. >> and you volunteered at ps 15? >> i did. >> as a what, kindergarten assistant? >> that was part of america reads. i did that my freshman year. >> down on the lower west side of manhattan. carissa, we are going to miss you. thank you very much for everything you have done for all of us here and all your tours of duty. carissa gets tonight's last word. thank you, carissa. "the 11th hour" with brian williams, starts right now. tonight, the dramatic testimony from sally yates who reveals what it was like letting the white house know their national security adviser was vulnerible to blackmail by the russians. while the former head of intelligence says russia is a threat to the foundation of our democracy. plus the news today that barack obama warned donald trump not to hire michael flynn as national security adviser but he

was hired anyway. and why is the family of jared kushner apologizing after his sister tried to win over a business deal in china. over in th name of kushner. "the 11th hour" begins now. as we start a new week, good evening from our headquarters here in new york. day 109 of the trump administration. this afternoon we were live on air with what turned out to be a dramatic day in the u.s. senate. at the center of it, a 27 year veteran attorney general named sally yates. she was the acting attorney general running the justice department in transition waiting for jeff sessions in effect to be approved as the you in attorney general back in january. but there came a day during just the second week of the trump presidency when she called the white house and asked the president's lawyer if they could meet. she said she had something important to tell him. now we know it was about

president trump's national security adviser at the time, retired general michael flynn. sally yates told the president's lawyer that mike flynn was potentially vulnerable to blackmail and had been compromised by the russians. >> we began our meeting telling him that there had been press accounts of statements from the vice president and others that related conduct that mr. flynn had been involved in that we not to be the truth. the first thing we did was to explain to mr. mcgann that the underlying conduct was problemate it in and of itself. secondly, we told him we felt like the vice president and others were entitled to know that the information that they were conveying to the american people wasn't true. and additionally, that we weren't the only ones that knew all of this. that the russians also knew about what general flynn had

done, and the russians also knew that general flynn had misled t the vice president and others. and that created a compromise situation a situation where the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the russians. >> sally yates was also questioned several times today about the reactions she got from all of this from wous counsel, veteran d.c. lawyer don mcgahn. >> i have a question that keeps annoying me that mr. mcgann asked of you, is there wrong with one white house official lying to another white house official? >> to be fair to mr. mcgann, i wouldn't say he said is there anything wrong, his question was more what's it to the justice department if one official is lying to another? in other words, why is this something that d.o.j. would be concerned about. that's when we went back through the list of issues and things that were troubling to us.

>> the white house counsel did not understand why the department of justice was concerned. >> to be fair to mr. mcgann, i think the issue that he raised, he wasn't clear on, was why we cared that michael flynn had lied to the vice president and others. why that was a matter essentially -- >> i think that's clear. >> within d.o.j. jurisdiction. >> i think that's so clear. and we have mcgann doesn't understand what's wrong with this? >> yates was also asked about any evidence she may have seen that the trump campaign was clu colluding with russia. >> miss yates, do you have any evidence, are you aware of any evidence that would subject that in the 2016 campaign anybody in the trump campaign colluded with the russian government or intelligence services in an improper fashion? >> and senator, my answer to that question would require me to reveal classified

information. >> sally yates wasn't the only one testifying today. she shared the witness table with the former director of national intelligence james clapper. during his opening remarks, clapper underscored, as fbi director comey did in his capitol hill testimony last week, the urgency and the depth of the threat posed by russia. and this got our attention. he said, quote, if there has ever been a clarion call for vigilance and action against a threat to the very foundation of our democratic political system, this episode is it. i hope the american people recognize the severity of this threat and that we collectively counter it before it further erodes the fabric of our democracy. and a reminder, the president has called this matter a total hoax. and four times in the last 24 hours, he has called the media out for being fake. thankfully, our guest to start

us off tonight are real. let's bring in two gentlemen who have been of counsel to us throughout the day during our live coverage. jeremy bash, former chief of staff to both the director of cia and the secretary of defense,r during the obama administration. also former counsel to housen intel, and matthew miller, former spokesman for the department of justice and the obama administration who along the way worked closely with sally yates, both fortunately, are msnbc analysts. jeremy start with you. what else did we learn today? >> we learned that when sally yates went to the white house she did not provide a mere heads up, as has been stated from the podium. on three occasions, twice in person, and one over the telephone, she discussed with the white house counsel precisely the nature of the department of justice concern. namely, that the fbi had interviewed the national security adviser, had found him to be lying, not just possibly to the bureau but indeed to the

