This memo was written by republicans, accuses the fbi and doj of basically abusing surveillance powers, specifically against an associate of the president s campaign. House Speaker Paul Ryan who is getting ready to hold his Weekly News Conference told a bunch of us at the capitol that he believes this memo should be released. Nbcs Pete Williams is in our washington bureau. Pete, we know the white house says it want transparency but the fbi, the doj have some concerns. Walk us through what happens now. What happens now has never happened before. The process is under a house rule that says if a house or i guess a congressional rule if a house or Senate Intelligence committee believes it comes into the position, thats classified, that reveals some sort of government misconduct it can vote to make it public but the white house has the chance to block it so the information will be made public unless the white house takes action to block it so thats the procedure were operating under here now. This is a memo written by republican staff of the house Intelligence Committee. Not all members of the committee have seen the underlying documents on which its based. As you say, it largely details the governments application for a secret court warrant, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, to get a warrant to listen in on the phone calls of a Trump Campaign official carter page, someone who advised the Trump Campaign and the criticism is that this application was based in part on information provided by a dossier that was funded in part for the Hillary Clinton campaign and therefore the allegation of the memo were told that this shows shoddy practices on the part of the fbi in making this application to the foreign intelligence court. So thats the guts of it here. Its up to the president to decide whether to release it. We dont know to what extent the Justice Department will weigh in on this. We know the Justice Department feels strongly this isnt the way to do things. This whole procedure is extraordinary. Committees are supposed to investigate things and report what they find out when theyre done but all these committees that have been looking into russian allegations have been putting things out here and there, transcripts of interviews, so this whole process is very odd. Pete williams putting it in plain english. Appreciate that. With us is march sho short. You know paul ryan is getting ready to speak, youve agreed to be interrupted if he does take questions. I have state of the Union Questions for you but i want to pick whereupon pete left off. Pete ask what extent should the doj have in reviewing this . What input will the department of justice has . The white house just received the document last night. What were going to do as s lead an interagency review process led by the National Security council and the White House Councils office that will include multiple agencies to make sewer theure theres no se methods divulged and well make a determination. Does that include the originating intelligence agency. I believe the nsc will be involved in it. Will the fbi . Will the doj . You talk about interagency but the president and rod shah and ohs in the white house have talked about the doj doesnt have a role. It sounds like youre saying something different. The National Security council determined which agencies are involved in the review process. You have some in conservative circles linking this memo to the departure of Andrew Mccabe. You know that happened abruptly sooner than expect ed. The president fired one fbi director. Hes publicly and privately berated another for months, Andrew Mccabe, he gave the order to fire the special counsel, so why does the president keep looking like he has something to hide here . I dont think he looks like he has something to hide. Did you see that graphic . Pull that up. If you look at the people in charge of the russia investigation, hes gotten rid of two and made no secret of his displeasure for the others. I think the American People have a right to know how the investigation happened which is why theres interest in the memo. Theres concern about the person leading the investigation whose wife was receiving 700,000 in political donations from the clintons closest friends. I think those are concerns people have. So career officials cant marry democrats if they want to serve under a republican president . Hallie, dont be absurd. Im saying if youre leading the investigation, it should be the people of america should know if your spouse is getting 700,000 from political investigations. Thats not saying you cant marry into a democrat, of course not. Should the president call her a loser . Our reporting is that the president was very upset about james comey getting the plane ride back from california after he got fired and asked how does it feel to be a loser. This may be a surprised to you but sometimes your reporting isnt accurate. You dont think that happened. I have no idea. Would it surprise you if the president did talk like that. I dont believe the president did. I want to ask you about the state of the union. Well leave that there. Great, i wasnt part of the conversation. There are three sources telling us that was the case. Thats great. State of the union, hes going to talk about immigration which youve been involved in. When you look broadly at the speech, he very famously at the rnc said i alone can fix it. Does he acknowledge after a year in office he alone cannot fix it . I think the president has done a lot enormously on trying to fix immigration. I think your viewers saw when he brought members of congress over, house members and senate members, republicans and democrats to talk about a solution. He said i will help protect my group from criticism. We havent seen leader schumer or pelosi saying theyll protect their members the president said ill take the heat and then two days later as you know there was the very controversial immigration meeting with comments that were made that offended a lot of people in the room that seemed to blow up in i chance of a deal. So where is the wiggle room when it comes to this . Hallie, lets keep in mind Chuck Schumer says hell do 25 billion one day, the next he says hes no longer part of the deal. Its hard to know where they are. Wait a second. The president just said he might invite Chuck Schumer over to the white house. Will he . He has multiple times. Has he invited Chuck Schumer in the last 24, 48 hours . Hes had him over multiple times. Heres the no, wait. I want to get to this. Have you invited Chuck Schumer since the president made the remarks . What Chuck Schumer said is the president should stay out of the negotiation so i dont think theres been an invitation to say lets chat today. Weve been very clear what we want. Weve been clear in putting out the pillars weve asked for, protect the border and visa lottery and chain migration and solve the daca population. Thats a starting point. Im asking. Is that a starting point . Thats not a starting point. We had a starting point that included other things that we wanted. We winnowed down our list and the president forward after listening to those conversation what is he thought was a sound compromise and on policy this is a sound compromise. The question is the politics on the left and will the radical left base allow democrats to strike a deal. I think democrats see this very differently obviously than you so i