Even as theyre busy saving his bacon day in and day out. All of our bacon, frankly, including the president s while he golfs. That does it for us tonight. We will see you again tomorrow. Now its time for the last word with lawrence odonnell. Good evening, lawrence. Good evening, rachel. You know what is coming up next . Because you know the president was just watching that segment. His next paycheck is going to the coast guard. And there is going to be a coast guard guy standing there with that look on his face, you know getting the check. Thats exactly right. For the 82,000 bucks. Thanks, rachel. Tonight we will be joined by jon ossoff, the democratic candidate for a vacant congressional seat in georgia. He has a huge lead tonight over the republican in that race for a seat that has been held by republicans for 38 years. Also tonight, a new report that foreign intelligence agencies were the first to uncover contacts between the Trump Campaign and russia. And nbc reporting tonight that the Trump White House has a plan for a preemptive strike on north korea. But first, is there any nonpropaganda reason for giving a bomb a nickname . The u. S. Has dropped the largest nonnuclear bomb ever used in combat. Its nickname, the mother of all bombs. They were going after some isis on province fighters. Did you authorize this . Everybody knows exactly what happened. And what i do is i authorized my military. We have given them total authorization. Was todays bombing about defeating isis or flexing muscles . Whats your position on north korea . I dont know if this sends a message. It doesnt make any difference if it does or not. Were dealing with a Nuclear Power nation. If we were to try to attack them, they would virtually wipe out seoul. North korea is a problem. The problem will be taken care of. Its time to call out wikileaks for what it really is. Wikileaks, i love wikileaks. A nonstate Hostile Intelligence Service often vetted by state actors like russia. I reject the idea that assange is a russian asset. Do you understand why youre a suspect . I understand why i have been blamed. But there is no evidence. Everything here was just happenstance . Yes, absolutely. The irony of roger stone rejecting a conspiracy theory. And so today, april 13th, 2017, was the day that america woke up to the sudden knowledge that bombs have mothers. That all of the conventional nonnuclear bombs in the American Military arsenal have one big beautiful mother. And there she is. The bombs official name for bookkeeping purposes in the military is the gbu43. The letters on the side of the bomb describe its function, what you can expect from it. Massive ordnance air blast. But the military doesnt want us to call it the gbu43, or the moab. Names are important to the military. They name their bases after war heroes, after general, including generals who have committed treason by fighting in the Confederate Army against the United States of america. The biggest u. S. Military base in the world, the one with the biggest military population is in fort hood in texas, named after treasonous confederate general john bell hood. But the militarys most important names, the names that are designed to deliver a message sometimes subliminal, sometimes very direct are the names of weapons. The militarys best names for weapons humanize the weapons. That is what they are intended to do. The gbu43, the biggest nonnuclear bomb the United States has never, ever used until today, april 13th, 2017. The gbu43 had to wait years for its first use. During the Bush Administration, it replaced the blu82, which until then was our biggest bomb. The blu82 was used frequently in vietnam. The military ace name for it was the daisy cutter. Not the baby killer. Not the family killer. Not the village killer. The daisy cutter. The militarys nicknames for bombs are designed to do two things. Impress you with something about the bomb. Its precision, its power, its enormity. But the best military names for weapons and bombs are designed to inspire awe and affection. And so the bomb that the bush and Obama Administration refused to use and has now been used by the Trump Administration is called the mother of all bombs. When the president was asked today about using that bomb for the first time in history, it sounded like he did authorize t the bomb in that instance. It sounded like perhaps he had given the general authorization to general mattis to use whatever weapon he decided was right for the mission. Did you authorize it, sir . Everybody knows exactly what happened. What i do is i authorize my military. We have the greatest military in the world and they have done a great job as usual. We have given them total authorization. And thats what theyre doing. Frankly, thats why theyve been so successful lately. The president got glowing review last week from most of the media in his first use of tomahawk missiles, his reviews on the use of the militarys most destructive nonnuclear bomb will have to wait until there are at least initial reports on the number of civilian casualty, if any, and what tactical gain was achieved by the gbu43. Now to the news that donald trump cannot bomb away, the guardian is reporting that British Intelligence first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious interactions between figures connected to trump and known or suspected russian agents. This intelligence was passed to the u. S. As part of a routine exchange of information. Sources also told the paper that over the next six monday. Until summer of 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between trumps inner circle and the russians. The European Countries that passed on electronic intelligence included germany, estonia and poland. According to the guardian, the alleged conversations were picked up