vice president. and that he was possibly going to be the subject of blackmail, that this resulted in russia -- the russian federation, having leverage over the national security adviser, and ultimately over the national security of the united states. >> matthew, start with your own knowledge. who is sally yates to you? and put on your bipartisan hat. how did you think she conducted herself as a witness? >> sally yates entire background is as a career prosecutor who 50e67b9ually was appointed to a political job, not a partisan job but a political appointee. she eventually became deputy attorney general. what i saw working with her is what a lot of people saw today, someone who is calm, someone who is resolute, someone who is fearless. the question she got in her confirmation hearing that i thought was relevant and came up again today. if you ever as the attorney general are asked to do something that is wrong, will you tell the president no?

if you are ever faced with an issue that's tough will you go to the president and raise it? that's what she did. and i think that's what people saw today. >> it's notable that question was asked by then alabama senator and now attorney general jeff sessions and the clip of that is fairly remarkable. >> it is. and i don't think that's the context he had in mind, obviously. he was thinking of president obama. but the principle is the same. and it is a principle that the people at the department of justice rely on and hold dear. you look at the facts, look at the law and do so without respect to partisanship. i think when you saw her lay out her concerns and the concerns of the justice department today and why she went and briefed the white house counsel it's because she had very real, very grave conference that the national security adviser to the president wasn't being truthful and was being compromised. >> she gets these questions back to the white house counsel, including but not limited to what's it to you if it happened over here? then we get into explaining 18

days that go by until the former general separates, parts company with the white house. talk about what we learned on that front today? >> first you would have thought that had the white house learned of mike flynn's acts his felonious actions possibly compromising national security that they wouldv fired him. instead they fired sally yates, and they kept mike president clinton in the position for 18 days. over the course of those 18 days mike flynn was involved with conversations with vladimir putin, prime ministers, other heads of state, dealing with all the covert action and national security matters that come under the purview of the national security council. it wasn't until the "washington post" revealed the nature of his deessential that the white house turned around and fired him. not because he was compromising national security but because he had lied to the vice president. in fact, he was, as sally yates warned a clear and present danger. >> matthew, is there a serious case to be made that we still

would not have known about this if 2 story hadn't leaked to the "washington post," if that hadn't been the way it got out? >> i think there is absolutely no reason to believe based on what we know that the white house would have ever fired mike flynn. it's clear they only fired him once it became public. and now when you look and go back and reconstruct these events and look at the way they rolled out as she explained today. a meeting with mcgann on the 26th, then on the 27th of january. thej had a phone call on the 30th. she was going to pry him with the underlying evidence which we believe are the transcripts of flynn's call with the russian ambassador. that's the same day she got fired. and ealways before had been led to believe and did believe she was fired because she refused to defend the immigration order in court. now when you look at the fact she was aage tant calling for something to happen with mike flynn. the white house didn't want to do that, they fond a way to remove theage tant.

you have to ask if the immigration order was an excuse. >> when mr. clapper said it in real time we knew the quote of the day when we heard it. we are patriots here, and by debt of your service at the foin and cia why where is the urgency? where is the immediacy? if russia had attacked the allusion islands, attacked alaska, blown one of our bombers out of the sky, rammed one of our subs, yes it would feel like an act of war. does the electronic nature this make it more ephemeral or is outrage dead and gone? >> we shun be deluded into thinking it's femmoral. anybody who loves the country has to be seized with what mr. clapper said today. he said unless we stand up to

it, defend our country from it we will yield to it and ultimately it will end us. that is the failure of the administration here. they not only didn't stand up to it. they allowed the person compromised to stay in that post. >> the president on twitter today kind of fighting the other angle, and 109 days of kind of forced or at least attempted normalization of all things russia and putin. >> we've gotten insurel newered to things the president says on twitter. he said something tonight as remarkable. he talked about this investigation as being a waste of taxpayer money. it is an investigation of people who ultimately work for him. the director of the fbi, the deputy attorney general, who he can fire. these are people conducting investigations of which the president's associates are subjects, maybe targets. the president is out on twitter raising legitimacy of the

