Brian Williams examines the day's top political stories and current political-campaign news. "should" is, that's rudy's latest talking point. was this performance today something long in the works, they were asked to submit their remarks, or were they asked to change the topic from the mess the president created yesterday with his early morning tweet about getting sessions to end the russia investigation? >> i think this has been building for some time. we saw dan coats a week or two ago raise some alarm in that interview with andrea mitchell in aspen. we've seen -- >> "alarm" is a good way to put it. let me show you his answer about helsinki. let's watch that. >> in the run-up to the helsinki summit, u.s. officials, ambassadors to nato, ambassadors to russia, said the president would raise the issue of malign activity with president putin. he didn't discuss that, at least at the press conference. you're saying today that the president has directed you to make the issue of election meddling a priority. how do you explain the disconnect between what you are saying, his advisers, and what the president has said about this issue? >> i'm not in a position to either understand fully or talk about what happened in helsinki. >> why not? >> that is amazing. i mean, this is the problem, right? it was only donald trump and vladimir putin in that room with their translators. that was by design, because trump didn't want there to be any note-takers, didn't want there to be any paper trail or official governmental record of what was discussed, what was agreed to, what trump said, what putin said. now you have u.s. government officials not sure what happened in that meeting. there's yet to be a public briefing by the administration. but what we have in moscow is the kremlin doling out details from those conversations characterizing it as trump making verbal agreements with putin in ways that favor russia, and we're not getting similar information from the united states. it's now about 2 1/2 weeks. >> carol lenning, do you get the sense that anyone in the white house is making the president eat some spinach, if you will, and ramp up the rhetoric and the language from the white house that shows some window into the president or his white house recognizing that russia is a threat and that pretending that it isn't is bad politics for this white house? >> i think it's clear that while some may try to give him some spinach, he's not eating it. take, for example, the tweets. after watching a lot of cable news television about the paul manafort trial, the president tweeted something that would only add to a normal prosecutor's view that he is making threatening or urging statements about shutting down a criminal probe. he's making those tweets during an ongoing criminal trial which is pretty interesting and sensational as well. and there was nobody that was going to stop him. when i asked his lawyers that morning what are you suggesting to him, that he should not do this, they said, that's not really our role here, the president does what he wants to do, this is his megaphone, no one's going to take it away from him. >> you can see that if you take the white house posture at the beginning of the mueller investigation, it was very much, we want to do everything we can to avoid a subpoena fight. that's not where the president wants to be. i think you've heard giuliani say publicly now that we're not really concerned about an indictment, we think this is ultimately a political question. so they're fighting a political fight. if they can take this sort of complicated story and make it, there's a witch hunt, bob mueller is out to get the president, him and his team of democrats, and now he wants to infringe on the power of the president, if he can make those talking points stick, then, you know, he can maybe win some support among republicans. >> for impeachment. we're not talking about the legal setting. >> yeah, this has nothing to do with indictment. this is all about impeachment. this is all about staying in office and keeping your poll numbers up. >> jeremy bash, i think that gave the president the solace that you would think it would, if he's safe from any sort of legal proceeding and all he has to do is malign the special counsel to the point where all the republicans in the house won't vote to impeach and the senators won't vote to convict him, he wouldn't be acting like such a loon. what do you make of his comments tonight, his railing at the media and the conduct he displayed in that tweet yesterday? >> this is part of a larger pattern here, nicolle, where the president fundamentally doesn't want to succumb to the rule of law. he believes in the rule of man or a man, he believes in himself. he does not believe he should be subject to questioning by the special counsel or anyone investigating his conduct or the conduct of anyone around him. it obviously sets a tremendous negative precedent for the office of the presidency. it signals to the rest of the body politic that the president does not want to conform to the law. he wants his law enforcement officials to extinguish any scrutiny of his own conduct and his own arbitrations. >> carol, your colleagues have written about the president's rally tonight, calling it attacks on the media going up to ten, attacks on mueller at the same volume, all while mueller seems to be closing in. we'll talk about that more after the break, but as the investigation seems to be closing in on people in his orbit. >> the white house and particularly the president are gearing or girding for whatever report and findings of robert mueller that come out. they believe they'll come out before the start of september. so i agree with what jeremy said. there's a big effort to discredit that work, to call it a hoax, to call it a witch hunt. but part of discrediting that work is to also discredit reporters who are reporting on it and learning about new witnesses who have been subpoenaed and discovering new contacts between russia and