"morning joe" starts right now. >> we must immediately harden our schools. >> we have to harden our schools. >> so-called gun free zones that are wide open targets -- >> it is such a target for the killer. they look for gun free zones. >> it should not be easier for a madman to shoot up a school than a bank. >> i want my schools protected just like my banks are protected, just like everything else. >> the national rifle association originated in the system. >> they came up with certain of the rules and regulations that we have now. >> i'm wondering, was there a -- did you think this same person wrote the same speech or do you think it was a -- i was going to ask, is it a jedi mind trick? >> president trump shares plenty of positions with the nra, but that mind meld with the guns -- >> kind of embarrassing.

>> wants to bring up the idea of raising the age to buy an ar-15 as the president now proposes. >> let's look at the front pages of the papers we've been looking at the past couple of days. the new york post, guns half cocked idea, pay to arm teachers and the great headline, smith and wes son. again, this has been a very conservative tabloid that has been supportive of did but this is a memo from rupert murdock knowing it's the first paper he reads in the morning. it is a stupid idea. it's an idea that nra likes because of course you actually get more than 300 million guns on the streets. you actually get even more guns than -- more gun shootouts and the need for more guns. i thought the ralph peters now

shrinking himself, ralph is a tough guy. and he writes a tough column today. and he talks about ban these weapons of murder and again, another tough guy, tough conservative, former military man, gun owner, fired his first gun when he was 7 years old and because he was such a delicate flower at 7 it was a sawed off shotgun. >> there you go. >> he spent his time in the military firing weapon after weapon, automatic weapon after automatic weapon and here's the line. said these are military weapons. their purpose is to kill human beings. they are not used for hunting unless you want to destroy the animal's meat. they're lousy for target shooting, but they are excellent tools for mass murder. now, anybody that suggests that you need these for hunting deer, hunting animals, the graphic

description we saw yesterday of what these bullets did -- what this gun did to these children's bodies and to their organs, that they smashed them like a sledge hammer, that's what these military weapons do and we can have the debate about whether americans need those military weapons to protect against a tyrannical government, we also should have a really honest conversation this morning about will it make a difference? i don't know if it will or not. stopping the sale of these weapons. i think we have to give it a try. just after 9/11 people saying we could have other terrorist attacks. and finally, we're going to have to turn a really hard look at

law enforcement. yes, we're all talking guns. everybody's talking guns, but the fbi missed the warning, which now -- now seems minor compared to everything else that has happened where you have local law enforcement officers missing 35, 39 warnings about this -- this shooter, and then of course the horrifying information that came out last night, there actually was a good guy with a gun at as the president and every nra person will say. there was a law enforcement officer at the school and he didn't go in. in part, i am sure because he was overmatched. now, that's no justification. at 9/11, you were working 9/11, you saw the firemen going in, they knew that they probably wouldn't be coming down that tower.

it was their job and they did it. so there are no excuses. i do think -- i saw david saying this morning on twitter or last night on twitter, we never know how we're going to react when we put ourselves in that position. and so we should look at these things humbly. i will say just like the firefighters jobs on 9/11, it was his job to go in and do his job and if he couldn't do his job then he should have -- he should have never become a deputy and he should have given that job to somebody else. >> okay. a wide range of topics to discuss this morning. with us on set we have new york times reporter jeremy peters. chief national correspondent from new york magazine. white house correspondent and former justice department spokes person, matthew miller and nbc

news capitol hill correspondent. okay. >> where's the lightning? >> what are you hearing? >> on? >> well, just from members of congress, from the political consultants you talk to, where's this gun debate moving? >> i mean, i think everybody's pretty -- i mean, you'll be surprised to learn confused about exactly where the president stands on all of this. he has suggested a number of policy changes. not least of which is the age limit for rifles, but it's clear from what we heard from yesterday, the whole day yesterday at cpac cl was a much different event from years past but they sent the message, we are going to take all of this to the mat. in some ways, you know, the traditional face of who's a veteran of many of these fights

in washington over gun rights, he was preceded by day that lash who is the new nratv spokeswoman and says all of you in the media love mass shootings and that was kind of the -- you know, the rhetoric was turned up in a way that is pretty remarkable. >> there was a lot of attention on cpac yesterday, this year's annual conservative political action conference and it comes a week after the parkland school shooting massacre and yesterday leaders for the nra took to the stage. the nra is under intense criticism in the wake of yet another school shooting, but chief executive and spokes person dana lash says a lot of other people are to blame. >> legacy media. >> the people and the salon and media matters. diane fienstein.

>> nancy pelosi, bernie sanders. elizabeth warren. bill de blasio. >> the internal revenue service. black lives matter. christopher murphy and keith ellison. michael bloomberg. european style socialists, young democratic social -- college campuses. carliemar -- the new york times, the washington post. >> wow. he said the nra supports law enforcement, but spoke darkly about -- >> no, they don't support law enforcement. just watch this because remember this is the same man and this is the same organization who called our law enforcement officers --

called men and women in our federal agencies that tried to protect you from terrorism, that try to attack -- to protect you from those who attack radical islamic terrorists, whether they're bomb strikes in boston or whether it's trying to stop the next 9/11 or whether the fbi is trying to stop from, let's say your local mall being blown up or you being blown up in a church. that's what the fbi is doing around the clock. they're working to keep you and your family safe. but wayne la pierre and the nra, they've now spent the past 30 years i guess, 40 years slandering the men and women who were actually fighting every day and on the front lines in our fight against radical islamic terror. this is what he thinks of those people who. >> reporter: trying to protect you and your family. >> as we've learned in recent months, even the fbi is not free

of its own corruption. i can understand a few bad apples in the organization as large as the fbi. but what's hard to understand is why no one at the fbi stood up and called bs on its rogue leadership. our intelligence community shrouds everything in secrecy, driving everything into darkness every dirty memo and every dirty institutional secret and memory in the name of national security. but when the leaks come, it reveals nothing about the security of our country and it reveals everything about the corruption of those in power. a tidal wave of new european style socialists seize control of the democratic party. they split size the department

of justice. they weaponize the epa, perhaps cripple the fbi and sees an embedded leadership in all of them to advance their agenda. absolute control in every corner of our government is their ultimate dream. history proves it. every time in every nation in which this political disease rises to power, its citizens are repressed, their freedoms are destroyed and their fire arms are banned and confiscated. >> i am amazed. >> so it is remarkable. that is -- again, that's really along the lines of his jack booted thug comment claiming that the men and women who go out every morning and risk their

lives and know that they may not see their children when they come home at night because they're trying to keep america safe. america's law enforcement officers, he's once again suggesting they're thugs who want to take away the right to religion, the right to keep and bear arms. we're in such a bizarre place. it was ronald reagan who really made feedback what feedback is and what did young people like me love about ronald reagan and watch when he was speaking at cpac, he was anti communist. he pushed back against the liberals in congress who were constantly undercutting the cia and were constantly undercutting the fbi and constantly undercutting law enforcement officers. they were the radicals undermining everything good that america was trying to do. it is now wayne la pierre and

those that invite people from the nationalist front who are now denigrating our law enforcement officers who say the cia is coming to get you, he's saying the fbi is coming to get you. he's saying the intelligence committee is coming to get you. it is a bizarre and it is un-american. >> it is bizarre and i think the timing is pretty striking when you sort of see the events of last week. i mean, it's one drum beat after another. last week in particular with the school shooting happening and then, you know, the timing of this is a little bit askew than we're accustomed. i mean, this thing has gone on obviously a lot of young people are energized by this and you see what the sort of millennial voters, i mean, you just don't sense a lot of millennial voters, people watching thinking this is what i want to be. this is where my generation is. this is the republican party that i'm willing to join.

>> i want to declare war on law enforcement. i want to hate the fbi. is that does he really think that's what people want? >> i think what you have to recognize is the power of the echo chamber. cpac is an echo chamber. so much of conservative media, frankly a lot of liberal media is an echo chamber. and i'm sure donald trump will have a version of this when he speaks at cpac. you feel good all of a sudden and you feel a sense that you talk in the world just sort of comforted and that's what is scary about these things because no one really has a broader conversation and cpac has just gotten narrower and narrower over the years and that's the reality. >> and you're looking at nratv and how it's becoming a propaganda tool for things beyond guns and social issues and what's the angle on that? how -- are they targeting a

certain part of society? n >> they're targeting people with the fear that their guns will be taking away and that's what you heard yesterday. he was stoking these fears not just of 2nd amendment infringements, but of trampling and confiscation of individual liberties across the board. that's what he said and it's an interesting shift in strategy for a group like the nra which no longer has a president in the white house to demean and to demonize and to make an enemy of. so what they've done is they've said okay, there's a much broader conspiracy. it's no longer coming just from the democrats. it's coming from the media. it's coming from the intel community. it's coming from the government and they are going to get you and the ultimate goal is to take your guns. they talked about mass gun confiscation, but going back to joe's point about young people, the room -- this is a room full of young conservative activists. the room was not with wayne la

pierre yesterday. at one point he said i sense it's a little quiet out there. but it was quiet, he said, they must be scared and all gun owners should be. the reason they were quiet is because they weren't buying what he was selling. >> i heard that a couple of other times. i've heard that it was -- there was a disconnect between what he was saying and -- and also there was a disconnect for a lot of people who were attending who went to it a couple of years back when donald trump was, you know, going to be the primary and people were even wondering whether he would be booed when he got there. this is not donald trump's crowd but they've sort of -- they've adopted this nationalism position, this inviting the racist leaders from europe who are actually, you know, actually on economic issues, a socialist. there is nothing conservative

about this and i -- what's amazing is though that even though they're appointing these -- bringing over these national lists sort of socialist leaders who -- who want universal health care and want to reduce work weeks to, you know, 30 hours a week, want to do things that are not all very french and socialist to me, those are the new stars of cpac and there was this sense of speech and here's what's so by cza -- bizarre. how do you whip up an intel community out of control when donald trump appointed the director of the fbi, the director of the cia, the director of national intelligence, republicans run the house of representatives that wayne la pierre owns, the

leadership, he owns paul ryan. he owns the senate majority leader mitch mcconnell. i mean, republicans and donald trump own washington, d.c. they're talking about a government out of control. it's their government, matt. so first of all, how bizarre is that and secondly, what does the intel community think when conservatives -- so-called conservatives spend their days trashing the men and women who are protecting the rest of us? >> i guess if you're playing conspiracy bingo as wayne was, the square on that card is the deep safe. it's this ball that they talk about embedded inside the intelligence community t. supposedly embedded inside the fbi. i think jeremy made the really correct point. there hasn't been a serious push for gun control in this country really in almost 25 years. even after newtown it was really just about increased background checks and so without a real

opponent that's trying to, you know, take their guns as they often claim, they've had to whip up opposition in other ways. they've had to find enemies and create boogiemen and without democratic lawmakers to go after, they have to, you know, attack the fbi, they have to attack the intelligence community and i will tell you having worked inside the justice department, the nra has never been a friend of law enforcement despite all their claims. in 2010 when there was a dramatic increase in officer shootings around the country, we convened kind of committee, a task force to come up with new proposals to stop officer deaths. the nra wouldn't meet with us. they wouldn't take a meeting to talk about what we ought to do to try to save officers from dying on the street. this has been their position for a long time. they want to put more money in the pockets of gun manufacturers and they don't care about the safety of kids in schools. they care about one thing and that's selling more guns.