investigation, it's an irresponsible thing to do. >> gentlemen, it's been a long day. it was a lot of testimony. perhaps it's unfair to ask you for a headline, but starting with you jeremy, what was the biggest thing you learned today? >> no mere heads up. that in fact, the warning to the white house was substantive. it was floor. and it should have resulted in flynn's firing. instead, they fired sally yates. >> matthew, same question? >> i think he had the major headline. but there is one thing we haven't talked about yet that i found surprising. it kale out in the hearing that director clapper was not briefed on the criminal investigation that the fbi was conducting into collusion between the russian government and the trump campaign, possible collusion. it raises a question to me whether the department of justice also briefed the obama white house. a lot of people asked why the obama white house didn't sound a more urgent warning in the days leading up to the campaign. that might go a long way to

explaining that question. >> jeremy, you go at the time last word. it's about director clapper. he's seen them come, he's seen them go. politicians, crises, threats, he doesn't scare easily, i don't think anyone assigned him a partisan label. how should he be remembered in post 9/11 history. >> the intelligence officer's creed, know the truth and the truth shall set you free. he spoke the truth today. >> couldn't end on a better note. gentlemen thank you not only for the live coverage this afternoon but for sticking around and talking with us on the. jeremy bash and matthew miller. we'll get our first break in now. coming up. the president who fired general mike flynn warned donald trump not give him a big job in the white house but he did anyway. tonight on his phone at least the president is reacting to the day's testimony. two reporters who cover the white house day in and day out

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i find it enormously d disappointing the decision of the office of legal counsel and decide instead that you would counter-man the executive order of the president of the united states because you happen to disagree with it as a policy matter. >> particularly tense exchange during the hearing with john cornan of texas. welcome back to "the 11th hour." these things all have titles. the title of today's hearing was sally yates and james clapper was, russian interference in the

2016 united states election. but as so often becomes the case, because of politics, a senator's questions may veer off topic depending on whether there is an r or a d after their game. there you just saw the majority whip of the senate, john cornan, expressing his disappointment over sally yates refusing to defend the president's first travel ban, something that eventually led to her termination. here is how yates responded. >> let me make one thing clear. it was not purely as a policy married. in fact i remember my confirmation hearing. you specifically asked me in that hearing that if the president asks me to do something that was unlawful or unconstitutional, and one of your colleagues said or even that would reflect poorly on the department of justice, would i say no. that's what i promised you i would do and that's what i did. >> i don't know how you can say that it was lawful and say that it was within your prerogative

to refuse to defend it in a court of law and leave it for the court to decide. >> senator. i did not say it was lawful. i said it was unlawful. >> and the president also couldn't resist politicizing today's proceedings on twitter of course, quote, director clapper reiterated what everybody, including the fake media already knows. there is no evidence of collusion with russia and trump. then this. sally yates made the fake media extremely unhappy today. she said nothing but old news. that was followed by this. the russia/trump collusion story is a total hoax. when will this taxpayer funded charade end. lastly, biggest story on clapper and yates is on surveillance. why doesn't the media report on this hashtag fake news. with us tonight, andy carney and brian bennett. andy, what's it like covering a story as a deadline matter, day to day, with this presence on

his phone of the person we like to call the leader of the free world kind of trolling the proceedings? >> i think at this point it's expected. it's sort of like, well we have to wait to see what the president's reaction is at the ends of a big day when we know he is going to weigh in on anything to do with russia, this cloud's been hanging over the administration of one thing about the tweets you just read, the one where he says that clapper said there was no collusion. first of all clapper didn't say that. he said he couldn't comment because it would affect the investigation. trump actually made that tweet the background of his entire twitter page which sort of works symbolically. the issue they can't shake. this came after a good day on health care as always happens with the trump administration. within 48 hours there is a russia story that sort of overshadows it. of course trump was going to weigh in. it's just a matter of what time

he gets back to his phone. >> brian, matthew in the first block used the word inyoured which is perfect and covers so many thing over these past 109 days. we have become inyoured to the idea the president of our country diminishing one of the pillars of democracy. and that's going after a free press almost every day. >> well, this is the story that donald trump just can't escape. it's not going to go away. there is an investigation in the senate, the fbi is investigating the russia hacking of the election that could have impacted the election. and what's amazing is that every time donald trump writes these tweets he draws more attention to this story and not less. and of course knowing donald trump and watching him over the last several months, you know that he just cannot let an issue lie. he has to respond. he feels like he has to punch back. and that's what we saw today. >> andy, let's not forget the way we started our news day, so to speak. and that is the report that it