the trump campaign and learning new things that trump said about getting rid of sessions. all of these reports in the paper are things that he is telling people over and over again, don't believe what you see, don't believe what you read, don't believe what you hear, look over here, that stuff's not true. it's part of the whole package of saying, i'm not a bad guy, there was no collusion, being friends with putin is great, and whatever you hear later about bob mueller from these reporters, it's not really true. >> and the dirty underbelly of this is when people are reporting, it's often testimony that the president sees when he sashays across the white house, 80% of the white house staff has been before robert mueller and his investigators. >> that's correct. the reports are accurate and real. part of what you have going on here is the president is a former television producer. he can't stand turning on cable news and seeing producers, real producers, making different judgments than he would make. if it were his choice, this entire show would be about the remains coming back from hawaii and vice president pence greeting them and how wonderful the optics were in helsinki with pute and in how big his crowd was in pennsylvania and the gdp numbers from last week. but there are other issues on the agenda that he wishes he could just erase. everyone is sticking around. we're going to squeeze in a quick break. on the other side, why robert mueller wants to talk to a russian pop star who made a music video recently with a donald trump impersonator. and what the first daughter had to say about one of her father's most polarizing policies. "the 11th hour" is just getting started on a thursday night. possibly by monday or tuesday, to robert mueller's latest interview offer. kelly o'donnell reports that guiliani says the legal team's message to robert mueller is, quote, you can question him about collusion and not post-presidency." giuliani also says if mueller issued a subpoena, trump's lawyers could win the fight about whether he testifies. giuliani says about trump, "he wants to clear himself because he didn't do anything." giuliani reports that the legal team will make a decision in a week to ten days. nbc news also reporting robert mueller has requested an interview with emin agalarov, the russian pop star who helped set up the june 2016 trump tower meeting with donald trump jr. and several russians including an attorney linked to the kremlin. in testimony to the senate judiciary community, donald trump jr. said he didn't recall speaking to the russian pop star about the meeting but in an interview with vice news earlier this year, emin agalarov admitted that he did. >> i said, they can help resolve things you would be interested in, if you could spare five minutes of your time. obviously don junior, being don junior, said of course. i know what that meeting was about, i set it up. it was about nothing. >> also tonight, one of mueller's grand juries will get to hear testimony from a long time aide to long time trump political adviser roger stone. a federal judge tossed out a challenge from andrew miller who tried to block subpoenas from the special counsel. miller worked with stone during the 2016 presidential campaign. two other known stone associates have also been called to testify. still with us, jeremy brash, carol leonnig, matt apuzzo, and phil rucker. jeremy, talk about the significance of these russians now being subpoenaed by robert mueller, what is he trying to do, what is he trying to prove, and what will he do next? >> the agalarov worked with trump to build the trump tower in moscow during the presidential election in 2016, it started to take shape in late 2015 and early 2016. they are the ones who went back to the russian government and said, we would like to send a russian delegation to trump tower to talk about how we're supporting the campaign in june 2016. they're integral to the ties between the trump family, the trump organization, and the russian government. they were the go-between. just because you are a cheesy pop star doesn't mean that you're also not a cutout for russian intelligence. >> matt apuzzo, this trump tower meeting has long been a flash point in questions about obstruction, because of what both your papers reported about the cover story about what that meeting was about. it now seems to be a flashpoint about conspiracy to collude or coordinate with an american adversaries. >> that's where the two stories come together. as jeremy said, this is part of the russian government's effort to help donald trump get elected, and the trump campaign response was, "i love it." there's that. and when reporters started to ask questions about this, were you straight with them and were you trying to conceal the truth from the american public. and in tamping down reporters' questions, were you kind of also trying to throw off investigators who also might be interested in this investigation. it's where the two come together. >> i loved rudy giuliani's explanation of who was in this meeting this week, because he hit his head the way i hit my head when i'm trying to remember something. do we have that? >> there was a meeting two days before the meeting took place with donald junior, jared, manafort, and two others. gates. and one more person. >> and that's a real meeting? >> that's a real meeting on a provable subject. >> you lose the thread of where rudy is going with this, but it's an interesting list of names he trots out, rick gates, paul man afford. what do you think they're telegraphing in naming who was in that meeting? do you think there's some concern that the other participants may be in trouble? there is definitely concern about donald trump jr. the president is definitely worried about his son's exposure as mueller focuses on the trump tower meeting, not because he thinks he did anything knowingly wrong but he understands how easy it would be to violate the law. >> to stumble into collusion? i've worked on a lot