♪ mark 1: i'm mark halperin. mark 2: and i'm mark halperin. and "with all due respect" this is a special "freaky friday" edition of "with all due respect." ♪ mark 1: mark and i will be here all night, but this weekend's topics were so big league no single coanchor could possibly do the job. our guest host -- is three, starting with bloomberg's one and only, margaret, who is in the washington bureau. welcome.

margaret: i'm mark halperin. thank you. mark: we're going to talk about a trio of republicans who had to deal one way or another with donald trump, billionaire. first up, paul ryan, the speaker of the house had a capitol hill , press conference yesterday where he said he has no plans now to an indoors -- unendorse donald trump. according to our sources, ryan's carefully chosen words were meant to deliberately keep that door ajar. when asked about trump in an interview with nbc news' chuck todd that will air in full on "meet the press" on ryan told sunday, fellow republicans to run for the hills if they want to. todd: you think it is that members in the house republican conference follow your conscience. speaker ryan: the last thing i tell anybody to do something that is contrary to their conscious -- conscience. of course i would not do. this is a very strange situation.

this is a very unique nominee, but i feel as a responsibility institutionally, as the speaker of the house, i should not be building a chasm in the middle of the party. that would definitely knock us out. chuck todd: it is already divided. paul ryan: i will not tell somebody to go against their conscience. mark: what are the implications of the speaker passwords to chuck todd? margaret: a vote of conscience, as we typically think of it, is a vote on abortion, or a vote on whether to go to war, not supporting the nominee of your own party. what he is doing is freeing everybody. what he is saying is if trump becomes a bridge too far, detach from him and try to save the senate. it has really stunning implications. mark: it opens the door for anybody without any fear that the speaker will be unhappy. i think it opens the door to the speaker doing the same thing, and this movement to try to change the rules of the

convention, the leading alternative of a way to stop the donald trump is to allow delegates to vote their conscience, so paul ryan using those words is like a dog whatevero the current exist of the stop trunk movement. umpsay if you think -- tr movement. to say, if you think voting for trump at the convention or supporting trump in the fall is not in your interest, the party's interest, or the country's interest, be my guest. margaret: that's exactly right and the convention structure is going to follow it. because paul ryan is largely in control of the process, we will see a lot of pieces of this come together in the next couple of days. mark: again, chuck's interview with speaker ryan with lots more donald trump and everything else going on will air sunday on "meet the press." interesting to see how people react to what ryan has said. that brings us to our next big republican who had to deal with trump, at least indirectly, this week, george w. bush. "the new york times" reporting that the former president is doing a round of fundraising for

embattled senate candidates. such as john mccain and kelly ai from new hampshire. we are hearing that trump's pulling freefall is having a deleterious effect on the political health of down ballot candidates including a lot of senate candidates. what are the implications of dubya getting involved in this way? margaret: it is interesting, on a basic level it is great for george w bush because he's been a fair amount of time in exile kind of, partly of his own doing waiting for his legacy and , reputation to settle in a better way than when he left office. this is allowing him to come in and potentially avenge what happened to his brother, jeb bush and solidify a name for , himself if he is able to help these republicans who are in trouble. it does create a situation where he is appealing to the middle, to the old guard, to the center, to the establishment, but if there are enough trump

supporters who are turned off by some of these folks and do not want to vote for them, that could be a problem. but george w. bush now being the cross hearty appeal to independent voters and maybe some democrats is interesting. mark: in some ways, this could help trump, but when he speaks at these events, the symbolism it creates is, here is two republican parties, the bush establishment and the trump. and these candidates clearly are going to be more drawn to bush than to trump. although trump says he is fine with it, this is the kind of thing that shows more division. bush is, along with mitt romney one of the most prominent people , saying they will not show up at the convention in cleveland, and i do not think that is good for the party. but it does get one of their biggest fundraisers back in the field, and it allows -- takes some pressure off of trump to try to raise money off of these senate candidates.

all, given the political situation going on, they are all desperate to raise as much as they can. bush has been off the field for so long he still has a pretty strong network in all of these states where he has -- is trying to help these candidates. margaret: it does further these divisions. mark: one last big republican who got entangled with trump this week is one of those senate incumbents who is embattled. john mccain yesterday told reporters that president obama is "directly responsible" for the mass shooting in orlando because of policies that allow the rise of the islamic state. when that remark was compared by some to the rhetoric of trump from his campaign, mccain walked it back. he put out a statement that said in part "i did not mean to imply , that the president was personally responsible. i was referring to president obama's national security decisions, not the president himself." that walk back to not stop the story from reverberating in arizona. here is what the senator woke up to this morning on local tv.

