A new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt “chronicles the clash between a president and the officials of his own government who tried to stop him.” In “Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President,” takes a look at “those who felt compelled to confront and try to contain the most powerful man in the world as he shredded norms and sought to expand his power.” Schmidt spoke with MSNBC’s Morning Joe panel about the book Tuesday morning:

“I tried to do in this book was tell the story of what it’s like to be one of the people sort of standing between the president and the abyss. For all of — or much of American history we’ve focused on how presidents use their power, how the people around them help the president do that. What that means about the president. What that means about the moment. What it says about the country. And with Trump, we’ve just seen an incredibly unusual phenomenon, and that is that the people around the president are trying to contain the president. So what is it like to be one of those containers? What is it like to stand up to the president? If you’re the FBI director or the white house counsel, there’s no other FBI director or white house counsel to call, you’re the 911 operator. there’s no other 911 operate error to call. So what do you do? What is that like? What is that human experience like? What does it feel like to be one of those people? And you can read the book and see, what would you have done? What would you have done if the president said go fire Robert Mueller, and you were the White House counsel, how would you have handled that?” 

Watch more from MSNBC above.