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. good to be with you. i'm katy tur. here is where president biden stands right now. today, two more democratic lawmakers have asked him to step aside. britney peterson of colorado and mike levin of california. it follows three more in the immediate wake of last night's presser, including the powerful ranking member of the house intelligence committee, congressman jim himes. will still more come out? hakeem jeffries met with the president last night where he says he relaid the feelings of the house democrats, saying quote, i directly expressed the full breadth of insight and heartfelt conclusions about the path forward. what were those conclusions? jake sherman is here to share his reporting on the money front, significant news from "the new york times." that donors have begun freezing some $90 million pledged to the largest superpac supporting president biden if he remains on the ticket. for his part, president biden is still adamant he's not going

anywhere, telling reporters last night he can still win. what do voters think? my colleague gabe gutierrez spoke with some of them, some of the michigan supporters of joe biden just a moment ago. >> i was a biden supporter. now i would really like to see an open convention. >> i hope he doesn't take this personally, but i think it's time for him to step down. >> the problem is that he's not going to be able to win the election. >> like i said, i vote for two dead flies with the wings pulled off before i would vote for trump. but it's nothing personal to biden, but we can't let that man win. we just can't. that would be the end of our country as we know it. >> i think it's a real opportunity to restart this campaign cycle, to reenergize potential voters, to get people back in the fold and to, you know, get us a candidate that is ready for this right now and for

many years in the future. >> if he stays in the race, are you going to vote for him regardless? >> i would probably be someone who would. i would not be happy about it. but i would. >> joining us now to talk about this, senior white house correspondent gabe gutierrez who gathered that sound for us. he's in detroit where president biden will be landing later this hour. punchbowl cofounder jake sherman is also here along with "washington post" senior political correspondent and msnbc political analyst ashley parker. and cook political report publisher and editor in chief, amy walter. all right, so gabe, so notable about those conversations you had were that these were all joe biden supporters. they all want him or a democrat to win. >> reporter: yeah, that's right, katy. look, those are voters who had voted for joe biden before. they voted democrat, they were lifelong democrats, but they feel frustrated where the race

is right now. as you heard, they felt they had no other option than for joe biden to leave the race. now, to be sure, katy, the president still has a lot of support here in michigan. we expect to hear from supporters who are backing him in this rally in a few hours. but the question is, katy, how much will -- sorry. there's some noise here as some of the organizers here are telling us to go back inside. my point is that there was a new poll that came out today. this npr/pbs maris poll that shows an extremely tight race across the country. and that's what the biden campaign is pointing to. they're trying to argue despite all this noise, despite everything that happened over the last two weeks, that the race essentially remains unchanged. those voters you heard from, that they will in the end end up voting for president biden regardless, because of what they see as the alternative, a second trump administration. so as we move forward here, the

question will be, will the voters you just heard from, will they stay home or end up voting for joe biden if he stays in the race. >> i'm going to let you go because it sounds like they really want to move you. gabe gutierrez, thank you so much. ashley parker, when we're looking at president biden and what might happen next for him, what's the sense of where things are going with the white house internally? >> well, with the president's inner, inner circle, which is a very small insular group and his family, i would add to that group, the reporting we have so far, although again, it's worth noting this is a fluid situation where things often feel like they're changing day by day or hour by hour, there's a belief that joe biden has made his decision, and that decision is to run. and as he said yesterday in the news conference, unless somebody comes to me, unless my team comes to me and with data that says you absolutely cannot win,

he is not going to reconsider that decision. the challenge, of course, then, amy and i were talking about this just yesterday, is that the actual math and the route to win and the different path to 270 were already narrowing for president biden before that debate, and they have gotten even narrower. so it would be hard for -- although people say this privately, that he has zero chance of winning, it would be hard for someone to come and say that to him. but they could certainly say, you have almost no room for error. and former president trump right now in this moment has a lot of cushion. >> all right. so in talking about the number of people who have come out and the room for error that's left, jake i have to get you on the state of play in congress. i have heard from folks that there are not many people privately who say in the senate at least who say that joe biden should stay in this race. that the best option is for joe biden to stay in this race.