>> senator john mccain is clarifying comments he made about the orlando mass shooting blaming president obama. ,>> 4:32 this morning senator , john mccain walking that comments he made about the president and the orlando terror attack. >> senator john mccain backtracking on a bold statement -- >> backpedaling on old made.ents he >> senator kirkpatrick saying he saw john mccain across a dangerous line in comments that undermine our commander-in-chief on national security issues. mark: what lessons can we learn about the current and future state of the party from john mccain's situation here? margaret: we have seen this before to some extent. there are sometimes when john mccain is his worst enemy, and i will say this would be one of those times. it has been awful to watch the last several weeks with the position he feels he has been forced into. the president was hoping he

would accompany him on his asia trip to vietnam and he could not , do that. now this, this walked back, and awkward walk back. john mccain, the 2008 nominee for his party, is now really in a lot of trouble. donald trump has got him in a really uncomfortable position because he disagrees just instinctively with so much of what trump is doing, and he cannot help himself from getting halfway there sometimes. trump is dragging him down with that part of the vote that he really needs. mark: there's no doubt there are a lot of voters john mccain needs to vote for him who like trump. at the same time, john mccain says this kind of stuff all the time. for mccain and a lot of others not only do they need to comment , on what trump says, but the press and democrats are on high alert for controversial statements. saying things that are like what donald trump says in this case , pretty specifically close to what trump says, and that means they are going to lose some news cycles because when they make mistakes, they have to figure

out if you walk back or apologize. or like donald trump does, bull through it. mccain will not be the last one who has to deal with that dynamic. margaret: backpedaling is not the headline you want. mark: mccain and donald trump have a rough history and mccain cannot like the headline he sees in front of him. trump clearly not getting any lifelines from the republicans we just talked about. ryan, bush, 43 or mccain. at this point, is there anybody out there in the republican party who, if they decided they to help stop this donald trump slide, besides trump himself and the people working for him is there anybody who can , turn the narrative around? margaret: the key is what you just said -- if they wanted to. of course there are. there are women in the republic party. there are hispanics in the there are party hispanic women in the republican party and the leadership of the , party. but the problem is every time they sort of make their peace with getting comfortable with what he does, he will come out

and do something like the judge, or what we have seen previously following the mass shooting, i think governors from key states, potentially, especially female governors are probably his best , bet at this point. mark: there isn't he's on bloomberg.com about donald trump's appeal to governors, trying to get support, thinking that they can trump in some way, pun intended, members of congress. there was a push for people to say stop criticizing trump. stop dividing. we need the party together. this is our nominee. that movement, as best i can tell, is dead. no one wants to be assertively for donald trump with the preibusn of previous -- . the next thing that will happen is they will feel a need to repudiate and they will not be in a position to be scolding other republicans for not being full throated in their support. margaret: an absolute freefall over the last week and a half or so.

it is not a good situation. he is the only person who can save him from himself. mark: we agree it is unlikely, but if trump could tap any one person in the party on the shoulder and say, you need to come out from a full throated who do you think would be the , most helpful, leaving aside the fact that a lot of people do not want to do it? margaret: right, because paul ryan. some of the party establishment, or again perhaps female , governors. i'm stumped. newt gingrich, jeff sessions, you keep hearing these names, how does that reach across the bridge, reach women, reach independent voters? mark: very tough situation. thanks very much. great to see you. when we come back, we bring in another guest host and talk more trump, trump, trump. we look at though week that was through our patented prism of dissension, data and donors. after this word from our sponsors. ♪

