[Smerconish:] Two top Republican senators asking the Justice Department to pursue possible criminal prosecution of the author of the disputed Trump Russia dossier, Christopher Steele, for allegedly making false statements to investigators. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, Senator Lindsey Graham accusing Steele of what they described as potentially false statements about the distribution of claims from the dossier. Joining me now, Gabriel Debenedetti, the national political reporter for "Politico," McKay Coppins, a staff writer at "The Atlantic," Joe Watkins, a former White House aide under President George H. W. Bush. He's got a brand new book, it's titled "The New PC, Practical Consideration." I'll get to the dossier story in a moment. But Joe Watkins, let me put on the screen a tweet that I set out at the end of the week. I had just been on Brooke Baldwin's program and I said this, "If you were the White House and you wanted to sell more of this book, you'd threaten legal action against its release and keep trashing it." Joe Watkins, the best possible thing for your new book would be a cease and desist letter from the White House. What do you make of the whole strategy, the way they handled Michael Wolff?
[Joe Watkins, Former Gop Candidate For Lieutenant Governor In Pennsylvania:] Well, it just underscores what Wolff is saying about the disorganization of this White House. First of all, allowing him in to the White House, giving him that kind of access without having strict rules, without knowing who he what he was going to write and giving him free access to everybody just shows the dysfunction of this current White House. No White House that I know of, certainly the president for whom I worked at the White House nor the president for whom my daughter worked at the White House, would allow that kind of unrestricted access to any author. So, this is I wish that I had written a book that was so inflammatory that the White House would have the White House lawyer try to do a cease and desist on me. I'm not so lucky to have that, at least not yet anyway. But at the end of the day, it points to the dysfunction in the White House. They should have just left it alone and let it be. Now they've made it the main story.
[Smerconish:] Gabriel, what was your one takeaway among many, I'm sure, about the Wolff book thus far?
[Gabriel Debenedetti, National Political Reporter, "politico":] Well, as you say, there are many, many takeaways, and I think the next few weeks will have even more takeaways from this book as the president continues to react to it. But the big one is what we saw this morning the president tweeting about. For the longest time people in Washington behind the scenes have been talking about this question of his mental fitness, Democrats in particular have been talking about this but don't want to talk about it in public. But this book says that members of the White House are constantly concerned about this, and it's a frequent topic of conversation among them. By tweeting about it this morning, of course, by calling himself the very stable genius, the president ensures that this is a topic of conversation in Washington and in New York. But the big takeaway is that this is now something we have to talk about and people in Washington have been talking about behind the scenes for a very long time. McKay, I thought I was particularly witty on Twitter this week. I'm going to hit you with one more of my tweets. Put it up on the screen and I want you to react to this. I said the following, if we can quickly find it. Where is it? We don't have it. Come on, guys. Here's what I said. "The only thing that's more problematic for this president than a salacious book about him is a salacious book that's not about him." For all the reports of him fuming behind the scenes, do you buy into that, or do you think he thrives on this kind of chaos?
[Mckay Coppins, Staff Writer, "the Atlantics":] I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive. I think he absolutely is probably upset with Michael Wolff. He clearly thought Wolff was an ally. He had reason to believe that, by the way, given the things that Wolff had written proceeding this book. But I had an experience with Trump like this back in 2014 when he brought me to Mar-a-Lago and I wrote a long profile of him he didn't like. He thought because he had invited me into his home that I would write a puff piece, and when I didn't, he was offended. But at the same time he clearly then and now basked in the kind of fallout from it. He loves that we're talking about right now on CNN. He loves that the media is covering this wall-to-wall. This is, arguably, the thing Trump likes most about the presidency, is all this attention. And so I think for that reason he probably is enjoying it, while still being upset with some of the things that are in the book.
[Smerconish:] Joe Watkins, I'm looking at a headline in "The Times" today, "GOP senators pursuing author of file on Trump." What's really going on in this dossier story?
[Watkins:] Well, it provides a little bit of cover, I think, to President Trump. It throws him a bone so to speak, because it's meant to divert some of the attention of the Russia investigation by attacking Steele. By the way, they don't attack the voracity of what he said in the dossier. They just attack the fact he may have lied to the FBI and the FBI needs to be just as much on top of this as they would for anybody else that lies to them.
[Smerconish:] Gabriel, Elizabeth Warren in 2020, you say that she's going through all of those steps one would normally take to be ready to run. Tell me about it quickly.
[Debenedetti:] Well, we don't yet know if she's actually going to run, but it's pretty clear that she's spent the last year doing a lot of things that if she wanted to be in prime position to run for 2020 she would get there. One of the big things is raising campaign money. She's currently sitting on more campaign cash than almost any other sitting senator at this point in a campaign cycle, and that's raised a lot of eyebrows. But also she's also been doing other things like sitting down with other Democrats who have been skeptical of her in the past, hiring up a bigger than usual campaign staff, basically doing things that are raising eyebrows across Washington, because when she was considering running for president or when people wanted her to run in 2016, before she decided against doing that, she hadn't done any of this.
