this sunday, president trump steps up his attack on the russia investigation. former deputy fbi director andrew mccabe is fired. the president tweeting, a great day for the hard-working men and women of the fbi. mccabe responds that the president seeks, not just to slander me personally, but to taint the fbi, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals. >> candidly, it looks like retribution and a bit vindictive. >> was mccabe fired because he may have lied under oath or because the president wants to undermine the russia investigation? plus, the president's lawyer says it's time to end special counsel robert mueller's investigation. are we seeing a change in white house tactics?

from cooperation to confrontation. my guest this morning, republican senator marco rubio of florida, democratic senator sherrod brown of ohio, and representative mike conaway of the house intelligence committee. also, the democrats' big win in pennsylvania. >> it took a little longer than we thought, but we did it. >> conor lamb wins a district president trump swept in 2016. >> you know, that's a wake-up call. >> was this a rare red district win for the democrats or a sign of a coming blue wave? we have the latest numbers from our new nbc news "wall street journal" poll. joining me for insight and analysis are amy walter, national editor for the cook political report, jonah goldberg, senior editor for national review, eliana johnson, national political reporter for politico, and the anchor of nbc nightly news on saturdays and telemun doe, jose diaz-balart. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." >> announcer: from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history, this

is "meet the press" with chuck todd. good sunday morning to, quote, the great character penny lane in the movie "almost famous," though without the jazz hands. it's all happening. attorney general jeff sessions fires andrew mccabe, who's been a target of president trump for months. mccabe, along with fbi director james comey, are the two people best positioned to know whether the president obstructed justice in the russia investigation. president trump's attorney john dowd says he wants to see special counsel robert mueller's probe shutdown. president trump formally joins his legal team's response to the porn actress stormy daniels, claiming in court papers she's violated a confidentiality agreement, but by doing so, the president effectively admits he was a party to paying off miss daniels to keep her quiet. against this flurry of activity over the last two day, and that doesn't even include tuesday's

firing of the secretary of state rex tillerson on twitter, we have a brand new "wall street journal" poll with mixed news. on the one hand, the president's numbers are up a notch. 43% approve of his performance, 53% disapprove. a four-point increase since we tested in january. it's the best mr. trump has done in our poll since september. at the same time, though, the republican party's numbers have slipped since january by a margin of ten points, 50 to 40, voters say they would prefer to see democrats control congress. but we begin with the white house's escalating assault on the russia probe. with president trump tweeting last night, the mueller probe should never have been started, adding it was based on fraudulent activities, he claims, and again he called it a witch hunt. the president is making his most aggressive moves yet to shut down the russia probe. a dramatic shift in his legal strategy. on saturday, mr. trump's

attorney john dowd called on deputy attorney general rod rosenstein to, quote, bring an end to the alleged russia collusion investigation manufactured by mccabe's boss james comey. the statements from the president and dowd are the clearest sign yet that the special counsel's job may be in danger after months of dropping hints. >> i'd like to see it end. look, the whole russia thing was an excuse. there's absolutely no collusion. that has been proven. >> the campaign against mueller and the justice department has been cheered on by mr. trump's defenders in the conservative media. >> if rod rosenstein had his way, we wouldn't know about any of these scandals. people now need to be held accountable. >> democrats are hitting back. on saturday, the democratic leader of the senate's russia investigation, mark warner, tweeted, every member of congress, republican and democrat, needs to speak up in defense of the special counsel, now. >> i just think this is outrageous. the department of justice, the fbi should be independent. >> another sign the

administration is trying to delegitimize the russia investigation, the 11th hour firing of former deputy fbi director andrew mccabe on friday night. just 26 hours before his formal retirement following a recommendation from the fbi. mccabe has been a target of the president for months. >> he got from 500,000 to 700,000, whatever it was. got that money for the wife. >> did you ask who he voted for? >> he has had some troubling behavior and by most accounts a bad actor. >> he's also a key witness in the russia probe. >> has there been any curtailment of the fbi's activities in this important investigation since director comey was fired? >> ma'am, we don't curtail our activities. >> on friday, mr. trump called mccabe's firing a great day, tweeting, sanctimonious james

comey was his boss. he knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the fbi. mr. mccabe is accused in an inspector general's report, which is not yet public, of not being forthcoming under oath about his decision to let fbi insiders talk to a reporter during the presidential campaign about the investigation of the clinton foundation. in a statement, mccabe dismissed the charges, quote, i am being singled out and treated this way because of the role i played, the actions i took, and the events i witnessed in the aftermath of the firing of james comey. joining me now from miami is republican senator marco rubio of florida. senator rubio, welcome back to "meet the press." >> good morning. >> i know it's been an extraordinarily busy time for you both locally and nationally. i want to try to get to a number of things with you. but let me start with andrew mccabe's firing. was he treated fairly? >> i don't like the way it happened. he should have been allowed to finish through the weekend. that said, look, there's an