>> and joe talked at the beginning of the show as well about what do people possibly need these rifles for. the ar-15 rifles that we've been talking about. they're not necessarily that you're hunting a deer, that they're going to present, these guns do so much damage and i was wondering how -- it seems to me that he was suggesting that there was a connection between, you know, all of these federal government agencies potentially coming to get you and your right to own these guns. i mean, he never comes out and says it directly but that seems to be what's underlying this. >> well, to me what i heard in his speech was really someone who was trying to acquiesce with the party of trump. it was all about conspiracy theory that somehow you cannot trust the federal government. steve bannon was not at cpac this year. wayne is hinting at only -- the

only person who had been attacking the fbi before it became something that was okay to do was president trump, and now that everyone thinks that that's kind of the way to get on trump's train, you hear someone like wayne talking about the fbi when that really has nothing to do with what his core message usually is, which is guns. i think -- so i think there's that going on. and to me it's fascinating to see someone like the nratv spokes person say that the media loves mass shootings because again that sounds to me like donald trump, who would be talking about ratings and tv while also trying to talk about guns other than someone like donald trump. so i think what we're seeing is people repeating him. >> and jeremy, we talked yesterday about some of the inflammatory messages that were being sent out by wayne la pierre and the members of the board, the people that fund wayne la pierre and the corporations and the banks that fund him and they will all be held liable for this incitement of violence. which people -- i can't tell how

many calls we got yesterday, people horrified that the nra would open themselves up, like lawyers calling me going oh, my god, do they not have lawyers over there? do they not understand how they're exposing themselves to liebltd? b -- liability? but apparently some corporations were listening yesterday because you had several that said we're going to dissociate ourselves from the nra. >> and that's where it hurts. there are two kind of changes that need to happen here in order for there to be any real movement. one of them is a cultural change and that's what you're seeing with the children and this notion that guns are no longer part of their lives. they're no longer -- it's no longer seen as cool to have a gun and that's why the nra is worried because the gun sales have been in decline. the other is corporate. >> so we just flashed up if you're driving to work right now, three rental car agencies

have said they're no longer to give nra discounts. i guess they were so offended by what they saw and what they're seeing him say attacking our law enforcement officers. >> this is a big business and if you start hitting them at their bottom line where it hurts it's going to be a big pressure point. >> what i want to know and we have to go to break, is here's enterprise, no longer will give nra member discounts on car rentals. nobody wants to be connected to this liability when they appear to be in their videos inciting violence. but what i don't understand is this. and i said yesterday after we ran those ads, it's okay to get mad at the woman who's up there yelling and talking about, you

know, we're coming after you new york times, clinched fists, you're going to burn in the fire. >> almost did try to burn a copy of the new york times in one of those videos. >> as i have always said i always find the new york times one to read and one to burn in the backyard. >> get an online subscription. >> in fact, she built a fire last night with the new york times. it burned quite well. >> i guess he's -- no, that's okay. it was an old new york times. >> you guys don't care what -- >> thank you for your service. >> yeah, only jeremy is part of the culture. >> but, you know, instead of getting angry, he can get angry, it's just easy. it's easy to get angry at these spokes people that are screaming and delivering their lines, horrible hateful lines. it's easy to get mad at wayne but what i don't understand is,

wayne la pierre is a spokes person himself for bankers who try to live with -- and informs torrs w -- investors who try to live their lives. and many americans believe guns are killing teenagers. why hasn't the media done a better job of instead of just getting the boogieman, and he's really -- he's a tasalesman, right? who runs the carnival? why don't we have the pictures actually of the seven men who are going to make more money now because children of parkland died? because they are. they also say after mass slaughters these investors who fund wayne la pierre, they -- they get even more wealthy. more children who are slaughtered in schools, it is a

data driven fact. >> and they get a pop right after a school shooting of sales. >> the more profits they make. why aren't we doing a better job at finding out who those men are and stop putting this clown on who is really just their spokes person? >> well, i mean, look, an event like cpac is an event of spokes people essentially. right? but you're right and i do think we're talking about the grass roots. the bottom line of these organizations and when you have rental car companies doing this and i think this is probably the beginning of -- if not a movement, certainly -- i think you'll see more of that. you have, you know, the kind of sort of undercurrent in which you -- you have bottom lines affected. and i mean, i think that this might be the next place -- >> do you know who let's say who the five people are that get wealthier every time there's a mass shooting at a school. >> you know -- >> why don't we put that together for monday. >> there is -- >> i'm just asking since the new

york times magazine. >> we'll figure it out. i think we can focus in. >> i just -- i mean -- >> we're assigning it to ourselves. >> it's not an original thought by me. wain la pierre is a spokes person just like sarah huckabay sanders is a spokes person for donald trump. he's a spokes person for big finance and for people who are making tons of money on guns, and that's why his job -- i think his job hasmorphed through the years. there was a time when nra was about gun owners and it was about protecting gun owners and teemping gun safety, a very noble -- i always believed a very noble organization. at some point and i don't know exactly when, it stopped being about gun owners and started being about the profits of wall street investors in gun companies. >> well, and he is the voice along with dana lash.

it's worth looking at them. and we look at her and how she spews lies at times when she's supposed to be serving this country and we'll look more -- >> wow. >> well, you can't call them like little pawns. >> that escalated quickly. and i just drawn an analogy. >> it's time to go to break. >> it's an analogy that you're not giving enough depth to. they are more than spokes people. they are the voice of these entities but we should look at what's behind them which is a point well taken. >> can i ask you a question? >> no. >> have i ever been accused of giving too much depth to any issue? >> no, we're way over. still ahead on morning joe, bob mueller -- >> you're suggesting i might. >> much more incredible news ahead. bob mueller files new criminal counts in the russia probe. in fact, he files 32 of them. the sweeping new indictments

against paul manafort and rick gates and what it means for the white house next on morning joe. >> we'll be right back. have you smelled this new litter? no. nobody has! it's unscented! (vo) new tidy cats free & clean unscented. powerful odor control with activated charcoal. free of dyes. free of fragrances. tidy cats free & clean. when no scents makes sense.

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a new indictment from special counsel robert mueller charg charge paul manafort and deputy rick gates with tax and bank fraud crime, raising the amount of money they allegedly launders to more than $30 million. manafort and gates are now both accused of tax evasion and not reporting money in foreign accounts. they're also accused of misleading banks on paperwork for millions of real estate loans obtained in 2016 by using outdated document to overstate income by millions of dollars and to omit other millions they had in debt. it is worth noting that manafort

began his february 2016 pitch to the trump campaign by stating quote, i am not looking for a paid job. though he did want an established role. a manafort spokesman said he is innocent of the allegations set out in the knewly filed indictments and he is confident he will be acquitted of all charges. he goes on, the new allegations against mr. manafort once again have nothing to do with russia and 2016 election interference or collusion. the white house has no comment. >> matt miller, these new charges for both manafort and gates will keep them in jail for a very long time. >> thinking the rest of their lives. >> certainly, without a doubt the rest of their lives. the question is and that still hangs over washington right now and i'm sure with the minds of many of the white house is gates moving towards making a deal with mueller? >> yeah, there have been a lot of reports that he was going to make a deal. those reports were premature.

you see this indictment made public yesterday and this indictment was returned last week, so it's been sitting out there for over a week now. so we'll see what gates does now. obviously mueller is bringing a lot of pressure on him and a lot of pressure on paul manafort who is 68 years old. so already looking at ten years in time on the previous charges. it really is the rest of his life and you have to ask what -- you know, what made rick gates at the final -- you know, the final kind of decision point before these charges were brought not take a deal when faced with such serious charges? we know he's in debt. he doesn't seem to have enough money to pay his lawyers facing a very expensive trial, maybe two trials now given that these were brought in different venues. i really think it's time to start asking this question again. have there been any conversations between manafort's lawyers, between gates' lawyers about pardons. his choice not to take a deal

doesn't look like a rational one in this situation. >> it certainly goes against the reporting we heard about him actually presenting a profit to the fbi, sort of the whole queen for a day routine where he according to reports told the fbi everything they needed to know about both manafort's illegal activities and his own. >> look, matt's just sort of talked about something that i think we've all heard a fair amount of around washington the last couple weeks, which is the kind of silent threat of pardons or the silent possibility of pardons and is there some kind of discussion going on through back channels that indicates that a deal for you is not a good thing to do and you'll be taken care of on the other end. this is something i'm sure mueller is very conscious of also. >> can these people really trust that trump will come through for them? >> well, i mean, it has nothing to do with trust, because if the feds don't get them, then the

state a.g.'s going to get them. every one of these people. manafort -- matt miller ex- plauned this. if the feds don't spent manafort to jail for life, if the allegations are true, new york state will send him to jail for life because mueller is sharing information with new york state. there's a reason -- there's a reason why the former national security advisor is saying i don't want anybody's help, i am mueller's guy because he could face kidnapping charges out of pennsylvania that would send him to jail for life. there are no good options for these people. i mean, the only thing i can think is manafort doesn't want to be killed by a russian or people with connections to russia. he stole like $20 million from a russian. children, do not try that at home. >> don't. >> you're right. all of the options are bad and you raise a really dark possibility but they were in

business with some very dangerous people in ukraine. people close to the highest levels of the russian government who could really retaliate with serious consequences. you're right about state charges being a potential here but when you are looking at bad options and none of the options being great. but if my choice is having to tangle with eric sniderman on charges and having to tangle with bob mueller with the u.s. code and all the possibilities for u.s. code to put you in jail for the rest of your life, i might gamble. but it's a much less serious possibilities than dealing with mueller. >> that may be the case, but eric sniderman would have a very firm hand on his shoulder and all the help he'd ever need from mueller. >> for sure. >> they've been coordinating for a long time. right? >> for sure. it's just -- i don't think the question is necessarily evidence

gathering because he would have access to all of mueller's evidence. it's the ability to bring state charges. there are apparently serious consequences under new york law but you don't have the same level of tax charges, of bank fraud. that might be the least bad one. >> but if you have a choice between doing a dealtrump.

