jackson flynn's contacts with russia during the campaign and the congressional transition. and about with me to share the reporting and the insights, cnn's donna bash. as this plays out, we have a better sense of, veteran republican, legal team in washington, d.c. will be joining the president's legal team. he says it's all an fbi conspiracy, to block the president. >> the president is said to be okay with it and what does this tell us about the president's mindset? if there are additions, will there be subtractions? >> there could be. if you go back to last year, the end of 2017. we talked many, many times about the fact that the president's legal team, their strategy was to. the investigation is almost over, don't worry, and their strategy was to try to keep him ca ca calm, the client, the president, is going to wake up and say, is my legal team not telling me the truth? or are they misleading me on purpose? that clearly happened because of so many things we've seen from b bob mueller and the questions they want to ask him if they actually get an interview done. one thing

of course, tom meszaros getting so many clients, out and out acquittals including michael jackson. >> thank you so much. do not miss jean's special report. the case against cosby. >>> we are just getting news that actor arnold schwarzenegger has undergone heart surgery and is now in stable condition. his rep said he had planned to complete the replacement of his that you wi that you will monday airy valve. we wish him well. have a wonderful weekend. >>> vladimir putin has satan on his side. "the lead" starts now. kit carry 15 nuclear warheads. president trump getting himself into an arms race? hope is gone. the first day, the first firing friday without the trump whisperer. hope hicks in the white house. as anxiety sets in inside the west wing. plus, a disturbing facebook memo leaked suggests bullying, even

tom mesirow, the very after famed attorney that got an acquittal for michael jackson on sexual as salt charges. the intensity is apparent because if convicted bill cosby could spend the rest of his life in prison. this is very, very serious for all accounts, and the commonwealth, they want justice for someone they say was a victim of bill cosby. >> jean cass sar rez in norristown, pennsylvania. join us for the case against cosby, 8:00 p.m. eastern only here on cnn. a lot of news we're following this morning. let's get to it. >> robert mueller is connecting the trump campaign, paul manafort directly to russian spies. >> my bet is that gates revealed russian connections. >> he could have seen and heard a lot. >> we have a lot of partisan smoke, but we haven't seen that direct connection. >> the president ought to be cautious, don't ever mess with director mueller. he'll crush you. >> that's why i made some changes because i wasn't happy -- >> i'm concerned about putting somebody in charge of the va who doesn't really have management experience. >> i wouldn't exclude the possibility that

it's a video, as well as a musical parody of michael jackson's work. >> i did a parody of every single shot of that video because people were so familiar with it. they knew every little detail. all i had to do was tweak everything a little bit and it became funny. ♪ most of our lives living in an amish paradise ♪ >> weird al yan yankovic when he does a parody, he has to admit, that is a good song but i can have some fun with it. when he did the song "perform this way" he asked lady gaga and she said, that song is very important. i'd rather you not. her fans said, you let weird al do -- like, they got -- oh, sorry, didn't know. never mind, go ahead. ♪ i'm sure my granny will say it's a grotesque display ♪ ♪ they can fight me, baby, i perform this way ♪ ♪ i'll be covered with these ♪ it doesn't mean i'm crazy ♪ i perform this way >> what i like about my job is a pop culture cuisnart. i get all this input from everywhere, and i mix it all up and spew it out. i'm providing cultural commentary. and hopefully it's funny to people. ♪ i'm not insane i just perform this way

but enough about michael jackson. >> jay made the jokes the joke. dave was doing the other side of jokes. he wanted the laugh he wanted. >> these last two jokes are the intellectual property of nbc. who would have thought you would ever hear the words intellectual property and nbc in the same sentence? >> there was not much emphasis on that monologue for dave. because when we started on late night we weren't allowed to do a monologue. they were calling them opening remarks. if you called them a monologue and there were too many, you would have stepped on johnny's toes. >> now with that in mind, let's continue with the opening remarks. >> it was just a little off. it looked like a talk show, kind of. sometimes he wore sneakers, which was weird. and they talked about the events of the day. to a certain extent. but also more focused on weirdness than on the newspaper. >> dave is passing out ham. >> dave was a very new york-centered show. jay could be monica lewinski and o.j. trial and dave could be like there was a squirrel today in the park. just some

joey jackson is here, cnn legal analyst and criminal defense attorney. joey, two major issues here. what does stormy daniels's lawyer michael avenatti want out of deposing the president and will he get the deposition. why does he want the deposition? it seems to me this is the end, not even a means to an end. >> all right. i always thought it might be bob mueller that took down the president if it went that way. it could vel be michael avenatti. here is the distinction. we talk about whether or not donald trump with go in the mueller investigation and testify? it's a criminal proceeding. you have a fifth amendment right not to say anything, which his lawyers are advising him to do. avenatti is saying you say the agreement provides for arbitration, before we get to that, we're going to have a hearing on whether the agreement legitimate itself. in order to get to that hearing, you have something called discovery. discovery provides for people being deposed. as avenatti said, the president is not above that. you have clinton, you referenced that, m.j., the clinton case involving paula

regardless of your qualifications. >> i don't want to talk about pardoning michael flynn yet. we'll see what happens. >> they had asked about conversations at the white house about pardons. >> the president has the authority to pardon individuals but it hasn't been discussed. >> the question hinges on whether dangling includes obstruction. >> this is "new day" with chris cuomo and alisyn camerota. >> welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. this is your "new day". it's thursday, march 29th, 6:00 in new york. here's our starting line. president trump firing his embattled v.a. secretary and tapping his white house doctor to replace him. the president insists dr. jackson is highly trained and qualified. but he has no real management experience. if confirmed, jackson will run the federal government's second largest department with hundreds of thousands of employees. well over 300,000. and it is plagued by in efficiencies. "new york times" reports that former lawyer john dowd may have floated the idea of pardoning michael flynn and paul manafort as special

., but ronny jackson's management experience is causing concern. now outgoing secretary shulkin is firing back. >>> the president's lawyer floated pardons for top campaign aides. was the trump legal team trying to keep michael flynn and paul manafort from cooperating in the russia probe? >>> the date is set for leaders of north korea and south korea to meet. the agenda includes denuclearization. this story is rapidly evolving on the korean peninsula. welcome to "early start." i'm dave briggs. >> i'm michelle kosinski. it is 31 minutes past the hour. >>> another change at the top of the trump administration. in this case, we are told chief of staff john kelly gave shulkin the head's up on the phone. he said questions about the travel have been distractions getting in the way. the president campaigned hard on helping veterans. >> the big surprise was not shulkin's ouster which was rumored for weeks, but who is nominated to replace him. his personal physician. rear admiral dr. ronny jackson. unsurprisingly the performance on tv had to do with the sele

the "new york times" now reporting that the president's top lawyer floated the idea of pardoning michael flynn and paul manafort last year as the special counsel was closing in on the two former trump aides. this as mr. trump faces the prospect of testifying in the stormy daniels' case. the porn star's lawyer now asking a judge to allow him to question the president under oath. our national correspondent, athena jones, is working the story for us. athena, daniels' lawyer keeps turning up the heat on president trump. >> reporter: wolf, that is absolutely right. michael avenatti has been doing everything he can to keep this story in the headlines. this latest salvo comes just a couple of days after avenatti amended daniels' original complaint to now sue the president's personal lawyer, michael cohen, for defamation. avenatti is arguing that cohen has implied that daniels is lying about the affair she said she had with trump. now, we've been talking a lot about how quiet president trump has been on this whole daniels story. now avenatti is trying to force the president to answer his questio