inspector general report that's due and work that's being done. after he had retired, if that report would have indicated wrongdoing or something that was actionable, there are things that could have been done after the fact. 48 hours to go before retirement, i would have certainly done it differently, given the fact there's still this report out there that hasn't come in. >> are you concern about damage this does to the fbi, to the office of professional responsibility, who apparently made this recommendation, and the justice department itself? >> yeah, i just don't like this whole back and forth between the people outside the fbi and in it. these agencies, the fbi, the cia, all these agencies are made up of thousands of people who are out there working every day. you know, the field offices around the country, many of whom are far removed from any of this drama in washington. they're just out there doing their work every single day. i would hate to demoralize the work force and hate to discourage new people from coming into that. i don't like the whole tone. i don't like the fact they're in the news every day. i think both sides of this debate have done this from time to time.

there was certainly a lot of criticism of comey from democrats when they didn't like how he handled the hillary probe. so they're not above reproach. there are ways to hold them accountable, but i think we need to be careful about taking these important entities and smearing everybody in them with a broad stroke. >> you're on the senate intelligence committee. andrew mccabe says he believes he was fired because of the role he played and the actions he took and the events he witnessed in the aftermath of james comey's firing. this apparently is based on testimony he gave to the house intelligence committee. do you believe the senate intel committee should call mccabe back to testify? >> potentially. but ultimately, people have to understand our probe is different from the special counsel. our probe is about election security, about the methods, about breakdowns in our intelligence system if they happen in terms of identifying russian interference. we're not a criminal justice probe. we're not prosecutors. we are looking at what happened, how russia did it, and what we can do in the future to prevent that sort of interference in our election.

so that's what we're focused on. to the extent he has something to contribute towards that, we should talk to him again. the other stuff about collusion and the like, in the process of looking at everything, you may or may not run into something about that, but that's the special counsel's focus. >> the president tweeted about the special counsel late last night. he said this, the mueller probe should never have been started and there was no collusion and no crime, it was based on fraudulent activities and a fake dossier paid for by crooked hillary and the dnc and improperly used in fisa court for surveillance of my campaign, witch hunt. is there anything about that tweet you think is factually correct? >> i would say this about the special counsel. the special counsel is not simply looking at collusion. they're looking at the entire thing and what happened with regards to russian interference and whether there was any u.s. laws broken in the process of russian interference in the elections. that's what they're looking at. it's not a collusion probe. it's much broader than that. now, obviously once you open that up and start looking, you can go in one direction or another. you go where the evidence takes you. that's what i support.

i support going wherever the evidence and wherever the facts take us. and again, that's why leaks are bad. that's why all this other speculation out there is bad. i remain confident that the special counsel is going to conduct a probe that is fair and thorough and is going to arrive at the truth and is not going to go down rabbit holes that are not places that we need to be going. >> i want to ask you about this news about cambridge and that facebook may have known in the summer of '16 that 50 million, sort of the profiles of 50 million facebook users were somehow in the hands of a political consulting firm, really without their knowledge. they have testified before your committee. have they been forthcoming to you? do you think facebook has told you the extent of everything that was done with their users? >> no, i don't. and i think we've learned that the hard way. every time we've spoken to them, it's kind of rolled out as more coming out. these companies have grown very

fast within the span of less than ten years. they've gone from being a novel idea to a major corporation. i'm not sure if the sort of institutional knowledge about the responsibilities, both legal and ethical, that come with that have kept pace with their growth. their growth has been a lot faster than perhaps their ability to mature institutionally from within on some of these challenges they're facing. another part about it is sometimes these companies grow so fast and get so much good press, they get up high on themselves, that they start to think they're perhaps above the rules that apply to everybody else. so we'll learn more about this in the days to come. but yeah, i'm disturbed by that. i'm disturbed by the fact facebook has created filters to help the chinese government censor and are begging to get back into china. >> by the way, we're going to see the re-election, probably put that in quote, of vladimir putin today in russia. we found out what he did in britain. the brits, the germans, we're standing behind them, but the

president himself hasn't been as confrontational himself as many. there's proportionate responses to putin, but he doesn't even respond well to that. what should be done to get putin to stop doing what he's been doing? >> well, ultimately, when it comes to the uk incident, i mean, that's an attack on an ally and a nato nation. i'm not saying that the response should be a military response, but i most certainly think it should be a comprehensive and coordinated response. our allies, if we truly have an alliance with the uk that involves other countries like germany and france, all the members of nato, all of these nations should be coming together with a collective response, whether it's additional sanctions or additional diplomatic actions, combined with some other perhaps nato build-ups and protective status increments. all of these things should be done in conjunction and together. there's got to be a collective response to this. vladimir putin is a cost-benefit analyzer. he's going to weigh the cost and the benefits of the action he took, feint benefits outweigh the cost, he'll do it again.