by chance as part of routine surveillance of russian intelligence assets. At no point was British Intelligence carrying out an operation against donald trump or his campaign. Former Trump Campaign adviser carter page, who was the sject of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant last summer said this morning that he may have discussed lifting u. S. Sanctions on russia during a trip to moscow last year. It sounds like from what youre saying its possible that you may have discussed the easing of sanction. Something may have come up in a conversation. I have no recollection. And there is nothing specifically that i would have done that would have given people that impression, george. But you cant say without equivocation that you didnt discuss the easing of sanctions . Someone may have brought it up. I have no recollection. And if it was, it was not something i was offering or that someone was asking for. President trumps a cia director mike pompeo said this today about wikileaks. As long as they make a splash, they care nothing about the lives they put at risk or the damage they cause to National Security. Wikileaks walks like a Hostile Intelligence Service and talks like a Hostile Intelligence Service. Its time to call out wikileaks for what it really, a nonstate Hostile Intelligence Service often abetted by state actors like russia. And here is what his boss, the president of the United States has had to say about wikileaks. Now this just came out. This just came out. Wikileaks, i love wikileaks. Boy, that wikileaks has done a job on her, hasnt it . This wikileaks is like a treasure trove. Joining us now, malcolm nance, msnbc counterterrorism and intelligence analyst. David corn, Washington Bureau chief for mother jones and an msnbc political analyst. And david frump, senior editor. I want to talk about the massive bomb that was dropped today and your interpretation of its use and what you think it might have been able to achieve in that usage. Well, the gbu43 is really just an area destruction device. Its designed to make a big blast over pressure. A lot of earthquaking, knock down tunnel, destroy people and tunnels that are out in the field. Its just another bomb. And i think people are sort of looking over the fact that it was dropped in a combat zone. A b52 carrying 32 jdam bombs could have caused much more devastation with much more precision. The air force wanted to use this device, and they did. David fromm, the reports today, it wasnt just the british picking up something involving trump world and the russians, estonia, poland. It sounds like there was a lot to pick up. And the polls have particularly sophisticated intelligence service, and have been very interested in the ukraine case. Poland and ukraine are neighbors with deep historical relationships. Poland contains many more consulates in ukraine than the United States does and it knows a lot about the career of paul manafort. That name would ring some very noisy alarm bells in warsaw. David corn, the way the we just heard the cia director talk about wikileaks compared to the way the president has talked about wikileaks. Its another one of those moments where you see that at least in the instance of his choice for cia director, there is no inhibition about saying things today i mean you have to know if you were the cia director and you anticipate other human beings reactions to things, you had to know that i and others were going to put those two hunks of video together tonight that what he had to say today about wikileaks and what donald trump said about wikileaks during the campaign. Well, its all very headspinning. During the campaign pompeo himself was putting forward on his twitter feed and his Campaign Account information coming from wikileaks. So by his own definition, he and the guy he works for who happens to be the president of the United States were in league with the wikileaks operation which was of course his own predecessor says was part of a russian clandestine operation to subvert the american election. So if you really start thinking what he says, it is mindblowing. And you know what . Maybe we should have a congressional i dont know. Thats crazy talk. But nevertheless, it is so absurd, you know, because at the same time donald trump still says this is all a hoax. Malcolm nance, you have literally written the book about this, about the russian influence in this election and what they were up to. Just give us your assessment about the last 24 hours of new information. Well, im afraid to say this is what separates Intelligence Officers from journalists, you know. I wrote this almost seven months ago now. That if you were ever going to get a scoop with relation to information coming out about the Trump Administrations activities related to foreign intelligence, it was going to come from a foreign intelligence agency. Pretty sure that i said estonia would be the first one. Because as we learned, they have very close ties with the United States and other allied nations. And theyre very, very good at certain types of special intelligence. Thats what we call signals intelligence. And our sister gchq and dgsc in france, they have a vested interest in knowing what is going on there. On the other hand, it was very surprising to finally hear mike pompeo come out and declare wikileaks a nonstate hostile intelligence agency. I wrote a whole chapter in my book about how wikileaks was nonstate Intelligence Company and a subsidiary of the fsb. That being said, its going to be fascinating for anyone who has now been found to cooperate withwikileaks. Because this is essentially him verbalizing in an unclassified setting an intelligence finding that they were in league, not only with russian intelligence perhaps by extension, but now a designated nonstate