was barack obama in the loefl offi -- oval office saying to donald trump you really shouldn't hire this guy. donald trump hired this guy. is it fair to say that donald trump may tonight be the last defender of mike flynn? >> that donald trump might be -- i mean he likes people who are not part of the establishment. probably people like barack obama and other politicians telling him don't hire this guy probably made him feel like, you know what, i'm different. i'm going to do it. i'm going to double down on my guy. he liked him personally. and mike flynn was a huge part of his campaign. he traveled with him a lot. so, yeah he -- now sean spicer today tried to defend the hiring saying flynn worked for obama and it's their uld fault. they approved him first. but i think that his predecessor telling him don't hire this guy made him double down and say

yeah, i will. >> take me to the briefing room tomorrow. how do they counter-spin against what we watched this afternoon. do they try to paint sally yates as a wild bought and mid-paid for partisan? do they try to do the same thing with the former director of intelligence. >> they are going to say these are obama officials that had an ax to grind against president trump and they were part of an apparatus that wanted to surveil the trump transition team and make donald trump look bad and feed into this narrative that the obama administration is pushing that there was collusion between -- potentially collusion between russia and the trump campaign to get trump elected. and that's what they are going to go after. and we are going to have to ask some tough questions about that. what we heard that was very interesting today from sally yates was not only her bringing us into the office when she

walked in and talked to don mcgahn the white house counsel on the seventh day of trump's presidency and laid out a long list of things that mike flynn had talked about in his discussion with the russian ambassador, but also she said something really interesting that i think is going to put some more fuel onto the story, which is that the underlying comment that flynn was making on that call raised concerns. and also that the fbi wasn't satisfied with their interview with mike flynn. and so that means that there is a potential legal jeopardy there and that the fbi is obviously looking very closely at mike flynn's conduct. and i think that part is not going to go away. >> andy, as we kinds of do at the end of the day, what does it all mean? does it mean that trump knew that mike flynn had lied to his vice president? does any of this mean that absent the "washington post" leak and subsequent report, mike

flynn would still be at 109 days in, the national security adviser? >> i'm not sure about the answer to that question. we don't know. we know that mcgann knew. we know that other white house officials knew. i don't know yet if they told donald trump and he for 18 days did nothing with the information or they didn't tell him. either way it leads to more questions. one thing i wanted to add to what brian also said, i think the white house wants to move on from this. sean spicer will have to answer our questions about this tomorrow but i was just talking to a white house official on my way over here and they are not planning any sort of offense other than sean addressing this at the briefing. i think they would rather put this behind them. the president tweeting doesn't help that cause. >> we were shocked today to learn that washington is a partisan town. and at this hearing arc lot of the republicans -- a lot of the republicans kind of formed a wall in their questioning. they doubled down on leaks. they doubled down on this process of unmasking. clapper said that about 2,000

people have been unmasked in calendar year 2016. they doubled down -- ted cruz even went the route of anthony wiener andma abedin briefly. but there was a tense exchange between cruz and sally yates over how she treated and her decision involving the travel ban. we'll show it. we'll talk about it on the other side. >> in over 200 years of the department of justice history are you aware of any instance in custom the department of justice has formally approved the legality of a policy and three days later the attorney general has directed the department not to follow that policy and defy that policy? >> i'm not. i'm also not aware of a situation where the office of legal counsel was advised not to tell the attorney general about it until after it was over. >> interesting exchange there. brian, talk about the difficulty in both of these parties. if you are the democrats in the house and senate, it's not -- it's not your party.