♪ mark: two days ago, we used the famous three d's to catalog donald trump's travail -- dissension, data, and donors. within the republican ranks, because it is friday, we will check in on those same katieions with nbc news's couric, who is here to lend a hand in this block. nbc and politico both reported there is tension now between the republican national committee and the trump campaign. after those reports, the chairman of the party, sent out this tweet, quote reports of discard -- discord are pure fiction. events lined up all of her taxes all the way to november, even including the exclamation point.

he announced that haley barbour will head up the convention organization committee next month, and the commission woman polls suggest he is in a fight with clinton, will chair the rules committee. katie, as you understand it, what is the state of play between the republican party and the trump campaign? is there dissension above the norm or at the norm? katie: that rhince tweet was very interesting. didn't it sound just like donald trump? with the cadence and everything. that was certainly a public showing of support from the chairman to his nominee, but we had six different sources that described what has been interior -- two tier rating trust between the sides and some tensions that have been building, each one thinking that the other is only out for themselves.

the rnc, we have talked about this so many times, mark, encouraging and trying to get all trump and his team to hire more people, that not happening. they still do not have a communication team. usually the campaign will at least match the rnc, if not take the lead when it comes to staffing up in battleground states, but donald trump and his team though, essentially just -- tog on the rnc to bolt bolster them, instead of finding a way to work together and build an effective plan. the donald trump campaign for its part, we should say, denies this report though -- they say they have a great relationship with the rnc. mark: i think you are going to see increased tension. with game six over in the finals last night, the republicans take over the building, but a lot of decisions to be made. you always see that tension between the national party and a nominee's team, about planning the convention. but as i understand it, there are a lot of decisions to be made, and the friction over those things is growing pretty high as well. some people at the rnc want

everything to be friendly, but as you just said, not everybody thinks it is so friendly right now. let's go to our next d, data. national polling continues to suggest donald trump is in some trouble. many commentators are pointing out the fact that the presumptive republican nominee, formally the brag or and chief r in chiefy the bragge when it came to his pole standing, has now taken to denouncing the polls, as he did last night in dallas. how big a problem is it for trump that he can no longer go to his rallies and talk about how he is winning? katy: we will have to see. he did say in atlanta the other night -- he talked about these phony polls, which was the day a number of really bad polls came out against him. yesterday, so maggie haberman, he admitted for, i think the first time that he is down in , the polls, so it is an uncharacteristic self-awareness from the candidate, which does seem to point to him actually realizing that something needs to be done.

i think that's why we sought -- psalm may be a more moderate his speech from him in dallas last night. moderate speech from him in dallas last night. but this is an issue, and the campaign knows it is an issue, but donald trump seems to be saying that he does not believe he is going to be doing poorly when it comes to, you know, august, september. remember, they feel like they are the underdogs, regardless of how they did in the primary. mark: the public polling on the horse race gets this kind of attention, but two different sets of data continue to be problematic for republicans who are worried about trump at the top of the ticket. one is his unfavorably rating. not just the overall unfavorably that the washington post had, but with some really important groups. this is an election that will not be won solely on the backs of white men. the other thing is the private data, all of these people are going into the field and finding that trump is hurting them. while the donald trump campaign has other things to focus on it

, is focusing the mind of mitch mcconnell, of paul ryan, and of their donors and of their political advisers who are saying, is this really going to be our fate, to deal with this problem? can trump turn it around? maybe. a are increasingly pessimistic that he can, and if he does not, that they can survive trump having the kind of numbers that he has now, if those carry into the fall, with clinton advertising against him, just beginning. finally, the donor class. trump is in texas continuing on a fund-raising to her. -- tour. he is in houston capping off a week of fundraisers if he went to georgia, north carolina, and texas, and next week he will be here in gotham city with some big names like private equity investor stephen feinberg and real estate magnate peter calico. trump seems to be doing a lot of fundraising. has he solved his donor problem? katy: he has not yet. but we are told last night from a few sources that he was able to raise about $6 million, which is a good haul for one night in dallas.