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you pull alstring and it's like a blimp. >> time now for the 2018 winter olympics. not sure about the jacket. the team usa curling team guaranteed a medal after upsetting canada in a 5-3 win. >> this is huge news. >> the three-time defending gold medalist but they go on to square off against sweden. despite the loss the canadians had a good day claiming six medals overall including figure skater who won canada's first female figure skating medal

since 2010. meanwhile three u.s. pairs did not reach the podium. their struggles in the previous round carrying over into yesterday. but the stars at the olympics free skate were two russian athletes who claimed both the silver and gold. 15-year-old zagitova and in order to win the first gold medal for russian athletes throughout the pyeongchang olympics and with that, norway, still leads in the overall medal count. >> have i always told you, never trust the norwegians? >> yes, you have. >> the curling pants. the norwegian curling pants, very special. different sets of pants. >> can you get me some of those for my birthday? >> valentine's day they were covered in hearts. >> seriously?

>> it's hilarious. >> if you guys will buy me norwegian curling pantsly wear them around connecticut all the time. >> i got to tell you. >> i bet they are. >> he wears lu lu lemon. >> still ahead -- >> isn't that what the ceo said? >> we're going to break. >> that's going to be right out of school. >> joe wears lu lu lemon. >> i would wear that. exactly. somebody -- what was it somebody said? i'm trying to remember, some people wrote some nasty things about my songs one weekend and they were one -- i'll remember it but they were some of the funniest, i was laughing all weekend because there was some really hateful things, sort of hateful in a funny way. but i was just going to say, i'm so glad -- i'm serious here, that the olympics allowed russian athletes like those

remarkable russian athletes, the 15-year-old young woman who is so extraordinary, to come and not have the sense of the entire russian federation olympic squad sort of keep them from doing what they've worked so hard to do. >> that's what it's about. >> there's a good -- good choice. i need those pants. norwegian curling. right? >> bring them up. >> leading voices in the gun debate on both national and the state level from the u.s. senate, we're joined here in washington. >> i remember the insult. >> this is something that i'm

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noing us now -- joining us now, jonathan swan who has new reportings on where things stand with white house chief of staff john kelly in the white house that jonathan says everyday is yesterday and last year. >> so it's sort of lord of the flies inside of the white house. tell us about it. >> trump is in what appears to

me to be a standoff with the prospects to replace john kelly. the sense we have is that trump wants them to beg for the job. gary cohn, mick mulvaney, kevin mccarthy. they're not going to do that because then they would have to take the job on trump's terms so they're in a bizarre situation which is reminiscent of every single day we've seen so farm in the trump administration where trump is trashing his top staff member to certain people, giving reassurance to other people and the new thing we've reported is in the last few days melania has weighed in on john kelly's behalf. >> really? >> yeah. >> she may have more authority right now. >> has she ever weighed in before? >> she weighed in very heavily against reince priebus. >> i heard throughout the campaign that -- from somebody that she didn't weigh in often but every time she weighed in

her instincts were right and much better than a lot of the people around her so it wouldn't surprise me. again, i would guess maybe she has a little more, like you said, heft and authority today than maybe six weeks ago. so what about the question of which washington media has been obsessed with, the jared versus kelly showdown that was supposed to happen today. that appears to have fizzled and now it seems to be sort of peace in our time. >> kelly's allies tell me he would love nothing more than jared to just get this damn clearance because it would make his life easier. >> but that's the white house choice, though. at the end of the day, the white house can waive consideration. >> they can but that would look -- i mean if the president did that, it would not look great and there's something holding it up. >> yamiche, it's not -- >> the president doesn't care. >> first of all, jared kushner and his family have extensive

hold eggs. that's going to make it harder than somebody that, you know, worked in commerce who's now gone over to the white house and also jared is under investigation by the mueller team. whether he's ultimately cleared or not, the last thing somebody in the fbi wants to do is say, okay, give him a clearance and then three weeks from now be blindsided by robert mueller who brings charges against him. >> that's true but this president is all about loyalty and family so if he can do whatever he wants, everybody that i've talked to said he's going to keep jared and allow him to have access to the dale g i -- daily briefings even if he doesn't need to to do his job. the president wants him by his side. he's kind of a shadow chief of staff. he talks to the president, advises him a lot. so i don't see any change in jared kushner's work. >> jonathan, stay with us, yamiche, we'll see you in a bit. >> in kasie staying with us.

>> i believe she is. >> i want to see more norwegian curling pants. >> we've got to look at those. coming up, president trump proposes arming teachers but rejects the idea of active shooter drills. we'll look into the president's solutions to keep students safe and how just similar they are to the nras, and this morning stunning new details about the police reaction to last week's deadly shooting in florida. we've learned an armed school resource deputy has resigned after failing to confront the shooter. >> the news just keeps getting worse and more tragic for their families. >> we'll be right back. ♪

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visit esd.ny.gov. >> legacy media. sanctuary city. james comey, loretta lynch. the people at slate and salon and think progress and media matters. >> saul alinskey, nancy pelosi, bernie sanders, kamala harris, elizabeth warren, bill de blasio, andrew cuomo, the internal revenue service. these intellectual elites, the occupy movement, black lives matter, antia, cory booker, christopher murphy and keith ellison, george soros, michael bloomberg, tom steyer, european style socialism, young democratic socialists, college campuses, karl marx, the national media, safe speech zones, berkeley, some hollywood gala, nbc, the "new york times," the "washington post." >> i got a lot of problems with

you people! now you're gonna hear about it. >> oh, my gosh. the nra is under intense criticism -- >> by the way, we cut it off right before he said the end of it with "and a partridge in a pear tree." that was a great list. >> in the wake of yet another school shooting, but as you heard there yesterday, chief executive wayne lapierre and spokesperson dana loesch said a lot of other people are to blame for society's problems, not assault weapons. welcome back to "morning joe," it's friday, february 23. with us, we have nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of kasie d.c. on msnbc, kase kasie hunt. jeremy peters, mark leibovich, jonathan swan, and joining the conversation, editor at large of the "weekly standard," bill kristol. good to have you on board.

>> bill, a lot to talk about. >> welcome to washington. >> thank you, we love it here. >> we've been showing rupert murdoch's memos to donald trump. murdoch a man that trump has always had great respect for and the "new york post" going out there talking about his half cocked ideas. yesterday the hidlieadline said "help us." it reminded me as something as iconic as "ford to new york, drop dead." it was one of those if this debate turns, it's -- the "new york post" for people that know donald trump will be one of the reasons why and then you have -- as we've said, ralph peters is not a shrinking violet, he talks about the first time he shot a gun he was seven years old and in ralph peters style it was a sawed off shotgun. he served in the military proudly, he fired a lot of military style weapons, he said this is a military-style weapon we're selling. civilians have no right to them.

he said the only reason you would use an ar-15 in hunting is if you wanted to completely destroy the meat of the animal that you were shooting. that these weapons are too kill as many human beings as quickly as possible. here's the "daily news" which donald trump also reads. >> it's good to hear you guys are such new yorkers that you bring the new york tabloids with you to washington. >> how can we not? >> it's good. >> it's affecting our lives. >> if jimmy carter were president of the united states right now we would probably bring the atlan"atlanta journal-constitution." it's fascinating that rupert murdoch and some conservatives are sending a message, hey, no, this is not more to zblnormal. >> rupert murdoch talked to donald trump a few times a week, at least he was. they have been close and then been at odds and then close

again as is so often the case with trump. trump has no personal allegiance to the nra. >> of course not. >> or gun rights or the second amendment. it's not an issue he had a view on until he started to run for president. >> he used to support assault weapons. >> he's not personally a big gun guy. he has people protecting him, protecting trump tower for years. so he's perfectly capable as on immigration, an issue he had no strong views on until 2014, in theory he would be capable of going against his base, or part of his base, and cutting a deal. i would not say it would not be a politically bad thing to do because i think he would keep the support. on immigration, that was an interesting dynamic. he wanted a deal, he wanted to be the statesman who took care of the daca kids but got the wall. basically he had that deal and he walked away from it under pressure from conservatives in immigration hawks and the question on this is is it the same. the nra, it's amazing. when i got to washington, when

you were a congressman, why was the nra powerful? they were powerful because they supported people from either party who supported gun rights. there was their model and it wasn't stupid and they got a lot of democratic votes as recently as a few years ago they got democratic votes against an assault weapon ban. >> so, bill -- >> and now like everything else in america, they've gone totally partisan, it's become tribal politics. >> you'll remember the time in the mid-'90s when i was here and you were starting the "weekly standard" this gun question was really open to debate. >> absolutely. >> democrats weren't talking like they're talking right now. democrats were talking about banning handguns. after the brady bill passed, after the assault weapon ban passed, bill clinton -- i remember in a side note bill clinton said maybe we go after handguns next. so there was a lot of flux, it was after ruby ridge, it was after waco, it was after a lot