he could do it again here inside the united states. >> all right. i finally want to ask you about the tragedy down at fiu, a school that's very important to you. frankly, my hometown. it's been a tremendous source of pride for south florida. but i want to ask you a question that an anguished uncle of a victim is asking this morning. why they had to build this monstrosity in the first place to get children across the street, then they decided to stress test this bridge while traffic was running underneath it. obviously there's a lot of investigating to do. but that -- frankly, that's the first question i think a lot of people have. why were they testing this the way they did it? >> well, i don't think it's clear that there was testing going on. i think what we do know is that there was work ongoing. there's these rods that go inside, like cables, and they were being tightened. they call it, you know, post-tension application. and it is during that work that the bridge collapsed, beginning on the north end.

obviously, whether the work was the cause of it or not remains to be seen. i think clearly just from a layman's perspective, the fact they were working on it actively at the time of its collapse leads you to believe it could have. the ntsb is on site. they've already taken samples. they're going to take entire chunks of that bridge for testing. we're going to know why this failed and primarily for the purposes of making sure it never happens again. but it's going to take a while. these are not quick investigations. but we will know the truth, and we will know it in its entirety. >> all right. senator rubio, i know it's been a tough week for you down in south florida. thanks for coming on and sharing your views, sir. >> thank you. and joining me now is the republican who has been in charge of the house version of the russia investigation for the intel committee, congressman mike conaway of texas. congressman, welcome to "meet the press." >> thank you. my first sundays morning ever. i should be at church and sunday school, but i'm here instead. >> i appreciate that. my apologies to your pastor. let me start with something andrew mccabe said following his firing because it involves the

committee that you're a part of. he said, the release of this report, referring to the inspector general report on his conduct, was accelerated only after my testimony to the house intelligence committee revealed that i would corroborate former director comey's accounts of his discussions with the president. can you tell us if that sentence, if it's true that's what mccabe did in front of your committee? >> i don't know how the inspector general got access to that testimony in front of our committee. if he did, i'm unaware of it. but i don't know how the inspector general would have gotten that unless he got it from mccabe. in terms of his testimony in front of us, i don't know how the ig would have gotten that. >> so there's no way transcripts of andrew mccabe's testimony are going to end up in the hands of, say, the white house? >> no, they're not supposed to. >> they're not supposed to under any circumstance? >> we could vote to have that happen, but that was committee sensitive information that should have stayed within the committee.

if the inspector general got permission to do it, he didn't ask me to do it and had to have gone a different route. >> how would you characterize mccabe's testimony to you? >> you know, i had previous -- some experience with andrew mccabe. at the time he was giving it, you're listening to it, trying to analyze for voracity and those kinds of things. but he's a guy that's not used to being questioned like that. he's the guy that's usually questioning someone else. he was uncomfortable, but i thought he was -- tried to tell us -- >> you thought he was forthcoming? >> to the extent that we knew it. but if that proves to be incorrect, then that was a bad judgment on my part. nothing he said, we said, well, mr. mccabe, that's clearly wrong. we didn't have any kind of confrontation like that. >> do you understand why people people think he's being treated unfairly? >> i don't have access to the personnel records the fbi does to see that. >> the president of the united states targeted him for over a year. that created this cloud over

him. >> yeah, but i don't know what he did to -- all the facts will come out. it's pretty unfair of us to speculate at this point. >> but it's an appropriate use of the bully pulpit? was it fair for the president to single him out like that? >> if he did his job, if he told the truth, then he wouldn't have been -- you know, we'll see. again, we don't have access to actually what he did or didn't do. we've got both competing narratives going on out there. the facts will support one or the other. >> did he back up comey east contention that he was fired because of the russia probe? >> when? >> during his testimony to you, mr. mccabe. >> he wasn't fired when he testified to us. >> no, did he back up mr. comey's contention. mr. comey said the reason he was fired, he testified he thought it had to do with the russia probe. did andrew mccabe back up james comey's testimony? >> it's been a while since i sat through that testimony. i haven't read it recently. we were focused not so much on