i believe last time, around the time when mitt romney was down there he only raised about $3.4 , million. let's be realistic. he is so far behind where mitt romney was back in 2012, so far behind where hillary clinton was. think about it this way mitt , romney was raising i think $100 million a month at one point for this election. hillary clinton already raising tons of money right now. the campaign -- donald trump's campaign has a steep hill to climb. what they do have on their side is a change in the rules. now individual donors can get about three times as much as -- jim three times as much as they were able to give in $97,000 as opposed to $32,000. 2012. he only needs to rely on a smaller amount of people to give a larger amount of money. mark: that rule change will clearly help with hard dollars. the two things that astounds me with another week going by, is there are other areas where it the donald trump could be raising big money where i do not see any indication that he is. they still have not designated a super pac that they consider to ir goto and the other is

, small dollars. they are going to have to do it, and if they do not, they will be leaving a lot of money on the table. the other is small dollars. bernie sanders showed you could raise a ton of money on the internet just by going on tv and asking. trump has grassroots support. people write letters. people go on social media and support him. why they are not out there raising big money and bragging about it, so money begets money is beyond me because that is an , area, as you suggested, right on message where they could raise a lot more. katy: the problem is the idea he will go out and bless a super pac goes counter to everything he said during the primary. i also think it is counter to donald trump as a businessman. he does not like to go out and ask for money in that way, but when it comes to smaller donors, i think you are absolutely right. they relied on them in the primaries. why are they not touting how much money they are making? it makes you wonder. are they making that much?

mark: thank you very much. next, we will bring in our last mystery guest host to talk about what bernie sanders said last night and, more importantly, what he has achieved already. after a commercial break. ♪

♪ mark last night, bernie sanders : made a live online video address to supporters. he did not drop out of the race officially or endorse hillary clinton and he did not make his , posture towards the convention in philadelphia next month much clearer than it has been. bernie sanders: the major political task that together we face in the next five months is to make certain that donald trump is defeated and defeated badly. i personally intend to begin my

role in that process in a very short amount of time. but defeating donald trump cannot be our only goal. we must continue our grassroots effort to create the america that we know we can become, and we must take that energy into the democratic national convention on july 25 in philadelphia, where we will have more than 1900 delegates. mark: msnbc's political correspondent casey hunt, who covers the clinton campaign is joining us. he has a legacy, regardless of what he ends up doing in philadelphia. let's talk first about policy. what kind of impact do you think he has had and is having? >> starting with a place i think bernie sanders would want to

start, he spent a lot of this race complaining that we did not focus enough on. he clearly demonstrated there is an appetite in the country that millions of people wanted to come out and support a lot of these reforms that he has been pushing forward on economic policy. for example, minimum wage, health care, single-payer health care for all. free college tuition. of course, these are ideas that generated ridicule from people inside the clinton campaign who said these are all height dreams -- pipe dreams. he says he does not know how to pay for it, but clearly, people were responding. the second thing i think that was a huge part of his speech and very motivating for a lot of , these young supporters was campaign-finance reform and the of -- the ability of people to buy into his campaign in small amounts. he was arguing that was a fundamental policy change that in his view could really reshape basically the entire political system as it currently exists. mark: what about the political

system? kasie: the top line is actually on this issue of finance reform. it is a policy priority that could be addressed with legislation. he certainly wants to do that, but he proved by the campaign that he ran that it is possible to mount a presidential campaign. he outraised hillary clinton, without having big donors. having covered him for months, as you know, covering fundraisers is a big part typically of being out on the road with a candidate, and we never went to fundraisers hardly with bernie sanders. i think that was a significant political change. mark: thank you very much. we will be right back. ♪ get ready for the rio olympic games

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x1 will change the way you experience nbcuniversal's coverage of the rio olympic games. call or go online today to switch to x1. mark: our next guest is a republican strategist and mitt romney's 2012 campaign manager.