of things that were concerning civil libertarians so there was more of a question of what was going on. i remember in '97 the tied turned. it turned because it was a bipartisan group and i remember you had john dingle and murtha standing up saying no, too much and you knew then okay, well, since the democrats are jumping in here they're not -- they're not going to succeed. but things have changed and it's gotten so extreme. >> but it would be great. there are proposals that are in between getting -- stopping a gun -- getting rid of a gun that eight million of which are out there and other versions of semiautomatic rifles so it would be great if you had a bipartisan proposal that would do common sense things to restrict the killing capacity, make it at least less horrible if someone gets into school with one of these things, have a bipartisan bill and the same on

immigration. dold good for the country. one of the terrible things, the most terrible things was the massacre of the school but the degree to which it's exposed the country's political culture which is terrible. >> you saw what happened yesterday. >> just screaming at each other and a very low level -- no discussion, no discussion given the fact that there are 300 million guns in america. given the fact that we have this constitutional order we have, given the fact that we have the legislation we have. so it would be great. it would be healthy for the country to have a deal on guns and immigration even if it only gets a bit -- >> on both sides. >> there are and yet at cpac you saw the nra kind of in an angry defensive crouch which is really -- i think that might be the disconnect you saw in the audience which might have felt uncomfortable and then you wonder what the cop at the school -- what he was armed with when you think about this next story given what the kid inside

the school is armed with. >> no excuse. no excuse at all. >> and i'm not making one. i'm just saying the whole concept of having teachers armed. it's kind of -- flies in the face of insanity given what we're about to report. >> and we're talking about the officer that didn't go in when he had a gun loaded. he had no excuse, just like the fireman went up the stairs at 9/11 but that said this is why law enforcement officers across america say they don't want military-style weapons out there on the street with civilians because they go to a gun fight and it'm people with those weapons who have the firepower. >> during a news conference yesterday the broward county revealed that school resource deputy scot peterson had resigned. peterson was under investigation for failing to enter the school when the gunman opened fire.

according to the sheriff, deputy peterson was outside the building for upwards of four minutes while the shooting took plac place. >> when we in law enforcement arrive at an active shooter we go in and address the target and that's what should have been done. >> the sheriff announced that two deputies are on restrictive duties because of prior incidents before the shooting. it appears the prior incidents may stem from information the two deputies had previously received about the confessed gunman. we've also learned that according to the "sun-sentinel" police also thought they were si seeing the gunman live on security cameras several minutes after he dropped his weapon. according to the coral springs chief of police, a failure in communication led police to believe they were tracking the shooter in realtime when they were watching footage delayed about 20 minutes. and in the wake of the shooting, the fbi says it's trying to

rebuild public trust after failing to pass along a tip about the gunman to agents in florida for further investigation. >> mika, we've been talking and i think for reasons i think most americans feel like we need to know we've been talking about enhancing background checks, banning bump stocks, raising age limits, limited access to ar-15s and other military style assault weapons like the "new york post" is talking about today but there is another side of this story and it is the fact that shooters like that keep falling through the cracks. i remember after 9/11 one of the great -- one of the great sort of public safety campaigns ever in this country. if you see something, say something. people aren't doing that enough and also of course a white house is focusing on this fbi tip because -- well for political

purposes you have the fbi missing that tip, you have local law enforcement officers being called this this gunman's house, 35, 36, 37 times. and then you have this happening. there is a real law enforcement problem. it won't be solved, as the "new york post" said, by arming schools because if you have people coming in with ar-15s and you have teachers with a gun -- a pistol, they're going to cower. and we don't want to arm the schools, it doesn't make sense but we've got to look at law enforcement. we have to figure out how to have a more holistic approach saying we have to focus on guns. i think we have to focus on guns since i said at newtown but we have to look at this other component. >> joining us now, editor at new yorker.com, michael luo who spent a great deal of time doing

investigative reporting on guns after newtown and the shooting of gabrielle giffords. >> michael, tell me, after your extensive investigation what would curb -- what is the best shot at curbing these type of mass killings? we know crime is down. in new york city it's at historic lows, gun crimes are down. not quite historic lows but gun crimes are down as well but these sort of shootings, what did you learn? how do we stop the next newtown, the next parkland from happening? >> one of the things you talked about, joe, is whether if somebody had said something or in this case people did say things to law enforcement and whether anything could have been done. and the issue really is that -- the reality is law enforcement is pretty limited in what they can do when it comes to somebody who even pretty clearly mentally

disturbed and the ability to take their guns or seize their guns. there's issues about due process that the nra points to. basically as you know the only way you're barred from buying a gun at the federal level due to mental health issues is if you've been involuntarily committed which is a pretty high legal standard. there are very few jurisdictions where there's authority to do anything about guns where you fall short of that. in florida, there's something called the baker act where police can actually put somebody on a 72-hour mental health hold but that's not a legal decision and they can temporarily take somebody's guns in that kind of situation but actually afterwards they have to return them and i've talked to police across the country about this dilemma that they confront and even if they saw?

the street who was walking around delusional, if they took him into custody, maybe they -- if they had a weapon on them they could take their gun, but could they go to their house and actually search and seize their weapons? i think a lot of police across the country would talk about property rights and things like that that limit their ability to do this. one thing that has come is up this issue of gun violence restraining order that marco rubio talked about. he got hammered the other night but it's notable that he talked about this issue, which is afternoan issue that gun control advocates have been talking about. police or family members can go in to a court and petition and say this person actually if, my son, my brother, my husband has been acting off and i'm worried, can you order the surrender of his firearms temporarily? then there's an opportunity for that person to respond in court

to contest that and that does have potential to give some power to law enforcement and others to intervene in these kinds of situations. >> and if somebody wants to see that, that's what david french has been talking about in the "national review" online. >> good point. >> on the surface there should be these areas of agreement between the gun lobby and gun control advocates. they talk of improving the background check system because as wayne lapierre said yesterday which was actually not that outrageous at all, the holes in the net need to be tighter in the background check system. but i wonder, michael, you've covered this for a while, you and i even worked on stories about this together when you were at the times and it doesn't seem to me like the area that -- the concentric circles overlap all that much when you're talking about background checks. i think the gun control lobby and the gun rights lobby are still very far apart on what

type of information should be in that background check system and what type of information should be disqualifying from a gun purchase so realistically is background check an area of agreement do you think? >> right. i mean there can be i think agreement about -- and they've been talking about this ever since i started covering school shootings back in virginia tech about the requirements for states to report all their records to the nix system. so that's talking about criminal records. there are issues we've been seeing with whether the veterans department was sending their records that they needed to send with the parkland shooting in texas so there's agreement about basic fixes around reporting which with everybody -- again, we've been talking about for

years. the issue really is in this case he legally purchased the gun. this wasn't an issue of some sort of missed record in this case and, again, the background checks would not have fixed this situation and many mass shootings. >> well, michael, thank you for being here, very important topic. a slightly less important topic but important to you and me, liverpool, go liverpool. i know you're a big fan. let us hope the season ends well. i know bill kristol you'd love to talk about english premier football for hours. >> like the rest of america, i was watching women's ice skating last night, figure skating, that was a very dramatic thing. did you watch that? there's this thing called the olympics. >> no, i'm so old -- >> videos of english league premier football?

>> i was watching a replay of lake placid. >> that was great. >> yesterday, that was anniversary of that remarkable win yesterday. for those of us old enough to remember it. so there was some interesting observations about cpac, people like you and me horrified by what's going on over there. they're turning it over to the nationalist front leaders for lowering retirement age to 60 and socializing medicine and doing all of these very french things. joking there. but it unrecognizable for the first time i went to cpac when you were going to cpac when ronald reagan made cpac a must stop for bill buckley small government conservatives. >> it's been -- it's always had its fringy elements and college kid party elements, not that there's anything wrong with that. but it -- yeah, i think it's

very indicative. cpac is run by the american conservative union and what they think is american conservatism is european style -- >> and funded by the nra in large part. >> yes. >> and we now have moved from something recognizably american conservatism -- and what was distinctive about american conservatism, it believed in limited government, constitutionalism, it shunned mostly but not always shunned and its leaders tried to shun even more ethnonationalism, racism, tribalism, all that sort of stuff, it believed in the constitution, the declaration. and now we have marine le pen from the national front, we have lapierre giving this kind of speech. >> defiant speech. >> and just all the panel seemed to -- there are three sensible people on these panels, i looked through them. the rest of it is all just at best cheerleading but at worst -- a lot of your college students there are being taught the future of their political

future is to pick a tribe, demonize the other side as much as you can, pick on any weakness in other people's background, believe half-baked or quarter baked or totally faked news stories, they believe conspiracy theories, assume the worse about anyone you disagree with and trump is a large part of legitimizing that and there i do worry about the political culture. i think the institutions have held up pretty well under trump, the rule of law, the justice department, the military acts in a responsible way but the degree to which this becomes a message of this is how american politics is going to be conducted in the future is very dangerous i think. >> and joe made the point earlier in the show that this is not a sustainable path for the republican party to be alienating a generation of voters because despite the number of young people at cpac, because it's always been a younger organization, talking to those people in the room as i

did yesterday, i don't get the sense that they're trump people. trump is not inspiring a generation of young politicians and activists like reagan did. i was struck the other day someone saying to me you remember in the 830s that colleges had significant pro-republican pro-reagan groups. >> i can tell you in the early 1980s i was in college and i can tell you that's where all the excitement was. we would go they're from 1974. but kasie, you said there was a disconnect. yes we're showing nra speakers speak but you said in the audience it was quiet and they were like i don't quite get this. >> yeah, it was frankly a much different conference than i -- i've been attending cpac for at least five years if not longer and it usually has kind of a carnival atmosphere and they toned that down, they banned costumes and signs but at the

same time it didn't seem -- it just felt -- and bill, you were hitting on this point -- like it was a much smaller corner of the universe, a much angrier corner of the universe that didn't have room for -- or maybe it was a belief in our democratic constitutional system instead it was you should be afraid of the state that has been built, you should be afraid of our government. that was a much more overriding theme, our media, all these institutions where in the past people were up there waving copies of the constitution declaring themselves to be constitutional conservatives. it's still a code word but i just -- it felt darker to me in a way that i don't understand how the republican party expands. >> i think it's not a viable political path for now but history suggests that things that look unfortunately not like a viable political path can be attractive to people. what if we have a recession? what if we have foreign policy mistakes? what if young people see more

instances like that broward sheriff's department and you think the whole system is corrupt and broken. i worry that this can become more -- the ethnonationalism on the right can be more attractive than it looks right now. >> i dissent from that only because jonathan swan we are still talking about a one-term president who lost by three million votes to perhaps the least effective communicator in the history of modern american politics in hillary clinton with a campaign that didn't take polls because they thought they were smarter than people like bill clinton and barack obama and joe biden and you look at the numbers. donald trump, his numbers among millennials absolutely miserable. his number among the fastest-growing demographics in america, ashes lubsolutely mise. this seems to be a death rattle more than a birth cry.