it's not your ball game you are in the minor it. if you are the republicans, they really have to support their president, fall in line. but there are mavericks in the republican party who have a traditional view of all things russia and putin-related. >> it's hard for the white house to keep control of the senate and the senators and the conversation there. especially with a senate investigation going on. richard burr, the chairman of the senate intelligence committee, said that he wouldn't give michael flynn immunity when mike flynn comes and talks to them and that could open up an additional can of worms because they are going to be looking at that really closely. what the trump white house wants to talk about right now. they want to talk about their tax reform plans. they want to talk about what they did on health care and how that is moving forward and they are happy to talk about the travel ban. they feel like that is something that the president tried to do to keep the country safe and

it's these liberal courts in their view they are standing in the way. >> annie, how are things like infrastructure planning coming? >> that's a long way down the road i think. they still need to get the health care passed in the senate. the tax reform plan is next. this all needs to be done by august. donald trump is heading overseas later this month for a long trip, his first international trip. there's a lot going on before we get to infrastructure. >> as they say, and so it goes. we know it has been a long day for everybody. thank you for staying up with us, andy carney, brian bennett thank for your time. another break for us. up next, senator dick durbin reveals the one person who could be the star witness in this russia investigation at this point. our conversation with him when "the 11th hour" comes right back. david. what's going on? oh hey! ♪ that's it? yeah. ♪ everybody two seconds! ♪

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welcome back. i spoke earlier to one of the senators on today's subcommittee that questioned both jatsz and james clapper about michael flynn and things russian. senator dick durbin the democrat from illinois. i started by asking him what he learned today about flynn and yates. >> sally yates gave us a very thorough and complete time line in terms of her knowledge of the fact that general flynn was in a position where he could be compromised because of public statements that he made and the fact she took that information immediately to the white house not once but twice to warn them that he was vulnerable to

blackmail because of things he said that weren't true. >> do you give any motives to the trump white house for the 18-day gap between the time they learned that general flynn was compromisible and when general flynn separated from the white house as national security adviser? >> listen, it's almost impossible to understand because president-elect trump had been briefed in detail about the russian involvement in the election. he had also been told by the former president, barack obama, about misgivings that president obama had about his choice of general flynn. he now was warned by the department of justice that he had said -- flynn had said things publicly and to the vice president that were not true. and despite all of those things, the president continued with him as national security adviser for 18 days where critical national security decisions were made. there's just no explanation. >> as a senior senator, are you

convinced that with all the congressional committees and with all the staff that will be focused on this, the russia matter will receive a full and fair investigation? >> no. of course i'm not. today we had a meeting of a subcommittee of crime. do you know how many were prepared for this meeting? none. not one. the senate intelligence committee is trying to put together the basic investigators and staff and they are struggling with a handful of people after five months of knowing that this is our responsibility. we need an independent commission, one that is bipartisan, one that is trustworthy and gets to the bottom of what the russians were trying to do. >> i heard you make that pitch today in the hearing, but it doesn't bother you that that would then require months of set up and months of staffing before it could get go? >> better to have a thorough, independent commission than to limp along with behind doors

hearings on capitol hill with no outcome that really protection us in the next election cycle. >> senator, final question. what one question do you have coming out of today's session? if you could call any witness and ask them any question, who would it be? what would it be? >> well, i think the white house counsel would of course be a person you would like to call. not likely he will testify because he has his own protection under the law when it comes to his client. but there is a lot of information that needs to come out for the american people for all of us to understand what the russians were up to in this election and whether there was any complicity by anyone, trump campaign or otherwise during the course this campaign. >> senator dick durbin, democrat, illinois thank you for joining us tonight. >> good to be with you, brian. coming up after our next break, new questions tonight about conflict of interest for trump's son-in-law jared kushner and the kushner family. "the 11th hour" back right after this.

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we mentioned this before the break, their new ethics questions involving the business of trump's son-in-law and adviser jared kushner after a controversial sales pitch in china. according to multiple reports here it is. this weekend, kushner's sister urged a crowd in china to invest in a new jersey project in turn for fast tracked immigration to the united states. she was talking about the controversial golden visa program that lets foreigners jump the immigration line if they make a $500,000 investment in a u.s. development. it's a program the president extended last week when he signed the spending bill. according to a "new york times" reporter a photo of the president was used in the presentation. and kushner's sister also referred to jared who ran the

company until january. in a statement today a company spokesman wrote in part kushner companies apologizes that if that mention of her brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors. jared kushner's personal attorney issued a statement saying he is not involved in the company anymore and will recuse himself from any involvement in the goalen visa program. we heard the same thing in the briefing room. >> jared made sure to comply with the ethics rules. that had nothing to do with him per se. he wasn't involved. >> let's bring in our panel, jill ran tett. and stephanie ruleho before becoming a television journalist spent some time in the business worlds. norm eisen said tonight it's as if they have a for sale sign on the white house lawn.