that, as that 2350efeeds into t collusion issue. our committee was not charged with the collusion idea. we weren't focused on that idea. >> all right. you're now saying your committee was not focused on the collusion idea. you said on monday in a conference call at the end of the day, we believe that the broader evidence available to us was that they, referring to the russians, favored her, hillary clinton, over him, donald trump. and the main issue was to sow discord. the next day you reversed that statement saying, no, no, no, they were trying to help donald trump. definitively, what is your conclusion on this? >> well, everybody gets to make up their own mind. what we did with the ica, which is what drove those comment, and i got us off on the wrong track, quite frankly, we wanted to look at the analytical integrity throughout that process of the ica. we agree with most of it. we'll have a second report on that effort, but the idea that

putin wanted to help trump, that came out of the ica. we don't believe that was supported by the standard trade craft of analytics. each of us gets to make up our own mind. only putin knows for sure what he was doing during that time frame. he might have changed his ideas across that, you know, six-year -- >> but you just said your job wasn't to figure out if there was collusion in the committee. >> that's right. >> okay. then why is devin nunes claiming, well, there's no evidence of collusion if you didn't even investigate this aspect of it? >> well, that's -- i don't understand. say that again. >> devin nunes is saying there has been no collusion. >> no evidence of collusion. >> no evidence of collusion. but if you're not investigating collusion, then you haven't sought the evidence. >> we didn't investigate his obstruction of justice issue. that's what we investigated. was there collusion between the trump campaign and the russians or between the clinton campaign and the russians. >> did you interview george papadopoulos? >> no, we did not.

>> if you didn't interview george papadopoulos, somebody who apparently is the person who triggered the investigation, because he was bragging about potential access to damaging information on hillary clinton -- if you didn't interview him, just that one, and there's other people you didn't interview, how can you draw this conclusion definitively? >> he got outside the opportunity for us to interview him when he was charged and got caught up in the mueller investigation. we're trying to stay away from the mueller investigation and not confuse that or hurt it one way or the other. that part of the timing. the other issue is we couldn't feel a real good link between papadopoulos himself and his br braggadociousness and the trump campaign. he was at the edge of the circumstances. >> how do you know that if you didn't interview him? >> all the information we got about him, talked about him, he was not somebody that seemed to be a player in the long term. >> do you regret trying to draw a conclusion on collusion? my apologies, that's a tough phrase to say. do you now regret trying to draw a conclusion about collusion? >> no. well, we haven't drawn that.

what we said, chuck, is that we found no evidence of it. that's a different statement. we found no evidence of collusion. >> tom rooney, who's a member of the intel committee, said the committee has gone off the rails, and he says we've lost all credibility and we're going to have to issue probably two different reports unfortunately, and no one is really going to -- he's implying no waone is goingo know what to believe. is he right? >> you'll need to talk to tom about that. what i believe is by thursday i hope the democrats will fold in whatever it is they want to put in the report, the report we're drafting at this point in time, and we'll have that one report. i think the issues is with respect to what the russians did cyber-wise, social media-wise, what our system needs to do to protect itself in the '18 election, certainly the 2020 election, that the democrats will agree with that. they'll disagree on whether or not he found evidence of collusion. they can have that section written in there differently. we'll have one report that will answer much of the questions we wanted to.

the collusion issue, we found no evidence of it. the democrats think they have. they've not shared that with us, if they have. i've shared all my evidence we've got with them. if they've got evidence of collusion, they haven't shared it with us. >> the blockbuster story about cambridge make you want to reopen the investigation? >> no, it's a different issue. >> why is it a different issue? they worked for the trump campaign, had potential contracts with the russians, manipulated facebook data. is this not part of your investigation? >> so if there was criminal activity there, then that's the justice department's responsibility. i don't have criminal prosecutorial tools to make that happen. we're already confident that the russians meddled in the campaign. we know going forward that -- >> so you're done. no reopening of this investigation -- >> harng on. the oversight responsibility intel committee is ongoing. we'll always watch what putin does or doesn't do. we'll always watch what these other ak ctors do. if something came up that caused us to look at smrks absolutely we'll look at that.

>> mike conaway, i have to leave it there. republican from texas. thanks for coming on, missing church this morning. hope your pastor forgives you. >> i need jesus christ's forgiveness. >> fair enough. when we come back, is president trump finally trying to shut down the russia investigation? we're going their experience is coveted. their leadership is instinctive. they're experts in things you haven't heard of - researchers of technologies that one day, you will. some call them the best of the best. some call them veterans. we call them our team. stay with me, mr. parker. when a critical patient is far from the hospital, the hospital must come to the patient.