>> yeah, i have not -- aside from a few notable exceptions, people who are many of the leaders of the chc, the cbc, i have not talked to hardly anybody who would like him to stay in. i think and amy is so well qualified to talk about this, but when you have mike levin, mike levin is from a district that joe biden won, i just checked the cook political report with amy walter, that joe biden won i think with 60 something percent of the vote, and mike levin won easily last time with a boost from joe biden. came to his district. when he comes out and says that joe biden should step away, and furthermore, when he says on a call with the congressional hispanic caucus, which is what he just did to joe biden, that joe biden should step down, that tells you a lot. now, there's a disconnect here.

the disconnect is the president is saying stick with me, i can win. no one believes that. no one in the house, the democratic caucus really believes that. and furthermore, as i told you yesterday, katy, the issue is they don't believe that they can win with joe biden on the ticket. and it's with that backdrop that hakeem jeffries went to the white house late last night after the nato press conference and jefferies met with biden. now, both sides, this was a one-on-one meeting. both sides are saying they will not discuss the contents of the meeting. jefferies said he shared the perspectives of the caucus with biden. it's not a direct quote, but said something to that effect. if that is true, then hakeem jeffries had to have told him that he has been with dozens of members over the last couple weeks who have said that joe biden should step away. so what's unknowable to me and ashley is really well positioned

to talk about this, is how much that matters. i think he just indicated it might not matter much, but these are dozens of democrats that say we will lose our seats if joe biden is the nominee. >> so what joe biden has said publicly is he needs to be presented with a scenario where he's told he can't win. that's what he said last night in the news conference. and the polls out there that we have seen publicly show that it is a dead heat of a race. within the margin of error. there's been some movement, but not major movement. you can see right here. and some cases, joe biden has a very slight lead. in some cases he does not. in other cases, it is tied. we are putting so much on polling right now. what are the limitations of polling, and can you trust polling in this moment? >> yeah. well, i think even if we step away, let's step away from the polling for a minute and get to the sort of fundamental

question, which is something the biden campaign has argued all along. that as long as they can make this election about donald trump, as long as the focus isn't on biden, and before the debate, we really thought it was going to be about biden's handling of the economy, or biden's handling of immigration. as long as they could make it, the biden campaign, that is, a choice election, they could stay in the fight and win a very narrow victory. the odds of this being able to be about anything other than biden, that is the challenge. and biden's age in particular. so again, i think he started even before the debate, with the status quo being this race is at best tied, is not good enough if you are the president of the united states looking to win a close election. if you want to talk about the

polls being right or wrong, remember, biden has always at least in 2020, he was always ahead. he was never trailing in either the national polling or in the key state polling. and that race was very, very close. so i think really, part of the reason you're seeing such panic among democrats is that they, democratic office holders in particular, is that they know what this campaign is going to look like. they know they're going to spend the next four months answering questions from reporters and from voters and constituents asking them whether or not biden can do the job. every time biden has a slip or is reported in the media or somebody leaks something that he did or said, they're going to have to answer for that. it depresses turnout, so whether you're in a district like jake pointed out that gave biden a 60% showing or whether you're in a close district, you can't afford to have your own

constituents like those ones that we saw at the package at the very top saying, yeah, i mean, i guess i'll turn out for biden. he needs those people to be excited to turn out for him. >> yeah, that enthusiasm, because it was enthusiasm that drove his win in 2020, ashley. it was all those people who came out to get president trump out of office, and does that enthusiasm still live in 2024? i mean, chuck todd, my colleague, has argued part of what drove voters to the polls to vote for biden in 2020 was covid. and donald trump's handling of covid. donald trump has been out of office for four years. there's a certain amnesia that has taken over the electorate about what happened back then. so in terms of enthusiasm, is the white house considering that, and are they considering, as jake and amy birthday point out, the pleas from lawmakers that this is going to drag them down, they could lose the house, the senate is already a tough

one. if joe biden stays on the ballot? >> well, in terms of what it would take for joe biden to get out of the race, some early reporting i did, and again, these are people who know joe biden quite well, who have served with him, who have worked for him and with him for decades, speculating, but their informed speculation is they thought one of the things that might be able to push him out would be just that. people like hakeem jeffries and chuck schumer going to him, not so much because of their meaningful personal relationships but saying, look, we will not win -- we will not win back the house, we will not hold the senate. not only will you lose, but if you believe what you say you believe, which we believe, that the stakes are existential, that american democracy as we know it is at stake, not only will trump be ushered back in, but there will be no ballast to prevent him from doing project 2025, whatever he wants, because we won't have the house or the senate, and there was a hope,