he has done work for that anti-trump act. katie packard joins us from washington. great to see you. as you know, there's a fair amount of chatter about some delegates at the convention trying to overcome the obstacles to getting rules changes to keep donald trump from being the nominee. from a rules perspective, not a pr perspective, what is your sense of how possible that is? katie: i think it is really possible because the rules that apply to this convention are actually made at this convention. everything that happens up until then is kind of a guideline more than anything. there is a real possibility, according to a lot of experts that have really paid close attention to this, that there really is no such thing as bound delegates, that once the delegates get there, they can vote to change the rules and determine if they want people to

be bound by what happened in their home states or not. i do think this is a process that will have to originate with delegates and not with washington. mark: the republican national committee announced that the national committeewoman from utah will head the rules committee and haley barbour will play a role at the convention managing the floor to some extent when paul ryan is not doing it. based on your knowledge, or tea leaf reading, what do you think of those decisions? katie: both are people that have been around for a long time, know the process, know what goes on at a convention, and i do think there has been concern that a lot of the folks trump is involving are people that have not been engaged in any real way in such a long time that they really did need to have some expertise and experience that is a little more current. both of those folks are people that have been involved the last several conventions in some way,

so i think it does bring, you know, some sort of bolster with the rnc needs to keep control of the convention. mark: i take your point that this is more likely to be effective if it is organic and grassroots from the delegates, but most republicans that i talked to say the move will not happen unless mitch mcconnell and paul ryan get behind it. whether you agree with that or not, if mitch mcconnell calls you up and says, "make your best case for why i should risk going against the will of the voters and put my influence behind trying to change the rules and go against trump," what is your pitch? katie: i do think this is something that would have to be organic. maybe it would have the blessing of people like mitch mcconnell and paul ryan, but i do think it would be a bad thing for them to in any way appear as though they are leading this charge. donald trump did win these primaries, but a lot has

happened since then. usually i love being right. this is one case where i really take no pleasure in being right, but this is exactly what we predicted in the spring what would happen that donald trump , would be a disaster for our party. he would not change. he is sort of johnny one note, only knows how to be one way, and it is proving to be disastrous for our party. if he has another couple of weeks like the last couple of weeks, the delegates and the leaders of the party are going to really start to talk in earnest about what we do come cleveland. mark: it was not that long ago hillary clinton was having some bad weeks. michael dukakis was up 17 points in the summer of 1988. are you ruling out the possibility that trump could start performing better and win this? katie: the difference between donald trump and any of these other candidates is other candidates have proven to be willing to listen to sound advice and counsel.

when they have been down, they have sort of revamped their strategy and decided to go a different way. donald trump is 70 years old. i do not think he is going to wholesale change his personality, and he only knows how to campaign to a certain segment of the population and those are not the voters we need to get over the top. he clearly has supporters locked in. they are not going to go anywhere, but you have seen the very high disapproval ratings that he has. 55% of american voters this week said that they would never vote for trump. we have never seen anything like this. this is catastrophic, and if something does not change, it is going to be really devastating. mark: who are the most likely vice presidential nominees at this point? katie: that is a really tough thing. my money is on donald trump continuing to be the nominee,

even though it will be a very tough thing for our party, but i think several of the candidates that ran this year would be plausible options. certainly someone like john kasich, ted cruz, marco rubio -- these are all people that sort finished strong, second, third, fourth places. any of these candidates i think would be stronger in a general election, and had they won, i would be happy to rally around any of the other candidates, but donald trump is sort of a unique bird. we have a very weak opposition in hillary clinton, the most vulnerable democratic candidate probably in several decades, and we somehow managed to nominate the one guy that could underperform her, so any of those candidates would be stronger. mark: the only way somebody is the nominee besides trump is with a fair amount of chaos and cleveland. the conversations i've had today, people talk about paul ryan, they talk about a

ryan/rubio ticket or a case of -- kasich/rubio ticket. voters would go crazy. is there a way for that scenario to play out in the convention is not just a huge mess and bad for the party? >> i think of something like that were to happen of course , the convention would be chaotic. the question is -- do the delegates in cleveland decide that they are willing to go down with the ship or are they going to stand up and try to prevent that? like i said, i do not think today that is likely to happen. i do think if there is a couple more weeks like this last week, i do think the environment could be created where people say enough is enough. the bottom line is he is better than hillary is not a compelling message for a general election, and i think people are beginning to realize that that is the only thing that they can say that in any way resembles, you know, a reason -- a compelling reason for republicans to support trump.