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and run them within your data center. it is... the new ibm cloud private. the cloud that's designed for your data. ai ready. secure to the core. the ibm cloud is the cloud for smarter business. welcome back. panel is here. the nbc nightly news saturday anchor, jose diaz-balart. amy walter. eliana johnson for politico. and jonah goldberg, senior editor of national review. wow. i got to start with a couple of new tweets from the president. he seems to be unloading again on mr. mccabe and the mueller probe. he said this, this morning. spent very little time with andrew mccabe, but he never took notes when he was with me.

i don't believe he took memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. same with lying james comey. can we call them fake memos? then he adds, why does the mueller team have 13 hardened democrats and crooked hillary supporters and zero republicans? another dem recently added, does anyone think this is fair, yet there is no collusion. eliana, the president has declared war on the mueller probe again. >> setting that aside for one second, i actually think that the president is doing great damage to his cause because the mccabe firing, from what we know, was recommended by career officials. the president stepping in to this is doing great damage because it is making it look like a political action. yes, it was ultimately decided by jeff sessions, but i do think, had the president stayed out of this, he would have had the facts on his side. sessions would have had the facts on his side. >> marco rubio not liking how this was done. >> yeah, it was done badly. they peeled out the investigation to mccabe from the larger ig report.

there is a theory among some that this was done in some ways to save the mueller probe. >> that's the irony here, right. to save sessions, which in turn saves mueller. >> if sessions had not fired mccabe, trump could have used that as a pretext to fire sessions, put in somebody who then fired rosenstein, and then it becomes like a nursery rhyme going all the way down. so the irony here is that, you know -- there are a lot of ironies here. there are also a lot of democrats who don't like andrew mccabe. they think he helped cost hillary the election. >> which is i think what he supposedly lied about. what he's being fired about is helping trump get the clinton story into "the new york times." the irony of that -- >> one last thing on eliana's point. the poll you have out today has trump up ten in the generic. a lot of that split has to do with the fact that suburban republicans don't like this drama. it turns them off. this is going to overshadow the republican efforts to get ahead.

>> this feels like we're about to see mueller and trump clash and it's an explosion. >> head to head. >> like it feels like this whole thing is -- >> and if that happens, what an explosion it will be. >> yes. >> i mean, if he goes through and takes out mueller, the reaction is going to be huge on all sides. you know what i think? i think we're living in like a different time-space continuum in the united states. maybe anywhere else. we're living in what catalan writer edrique juliana called "the emotional spasms of twitter." every emotional spasm that comes out is something that the world reacts to, and yet it's like, are we living in a different time and space right now because of twitter? >> and yet he's used twitter often to make these threats that never get followed up on. this has been his -- so we don't -- he could be doing all of this, and there is no actual clash. it's just a clash on twitter.

and that this debate about the merits of anything now has become impossible to have because it's not empirical, it's emotional. so half of the country is going to believe or 40% of the country believes that mccabe was railroaded. another 40% believe he had it coming to him. >> without the ig report. >> and it really doesn't matter. what the actual facts are. because we have now pushed our sides -- and when you have john brennan and james comey coming out on twitter -- it was like a blow torch. >> look, let's put the brennan quote up. it was unbelievable. he said, when the full extent -- this is brennan talking to the president -- when the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dust bin of history. you may scapegoat andy mccabe, but you will not scapegoat america. america will triumph over you. >> i think we know what he feels. >> i think brennan needs to stay off twitter. comey needs to stay off twitter. these guys would all behoove themselves to stay off twitter.

>> starting with the president. >> samantha power responded to that tweet by saying, you don't want to make enemies with john brennan, which is a really dumb thing to say because it fuels this argument that the deep state is out to get this guy. >> and comey is threatening the president about what he's going to say in his book. >> on twitter. >> exactly. to amy's point, you know, i think -- i'm sorry -- >> what did i say? >> no, but to amy's point, you were saying a lot of this stuff doesn't come to fruition with the president, but i think what people around the president fear is that with the firing of rex tillerson and all these rumors of who else is going to be fired that the president is feeling more comfortable in his skin, feeling more comfortable in the job, and that more things are going to come to fruition that he will step up and fire h.r. mcmaster, he'll get rid of more of his cabinet secretaries. he's simply beginning to trust his instincts more. a year into the job, feeling more self-confident than he was a year ago. >> i think we're going to have an 800-number where people get to call in and pick which

cabinet secretary they want to fire. >> you laugh. i don't know at this point. it does feel as if, you know, you talk to one set of people and they think the wheels are coming off this administration. you talk to another set, and it's exactly the presidency they wanted. but the fact of the matter is i don't know if our institutions can handle what trump is doing. >> you step back and look at the world, strong men are getting stronger. you talk about the election happening today in russia. we already know the results of that election. >> "election." make sure it's in quotes. >> a country that likes our facebook more than we do. venezuela has a sham election 20th of may. cuba just had a sham election. china's strong man is going to stay stronger. yet that's the big view. yet we can't seem to see if our institutions are going to survive the emotional spasms of twitter. >> it's a great line at this point. amy? >> remember, though, that the fbi still is more popular than the president. but the president is more