and there is still some smaller hope that would be compelling. based on the trump amnesia, i want to pick up on a point amy made. going to this debate, joe biden was already trailing within the margin of error. the whole point of this debate is that the biden campaign requested it because they knew they had to change things. they had to turn it from a referendum on joe biden into a referendum on donald trump. a choice between joe biden and donald trump. so even the democrats who say look, the debate didn't matter, it didn't change anything. they were losing, now they're losing by a smidge more, which is a heck of a spin, the concern is that the debate was supposed to change everything. the debate was supposed to cure that trump amnesia you just articulated. it was supposed to make people remember everything they didn't like about donald trump, and right now, we are all still talking about joe biden because that's what the voters are talking about, and that's what the lawmakers are talking about. >> but it seems like what the white house is saying is the only people who are talking about it is us, the media, the

pundits, the donor class. it's a narrative driven by the elites, they say, and not by the voters. and that is, as amy, i know you know, polling has shown for more than a year that the american public does not believe joe biden should be running for re-election. they thought he was too old years ago, and they think he's too old now and they have been saying it. they don't just not want joe biden. they don't want donald trump either. >> right. you understand why so many voters that i talk to, that we listen to in focus groups call this the lesser of two evils election. they don't like either of their choices because they have known this for some time now, that what they are choosing between is someone who they think is too old and somebody else who they don't trust or think is corrupt or for whatever other reason don't like his behavior. and that they kind of knew going into this race, that's what they were going to face. now, the question going forward is whether or not when people

said i think he's too old, when people said i don't know that he's going to actually complete a term, his second term, whether that meant that they were envisioning what we saw at the debate the other night, or whether it was just simply that, look, he's old and kind of frail, and i don't know, you know, many 81-year-olds don't usually work well into their deep 80s. so that's something to figure out. >> except if you're in washington. >> except, yeah, exactly. and we will -- i do think the challenge we have right now is that there's been very little polling in some of those swing states. but i think it's probably going to show what we have known for the last week or so, that this race, even if it didn't move, as ashley pointed out, it's still in a bad place if you are

president biden trying to get back on top of an election that you have been on your heels for, for the basically entirely of the campaign. the rnc is going to be interesting because now the focus will go back to donald trump. and which donald trump will show up? will the donald trump who has been really focused on not making -- not getting himself in the middle of this, letting democrats really kind of struggle, or will he spend the time at the rnc talking to those voters who are double haters trying to win them over, or will he do what he's often do, talk directly to his base and not try to win over the people who are struggling with what they see as two not great choices. >> jake, i have no time, but i'm going to give you the last word. >> it's amazing that, if you think about it from the house democrats' perspective, republican in the house have had a hell of a bad two years, and

the fact they could keep the majority is what's really eating at house democrats. >> jake sherman, ashley parker, amy walter, thank you for being here, especially you, amy. we have been trying to get you on forever. >> all right, coming up next, what democrats in congress supporting joe biden's candidacy are saying about all these calls, all this discussion about joe biden. rep ro khanna joins me in a moment. plus, what is donald trump's campaign hoping for. tim alberta has exclusive new reporting on the plan the trump team has and the one thing that could disrupt it. later, what the people behind project 2025 are already saying about this next election. we're back in 90 seconds. even if you're not on summer vacation. join millions of families who've trusted us and find care in your area for kids, seniors, pets, and homes. all from background-checked caregivers, rated and reviewed by people like you. that's hours and hours of goofing around.