people are starting to get very frustrated with this. mark: i know you have thought long and hard at various stages about what the outcome will be. given that you are pretty confident trump will be the nominee, how would you like things to play out that would be the best interest of the party in the country? katie: i do think that candidates that allow some distance between them and trump are the smart candidates come fall. candidates that embrace him too closely are embracing a ticking time bomb, and in terms of doing what we can to hold onto the senate with very, very strong candidates, providing some level of arm's-length distance so that they are not responsible for everything he says and we try to hold onto these down ballot seats, that may be the best we can hope for. mark: thanks very much. appreciate it.

up next, more on the republicans running down ballot from trump. if you're listening in washington, d.c., you can listen to this program on the radio any time at bloomberg 99.1 fm. we will be right back. ♪ mark: coming to us now from the

city of the diamondbacks, phoenix, arizona, the national political reporter for "the arizona republic," who covers john mccain closely, dan, what is your take on how john mccain has behaved in the last 24 hours, and how much of that is in the shadow of donald and his

reelection. dan: a big part of the arizona republican party views him as too liberal. on the one hand, he likes to look tough against president obama. i have noticed in past years one of the ways he does that is to take him on hard on national security and foreign-policy issues, and that is what he was doing here, and i think he went too far. i think he did miss speak a little bit. intentionallyhe intended to blame president obama for orlando. heard him make variations on that same argument many times in the past, that he blames obama's policies in iraq for the rise of isis. mark: i agree with you that he says stuff like that all the time, but in this case, he felt compelled to take it back. let me bring in our colleague, a

longtime mccain watcher. you have heard him say plenty of stuff about obama. why is the context different here? karl: to me, people are plenty on edge in washington over this trump thing. i think he came to a quick realization he needed to take that back. john mccain is in a tough race and will need democrats to win. he cannot rely on democrats if he is going to go trashing the president like that, so i think that was part of his calculation, and he just knew he had gone too far. he has a sense of self, and he likes to say these things and be provocative, but he also knows sometimes you have to get out of it. mark: set the stage for this general election race. how tough a contest does he have against a congresswoman who has been very aggressive in criticizing mccain all across the board, including for these latest comments? dan: he has a very formidable opponent this year in kirkpatrick, and i think the

atmosphere and the battlefield is terrible for mccain with trump at the top of the ticket. we have a late republican primary. our primary is not until august 30, so he has to watch what he says about trump until at least he gets through the primary, and then i suspect you will see mccain start to put a lot of distance between himself and trump as he proceeds on this general election, but it is a frustrating position for him. he is kind of stuck in the middle. he kind of lucked out a little in this primary. there were a couple of republican conservative congressman that groups like freedom works and the public growth are trying to push into the race, and they decided not to do so. he does have some primary opponents, but the general consensus is he probably can make it through the primary ok. that would have been a different story had an incumbent house member run against him.

he is kind of biding his time hoping to get through this next couple of months. mark: in the ring of potentially vulnerable republican senate seats, that arizona seat is one. the missouri seat is one. north carolina. then there is florida where every indication i have and you do, too, that senator rubio is going to run -- i heard that senator rubio is thinking about announce and denounce. how does he sequence that, that he wants to not run, having embraced trump the way he did, that he needs at some point to make it clear that he is not with trump in the early phases of candidacy -- what do you think of that? carl: it is going to be really tricky for senator rubio if he does decide to do this. he will have a tough race. in some ways, this might be good for senator mccain because democrats are going to pour a

ton of money into florida. i talked to harry reid this week, he personally told me he is not happy, we might have to spend a lot of money in florida. that might shift some of the resources they would use against mccain, but i think senator rubio is going to have a tough time. one thing i wanted to say about senator mccain on his comments -- they fed this narrative that democrats are trying to create. this is not the same old john mccain you used to know, the maverick, the straight talk express. mccain has changed. those kinds of comments and his position on garland really helping the democrats. a lot of senate races in this cycle to take a look at. mark: donald has a lot of support in arizona obviously, , immigration is a hot button issue in the state of arizona. as it has been perceived in the last couple of weeks that he is in trouble and national numbers are bad, what are arizona republicans saying about the trump candidacy?