>> dell, demographically, yes. i'm not ready to call him a one-term president. i think trump has identified the disconnect between a lot of republican voters and the people who represent them in washington. i think we learned during the campaign that actually republican voters aren't quite as fiscally conservative as paul ryan and others might fantasize that they are. in fact, a lot of these people quite like their government benefits and trump also identified a strain of concern about immigration and some of these other issues and, again, among older people, among people who vote, among republicans his ratings aren't quite as bad as they are among the general public so i think we underestimate him again at our peril and i learned a lesson in 2016 about underestimating him repeatedly. >> jonathan swan and bill kristol, thank you both for being on this morning.

still ahead on "morning joe," leaders from both parties are calling on congress to address new gun measures when lawmakers reconvene next week but the real change may need to come from the states. governors kate brown of oregon and john hickenlooper of colorado join the table next. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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congress is back in session next week and gun laws could be the focus. republican senator pat roberts said he supports a push for stronger background checks and age restrictions for buying ar-15s. republican senator jeff flake also voiced his support for the measure tweeting on wednesday "a kid too young to buy a handgun should be too young to buy an ar-15." flake and democratic senator dianne feinstein are working together on a bipartisan bill that would increase the minimum age to buy certain types of

rifles and a number of republicans, including lamar alexander and marco rubio, said they would support a trump-backed bill that would strengthen the fbi's background check system. but the real changes may need to come from the states and today we expect florida governor rick scott and republican lawmakers in that state's legislature to propose changes to florida's gun laws. the package is expected to include raising the age from 18 to 21 to buy semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. meanwhile, the democratic governors of connecticut, new jersey, new york, and rhode island announced yesterday that they have formed a coalition. states for gun safety will work together to address the scourge of illegal guns and share law enforcement efforts. the partnership would allow states to share data on suspects in gun registries and to create new gun violence research to fill what they call a vacuum of federal action.

and oregon's lawmakers passed a bill yesterday banning anyone with a domestic violence or stalking conviction from owning a firearm. the bill closed a 2015 loophole that allowed abusers who weren't living with, married to or have children with their victim to own a gun. the bill heads to the desk of governor kate brown who lobbied for the bill and governor brown joins us now along with governor john hickenlooper of colorado. thanks to you both for being on this morning. >> this is a great segment. we're excited to have you here. i want to speak to camera really quickly and set this up. what we've been saying is you're going to hear from the nra and gun manufacturers that every american has a right to carry around an ar-15. the supreme court of the united states says every american has a right to have a handgun or perhaps a shotgun in their home to protect themselves but scalia in "heller" in 2008 went no further than that and the court has denied one case after

another case after another case that has limited the rights to get ar-15s and other assault-style weapons, expanded background checks and the type of things connecticut did and other states have done. so now i can turn to you and say that because there is so much disinformation out there. people say oh, i have a second amendment right to own an ar-15, to buy it when i'm 18 years old. that's not this the constitution which is exactly why doing this on the state level like you guys are doing right now, this really is the future. and the supreme court again has sent a message to states, as long as you let people have h d handguns in their home, go to it, there are limitations to the second amendment, you can protect the people in states the way you see fit. >> in my state, in oregon, we've worked really hard to move forward on common sense gun

legislation. since i became governor we've closed the domestic violence loophole. we have moved forward on what we call the extreme riks protection orders, allowing courts to take away guns from folks at risk of hurting themselves or a danger to others and we passed legislation to create a comprehensive background check legislation. we're moving forward on every tool that we have. i think it's important congress act now. this is president trump's nixon go to china moment. he needs to take action, we must move forward and protect our students in schools, to protect our communities, churches, synagogues. what is happening right now across this country is insanity. >> it complete insanity. >> it is absolutely insanity. >> you guys, governor, can do it on the state level, though, as well, you don't have to wait for congress, you can move forward on all of these proposeals we'r

talking about. >> sure. but it does take a toll. we did universal background checks in 2014 and then the nra swooped in and recalled two democratic senators in our state general assembly. there is a whom balancing issue even in states where you have to get the politics right around the policy and we're getting there and how many tragedies does it take to get people to that point. >> and how do you make sure what happened in broward county doesn't happen in your states? >> it has happened in our states. that's why we are fighting to take action and we have moved forward on common sense legislation. i showed up at a community college after the horrible shooting that happened there. we moved forward on legislation but we cannot do this alone.

it's imperative congress take action. talk about insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. we allow 18-year-olds to buy assault rifle weapons. are you kidding me? that we allow anybody to own these weapons in the united states. for what purpose? >> what's an age limit going to do? i'm not giving excuses to the cop that didn't go in and we don't know the rest of the story but what's a pistol going to do when you're up against an ar-15? >> in the first 40 days of this year we had three deputy sheriffs in three different parts of the state, three separate incidents killed in the line of duty. and that's -- when you have one of your first responders die it's a tragedy for your state. three in 40 days. and at least in one case, maybe in two cases, their body armor was penetrated because these assault weapons are military grade hardware. it's military grade weapons.

they don't belong in the hands of people that have psychological issues, anybody. >> really anybody. >> republicans have always -- my former party always talked about supporting law enforcement and liberals were tough on law enforcement, liberals were tough on the fbi, liberals destroyed the cia, liberals destroyed you name it yet now you have with one law enforcements officer after another law enforcement officer saying we can't compete with people who are collecting military-style arsenals. >> right. >> so look i have to tell you, the reason why i fought for three years to close the intimate partner loophole. we had an incident in my state in oregon, a woman was killed by her estranged husband and the first oregon state trooper that

showed up was shot 12 times i s -- he miraculously survived. i saw him in the hospital about three months later. guns are an issue in domestic violence cases a lot. we've had 66 domestic violence deaths in oregon in the last two years, half due to gun-related incidences. spouse or intimate partner. we have a culture of violence, this must end now. congress must take action. if the kids can't get them to do it, i don't know who can. >> let me state another thing for my viewers that i wouldn't have known until i went out the, you all both live in obviously western states but that are also rural. you have a lot of rural areas, a lot of gun owners.

this is not like martha's vineyard. you have a ton of gun owners and -- >> i'm not going to go there. >> i'm a nantucket guy. but for people watching at home, for you all to be saying this, it's not like you're anti-gun. >> but one of the keys is that we have to open up the lines of communication and the rift between urban and rural which we saw in 2016. part of this is not to try and jam our ideas down the throats of the rural parts of america. part of it is to open up the dialogue and when you see deputy sheriffs who are more rural, that's where our rural first responders -- their strength is there. when they get killed by assault weapons and you have a chance not to preach but throb the concerns of rural america, that's -- long term you want to look at how to get rid of

assault weapons eventually, completely, it's when rural america lines up and says yeah. look what we did with tommy guns in the depression, right after the st. valentine's day massacre and all those things happened suddenly america was so bereaved that they went ahead and said we will ban these automatic weapon weapons. >> rural gun owners in colorado and florida, they want background checks. the gun manufacturers don't because that may sell a few less guns but rural gun owners that go out hunting in both of your states want background checks but it's so sort of twisted and skewed, the dynamics, the politics where you support background checks in colorado to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and terrorists

and the mentally ill and you get recalled. >> and the thing they said while you're getting half the gun purchases already, why do we have to wait around, crooks aren't stupid and finally my son was 11 and he said dad, get the facts, make a decision, check next, your life isn't so hard. so i went back and in the previous year -- and i still memorized the statistics. 38 people convicted of homicide tried to buy a gun and we stopped them. 133 people convicted of sexual assault tried to buy a gun. 1300 people convicted of felony assault, where somebody usually goes to the hospital so without question -- >> and you stopped them. >> we stopped them so universal background checks do work and rural colorado, rural america does believe there them, want them. somehow the political dynamic hasn't caught up -- the political dynamic hasn't caught up to the sentiment of the people. >> and americans across the board want an assault rifle weapons ban. >> they do.