he said perception is reality in these matters, and they are not fooling anyone. do you concur? >> well, you don't just had to be norm eisen who is an eddics experts. but there are many people who voted for president trump who are saying after something like this, enough is enough. let's not get cute. for jared's sister to be in beijing on a road show saying, and my brother, who ran our company starting in 2008 and just left to take a post in the white house -- it's a little bit like spare me already. while you may be literally following the law, at some point the spirit -- it's got to catch up with you. >> jillian is just back from asia. i say that by way of thanking you -- >> jet lag. >> that is a special kinds of jet lag but it's also germane to the story you were saying? >> absolutely. i mean, one of the things that you have to understand is in a country like china, business and politics influence is absolutely embedded in terms of how people

perceive powerful figures. even if jared kushner, even if the family says we have taken all the right american steps to comply with the law, the reality is that people in china, people in the philippines, even japan, will see this very clearly as a sign that essentially access and influence can buy you power. in this case, can buy you a visa. >> steph, who is out there to get someone in trouble? who is the watchdog who is going to come in and say, okay, all right, this is too much, this is going to stop? who is the person who says, when everyone says they have recused themselves, stepped away, blind trust, we don't believe it? >> don't you wish there was that person that was in the white house doing that? i mean if you think about the fact that the kushners continue to say remember, jared has divested himself, he's got things in a blind trust, that blind tru is run by his sister, nicole, who was doing the presentation in beijing by her husband.

the pr woman in beijing, who is shuffling out those reporters who didn't want them there said this isn't the story we want to tell. you are darn right, lady, we know that's the story you don't want to tell. but this is the reality. >> jailian, think of jared kushner's realm of influence, he is going to fix the veterans affairs, fix the opioid crisis, middle east peace. >> innovation. >> exactly. it's very important to understand when donald trump was elected president there was a panic amongst many of the japanese, chinese, and other asian governments because they didn't know how to get in touch with him. they didn't know how he worked. since that election, they have increasingly come to the belief that need to find whatever leverage they can to get in close with the trumps. there is a real perception that actually looking at the trump family, looking at the kushner family is one way to essentially cozy up. once again, even if you scrub

this whole deal with any detective connection between jared kushner and the property companies the reality is, it's perceived in asia and essentially america doing business asia style. >> you a journalist for a long time get off a plane from asia to fine that four times in 24 hours the president of the united states has called the news media, all of this, fake. >> exactly. >> eric trump aggressively was saying the news media is fake, fake, fake, after it was reported back in 2014, i believe, he didn't interview with a golf reporter. in that interview he said oh, we get our financing -- we don't need our american banks, we get plenty of financing from russian banks. what was eric trump's response to that today, believe none of it. the fake news media said it. i was very clear, we reached out to the trump family and eric trump directly and said if you believe this is fake news the

last thing we want to do is spread that fake news. please, help us write this, what is the right answer, would you like to share the right information? what was the response, silence. >> everything can be treated like a deal, that's breeding a sense of cynicism and eroding a lot of the values that america has championed. >> as norm eisen said, they are not fooling anybody buy it. thank you both for this segment, julia tett, stephanie rule, we will be watching you at 9:00 a.m. you better run, go home. coming up, nationalism defeated in france, where the elections there could have had a deeper meaning for donald trump and the u.s. we'll talk about that next. affi, the future's going to be a nightmare! does nobody like the future? c'mon, the future. he obviously doesn't know intel is helping power autonomous cars and the 5g network they connect to.

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paris as france elected emmanuel macron to be its next president a blow to populism as some have put it. macron beat favored marie le pen and will officially take office on sunday. at the top of his to-do list, carving out a parliamentary majority in elections next month. we are joined by phillip crowder, white house correspondent for france 24. and the jet lagged gillian tet has agreed to stay with us for this conversation. phillip, we'll begin with you. what happened in france in this election? and perhaps more importantly, what almost happened? >> what almost happened was a populist, nationalist victory. at the end of the day, it was a pretty emphatic victory after all for emmanuel macron, he got over 60% of the vote. that is quite a lot after all, and more than the polls even expected. but marie le pen, the far right