[Smerconish:] And Gabriel, those cheers that you hear are probably from the West Wing. I mean, isn't this the scenario they'd most want apart from Hillary coming back in 2020 and running against Trump?
[Debenedetti:] Well, there are two sides to this. Certainly, the White House wants you to think THAT they'd be very happy about this. The reality is Elizabeth Warren does occupy some of the president's time when he thinks about the Democrats, he often talks about her, refers to her derisively as Pocahontas. On the other hand, plenty of Democrats think that she would be able to beat him pretty easily. If you look at head to head numbers, she is of course ahead at this point. But let's take a step back again and say it's very, very early. We don't know what a primary would look like, we don't know if she's going to run. But the reality is, yes, the president would love to take someone like Elizabeth Warren on because he's shown that he wants to do it in the past. There's no reason to believe he wouldn't want to do it in the future.
[Smerconish:] McKay, you just wrote about Mitt Romney. The last time that I thought about Romney and Trump in the same breath is when they were having dinner. I think it was at the 21 Club just before Trump was sworn in. At that time somebody was courting somebody. What went wrong here, and is Romney really going to run for the hatch seat?
[Coppins:] Yes, Mitt Romney had obviously been an outspoken critic of Trump during the campaign, and then there was this moment that looked like Romney might actually end up in the Trump administration back in January or December, I think. You know he was being talked about as a potential secretary of state. And at the time I'm told Romney didn't want to disown any of his criticisms of Trump but felt like it was possible that some really, you know, irresponsible and unqualified people would end up in the administration and Romney felt like it was worth exploring, you know, taking one of those slots. Since then he's continued to be critical of Trump, and I report that Romney has very seriously laid the groundwork for a potential Senate bid with Hatch's retirement. Most people in Utah are expecting Mitt Romney to run, so the question now is what kind of senator Mitt Romney will be. If he does run, he will almost certainly win. He's very popular in Utah. The question is, what kind of senator will he be? Will he want to hold Trump accountable, or will he use his influence to try to pass major Republican legislation, in which case he would probably be trying to mend fences with the White House. Time will tell.
[Smerconish:] Right. And Joe Watkins, finish us up on that. Is it the severe conservative? That's what mitt Romney described himself as in 2012, or is it the progressive who governed a blue state in Massachusetts? By the way, can I just say this? Can you imagine if ultimately the fate of the affordable care act in a 5149 scenario comes down to the senator who truly was the godfather of it in Massachusetts? Joe Watkins.
[Watkins:] That's right. Of course, politics is like theater, and Mitt Romney is a very smart guy. He will be who he has to be, and what he had to be or who he had to be in Massachusetts may be different from who he is able to be in Utah, a state that's heavily Mormon, that has values that he understands deeply. So, yes, Mitt Romney is in great position here. This seat is his for the asking, by the way. If he wants the seat, he's the next senator from Utah. And, indeed, he may be the one to put the finishing touches on a health care vote if he gets the chance in the Senate to do that.
[Smerconish:] Gentlemen, I appreciate all of your work. Joe, the White House just called to ask people not to buy your book. I hope that helps you. Thank you all very much.
[Watkins:] It's a bestseller now, it will be a bestseller.
[Smerconish:] Right. On Amazon, boom. Let's see what you're saying on my Smerconish Twitter and Facebook pages. What do we have, Katherine? "Smerconish, could absolutely care less about Wolff book. I'll laugh at those who take it seriously." You know Josh, thus far, and by the way, Michael Wolff is scheduled to be here a week from today with me. I'm paying close attention, I see that some dates are wrong, some names are wrong, a lot of little stuff is wrong. But what I've noticed is this, Bannon didn't disavow the treasonous comment, right, because that's the big substantive issue in the book, and the president clearly thinks that Bannon said that, or the president would not have gone after Bannon the way that he did. So, you know, you've got to acknowledge that where it matters thus far, it seems like people are agreeing that he got it right. One more, do we have time? Yes? "Smerconish, why the fascination with his base? There's another two-thirds or so of America that's going to decide his fate come November. His base can't save him from that." I don't know, Bobby, I'm fascinating by, and frankly you're pointing out the fact I wanted to get into that issue and I neglected to ask my guests about it. I'm just fascinated by the fact that the base seems to be holding firm. And the idea that a, you know, liberal writer publishes a tell-all book about the administration, I don't think it's going to resonate with folks in the red states, but I want to know. Next, is a pot war looming between the feds and pot-loving states? Going to ask the governor of Colorado. And then is the Bitcoin craze digital gold or a Ponzi scheme that's going to crash and burn? Two major players in the industry are coming up.