carl: i think they are pretty uneasy about trump at the top of the ticket. i think gradually, they are starting to come around. the governor is coming to town on saturday coinciding with a deadly heat wave that is coming to town. i think they are coming around and the argument they are making is that he is not a great conservative by any means, but he is preferable to hillary clinton. there are some exceptions like senator jeff flake who have not endorsed him. mark: of all the washington republicans with standing here, who do you think today is both most uneasy about trump and actively strategizing about what to do about it? carl: i think mitch mcconnell obviously is playing this in a pretty interesting way. he says he is supporting the

nominee, but he also bashes trump. i think he is a guy to watch. he is watching this through the prism of the supreme court vacancies and his own majority. right now he thinks it is in his interests to kind of play at the way he is and be out there saying, "i'm ok with trump." as soon as he decides it's not in his interest, he is going to not be ok with trump and cut his incumbents lose. i think he is watching. paul ryan is having a heck of a time with this. him, he is for him , he is kind of for him. he has a different set of imperatives than mcconnell does, but i've got my eye on mitch mcconnell. mark: i do, too. if the trend keeps going on these senate races the way it is, i think mcconnell is going to have to come up with a new strategy. it may not mean try to stop trump at the convention, but it does mean come up with a new

strategy of how his incumbents talk about trump. carl: he was quoted earlier this year saying they would drop him like a hot rock, and i know they would. he is not going to sit by and easily lose the majority. i think they have real problems hanging onto their majority, but he will make a move if he has to. mark: dan, you are a great student of john mccain body language. do you think he is scared about losing this race or just being cautious? dan: i think he is legitimately worried, but you are right, he takes every race seriously, and always runs like he could lose. that may wind up saving mccain in the end, the fact that he took this serious from the start. mark: what kind of candidate skills does congresswoman kirkpatrick have? dan: she is not very well-known statewide. she represents a very rural

arizona district, several indian communities in her district, so she has to get herself known a little more in maricopa county where most of the voters are, but she is a three-term house member. she was defeated in 2010 and has been reelected two more times since then. she supported the affordable care act which is a mccain , issue. that is what mccain is after her on and she is after him on building the fence. i talked to senator flake about this recently, and he thinks that mccain has a big enough brand on his own to overcome this. but everyone knows this is going to be john mccain's toughest race. some people think arizona is in play. that will not be good for him. he is going to have to keep his composure, though, i think, and he recognizes that. mark: easier said than done when we are talking about john mccain.

up next, a debate that has been raging for months. we will parse out donald trump's words syllable by syllable when we come back. ♪ mark: finally tonight, an issue

dividing america in a bigly way -- or is it a big league way? if you don't know what i'm talking about, here's how to get caught up -- trump: someday, i believe that will be proven out bigly. >> twitter says lol. then twitter says slowdown. i can never tell if he is saying "bigly" or "big league."

>> i would be helping out israel bigly. >> you hit me, i'll hit you back bigly. >> people on tv also disagree. the world may never know. mark: it is true we may never know, but let's turn now to our bigly big-league decision desk. they have been up all night into today, trying to get to the bottom of this. what are you finding? >> the overwhelming evidence supports the bigly conclusion. one word. trump has not said big league. you would hear the g at the end of that with a case. take a listen. trump: absolutely, there is an assault on christianity, and we

are going to reverse that trend bigly. >> i did not hear a g at the end at all. mark: i know you think it is big-league. >> clearly, big league. trump has a well-known habit of dropping his g's. >> she wants to raise your taxes folks, big-league. mark: what is the campaign saying on the record about this? >> saying it is big league. >> you're going to take her word for it? she says the rnc has a great relationship the trump campaign. mark: the debate continues. we'll stay on it and bring you the latest throughout the program. we will be right back. ♪ mark: thanks to our trio of

cohosts today. check out bloombergpolitics.com for a story on companies opting out of the republican convention this having an effect on , democrats as well. coming up, talking about the intersection of terrorism and social media -- a timely topic, as they say. thanks for watching. we will be back here next week, same bat time, same bat channel. until monday, sayonara. ♪ ♪

announcer: gunpowder, it is cai guo-qiang's calling card. >> he has a larger-than-life presence he cut his art takes a larger than life size. announcer: at the beijing olympics, having