>> i don't know what the polling numbers show but it's over 75% supported. >> common sense. >> ronald reagan, president reagan, the pillar of conservative republicism signed into law the assault rifle weapons ban. we can do this. >> background checks right now, the polls were 90% to 97%. assault style weapons bans anywhere from 67 -- there's one that had it around 50 but there was an outlier. 67% to 75%. it's a majority issue for americans. >> the numbers are going to just grow as these events keep happening. governors john hickenlooper and kate brown, thank you so much. >> thank you so much. still ahead this morning, a second grand jury brings charges against paul manafort and rick gates in the mueller investigation. what officials say manafort was doing while managing the trump campaign. we'll be right back. when you have a cold,

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>> i woke up and i just thought -- >> yeah. >> and i don't -- i don't like

giving negativity power so i just thought what i actually did was i went back and i looked at the tape to see if there was any place that could be true. did i feel like -- >> like it was slanted or biased. >> i went back and looked at every tape. >> oprah winfrey responding at ellen's show to the president's recent tweet calling her insecure and biased. the president's tweet attacked oprah for a "60 minutes" report about america's political divide during trump's presidency. win friday moderated a panel of six michigan voters reassessing the first year of the trump presidency. she fielded a discussion spanning hot button issues including the me too movement, immigration, and trump's stability and fitness for office. up next, president trump has proposed moderate changes to gun laws in the wake of last week's school shooting, but will he

keep that same tone when he addresses cpac later today? we'll get a live report from the white house next on "morning joe." don't we need that cable box to watch tv? nope. don't we need to run? nope. it just explodes in a high pitched

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every moment, every medal, every screen. x1 is the ultimate olympic winter games experience. i spoke with the nra. the top salespeople. i spoke and they gave me tremendous support. they endorsed me. at the absolute earliest point they could. i'm a believer. they're ready to do things. they want to do things. they're good people. they're patriots. they love this country. the nra is ready to do things. president trump says the nra is ready to take action following last week's school shooting, but comments from the leadership at c-pac yesterday suggest otherwise. let's bring in kristen welker. president trump is set to address that same cpac crowd

today. you are learning new information about what he's going to say. >> i am. i just spoke with a senior administration official who tells me president trump is going to be making an announcement on north korea today when he addresses c-pac. what specifically will he say? that is still a question. i sat with this administration official and asked if they meant new sanctions. so far not giving specific details. i an miticipate we will get a f more details ahead of the president's speech. this is coming as the olympics wrap up. arguably largest foreign policy crisis for this administration. so again, president trump expected to make an announcement about north korea when he addresses c-pac later today. the other issue, i'm told he's going to audiocassette about is what you were just talking about.

yesterday the president doubled down on the call for some teachers to be armed. suggesting those who are carrying concealed weapons should receive bonuses. i wouldn't be surprised if he focused on that. we heard the head of the nra talking about it. it's hard to have schools taking a page from pump's playbook. we heard the president using that terms. having more hardened schools. i think they'll echo that at the ru root of that. president was indicating he's going to support increasing the age limit to buy ar 15s. the weapon used in the public shooting and so many other recent massacres. making it clear they do not support that type of legislation. we'll be listening closely to see what he has to say about that. finally i'm told he's going to be talking about the other big issue. for this president. which was of course immigration. a lot of headlines today on

cpac. >> kristen welker, thank you very much. we look ahead to what the president is going to speak about at cpac. on the issue of guns, he produced an effective show. at the white house the other day. i thought it was a really good move on many levels to get the conversation going. if you look at what he's honing in on, it's more guns in the hands of teachers. age limits. which just doesn't seem to really scratch the surface of what we're doing here. >> also a point of disagreement between what the nra wants and what he would argue for. these are -- i don't think he'll -- i mean, this is just a guess. i don't think he'll get into details on the hard core of gun policy or even of immigration policy when you can sort of anticipate at cpac he will go he on things like the wall. and guns are very, very sure

fire plug on freedom. so i mean, look, these are safe issues for him in a crowd like this. mark, thank you very much. still ahead on morning joe, senator richard blumenthal called the plan to arm teachers insane. joins us ahead. plus senator amy will be here as well. the big loophole that helped russia exploit facebook. morning joe is back live in a moment. experience lexus safety system plus, standard... in the 2018 lexus es, and the es hybrid. take advantage of special president's day offers now through the 28th, on the 2018 es 350. experience amazing at your lexus dealer.

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hillary wants to essentially abolish the second amendment. by the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. although the second amendment people may be there is, i don't know, but i'll tell you what, that will be a horrible day. >> that was donald trump on the campaign trail back in 2016 using some loaded rhetoric on the gun issue. >> that was -- actually, that was one of the many defining moments in the campaign when donald trump talked about second amendment solution. who was the woman who ran for senator? in nevada that talked about -- talked about second amendment

solutions basically implying that second amendment people would go out and assassinate hillary clinton. that tells you what you know about that. >> we'll see what the president says when he addresses cpac today. welcome back to morning joe. the it's friday, february 23. still with us, "new york times" reporter jeremy peters. nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of kasie dc on msnbc, kasie hunt. white house correspondent for pbs news hour. and joining the conversation, we have commonary editor for the washington examiner and visiting fellow at the american enterprise institute, tim carney. good to have you.

said the nra supports law enforcement, but spoke darkly about government agencies conspireing against its citizens. >> our intelligence committee shrouds everything in secrecy. driving into darkness every dirty memo. and every dirty constitutional secret. and memory in the name of national security, but when the leaks come, it reveals nothing about the security of our country, and it reveals everything about the corruption of those in power. as we've learned in recent months, even the fbi is not free of its own corruption. i can understand a few bad applapple s an organization as large as the fbi. what's hard to understand is why no one at the fbi stood up and called bs on its rogue leadership.

the tidal wave of new european style socialist seized control of the democratic party. they politicized the department of justice. they weaponize the internal rev service. the epa, perhaps cripple the fbi. and the intelligence committee. and ceased an embedded leadership in all of them to advance their agenda. absolute control in every corner of our government is their ultimate dream. >> in the salon in progress, media matters. >> diane feinstein. >> nancy pelosi, bernie sanders, kamala harris. elizabeth warren, de blasio, cuomo. black lives matter, cory booker. christopher murphy and keith

elson. george sar rorrows. michael bloomberg. young democratic socialists. karl marks. national media. berkeley, some hollywood gala. nbc the "new york times" "the washington post." >> that's a lot of. >> and a partridge in a pear tree. >> that's a lot of blame. >> so matt, matt lewis said yesterday and great point, why do we keep acting shocked every year they instrevite people to they get crazier and crazier. get further and further from conservatism. that's happened. talked about european style socialist. la pen is a european style socialist who is also a racist at the national front. it has been a while since cpac has been about the type of

conservatism that you and i both grew up on. >> i think if you go back two years to when you had the heart of the republican primary debate, while you had sort of circus clown acts up there, you still had, where is this party going? do you have cruz, you had rubio, all these people going there. and trump. there were kind of different options. now it's become trumpish in two important ways. one, a lot more of the nationalism protectionism that i would say is unconservatism. make sure we don't compete against arab. sorry, but then the other part is the perpetual victim hood that is part of trump. you're in charge. there's a republican majority. a republican president. and you spend your whole time talking about all the bad guys out there that new york has you know de blasio. >> you're in charge at every level. >> if i can focus on where the

bad guys still have power. >> if i could talk as an old conservative, there was a time when we conservatives rightly saw capitol hill. the "new york times" in "washington post." the democratic territory. the agencies. democratic territory. so that's what we always were fighting against. now, they're fighting against a bureaucracy that's republican. an fbi director that's republican. cia run by a trump person. a special counsel that is a life long republican. i mean, you can do down the list, paul ryan, republican, mitch mcconnell, republican. this is a republican down. it is a monopoly and yet the caveat i would say is the bureaucracy is always going to be institutionally a raid against conservatives.

the government employees are going to have an interest in bigger government and the media i think and maybe we can argue about this, but clearly has a bias towards washington and bigger government in washington. and against being -- >> hold on: let me -- wait. i don't have a response to that. there's no doubt the mainstream media is -- you don't have a lot of people that are champions of small government. champions of entitlement reform. champions of balanced budgets. >> prolifers. >> i haven't seen that in washington. >> is president trump champion of any of that though. >> no. what about congress. >> this guy is a nigh democrat.

they had sean hannity there. that was supposed to make everything better. that's how much they were worried just two years ago. now it's turned into a national front. big government organization that has nothing to do with what bill buckley wanted or ronald reagan wanted when they came to cpac to promote this. >> just become i think a diminished version of what it always used to be. i mean, when we were covering it when the primaries were in full swing and you were there one year, jeb bush attended, scott walker. masses of reporters a lot of tension of ideas and competition on stage among all of these people. the reality is that traditional conservatism is in exile in washington in so many ways you you see that tension play out every day on capitol hill. the, quote, unquote, never trump

movement really failed utterly at a national level, but really represents a significant portion of the conservative and republican party here in the town. and you can really see that was all stripped away. >> what i've seen over the past month. i was worried a month ago that a lot of people that were never trumpers and people that also were resisting trump from the right seemed that some of them after the tax cuts were moving a little too far towards accommodating trump. making excuses for him. that seems to have changed. yesterday a lot of conservative voices saying this has nothing to do with what we've been fighting about our entire life. it almost is like a conservative movement in exile. fight this guy where they can and mainly wait him out. >> mainly wait him out. because as of right now, the president has -- if you look at

his agenda, it's not something that conservatives traditionally wanted. if you're going to back the president, you're going to have to in some ways flip what you believe. i look at the tax bill and his budget and you think conservatives used to be about being fiscally conservative. wanted to be worried about the deficit. now we have a conservative party that doesn't admit if you endorse the president's ways, doesn't have that. you also have a republican party who used to care about trying to expand the base, thinking about brown people. thinking that report that came out, they spent all this time talking about that reince priebus waved around any reporter. i remember being called into meetings saying you need to come look at this report. that report is gone and on a shelf somewhere. the republican party is completely changed. the people who bougfought trumpe wrong essentially. what happens moving forward and what's going to happen on this

gun bill. question i'm going to ask film as well. what's going to happen with trump. talking about bump stocks. talking about enhanced background checks. raising the age for people who can purchase assault style weapons. is. >> going to be any movement on that? or is this all bluster. >> i think what donald trump has proposed so far is the path of least resistance for somebody who is really indebted to the nra. let's not forget the massive sums of money the nra spent in the last election helping to elect donald trump. so many parts of the conservative movement, the gun rights proponent saw the election as a chase. they weren't going to go for hillary clinton so well, i guess, donald trump says he's with us. might as well. he's better than she is. >> right. >> i don't think that donald trump is going to cave.