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congressman mike levin became the 19th congressional democrat to publicly call on president biden today to step aside, saying i believe the time has come for president biden to pass the torch. it's time to move forward with a new leader together. this morning on today, congressman jim clyburn, one of the president's closest allies, well, he left the door open. >> let joe biden continue to make his own decisions about his journey. he's earned that right and i'm going to give him that much respect. if he decides to change his mind later on, then we will respond

to that. we have until the 19th of august to open our convention, and so i would hope that we would spend our time now focusing on the record that we will lay out for the american people. >> joining us now, california congressman ro khanna, a member of the biden campaign's national advisory board. let's talk about the record. we're talking about president biden, his ability to do this and all the concerns but let's get to his record. what is he running on and what is his plan for the next four years? >> let me say the most important thing he's done, there were all these deindustrialized towns in america. donald trump said they were the forgotten americans. in the last three years those towns have had more job growth, more manufacturing return than since the 1990s. joe biden is running to finish this manufacturing revolution, to reindustrialize america, to have universal child care for aern, to help make community college free, he wants to continue that agenda, things he didn't get in build back better.

>> he has accomplished so much during his time in office. objectively speaking, he's gotten bipartisan, big bipartisan legislation passed. he's gotten bills that will create jobs like the chips and science act. you're talking about the job creation in the industrialized west. because of all that, and because the economy is getting better, inflation is coming down, we saw a report just the other day that showed that prices came down for the first time in three years. first time since the pandemic. why are the polls so close? >> the polls are close, one, because we're a polarized country. two, because you can't underestimate donald trump. he's unfit as a leader, but he's a very talented candidate. he has a huge base. i mean, remember, he destroyed people in the republican primary in 2016. he beat hillary clinton. joe biden is the only one who beat him. he spoke to the anxieties people had in the deindustrialized america with jobs going to china. he was always going to be a formidable opponent.

>> you think joe biden is the only person who can beat him? >> i don't, but i think if it was going to be someone else, they would have had to start a year and a half ago. >> other countries do elections in six weeks. we're always told no one pays attention to the last few weeks of the campaign. why do we need to subject the public to two years of campaigns? >> we're running against someone who has universal brand. i knew who donald trump was when i was in seventh grade and visited the taj mahal in atlantic city. i used to play the trump board game. you can't run someone new against a person who has been on tv for 14 years. >> a person who has a really high disapproval. there are people that don't like him at all. he's got high name recognition. he's also got a high level of antipathy. >> he's beatable, and i think michelle obama could beat him, maybe george clooney if he got in. but to say you're going to have someone who is an untested governor who hasn't earned that trust or even the vice president, who i think had she

started a year ago, would clearly have been able to beat him, but it's a risk. i'm not saying they couldn't, but it's a risk. >> why do you think 70% of voters don't want either candidate? >> they were on the debate stage debating their golf handicap. >> this is a year ago they said this. >> it's symbolic of a sense this country wants the next generation of leaders. >> why were not given that choice with the democrats? >> no one ran. there is no committee that came and said don't run against joe biden. others could have tried. the reality is no one could have beaten joe biden a year ago. >> this morning, you told a handsome "morning joe" host if you had a magic ball, you would have gone back two years and not run joe biden. he did say he was going to be a bridge. why was that not forced more forcefully. why not do one great term and pass it off to the next generation? >> two reasons i think he

decided to change his mind. one, the midterms went much better than expected and i think that gave him this boost of confidence. if you looked at the poll numbers back then, biden's numbers were at 80%, 90% in the democratic primary voters. no one would have been able to beat him. i think people would have beaten him today, if the election were today. and the reason he ran is i think he looked at the legislative achievements he had, the threat of putin, and he concluded he was the best person to lead. that's the only reason to run for president. do i think in retrospect we should have had an open primary where more people came in? yes, i do, but we're not at that point. we're four months away. i don't believe barack obama, who i think is the most talented politician of the last 50 years, if he was thrust in four months against john mccain would necessarily win. >> really? >> look at all the things that happened. the reverend, he had to give a speech on race, show people he had the patriotism. it takes a lot to earn people's

trust. >> that was running against mccain. this is against donald trump. >> i don't underestimate donald trump. and i don't have a view that joe biden is the only person who can defeat donald trump, but i don't think it's obvious absent michelle obama or someone with name id, and ultimately, it's biden's decision. he said he's running, and he said he's conveyed that clearly. i don't see there's introspection. >> thank you for being here in person. good to see you. coming up, why the calls for president biden to step aside have sent a chill through the trump campaign. plus, the new conspiracy theories meant to undermine november's election brought to you by the same people behind project 2025.