popular than his party. and this has been the challenge all along. what the president's doing, it's very hard for his party to come out against. so this idea you're going to see republicans coming forward and trying to be sort of a moderating influence, until the president does anything, is going to be very hard to do. >> jonah, you heard it in marco rubio's voice. he's clearly disturbed but trying not to get emotional. >> you talk to people, one of the greatest disconnects in life is talking to congressmen and senators off the record. i'm not talking about marco rubio, just generic. the way they talk about the trump white house, the sense of chaos, sort of like -- >> sense of concern. >> like a kid from a dysfunctional family worried that dad's in the ripple again when twitter starts going. it's palpable. then you get them on camera. most of trump's policies divides the gop rather than attracts independents and moderates. >> the other thing that's difficult is republicans have no agenda this coming year. it's difficult for them to say,

focus on this, our agenda, as opposed to the distractions coming out of the white house. >> we're going to try to get to that in the next round of the panel. red fox called. he wants the ripple comment back. when we come back, one of ten democratic senators trying to hang on to seats this year. sherrod brown of ohio. ♪ (nadia white) the moment a fish is pulled out from the water,

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we plan for everything from retirement to college savings. giving us the ability to add on for an important member of our family. welcome home mom. with the right financial advisor, life can be brilliant. we fought to find common ground, and we found it, almost everywhere. democrats, republicans, independents. each of us americans. >> welcome back. that was democrat conor lamb on tuesday night after winning a pennsylvania congressional district that president trump

won in 2016 by nearly 20 points. republicans were already nervous about their prospects in the house. tuesday's results suggest more districts than they thought are vulnerable. the senate picture has always been a cloudier one for democrats because ten of them are running for re-election in states that donald trump carries, but lamb's victory has them thinking maybe they can take back the senate too if their red-state democrats are survive re-election. one of them is sherrod brown from ohio. senator, welcome back to "meet the press." >> good to be back, chuck. thank you. >> i saw on twitter your wife said you got a haircut yesterday for this. i appreciate that. >> carlo's in garfield heights. good man. we sat there waiting for an hour and a half. he knows everybody in garfield heights. maple heights and the city of cleveland. >> all right. >> just a little bit of -- okay, go ahead. >> fair enough. senator, let me start. before i get to the political landscape, what should congress do as an institution in looking into the mccabe firing?

>> well, you said something earlier about -- as i was listening to the show from the studio in cleveland -- about how what members of congress say publicly and what they say privately. what democrats say privately and publicly about this president and the dysfunctional aity is t same thing, but i hear so many grumble about his ethics. i was with a ceo the other day who said he's never seen a business leader or political leader who calls his employees or her employees names. i think that -- i think at some point, republican enablers in the house and senate are going to say publicly what they've been saying privately, and that's when things change and we see a president back off this kind of name calling, not telling the truth, sending out these tweets, all that. >> do voters in ohio care about the russia investigation right now? >> i think that a lot of people do. i think people -- what they care about is they see a president

who is engaging in that name calling, and they know people know he doesn't tell the truth about a whole lot of things. i think people overwhelmingly wonder about president trump when he calls everybody else names, including people in his own party, but he never, ever criticizes putin. so i would guess 70%, 80% of people in ohio, including trump voters, really do wonder what exactly it is between putin and trump that we don't know details about yet. >> you know, it was interesting to watch conor lamb's campaign. he didn't run against trump, per se. in fact, would embrace some things, policy-wise, that the president was pursuing. what's your pitch to the trump voter in ohio that says, you know what, i don't like -- i may not be happy with his style, but i think he's delivering? >> well, conor lamb's district is right on the southwest edge of pennsylvania, between -- from the state line to ohio is only a few miles because it's the

northern part of wheeling and that area in west virginia, across that part of ohio. so i know that district in that sense. i know what kinds of people live there. his race didn't particularly surprise me because conor lamb, what did he talk about? he talked about pensions. he talk about the health care. my state alone, 200,000 people are getting opioid treatment right now because they have the affordable care act. conor lamb knows that. he fought for the affordable care act and said, no, i'm going to stand the way of repealing. he fought for a trade policy. he wasn't around to vote against nafta like i was, but he knows what these steel -- the steel enforcement -- enforcing steel trade laws mean to his district and all of my state. he knows what pensions mean. i was in cleveland yesterday with 200 pensioners that will see 40%, 50% cuts in their pension in large part because of