hostile intelligence agency. Its going to make for some very, very interesting congressional investigations and trials. There. Are people in the Trump Administration, pompeo and tillerson who are trying to go legit, as activists who move from one country to another kind of work. And they are trying to hem the president in. One of the interesting questions, and well be studying this in Political Science for a long time, can you hem in the president . Can you remove the president s agency and authority . Because there is this group of now pompeo, now tillerson, before that mattis, before that mcmaster who want to encourage the president to golf more and watch more television and let them run the government. In other circumstances, that would look like a rather sinister thing. In this circumstance, it may look like the second best option. David corn go ahead, david. I was just going the say the question is, can they really wipe off the stench of Donald Trumps campaign . And if not the collusion encouraging this putin operation to subvert american democracy. I mean, they all admit it happened. Tillerson admitted it. Nikki haley admitted it. Mike pompeo said it today. While roger stone is out there pushing conspiracy theorys on this network and others. So can they kind of act as if theyre legitimate, even when theyre working for a fellow who denies the original sin of this administration and still continues to say things that make no sense . I think the answer to that, david, would be from a moral point of view, maybe not. From a practical point of view, everybody has to be less fussy. Malcolm nance, isnt it a question of what are they saying from ts point forwar when you look at what tillerson was saying the week before the emical attack in syria, he seemed like he hadnt even found his way around the office yet and didnt have the vaguest idea what a reasonable talking point sounded like on syria, saying he was going to leave it to, what, the democratic expression of the syrian people, what would happen to assad. Everything he has said since the chemical attack has been a strong statement about both syria and the russian involvement in that, including him speculating that russia could possibly have known about it before the fact. So is it one of those things where like with pompeo today, you pick a spot and you say were going to start watching him from here forward and see what he does . Well, yes, because prior to last week, things were pretty rudderless in the white house. And that rudderlessness came from the palace intrigue that was going on between jared kushner, steve bannon, donald trump jumping in both feet in certain things. But now you have general mcmaster and you the secretary of defense mattis giving strong indications that there has to be a certain way. Most interestingly is nikki haley as u. N. Ambassador has been far ahead of even mcmaster and mattis. And the strength of her statements about russia and syria. And so now it appears that its coming together at least on these two points, even though as i contend, the attack on syria was a complete wash. We didnt destroy anything. We didnt destroy chemical weapons. We just showed that we knew how to turn the key and launch cruise missiles. So i think that the white house in some respects is coming together. And if these threats and statements about north korea are true, as were going to talk about a little later, they had better get their acts together. Because this is the sort of talk that will bring this nation io war or to a crisis that will, you know, resemble the paces to war. David, when you talk about hemming in a president , that has been done in the past in a more subtle way. Just the advisers would basically the experts in the areas of defense or whatever it was would present a set of possibilities. Only one of which looked possible and the others just werent. And so that was always the traditional way if the advisers were trying to hem in the president. Well, it is a more extreme way, which youll remember from the history, James Schlesinger in the last days of watergate telling the Nuclear Command by the way, im putting myself as secretary of defense into the Nuclear Command. If you get any funny orders from the president , just run them past me. This was when president nixon was up drunk late at night in the white house. Taking pills. And approaching the point of being forced to resign. His said dont take any nuclear orders from him in the middle of the night. Right. Unless you cleared them with me. So president s can be hemmed in. The question, how many weeks did that occur over . Relatively short period of time. Can you do it over four years . Probably not. In the end, the president fires a all of these people. And one of the things that Donald Trumps displayed is, and he has done it now to his white house staff, steve bannon and others, he doesnt like it when anyone near him gets too big. And right now mattis is very big, and tillerson is getting bigger, and nikki haley in particular is getting very big. How will the president feel about that tomorrow, next week, the week after that. David corn, isnt that a matter of how saturday night live treats it . If saturday night live says nikki haley is the brains of the Trump White House, thats when the clock starts ticking . I would amend davids astute observation. Its not how people around donald trump getting big. Its how its portrayed and perceived. And because thats really how he views the world. He views the world and how the world is viewing him. The reality doesnt matter as much. And if we talk about hemming in and mastersetting his hands around the National Security council and mattis, we see it only takes trump seven seconds to Say Something or even less seconds to tweet something about north korea or Something