of campaigns. we worry about a lot of things, bad oppo, working too much, lying to "the new york times." we do not worry about stumbling into collusion. that's the a normal thing. >> well, he knows his son. he's worried that his son could have somehow done something illegal unintentionally and there could be dire consequences, and it has him nervous and agitated. >> carol leonnig, the story has gone, for many months, the president is too incompetent to have colluded with russia, they couldn't collude with headquarters, but obstruction, maybe, it was a mom and pop operation. they now seem equally agitated and concerned about the potential that something could look like conspiracy to collude with an american adversary. >> right, we're getting down to the brass tax. the time is coming that we're going to hear some information about whether or not there were contacts with the trump campaign that the trump campaign knew about. the subject line of the e-mail, part of the russian effort to help you, don junior, and your dad's campaign, did they know about this, did they willingly accept any accept? we know about a zillion different contacts now. it's sort of this worry throughout this period what's going to come out. i would like to recommend that everybody remember that michael flynn played a key role in all this. he cooperated early on in this probe. we haven't heard anything from michael flynn. but he gave information to bob mueller. and we don't know what that is. but i'll remind you again that in december, right before the inauguration, michael flynn is the person calling sergey kislyak and it's reported they were talking about sanctions. why? why is that? and will that come to be important later on about the russian effort that don junior was willing to bring home the russian effort to help your dad? >> she's telling us to remember mike flynn. where do you think mike flynn fits into all the revelations? >> i think carol is definitely on to something. it's hard to know exactly what evidence mike flynn has about that discussion. clearly he got instructions from his ultimate boss that when russians come collecting on their investment, it's time for us to pay back the favor. and that's exactly what happened. i want to make clear, there's no question whether or not anyone in the trump campaign knew the russian government was attacking our election process. that was the whole predicate of the meeting. it was set up that way in the e-mail. it had already been previewed to them by papadopoulos. there were people who came to the trump campaign and said this was happening. it was overtly discussed in the meeting. nobody kicked them out of the office, nobody called the fbi, nobody said this is illegal or inappropriate. they welcomed it. there's some mythology that because they didn't start colluding there at the table, somehow that's not conspiracy or collusion. of course 165 times donald trump referenced the wikileaks and the hacked e-mails in the last month of the campaign. he clearly made it a central aspect of his final closing argument in the 2016 campaign. >> he sure did. and we know from "the times" reporting that the special counsel is looking at all his public statements and tweets. thank you so much for spending some time with us tonight. coming up, the latest on the paul manafort case, including testimony from a witness who knows an awful lot about manafort's money. "the 11th hour" back after this. gave us privately about what we're not paying enough attention to. >> one of the things that i think concerns me a little bit is that the judge, in an effort to move things along quickly, which most people do appreciate, and out of concern that some of the evidence of paul manafort's lavish lifestyle might cause resentment among the jury is limiting the amount of evidence that the prosecution is being allowed to present in court. it concerns me that the jury may have difficulty understanding the significance of some of the things that are coming in. there's a lot of documents here. today we had the bookkeeper testifying about a lot of documents. and the judge does not allow the prosecution to publish the documents to the jury so they can see it in real time. he says they can read those things later. and same thing with photographs of some of the lavish luxury items that paul manafort bought, you know, things like luxury cars and custom suits and real estate and things like that. and the problem is that if the rulings result in an acquittal recall the government does not have recourse, the government can't appeal an acquittal because of the double jeopardy clause in the constitution. nonetheless, they're persisting and the evidence is coming in, it's very strong to demonstrate the tax counts as well as the bank fraud. >> one thing i've heard you say since the trial was under way, really at the time the indictments were unsealed, is that this is a paper case, so much damning evidence was included in what we already have seen. what is the importance of the bookkeeper's testimony to understanding the alleged corruption with which manafort went about hiding money and violating these laws? >> the bookkeeper's testimony, you know, may have been a little bit tedious, it lasted a couple of hours, it was a lot of dry financial transactions, but it was really important. one, she was able to tie income from paul manafort to these shell companies that he had offshore with these bank accounts in cyprus, a really important part of the case. the forgiveness of a loan that should be treated as income, we'll learn later that's undeclared income. she also talked about how in 2016 and 2017, paul manafort became essentially broke after living this incredibly lavish lifestyle and having millions and millions of dollars, suddenly he's broke because his business in ukraine dried up, which provides motivation for the bank frauds. she also testified about some fraudulent documents that were used to obtain loans during this time when he was desperate for cash. one piece