what wall street did. it was my idea to set up this joint house/senate bipartisan pension committee. had our first meeting last week. 60,000 ohioans could lose 40, 50. what this town doesn't understand, chuck, is that workers 30, 40 years ago sat down at the bargaining table, gave up dollars for the future so that they would -- gave up dollars today, money they'd like for their families, but gave those dollars up so that in the future they would have economic security. that's been taken away. that's the kinds of things conor lamb talks about. that's the kinds of things i'll be talking about and working on. and that makes all the difference in the world regardless if you're a trump voter. >> it's interesting. i wonder how concerned you are about your own credibility, being able to fight for these voters. because here was hillary clinton and what she said earlier this week while giving a talk in india. take a listen. >> i won the places that represent two-thirds of

america's gross domestic product. so i won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward, and his whole campaign, make america great again, was looking backwards. >> senator, i heard you describe in those border communities there between ohio and pennsylvania, it sounded like hillary clinton was talking about those people. what do you say to that? >> i say that i don't really -- i'm not going to look back. i don't think voters or citizens in my state particularly care about the 2016 election, whether it was hillary or donald trump. >> well, then answer me this. what does she not get? >> i'm not going to come on your show and analyze what hillary gets today or not and what she got in 2016 or i'm not going to analyze how donald trump keeps talking about hillary clinton. i think that's all pretty bizarre. he just keeps reliving -- i mean, chuck, when i won my first election many years ago for

state representative, and i remember for like three or four days, i kept talking about the election, how great i was for winning the election. then i realized nobody cared. so i stopped doing it. maybe the press ought to stop covering it, and maybe hillary and trump ought to quit talking about it. the election is over. we ought to be working on infrastructure and pensions and all the issues that matter in places in conor lamb's district and in my state. that's why people voted for him. that's why people in the end will vote for me and democrats that stick to those issues of fighting for consumers and fighting for health care. >> senator brown, i'm going to leave it there. i think you're wrong. i think we all are stuck in this time warp where we're going to have to relive the 2016 election over and over and over again. >> help us get out of it, chuck. you have a pretty loud microphone. >> i'm half teasing. i think we all want to get out of the 2016 election anyway. thank you very much. >> thanks. it's easy to think that all money managers are pretty much the same. but while some push high commission investment products, fisher investments avoids them.

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welcome back. data download time. it may be time for republicans to start hitting the panic button. our new poll shows the gop could be in for a very rocky midterm season this fall. as we mentioned, the president's approval rating is actually up four points from january. while those who want to see republicans in charge of congress is down, giving democrats a double-digit ten-point advantage. and republicans are losing support among groups they typically rely on to push them over the top. since january, republicans are down three points among all white voters, down six with voters who live in gop districts, down seven with suburbanites, and down nine with white-collar workers. the gop is also down double-digits with young voters. all of this played out last week when democrats pulled off the upset in that special election in pennsylvania's 18th

congressional district. a place donald trump won by nearly 20 points less than two years ago. and come november, republicans will have a lot more districts just like it to defend. districts home to a lot of the groupings that our poll shows republicans are now struggling to hold on to. there are 97 republican districts where president trump's margin of victory in 2016 was less than 20 points. 44 of those are even more suburban or urban. 90 of those are younger on average than p.a.-18. and 96 of 97 are more racially diverse. republicans were already worried about suburban districts in big metro areas from orange county, california, to houston, where hillary clinton won districts. now they have to start worrying about suburban districts and a lot more smaller to midsized cities, places like virginia beach, lexington, kentucky, little rock, arkansas, and omaha, nebraska. in short, our new nbc news "wall

street journal" poll shows pennsylvania 18 may be less of an outlier and more a sign of things to come. we'll be back in a moment with "end game," and something in our poll that we've never seen before that could be hugely significant in november. >> announcer: coming up, "end pro golfer. to me he's, well, dad. so when his joint pain from psoriatic arthritis got really bad, it scared me.