i've heard some skepticism within the white house. concern he's going to go full democratic on the issue and aides around him trying to keep him in line with what the nra has proposed frankly what donald trump proposed when he was running at a candidate, but his tendencies always to revert right. you saw it back in the immigration debate when he briefly entertained the idea of cooperating with democrats and going along with some of their softer immigration proposals and then guess what, steven miller and the other aides in the white house yanked him right back in. i just don't see trump compromising or softening niz view his views on this. >> what do you think, tim? it seems it makes sense. background checks. donald trump is talking about that. banning bump stocks. these are things the nra has said in the past. for instance, cornyn's plan

along with murphy on making background checks better. yet, no movement on it. >> well, first of all, when donald trump says he's considering something, he says he's considering everything. there's no core. we can't treat him like a regular president laying out policy proposals. the way to get some compromise on this is to say we're going to craft a proposal that doesn't significantly constrain the second amendment rights of law-abiding people. the problem is there's not a lot of stuff that can really limit the ability of criminals to get guns that also doesn't constrain that. so there are going to be narrow pathways they can go down. this debate has a problem of blowing up. go from talking about school shootings to try to talk about 30,000 gun deaths. once you ride in the discussion, you're sabotaging it. >> trying to clarify position to arm teachers as a solution for school shootings.

the notion of arming school personnel originated with the nra and now the president is giving that idea a new look with a military and monetary twist. >> frankly, you have teachers that are marines for 20 years and retire and become a teacher. and they're army, navy, air force, coast guard. people that have won shooting contests. i don't want teachers to have guns. i want certain highly adept people. people that understand weaponry, guns. if they really have that aptitude. not everyone has an aptitude for a gun. if they have aptitude, concealed permits for teachers. letting people know there are people in the building with gun: in my opinion, you won't have the shootings. these people are cowards. the people who do carry, we give them a bonus. we give them a little bit of a bonus. frankly, they'd feel more comfortable having the gun

anyway. you give them a little bit of a bonus. so practically for free, you have now made the school into a hardened target. >> all right. joining us now member of the armed services and judiciary committee richard blumenthal in connecticut. >> senator, a lot of people in scour state read the new york post and daily news. the new york post has a very conservative paper just saying that donald trump's idea to arm teachers is a half cocked idea. and say smith and less son. an editorial on the inside actually talking about banning assault style weapons. i'm wondering we certainly -- you know as well as anybody the debate at newtown led to nothing. what can we do that has a chance of passing a republican house or

republican senate getting the president's signature. >> first, toxic lunacy is the way to describe the idea. all the interest in this country. 3.5 million teachers. 7 health insurance,000 of th 700 no 700,000 of them are going to be packing heat. what kind of message does that send to a student. what kind of real prevention does it provide. many of these are deeply disturbed individuals that are suicidal and they expect to die in horrendous tragic shootings. what can we expect? i'm going to be fighting for real reform. not the baby steps alone that president trump has proposed. the idea of fixing the background check system with better information is fine, but it needs to be extended to all purchases. the idea of regulation of bump

stocks is a very difficult proposition because it had to be done by legislation, not by the regulation that president trump had proposed. the atf said it has no authority to do it under current statute. we need that legislation. i'm going to be fighting for it and a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines and extreme risk orders that enable taking guns away from dangerous people. that's the key here and that's what i think realistically we have a chance of achieving step by step. not with the baby steps that president trump is proposing, but the giant strides the country is demanding. >> senator, good morning. some of my sources had indicated that it's possible the judiciary committee is moving more quickly on this fix nix legislation. i'm wondering if that's your understanding considering your sit on that committee and i'm

also wondering if you think that you and also members of your party would be willing to support that more limited fix bill if it doesn't go into some of the broader reforms you were just discussing. >> i'm a major leading cosponsor of the bill. it's a fine idea. i'm going to be pushing for it on the judiciary committee this week. i'm very hopeful we can approve it. senator cornyn, one of our co-sponsors is a leading member of the committee. i think it's a prime candidate for action. i think it will attract a lot of support. it ought not to be the limit of what we do. there is much more that is necessary and it has to include mental health. this administration has proposed cutting funding for mental health. has to include school security. this administration proposed cutting funding for school security. those are the places the resources ought to be devoted. >> senator, when the democrats had all the power in washington,

they also did not pass sweeping gun legislation. why did that happen and can you tell me a little bit of how you see if there is something to be passed, how that can happen under this presidency. the president will provide political cover for people who backed legislation. >> second question first, there is a new sense of building outcry and outrage driven by the young people in the streets and the state capital. sustained by a network the first time we have real political infrastructure in groups like every town for gun safety and moms demand action in sandy hook and newtown action lives. the same kind of structure the nra has. those kinds of developments would help break the wall and create cracks in the eyes of indifference we see all too

often. may not happen, but a betting person would have to say the odds are against it. the key here is election. the test will be candidates rejecting the blood tainted money of the nra and donald trump really proposing meaningful reforms and i think there is a chance we can do it, but the turning point and the tipping point will be the next election. >> senator richard blumenthal, thank you very much for being on the show this morning. >> thank you. tim. a lot of conservatives were talking about the state of the conservative movement looking from the outside in. a lot of people saying, well, if you really wanted there to be a debate about the future of conservati conservatism, you would have people like jenna goldberg and others on the stage debating. are you going to even have somebody -- this is radical, but

somebody who supports free trade debating protectionist? that never happens. so can you sort of look at this moment where we are right now and talk about the state of conservatism. >> there's a lot of debate. i think the american conservative union which hosts cpac should make cpac be exactly what your talking about. they didn't. it's not that. not that sort of debate. it is a lot of debate. bill crystal and i work around the corner from each other and we'll argue we were both never trump during the election. we'll argue what's the proper stance towards trump in the white house. should we oppose the man or call balls and strikes. that's a debate we have on the pages of national review. so there is a lot of debate. i look back on previous eras when there was lest. the iraq war i opposed it and my old boss opposed it, it was a

lot more constrained. now since trump is so clearly different from conservatives, i think there is plenty of healthy debate. and it should be at cpac. check out national review. check out washington examiner editorial one day and the weekly standard editorial next week. >> that's a great point. i remember back in the middle of the administration, peggy newman was critical of the legislation. basically went around and said you know, called up people and said peggy newman speaks at your events. want access. i remember bush's people calling up bob riley who invited me to speak at a rally in alabama and said if scarborough is there, bush is not going. i know this will shock you. talking about how republicans were spending too much. which is sort of a reoccurring

theme of my life. you're right. there was less of a debate. the only people that actually were saying what i was saying. >> it can be a curse like this. dissenting a run when you're a minority. there are constraints on it. i still think we're better today than we were. >> tim carney. thank you very much. great to have you. still ahead on morning joe, hijacked by divisive meme. new reporting on the "wall street journal." impact russia used to influence the 2016 election. good morning. we have a very busy weekend ahead of us. we're going to see possibility of tornados in the south. snowstorm in areas of the midwest and pretty crazy stuff. right now the problems in northeast texas and arkansas. heavy rain overnight.

flash flooding continues. 33 million people under flash flood warnings. widespread 1-3 inches. this area in maroon under flash flood warnings. dam overflowing and had to release the water and cause a stream rises and we're going to have to track the heavy rain today into the ohio valley. pittsburg go throughout this afternoon. rain doesn't move out of this region until sunday. rain in the northeast. washington, d.c. to boston. still holding on to the summer like heat in the southeast. that's the problem. as the cold air tries to move to the south. hits warmer air. on saturday we have tornado threat. watch out for areas from memphis. maybe a few strong tornados. haven't had any outbreaks this year. this is the first chance of that. get everyone wake up and make sure saturday afternoon everyone stays safe. washington, d.c. is one of those spots in and out of the rain all weekend long. not the best february weekend. you're watching morning joe.

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are you sure. is that inappropriate. >> no i just wanted her to identify a couple of members. >> senior video reporter at the "wall street journal." shelby holiday. her team is out with new reports. the big hoop hole that helped russia exploit facebook. plus, this use of doctored images was a crucial and deceptively technique used by russian propaganda to spread fabricated information during the election. one that expresses a loophole in tech companies defenses. facebook and google have tracks to detect misinformation, but

struggled then and now to identify falsehoods posted directly on their platforms, in particular through pictures. how scary. what are good examples of that. >> we have a few examples that show number one. trolls were extremely sophisticated and swift. really hard for tech companies to detect some of the misinformation in these photos. first example i'll show you is example from secured borders and anti-immigration account. you see on the left a real sign that was taken at a rally. over on the right the sign is photoshopped to give it a negative spin. give me more free. it's easy to change the words. another example i'll show you is from stop all invaders. account as you can tell was anti-refugee. original on the left. on the right.

if you do a reverse photo search, this is actually a kid in ukraine posing for a stock photo. this is another tactic they would use. take a photo. spin it. another example. black live matters posted this methamphetamine. original photo on the left. on the right all this text talking about how african-american men in america are effectivelily dying an the rate of an endangered species. first of all, those statistics with wildly misleading. second of all, this is taken in knee j nigeria. who when i reached him was shocked it had been taken out of context. no idea it was used by russians. the tactic you're seeing is imbedding text in photos so it's difficult to detect. and the last and i think one of the most important example is this nophoto posted. on the left original photo taken

by a college student. saw this sign on her way to class. it says no black people allowed. there's a confederate flag and has hashtag. she looked into it. determined this was a hate hoax. sign was hung by a bitter neighbor putting it in front of campus house. she writes about it on a college blog post and within 24 hours, the account block had taken her picture. cropped it. darkened it. added a water mark down on the reasoned corner. deleted maga from the sign. spun it as an act of white supremacy. took out the words hate hoax and on the right on my twitter account and in our story, if you can't read the text on tv. they had all kinds of strange wording. trying to gin this up at terrible event. you could tell it was clearly intended to get people emotional and riled up. and there was one funny thing in the text. they called dps. which most people know as department of public safety on

college campuses. called them a leading engineering firm. you can see some hints, but you only see them looking back. when you look back at the post, maybe that was weird, but when you're schorolling on the phone and talk to researchers, the images are so effective. number one because images really do get you emotional, but number two, just scrolling and we tend to believe what we see. our brains are nwired to be skeptical or photos. we accept and move on. scroll to the next line. they're extremely effective weapons when used as disinformation. >> and it seems that again a lot of people are trying to figure out what the russians were trying to do. i don't know that it was in some of cases, not so much focused on how do we elect donald trump as much as it is how do we stir as much division and hatred in america's sort of political conversation as possible.