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among those urging president biden to stay in the race is his

opponent, donald trump. tim alberta of the atlantic reports trump's campaign managers have long believed the road to victory lies in the, quote, extraordinarily visual contrast between strength and weakness. but that's only one thing could disrupt that plan, a change of candidates at the top of the democratic ticket. joining us, staff writer for the atlantic, tim alberta. this is a really interesting piece you wrote. suzy wiles, the head of the donald trump campaign, called joe biden a gift. why does she see him as a gift? >> hey, katy. yeah, it's interesting. if you really look deep under the hood of the trump campaign, what you see is an operation that has been built in every way sort of specified to run against one candidate, and that's joe biden. and that's from the microtargeting of certain demographic groups they have

been doing to their decisions on ground game and field operation, to the internet memes they make on any given day and then spread through the ecosystem to all their affiliates on social media. everything they have done is designed to beat joe biden. not to defeat a generic democrat. they believe that his particular weaknesses are so helpful to them in running the campaign that they're running that they're terrified at the prospect of losing him at this stage in the race when they believe they're well on their way to victory. >> what do they think his weaknesses are? >> well, if you look at the debate, i think that pretty well crystallized it. obviously, he's old. he is visibly at times unstable or uncertain. someone who does not exactly project strength or confidence. and for all of donald trump's vulnerabilities, and lord knows there are many, on that same stage, he comes across as sort of forceful and in command, and

that is to the point that you read from earlier, katy, that is just the essential contrast that they're trying to draw in this race. that it's about strength versus weakness. and when they look at joe biden, they see someone who is not capable of projecting the sort of macho, in charge control that they believe voters, particularly suburban women and even more particularly, young men of color, this is black men, latino men, 18 to 34 years of age, that these are the voters who are most susceptible to being pulled away from the democratic coalition by that very essential contrast of strength versus weakness. >> you write in the piece, this is what one of trump allies had told you, one of the trump allies had told you, for every karen we lose, we're going to win a jamal and an enrique, and that wiles nodded when you said this. that's a fact i believe it, and

so i believe we're realigning the party, she told me. and i don't think we're going to lose all the karens either. they buy eggs, they buy gas. they may not tell their neighbor or carpool line, but they know. you go through what their plan is and the way that they have taken control of every aspect of the party, especially the finances, and the leaner campaign that they're running, from what you can tell, is that a lot of sound and fury? are they running a leaner campaign because they're spending more money on donald trump's legal fees or are they running a leaner smarter campaign from what you have seen compared to other campaigns? >> i think the answer is yes to both questions. so necessity is the mother of all invention, as we know. so on the one hand, it's true that certainly compared to the trump 2016 operation and the trump 2020 operation, both of which were badly mismanaged in many ways and ineffective and

inefficient, it's certainly true that chris and suzy have been even if you look at the fec filings about money in and money out and about what they spent it on, they have been much more professional, much more restrained, much more efficient in how they run this campaign. it is also true, katy, that between 25 and 33 cents of every dollar they have brought in has had to go to trump's legal fees for the last 18 months give or take. that is really hard for a campaign to get past. i think the other thing that people have paid less attention to but i try to shine light on in the piece is that donald trump has insisted in this 2024 campaign on building out this massive, unprecedented voter integrity program, this huge apparatus to make sure that there's no cheating in the 2024 election. well, guess what. that costs a lot of money too. so chris and suzy are looking around here and they're realizing, there is only so much money to go around and they have

basically had to triage their other operations in order to keep trump out of jail. on the one hand, but also to try to stroke his ego and keep him assuaged this election is not going to be stolen from him. >> there's so much in your piece and i can't get to all of it, but just looking at the two of them, you also talk about the perception that you get that they might not at all times be entirely comfortable with who they're running. >> yeah. look, this is not a new story, katy. you know it as well as i do. there are any number of people who have worked for trump over the years who have had sort of private misgivings about the man. and i think the difference maybe this time around is that in the post january 6th world, there can no longer be any uncertainty. there can no longer be this plausible deniability to say, well, i didn't know exactly how he would govern or how he would

handle himself as commander in scheef. i think to work for trump in this environment requires an ability to compartmentalize. for chris and for suzy and a lot of other people on the campaign, in their private moments, they will talk to you about being very sort of vociferously anti-democratic party, very vociferously anti-woke, anti-left, all of that, mump more than pro-trump necessarily. so i think for a lot of these folks they view it as zero sum warfare, and trump is the most convenient vehicle for them to use at this point in time. >> you argue it's intoxicaing for any strategist to say come work on a winning team. come do a presidential election. come beat your opponent. tim alberta, again, the piece is fascinating and i didn't even get to the staffers who genuinely believe they're going to be arrested if they lose. anyway, go read the piece.