of it that's not going to come out in this case but that is really intriguing and could come out in the later trial in the fall is, it's during this time that paul manafort is broke and desperate for cash, that he goes to work for the trump campaign for free. and so that raises i think some interesting questions about what his motive might have been there. >> it sure does. barbara mcquade, we're so lucky to have you navigating for the non-lawyers among us. thank you so much for spending some time with us. coming up, the president's adviser and daughter finally speaks up about some of the issues dividing the country. separation of parents and children. >> really? well, until today, ivanka had been publicly silent as the government took more than 2,500 children away from their migrant mothers and fathers. the president ended the separations in june, reportedly after some pressure from his daughter and others. but tonight, hundreds of those families are still torn apart. with us for more, emily jane fox, senior reporter for "vanity fair." her recent book is "born trump: inside america's first family." and the low point for the children, the infants in baby jails, was being yanked out of their mothers' and fathers' arms, and the low point for ivanka trump was reading about it? >> was the press scrutiny. >> maybe the low point was the scrutiny she got on twitter for posting this picture. was that the low point? >> why else talk about it in the past tense? this is something still going on. there are hundreds of children still separated from their families. to speak about the low point having already happened when this is still ongoing just signals that perhaps what was the low point was when she was getting hammered and hammered for not speaking up and not saying a single thing. even when she did speak up today, it's six weeks later, all she said is exactly what her father has said, maybe not in as nice terms. she was basically repeating his talking points and the talking points that the first lady said six weeks ago. it took her all this time to say something and what she said is exactly what the rest of her family members said six weeks ago. >> andi kearney, melania trump went to the border and met with and visited with people trying to help some of these children. so this is an occasion where ivanka trump did a lot less. i guess what doesn't add up is the low point for something she was a part of, she works there. she has the most senior rank in the white house, on the white house staff there's nobody higher than an assistant to the president. she is either a totally impotent, ineffectual assistant to the president who suffered a low point i guess by watching what her father did that she had no ability to influence or she feels bad -- i just don't understand what she's trying to say. >> it's the same problem with ivanka and the family members serving as senior officials that has been plaguing her since day one when she joined the information. either she's an ineffectual adviser who has no power to influence her father, or she's, you know, doing pr and damage control for herself when she says now that she's vehement my opposed because, as you said, she didn't actually visit the southern border as melania trump did. neither of those are great options for her and i don't see a third way to interpret this they shade some -- she made some other comments that we'll talk about in the show, but she has some ability to disagree with her father and know she won't get fired. that's something that other staffers don't enjoy. and so we see that she has that leeway if she wants it. she just doesn't choose to use it a lot. >> you got ahead of me and did part of my job for me, which which i appreciate. we'll talk about those comments you just referenced about the press. she says they're not, we're not, the enemy of the people, even as the president and his press secretary take the war against the media to new lows. "the 11th hour" is back after this. the fake news refused to call it. fake news. whatever happened to fair press? whatever happened to honest reporting? they don't report it. they only make up stories. so here was the story by the fake news. the president was 15 minutes late. they can make anything bad because they are the fake, fake, disgusting news. >> that from the guy who according to "the washington post" has told 4,000 lies. that was president trump who spent much of tonight's rally in pennsylvania taking shots at the media. hours earlier his daughter ivanka was asked something else about what her father often says about the media, that we're the enemy of the people. >> you have a number of colleagues here in the press. do you think we're the enemy of the people? >> sorry? >> do you think we're the enemy of the people? >> no, i do not. i have certainly received my fair share of, umm, reporting on me personally that i know not to be fully accurate. so i've, you know, had some -- i have some sensitivity around why people have concerns and gripe, especially when they sort of feel targeted. but no, i do not feel that the media is the enemy of the people. >> that response prompted her father to take to twitter this afternoon with a clarification of his daughter's comments. he wrote, they asked my daughter ivanka whether or not the media is the enemy of the people. she correctly said no, it is the fake news which is a large percentage of the media that is the enemy of the people. the question also came up during this afternoon's white house briefing. white house press secretary sarah huckabee sanders was asked repeatedly whether she believes the media is the enemy of the people. sanders told reporters she's there, quote, to speak on behalf of the president and that, quote, he's made his comments clear. emily jane fox and annie karni are back with me. i'm trying to keep straight whose enemy we are. ivanka does not think we're the enemy of the people but sarah sanders seems to think that's an accurate description of the free press. you saw