would imagine thats why they come on msnbc. They want a place where you will find compromise. So let me ask you this. Would you consider something that would not, in fact, cut drastically the number of legal immigrants into this country . Hallie, we dont think were cutting legal immigrants. Cotton purdue proposal talks about cutting the number. Why dont you talk about our proposal. So thats off the table . Were taking the visas and say apply those to the backlog. Lets expedite that process. It takes 10 to 15 years, lets expedite that process so i dont think were going to cut legal immigration. When you talk about the president s speech, its not just immigration, hell be talking about the economy, trying to strike a tone of bipartisanship, thats different from when i heard the president speak a year ago when he talked about american carnage. Has his view point changed . I think the president knows hes the president of all American People. So no more american carnage. What can we do on a bipartisan matter. When you look at the american carnage, look at what the economy has happened over the last year and the president solved a lot of the problems we faced. You look at the fact that we have a 17year low in unemployment. Lowest Unemployment Rate for hispanics, lowest Unemployment Rate ever for africanamericans and you see over 3. 1 million people, 3. 1 million workers in america have either received a raise or bonus since the tax relief package was passed five weeks ago. Thats an enormous progress on the economic front. The white house will cite those statistics but it should be noted when you talk about for example the africanamerican Unemployment Rate that its almost double the Unemployment Rate overall for the country. Its the highest it began declining under president obama back in 2010, not under President Trump. What is the white house going to do to target that more specifically if anything . Theres more we can do but youre not acknowledging its reached an all time low. Thats correct, im not disputing that but hes taking credit for something that started seven years ago hempltshemplt. Hes taking credit for the fact hes reached an all time low. I think youll hear that we need to continue rollback regulations, to continue to unleash the free market and youll also hear him talk about a infrastructure plan he hopes will be a bipartisan one. Thats an interesting topic because i know thats something that the hill might not be so ready to embrace, particularly in a Midterm Election year, paul ryan is speaking now, talking about immigration and daca, were going to go to him when he takes questions, but since he talking immigration, john kelly is somebody youve been working with closely. Youve been on the hill quite a bit. Where as Stephen Miller been in this process . Hes essential. Hes one of the most knowledgeable people i know on immigration policy. He knows where republicans can compromise, he knows where democrats can compromise and this helped us put together the pillars we unveiled . Theres an acknowledgment from folks on the hill that he is at times politically toxic. Why hasnt he been more publicly involved with this and are you concerned hes turning off members . Im not concerned, hes been an invaluable part of this process. Marc short, thank you for being with us. Appreciate. Thanks, hallie, good luck this weekend. Thank you took me a second. Paul ryan speaking now not about the super bowl which we can talk about for the next hour but about what the plan is on capitol hill to get something on immigration done. You know the president will be talking about this, you know the president will be talking about, for example, National Security which well discuss later on in the show as well as tax reform and hell also be discussing infrastructure, something that marc short referenced just a moment ago, questions about whether that is truly politically feasible to do moving forward. Paul ryan is set to take some questions and while he does, we want to continue the conversation. Marc, can i bring you back in since youre still sitting on set. On infrastructure, the president wants to talk about this. Thats a big spend. Reporter republicans in the house to release a republican memo and not at the same time as a democratic memo to give the American Public a full picture, at least both sides of the argument regarding this underlying intelligence. Whats okay is to follow the process and thats what is happening. I would remind you that the democrats tried blocking the rest of the members of congress from even having access to the memo the majority wrote. Yesterday the majority wrote to provide access. The process is this, youve probably reported on it which is a memo gets released to the broader members, they read it then you go and scrub to make sure that no sources and medis are being compromiseden this you go through the process of releasing it. This memo is going through that process and unlike the democrats on the Intelligence Committee who voted to deny access to this memo to the broader members, reports sported doing so. Devin made the motion so it will go through the 11g process like the other memo did. Reporter why not hold back and release them at the same time . Whats that . As kevin was mentioning, the chairman went to the fbi to go through the memo to make sure that we were protecting any sources and methods and we are confident that we are none of that work has been done on that new memo but the republicans allowed the rest of the members to meet it. Reporter why not hold back . Youve asked enough. Reporter why not ask the republicans to wait and release it at the same time as democrats to release theirs . Well go through the process as the process is laid out and its ironic that the majority voted to give access to this memos while the minority voted to deny that access so i think the irony is rich here these days. Reporter based on what youve learned from this memo, do you believe the fbi and the doj used their powers in a partisan way . Let me make four points here. I think there were as we think about all of this, i wrote some of this down. First, there are legitimate questions about whether American Civil Liberties were violated by the fisa process. We are the legislative branch of government, its our job to conduct oversight on behalf of the American People of the executive branch in case any powers were abused and Civil Liberties were abused by the executive branch so theres a legitimate issue here as to whether or not an american American Civil Liberties were violated. Point number two, this is a completely separate matter from Robert Muellers investigation and his investigation should be allowed to take its course. Point number three, there may have been malfeasance at the fbi. Reporter was it let me finish my point. There may have been malfeasance at the fbi by certain individuals so its our job in conducting transparent oversight to get to the bottom of that. Sunshine is the best disinfectant so we want this information to come out so that transparency can reign supreme and accountability can occur theres a fourth point i want to make. And that is the institution of the doj, of the fbi, is a very Important Institution for american life. Its a very Important Institution for keeping the rule of law intact. The vast number of men and women at fbi and doj are doing their jobs well. The people over in the field office in milwaukee, the fbi off