you'll learn all about it. tim, thank you so much. coming up next, how the organization behind project 2025 is already working to delegitimize this year's election. plus, what donald trump's attorneys tried to do to get his hush money conviction thrown out on the same day he was supposed to be sentenced. be sentenced. it's time to feed the dogs real food in the right amount. a healthy weight can help dogs live a longer and happier life. the farmer's dog makes weight management easy with fresh food pre-portioned for your dog's needs. it's an idea whose time has come.

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we have been talking a lot about the heritage foundation the last few days.

also, a sponsor of the republican national convention starting next week. it's now a group connected to the heritage foundation that now -- i'm sorry, another group connected to the heritage foundation says it's prepared to seek legal action if democrats prepare to replace president biden on general election ballots. joining us now, nbc news correspondent vaughn hillyard. >> this is under the context of this group preparing for the unknown of what could happen over the next four months. particularly when it comes to being prepared to challenge any potential effort to replace joe biden on the ballots in states across the country after the convention. there's an event that was held yesterday at the heritage foundation by this group that prepared this report, and they made very clear here, i want to read you part of it, quote, these are real legal threats that will play out in real time. from where we're sitting we're going to make sure we're best situated legally to prepare for those threats because you cannot

run an election by making up rules as you go, and you certainly can't do that when the rules only favor one side. they're arguing every state has different election laws. there's ballot deadlines they say if something were to happen to joe biden in october, some states say the only way you can get removed from a ballot is if you're deemed incapacitated. there's also the faithless elector laws which was meant to keep electors from january 6th from switching over and voting for somebody else. so what the heritage foundation group is doing is saying if the democrats were to make a late play to switch out joe biden after the convention, we'll challenge state by state any of those. >> this does not apply if they try to do it before the convention. what happens if he steps aside after the convention. what happens if he has a health event after the convention that renders him incapacitated? the constitution allows for a change there. it's not like you have to run somebody who is not alive any longer. >> that's a very serious

conversation. it's different state to state. there's at least one state where that individual, that ticket would be deemed ineligible. so this is where the complication is. is there an incapacitated versus does the person have to be dead. >> and they believe -- >> this group makes it clear, this is their words, we'll see a contested election the likes we have never seen before. >> they have a friendly supreme court on their side to make -- they have a better chance at getting a ruling in their favor than they might have had in the past. >> again, this comes down to it's complicated and this has never been legally tested before. and they are very well aware. >> vaughn hillyard, we'll see what happens. thank you very much. and what donald trump's lawyers just did in the new york hush money case to try to get his condition overturned. what they're trying to use, plus, what president biden is signaling about vice president harris. even as he says he is going to stay in this race. for kids, summer break is the best. but for parents? well...

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donald trump was supposed to be sentenced yesterday for his conviction in the hush money/election interference case. instead, last night, citing the supreme court, trump's legal team filed a motion asking judge merchan to throw out the conviction altogether. throw out the conviction altogether. joining us now, from manhattan, and legal analyst, catherine christian. what are the chances the case is going to get thrown out? >> well, i think if it makes its way to the supreme court, it might get thrown out.