leader, got ever so close to making it all the way to the palace. she made it to the runoff after all, which is a lot better than any far-right leader has ever done in france. and a lot better than her predecessor, her father did for the same party. what emmanuel macron managed to do was stop whats with perceived as a potential wave of populism and nationalism in europe and here in the united states, as well. emmanuel macron beat a populist candidate, very much like donald trump here in the united states. he beat a nationalist candidate also like donald trump here in the united states. and also this was a victory for someone who was pro-european union against the european bloc falling apart. rile penas very much for the end of the european union, and you've heard that from donald trump also. in the past, he has said in the past that he is for more brexits

to come in the european union. one possibility was a frexit, the word used for the potential departure of france from the year peen y european union. >> this was an interview with condoleezza rice with "usa today." she talked about the impact of nationalist, nativist, populist candidates in races, what we should and should not glean from that. >> i think we make a mistake if we see populist candidates who don't win as then we think it's had no effect. the rise of populism and nativism really, which they rather go together, the rise of nativism is having an impact on the politics, even if the candidates aren't winning. >> do you concur with that? >> i completely agree.

macron's party is a new party and it remains to be seen whether in the parliamentary elections next month whether he can get a proper group of parties to work with him or not. the other thing that's important is that of the 20 million voters who chose mr. macron in the runoff, 43% only did so because they wanted to stop marie le pen. and only 15% say they back his policies. that is not recipe for stability. >> and phillip, in the end, the le pen story is complicated. it involves her father, it involves her views, their relationship, the change in how both of them approach the holocaust. a lot of denier history there. in the end, can it be said that the french of the countryside, who had threatened there to make the difference and put her over the top, just could not get there? >> there was certainly not enough votes to get her into the presidency this time around.

when you mentioned the countryside, well, that's pretty much what you see from the electoral map. the cities largely voted for emmanuel macron, the countryside largely voted for marie le pen. though the difference wasn't quite as big as we saw here in the united states in the presidential election in november. the good news for marie le pen here is that not that she lost but that she got over 10 million votes in france. that is a new threshold for the leader of the national front in france. and she will stick around. she's already announced that she will probably rename her political party, the national front. as you can see from those pictures, she was pretty happy at the end of this result, despite only getting just over 30% of the vote. she will stick around, because first of all, there are those legislative elections coming up in france in just five weeks' time. she will want to garner as many seats as possible in the

national assembly. and if anything goes wrong for emmanuel macron during his five years as president of france, his initial five years, well, then she would be able to step in and say well, that didn't work out, did it? i was the second best choice. here i am again. and we know already that she will be around. this is not the end of marie le pen. it is the start, though, of something pretty new in france. it is absolutely an anti-establishment choice, the choice of emmanuel macron. le pen would have been an anti-establishment choice, as well. >> and the world gets to see the youngest president ever of france. thank you both for joining us. phillip and gillian. it's late for all of us. you have the only good excuse. you just got off a plane from asia. when we come back, senators say they're going to start fresh on their health care bill in the senate, but it appears they are taking one big cue from their counterparts in the house. ♪when you've got...♪

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what are you doing? getting your quarter back. fountains don't earn interest, david. you know i work at ally. i was being romantic. you know what i find romantic? a robust annual percentage yield that's what i find romantic. this is literally throwing your money away. i think it's over there. that way? yeah, a little further up. what year was that quarter? what year is that one? '98 that's the one. you got it! nothing stops us from doing right by our customers. ally. do it right. let's get out of that water. last thing before we go tonight. the next step to repeal and replace obamacare must go through the senate. mitch mcconnell has put together a working group that's been meetinto craft a piece of legislation that would be able to pass through the senate. all 13 members have something fundamental in common with their colleagues in the house. they are white males. and given that the house bill

defunds planned parenthood, given that was the largely the work of white males, it's already been noted that not one of the five female republican senators is in this working group. with a 52-seat majority, the republicans can only afford to lose two vote it is they want to pass their health care replacement bill. as to when we'll see anything from the senate, that seems to be anybody's guess. there's talk of getting started right away and start we won't see anything before the summer recess. there's talk we'll see something by the midterm elections. and because it's washington, as of tonight, it's all just talk. that's our broadcast for this monday night as we start a new week. thank you for being here with us. good night from new york. now we know how it went. the swearing in, the inauguration was on a friday, january 20th.