>> yes, i think that was a primary goal. we heard that. they definitely wanted to stir the pot. and i think they wanted to gain influence over certain communities. they did they posting photos like this. yes, it was a disinformation campaign, but it was also an influence campaign. they wanted americans to do things. they wanted them to follow these accounts. wanted them to vote a certain way. perhaps they want them to do certain things during the midterms. heard from intel chiefs this kind of activity is not going to stop. i also want to point out that facebook, google, twitter, all these tech companies are years away from being able to detect misinformation in photos. they're working on algorithms that detect links and texts. photos are a whole different thing. rely on users to flag them. the brains just aren't wired to question photos. happens in just a second. >> the question then is facebook and google, they do have to

understand that they are more than just a platform to bring people together. this is going to be unpossible to unwind or put the tooth paste back in the tube. facebook is a accomplisher. they accomplish. more americans get news from facebook than all of the media outlets combined. two-thirds now. the question is why aren't they treated like the "new york times" or "washington post" or new york post or daily news? i mean, how much longer are they going to be able to have this exception? >> they try to distance themselves from being a accomplisher. saying we don't want to police the truth. you shouldn't want us to police what you're putting up. it's a very difficult necessary

aspect of free speech. they're adding safety security employees. expected to announce a fact checking program for photos. the challenge is there's so much content posted on the flat forms and guess what. guess what, it goes viral. these are promoted by facebook algorithms because those are the posts that do well. you're on social media. you're extremely good at social media. you know when you post photos and videos people will engage more than just a text. russia knows this strategy. and contrary to what some people have said they were just a bunch of idiots posting wacky things. they were not. they are extremely good at finding loopholes and exploiting them and they will continue to do so. >> what shelby is trying to tell you is there are going to be somebody in saint petersburg in 2018 campaign holding up a pig like you or chicken or cats,

dogs, right. >> least of our worries. the "wall street journal," thank you so much. great piece. great story. >> thanks for having me. up next, special counsel bob mueller just hit manafort and rick gates with 32 new charges. we'll run through the new indictment ahead on morning joe.

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manafort and gates are now both accused of tax evasion and not reporting money in foreign accounts. they're also accused of misleading banks on paperwork for millions in real estate loans obtained in 2016 by using falsified and outdated documents to overstate income by millions of dollars and to admit -- omit other millions they had in debt. it is worth noting that manafort

began his february 2016 pitch to the campaign stating quote, i'm not looking for a paid job though he did want an established role. a spokesman said he is innocent. and he is confidence he will be acquitted of all charges. goes on the new allegations against mr. manafort once again have nothing to do with russia and 2016 election interference. new charges to the russia investigation. keep it right here on morning joe.

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joining us now from minneapolis, member of the

democratic committee. amy klobuchar of minnesota. a lot to talk about this morning. let's start with the 32 new indictments against manafort and gates. what do you make of that? >> well, it's a big deal because it foreshadows i think more to come. and one of the differences between the other indictments against manafort and gates both of whom were with the trump campaign manafort sharing it is these charges were more recent. these are charges involving when they were actually working with the trump campaign as chair. as adviser. that's the difference. and the second thing is the amount of money involved. there's a charge for every million dollars. the hidden money. the lavish lifestyles. all of this flowing from money related to work they were doing with ukraine with russian related work for a pro russia candidate and pro russia government official.

>> senator. good morning. last time the senate had a gun control debate. there were more red states. that helped create a sense of bipartisansh bipartisanship. there was a lot more dialogue going on about restrictions and background checks to put in place. that's of course gone now. i wonder are there republicans that democrats are talking to now about gun reforms you're comfortable with or are the two sides too far apart at this time to get anything meaningful done. >> i do think that this is a major moment for the republican party because as you know, the votes if you look at the background check vote, that was mostly democrats and a few republicans. so when they're talking about background checks, yes, we want to get better data and that's the bill senator cornyn has with

murphy. bipartisan bill. we really need to close the gun show loophole. it was difficult to get sloet s votes on that. senator grassley claims he wants to work on it. senator flake wants to put forward a bill. you saw in the town hall meeting with rubio. you have some. overall, i think they're going to have to decide what side are we going to be on. are we going to be with kids marching on the street that is sensible legislation. supported by 80 pgt % of americ are we going to stick with what we were going what the nra wants us to. >> senator, chuck schumer tweeted yesterday, our number one priority is going to be background checks. defending many states. should priority number one be banning assault weapons or does

schumer have this balance right. >> when you look at the background check bill and i will never forget having those sandy hook parents in my office the morning we found out it was going to fail. i kept thinking they had the courage to come forward and advocate for a bill. wouldn't have saved the babies, but would have saved the most lives. that's because it helps very much with domestic violence cases and suicide and other things. the reason senator schumar is focused on the bill is for that very reason. of course there's us who support assault weapon ban and support age limit on that, but i think what he's trying to do is find something that would make a major difference closing this loophole and get the most support. >> senator, i wanted to ask this question and i'm asking it to every democrat. democrats had a bunch of power before republicans swept it all away. why didn't democrats focus on gun when they had the power. what do you think is going to influence them to change their

minds now. >> i think this march in all of these young people. i keep thinking of major issues that changed because young people were out front talking to parents. not just girls, boys too. and i think about barack obama getting elected. a lot of that you heard -- you had people on your show that talk about how well. my kid kept saying why don't you support this guy. a lot of this was movement of young people. we have not had that before with this gun debate. now we do. that makes a major difference. >> i want to ask you about facebook and other platforms like that. i know you're working to drum up support for a bill that would make the social media giants a little bit more able to disclose information about who is actually posting ads and who they're targeting. are you making any headway. do you think the social media platforms or whatever we call them, publishers.

understand the responsible they bear? >> i hope they do. we had a hearing i was pretty appalled. looking at the ads you just showed on show. those are the kind of ads we were talking ads designed to make americans not vote or to give them disinformation so they make a different vote. those kinds of activities are criminal when you tell people, oh, hey, just text your vote in. and the answer we got from them, well, it's too hard for us to do, what your "wall street journal" reporter was saying, well, we can't do it. i literally said to them, you know what, my radio station in minnesota knows how to do this because under law they're required to keep the ads on file, either online or in a file, and they're also required to have disclaimers on issue ads and candidate ads. why can't you, one of the most -- the most powerful companies in america, hire enough people to do the same thing? this makes no sense. we're simply asking the bill i have with senator mccain and

senator warner, we're simply asking they follow the same rules. that would help with russians but it would also help with ads that people -- mean, negative, misleading ads that people are trying to put out there. >> dangerous. yes. >> so senator, is facebook a publishing platform? >> of course they are. they are called a media company for a reason. and while i appreciate their efforts to myself themselves, twitter doing the same, we need rules of the road that applies to them. $1.4 billion spent on online political ads in the last election. it is forecast just over 260 days from now to go up to 3 to $4 billion. money is migrating over there. and they are making money off it. they're making profits. they cannot expect us to believe they're just a fun platform to put cat videos on. they are making money off this. they have to take responsibility for what's going on on their social media platform, which is

a for profit platform. >> i can't disagree. >> we cannot agree more. i will say it is a fun platform. >> senator -- >> it is a fun platform. >> and a pig. >> pig videos. >> i'm not just a fun killer. the curling team, minnesota has most of the members of the curling team. >> yeah. >> there you go. usa. >> thank you so much. >> we have 8 of 109 membthe 10 of the hockey team but we're so psyched up for them to come home and celebrate and for the men's curling team to win this weekend. >> all right. >> usa. thank you. up next, a look back at this emotional past week and how a generation of future voters is leading the conversation on the issue of guns in america. keep it right here. lot of work to run this business. but i really love it. i'm on the move all day long... and sometimes, i don't eat the way i should. so, i drink boost

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of others or stroikes out againt injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the migh mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. >> that was of course some extraordinarily powerful images from this past week and those were the words of robert f. kennedy, who delivered those words in cape town, south africa, in 1966. when the state department, the white house, everybody in washington, did not want him to go down to speak out against aparthe apartheid. his message was simple. it was the young of south africa and the young of the world that would ultimately prevail and end apartheid there. he would be killed two years later from the date of that

speech. but it was the young that grew up and helped end apartheid. and now of course, mika, we're looking at young voters, future voters, getting engaged in a way that we haven't seen in quite some time. what's the impact? >> well, they have been using their voices in the most profound way. their voices were fueled by rage, by fear, by knowing that this now impacts all of them every day and that in the future, the next shooter could be at their school and that right now there's nothing in place to protect them. and i don't think anything but the president is proposing or that could happen right now will be enough. these are baby steps. and they will be cut down by the nra in some way, but it could happen at the ballot box and it could be in the hands of those young people voting in the midterms and the next presidential elections. >> so we only have a minute

left. i will say quickly, they are making some progress in the state of florida and congress as well. final thoughts, jeremy. >> so there's a lot of reasons to be cynical about gun legislation passing. but one thing that is noticeably demonstrably different this time is this moment has coincided with aivism on the left and these kids have found their voice through that i think and that may make a big difference. >> i think this generation is ready like no other generation to fight social media and fight online. they're not going to be trolled in the same way. they know how to react and they know how to retweet and be smart about how to combat people. with this story is one example how they got rid of that. >> one of the things that struck out to me is the ones who came out of those meeting in tallahassee saying i went to these doors, they didn't have time for me. what is wrong with this system? and i think if they can hang on to that, you know, yes this was

a tragic thing that happened to them but they have the potential to make real change. >> and then the next day they were talking to republican leaders who understood they couldn't close their doors to them. every time they are attacked, and i saw some attacks this morning from gun supporters, all they do is make those young americans stronger. and help their cause. well, that does it for us this morning. >> what a week. >> thank you so much for being with us this week. please keep the people of parkland and especially the parents who lost their loved ones, their children in your prayers. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> thanks so much, mika. thank you, joe. good morning, everyone. i'm stephanie with a lot to cover this morning, starting with a failure to act. as shots rang out, an armed resource officer, well, he stayed outside, rather than engaging the shooter. >> devastated. sick to my