so when justice roberts accused the dissenters of having a tone of chilling doom, you know, maybe that is just a surprise. and what i mean by it gets to the supreme court, i have confidence that judge merchan will find there were no official acts, meaning that anything that donald trump considered immune from, meaning that they went through the court, constitutional powers or any that he would be presumptively used for, because the acts that the defense are saying are official acts are private acts. hope hicks testimony and, yes, she was a senior adviser and she testified to a conversation she with donald trump when he was president. but the testimony was purely regarding a private act. basically the stormy daniels affair and how donald trump was happy that the story came out now when he was president as

before, when he was running. so, what the defense are calling official acts i think judge merchan will say are not official acts and will be affirmed by the new york appellate court. but, you know, the supreme court may decide that they're not. so that is why i say, you know, the manhattan d.a.'s office may have won the battle but they may lose the war eventually. >> we'll see if it gets that far. thank you very much. coming up next, we've got simone sanders to tell us how she sees everything that is going on with joe biden and what the future might hold for kamala harris. d for kamala harris it's hard to run a business on your own. make it easier on yourself. with shopify, you can have your inventory, payments, and customers in sync across all the places you sell. start your journey with a free trial today. (woman) i'm so excited. i'm finally here in the city.

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three democrats with ties to kamala harris are pointing to comments from the president in the last 24 hours as a clear sign that harris is being boosted as the only alternative

if, if he chooses to step aside. joining us now, former chief spokesperson for vice president harris, and msnbc co-host of the weekend, symone sanders. is harris is the one if he step as side? >> well she is the vice president and the nature of the vice presidency is to be able to do the job, when and if the moment calls for it. i frankly, don't think that we're there yet. or frankly are even on that path. because the president has been resolute and i'm struck by the fact that -- i'm struck by the fact that all of the new kamala harris fans are out there. it is remarkable. it is just remarkable what a little paying attention will do for folks. but i was also struck by how loyal and defensive of the president the vice president has been more so than people that have known him for 30 years and throughout the entire last two

weeks, even in the aftermath of the debate, it was vice president harris that went out forcefully to say, okay, i think her words were that he had a slow start, but finished strong. and then she has continued to do out there on the campaign trail and talk about the ticket and back up the president, which is frankly that is the job. >> why do you think it would even be a question whether she would be the one. if it was someone else in that position, maybe someone of a different race or sex, would there even be a question today. >> i highly doubt there would be a question. i hoo highly doubt we would even be having this conversation. i think it is important that we separate people's opinion from the facts and the facts are that the pledge delegates will make a decision here and all of the pledge delegates say they're still supportive of the president. there is still time between now and the pledge vote, but i do

think that the opinions that people have, i heard mr. carville on earlier saying she shouldn't -- her and her supporters shouldn't feel so entitled and she should earn it and if the president can't serve another four years. they're concerned about who would come after him. and they're concerned about the black woman, this is how i'm reading it, that is his number two and i think if that is what people are saying, they should say that. let's not use coded language. let's be specific. >> i was reading a piece in the atlantic and it talks when kamala harris is at her best and she was at her best doing what she does, she was a prosecutor. and that is why she was so good in the cavanaugh hearings and she's very good at focused topics. and straying from that during the 2020 election when the democratic party had moved very far away from law enforcement, that wasn't a popular background to have, has proven more difficult for her.

do you think if she were to get this role, and i know it is an if, she would make a turn back to her roots as a prosecutor, come at this as a -- a hard on crime democrat? >> well, i don't think kamala harris was ever a hard on crime democrat. i think she was one of the smart on crime democrats. >> that is her book, smart on crime. >> a smart on crime democrat. she was one of the pioneers in that space. but i don't think this is a will she get an opportunity to pros caught the case against donald trump at the top of the ticket. this is still the biden-harris ticket. and as the number two, she is prosecuting the case against trump and i would argue the health care crisis that is facing women across this country quite effectively. and so folks don't need to way for a fantasy land scenario to see that play out and i'm looking forward to see who donald trump picks as his running mate because i will be there with popcorn waiting to

watch that vice presidential debate. >> i don't have much time, but do you think she would be a good president. >> i do. >> thank you very much. tune into the weekend, simone and michael and alicia every weekend. katy tur reports is coming to you live next week for the republican national convention. catch up at 3:00 p.m. eastern. and i'll also be feeling in with andrea mitchell from tuesday, wednesday, thursday and friday of next week. that is going to do it for me today on this friday. "deadline: white house" starts right now. ♪♪ hi there, everyone. we made it to friday. it is 4:00 in the east. it is a claim that is breathtaking and in both its audacity and its danger. from the very same people who are building the infrastructure to help donald trump tear down the very pillars of our democracy, should he prevail in november, aur