the piece by maggie haberman, her colleagues in "the new york times," they were able to detail a list of people that ivanka and her folks wanted "the new york times" to talk to. i guess you can't consider the media the enemy of the people when you're handing them a list of people to call about how great you are. >> this is something i encountered when i was writing my book about the first family and ivanka in particular. they understand there is a way to manipulate the narrative if you're working with people who are willing to be playing that game. and so when you have someone ask a pointed question today, an up or down, is the media the enemy of the people, this is someone who is so media savvy, who is 37 years old and will spend the rest of her life either in politics or in business, and she needs the media on her side. for her to say no, the media is not the enemy of the people, was just a savvy business decision. she couched it, defending her father, without saying i'm defending my father, by saying i can understand how certain people feel targeted and they feel that way. but she's been getting a little bit of credit today for coming out and disagreeing with her father, although i don't really feel like she disagreed. i don't know that we should be giving credit for not being a lunatic. >> we here do not give points for not being a lunatic. >> this is not a big disagreement for ivanka trump and her father. in fact her father came out afterwards and basically clarified her statement. it's the same way that he calls her honey and baby and says that, in relayed conversations with her, she calls him daddy, it's another way for him to demean her. they have this good cop/bad cop demeanor and i think we saw that playing out today. >> annie karni, was a clarification of his daughter's comments, do you have any reporting that suggests that he was displeased with her not towing the family line? >> i don't think so. but he has expressed frustration with ivanka in the past. he has expressed frustration in the past with ivanka and jared even being in the white house, saying, you know, this was a bad idea, they should go back to new york. but the sarah moment i found instructive too, about the limits of what she can do. the president was mad at how she dealt with the white house correspondents dinner, wanted her to walk out, wanted her to personalize it. we saw her personal size the situation when she talked about the red hen. she absolutely would not have gotten a correct, she was correct when she said this, if it she had made the exact same statement that ivanka did. it highlights the strangeness of having family members serving side by side with regular staffers and the limitations on one and not the other. i think the whole split screen between the two of them was very awkward internally today. >> it was, as much as you want to see women in the public space, in any field, in politics or anywhere else, these were not women that appeared to be, i don't know, speaking their mind or standing up for anything that would distinguish them. i want to ask you about this moment in the intersection of the white house and the media, because i don't want to romanticize anything about the bush years or the white house in which i served, but it's a goalpost for what was normal, what was normal was tension with the media. what is not normal is what went down in the briefing room today. >> and the rally in pennsylvania. there is no point at which the media is spoken to or treated as though they are members of -- and protected members of a fourth estate, a fourth branch of government. i feel like every single day the relationship further deteriorates and we're going to a place where i don't know that we can come back from this. >> annie, it's the right word, it is the responsibility of the white house to protect the press corps when they travel with them and advocate for their rights to be in pool sprays. is there concern that the white house is on a path to stop that? >> the incident in england where he couldn't call jim acosta from cnn, to do that on foreign soil is setting an example on the world stage. i was on that trip, and the reaction from the british press was jaws on floors, to see him treat the media that way abroad. so i do think that these norms are being shattered and that it's going in a bad direction in terms of the relationship and how they're treating us every day. >> we stand with our friends in the british press with our jaws on the floor. thank you so much for staying up. there's more "11th hour." don't go anywhere, that's just ahead. we'll be right back. from the very beginning ... it was always our singular focus, a distinct determination. to do whatever it takes, use every possible resource. to fight cancer. and never lose sight of the patients we're fighting for. our cancer treatment specialists share the same vision. experts from all over the world, working closely together to deliver truly personalized cancer care. specialists focused on treating cancer. using advanced technologies. and more precise treatments than before. working as hard as we can- doing all that we can- for everyone who walks through our doors. this is cancer treatment centers of america. and these are the specialists we're proud to call our own. treating cancer isn't one thing we do. it's the only thing we do. expert medicine works here. learn more at cancercenter.com cancer treatment centers of america. appointments available now. that's our broadcast for tonight. catch me every day at 4:00 p.m. eastern in this very studio. brian will be back here at this time tomorrow night. thank you for being with us and good night from nbc news headquarters in new york. tonight on "all in." special council is negotiating an interview with the man who set up the trump tower meeting. >> i have been accused of influencing. >> and bad news for rodger stone. tonight, we are learning about where robert mueller is headed. then, bank fraud, oligarchs and more suits on day three of the