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"end game" brought to you by boeing. continuing our mission to connect, protect, explore, and inspire. >> back now reque"end game." what is surprising is in the congressional districts we polled in that are all held by republicans right now, the generic battle is dead even, 46-46. we've been looking at the

congressional ballot result through this lens since 2010 and both parties have always led in their own districts they've held and always led by double digits, just as the democrats still do now. showing polarization. this one poll could be an outlier. we'll have to wait for our next poll to see what could be a rough sign for republicans. identical result from conor lamb. >> we have seen it in pennsylvania '18 where the generic ballot, when you ask that question right before the election, was 42-42 in a district that trump carried by 20 points. the challenge for republicans right now isn't just that the president isn't popular and has lost popularity even in districts he won in 2016, the party's unpopular and the issues are unpopular. what conor lamb talked about, and senator brown raised this about the issue of health care, will be a big issue in this election. the irony is democrats lost the house in 2010 on obamacare. republicans could lose the house

in 2018 by trying to repeal obamacare. >> how do you hike them apples, jonah? health care. i've heard this too. on the trail, it's not russia, it's not trade. it's health care. >> yeah, well, and also if you talk to republicans over the last three months, they all would say, oh, once the tax cuts thing, you know, actually manifests itself and people see it in their paychecks, and we saw in pennsylvania '18, the dog didn't bark. that's why at the end saccone, the republican candidate, moved to his sort of they're coming for your bibles stuff because he hoped that would work instead. that's got to be terrifying to a lot of swing districts. if i were a district that a republican candidate won narrowly in 2016, the p.a.-18 thing is basically the equivalent of watching the rivers turn to blood. >> what you're saying is you'd bail. >> yeah, or i would think of bailing pretty hard. >> and between now and november, what do you have? taxes, taxes, taxes. >> that's it.

>> that's it? >> that's what you talk about. where's the agenda? >> i don't think that there is one between now and the november elections, which i think makes it very difficult for republicans. and i think the problem they face is they didn't pass a reconciliation bill, which means they need 60 votes to get anything through the senate. frankly, the house, anything that passes the republican house is too conservative to get through the senate, which needs sort of oatmeal, mushy-type compromise legislation. so i think there's nothing happening in terms of legislation between now and the elections, which leaves the head lines, trump tweets, the sort of circus of the executive branch. >> one quick point though. there are a lot of people -- there are a lot of democrats, i hear them on your cable show all the time, that say democrats need to put forward an agenda. i think that's nuts. their agenda is unpopular. >> if there's no agenda between now and november, why don't you deal with the dreamers? 5th of march was supposedly

their end date. the court stepped in. why don't we deal with the dreamer issue? it seems like everybody is in agreement that they should be dealt with. no one is talking about it because they don't have to. >> i want to change the subject to facebook here. if facebook were a senator and we treated facebook as an individual, here's what senator facebook -- here's what we would put up in questioning senator facebook. senator facebook, in november of 2016, your founder says the idea that fake news on facebook won the election is pretty crazy. then senator facebook in april of '17, you admitted malicious actors did spread misinformation in the 2016 election. on october of 2017, senator facebook says, russia backed election content reached 126 million americans. then march 18, senator facebook, we find out, 50 million users had their data from facebook somehow ended up in the hands of a political consulting firm. facebook's got a problem. >> they do. and it's beyond this. it's also this idea that they can't control this platform that they created, that these bots

are out there now, whether it's on twitter or facebook, and driving a lot of this. >> they can't or don't want to? >> that's what's really unclear. is it that the technology has gotten away from them, or is it that they just don't want to spend the money to do what they need to do to make this better? >> we led nbc news last night with this story. "the new york times" has seen evidence that when they said they were going to destroy the data, they didn't. >> but they sent them a strongly worded letter. i believe facebook said, you must do this. okay, check a box if you did it. >> the weird irony is facebook is the home of everyone putting their most sentimental part of their lives on there. pictures of their kittens and grandkids and vacations and love letters to themselves and everybody else. meanwhile, the actual corporation, it's like they have asperger's. they're totally tone deaf to people's passions about these issues, about the invasions of privacy. they're trying to turn human beings into commodities. >> they're products, yeah.

>> well, you know, even though facebook is now accused of having played a role in helping the trump campaign, i do think that they're a microcosm of why the president was elected. they have the smartest people in the country working for them. every ivy league graduate wants to go work at facebook. yet they are an example of the failure of elites to sort of do their jobs. >> great point. and it's a good one to end on. a lively panel. thank you, all. that's all we have for today. enjoy that umbc game today. sorry, uva fans. thanks for watching. we'll be back next week, because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." >> announcer: you can see more "end game" and "post game" sponsored by boeing on the "meet the press" facebook page.

breaking overnight, another explosion in austin, texas. this after three package bombs detonated earlier this month. a $100,000 reward is being offered for information. >> the president gets personal while tweet slamming the russia investigation, calling out the special counsel by nam while attacking the number of democrats on robert mueller's team. >> the tragic accident in front of a capacity crowd at cirque du soleil leaves one veteran performer dead. what went wrong? >> today the white house will unveil a master plan to combat the nation's opioid crisis. >> and olympic gold for the u.s. men's hockey team in overtime against the canadians at the paralympic games. "early today" starts right now.