♪ ♪ this sunday, crisis on the border. president trump blames democrats. >> they don't care about the children. they don't care about the injury. they don't care about the problem. they don't care about anything. >> blames mexico. >> they can stop the immigration on the spot, but they choose not to do it. >> blames the media. >> they are helping these smugglers and these traffickers like nobody would bve>>n the en moves to stop separating children from their parents. >> we are signing>>ut then says republicans should stop wasting their ti o so what is the administration's plan to house the children or to reunite the families? my guest this morning republican

senator james langford of oklahoma and independent senator angus king of maine who caucuses with the democrats. also, refugee crisis. why are so many people from central america coming to the united states? what are they fleeing? richard engel of nbc news has a report from his trip to el salvador. >> and political culture wars. white house press secretary sarah sanders is asked to leave a restaurant because she works for president trump. her father, mike huckabee tweets this picture with the caption, nancy pelosi introduces her campaign committee. is all of this the new normal? joining me for insight and analysis are nbc news capital k and erick erick son editor of the resurntent. welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press". >> the longest-running show in

television history, this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. good sunday morning. for perhaps the first time in his presidency donald trump lost an issue that was defined by television. not the facts that parents and children were separated at the border, that was the administration's policy, what mattered was what happened next. it was the wall to wall parade of desperate parents and the first ladies and the growing number of reps wublicans, and i was the sound of administration officials articulating a policy from separating children from d that their cy waso separate children from their parents. in the end, president trump did agree to do what he insisted could not be done. he signed an executive order ending the policy. there are reports of tense infighting at the white house over how to reunite families and confusion about where to house tens of thousands of people. to be fair, this crisis, immigration crisis which more

properly should be called a refugee crisis has confounded presidents beforehand, with children at shelters at the border thks much is clear. the trump administration has inflamed a humanitarian crisis and it has no idea yet how to repair. >> people walk in, they put a foot in. please, would you like to register? other countries they say get the hell out of here. >> president trump is on defense. after first denying the administration could even end the administration's policy. >> congress and the courts created this problem and congress can fix it. >> there is only one body that created this legislation and it's >> you can't have a executive order. >> mr. trump signed an executive order he now says would end it. so we're keeping families ogether and this will solve complicated. in 1997 flores settlement the government cannot detain children with their parents for

20 days, likely not enough time for adults to get a court hearing and out of 2300 children the government has confirmed were separated from their parents since may 5th, so far the administration says only 522 children have been reunited with their families. >> what happens to the kids now that they've been separated from their parents? why did you guys sign it yesterday? >> children are scattered across the country, housed in about 100 shelters in 17 states and despite repeated requests, the department of health and human services has not allowed cameras inside forcing on government to rely on government handout images and in the midst of this crisis the white house declined to hold a briefing to answer questions for the public for four straight days. >> in this audio released by a 6-year-old jimena from el

salvador begs to talk to her aunt. jimena is lucky because she was able to memorize her aunt's phone number. she connected with her this week on the phone. [ speaking foreign language ] >> many of those charged with the illegal entry into the united states say they have only been given a flyer on how to locate their child. >> the children don't have the capacity to even maybe tell them their parents' full name. so being able to identify the parents through the children is something that's impossible. >> despite the bureaucratic confusion and questions of pure competence, the president has been pretty clear about one thing, the message he wants to send. >> but if we did that everybody come -- if we did that, you would have -- you're right. the word is overrun. we would have millions and millions of people pouring through our country.

>> joining me now is republican senator ja langford of oklahoma. he's been taking the lead on finding the short-term congressional fix to the family separation issue. senator langford, welcome back to "meet the press" sir. >> thank you. good to be back with you. >> let me start with the basic question. have we misnamed this? is this a refugee crisis than an immigration crisis considering this is a specific region of the world where this is emanating from? >> this has been a long-term issue. i'm not sure i'd call it a refugee crisis, about you it's been destabilizing for a long time. there was $650 million into el lv provide some stabilizing force in their government and to be able to provide them a reason to be able to stay. i've been in the region multiple times, to be able to oversee how that money is being spent, but

this is a long-term issue. you go back to 2013 there were families coming as a family unit and now we're up to 89,000 families a year that are coming at the united states as a family unit. >> let's go to some specifics here because we haven't gotten a lot of answers from the trump administration, maybe you have gotten some of these answers. maybe they're fulfilling their duty to at least let you know what's going on in congress. do you know how many of these kids that have been separated -- how many of them are in shelters? how many of them are at detention facilities and how many of them are in foster care. do you know how many are a good idea with the categories. >> we know where everyat's gonet there in some of the other media and it's not been responsible with this with the assumption that the administration's lost track of that. so let me clarify a couple of things. these are career professionals that work with hhs and that work with dhs and customs and border

patrol and i.c.e. these are not political appointees and they are career folks and they know where every child is to connect them with their relative. trying to be able to make sure we're connect the dots on this. of the 12,000 children 10,000 of those are unaccompanied minors. >> right. >> that came with no parent at all and then you've got another 2,000 that are out there that came with a family member of some type. they're all in hhs custody and they're trying to be able to reconnect them now, but hhs often puts them in foster care across several states because they can't handle the load on the southern border. >> to be clear, while you said we know where every child is that the government knows where every child is. the government of the 2300 that were separated from their parents, that the government has said the number might be higher, we don't know, but of the 2300 they've confirmed do we know where those parents are? that's an unknown, correct? we don't know where the parents

are. >> well, it's a known of the adult they came with so the child and adult they came with, we don't know if that is the parent. oftentimes the parent that is somewhere in the country oftentimes illegally, as well. they came with another in the country and connect them going through procedures and whatever that may be and yes, we are able to connect them as well. >> the child, you identify the parent and the child, then what happens? is the parent brought to where the child is? are they sent to a separate facility? what can you tell us about that situation? >> it's a mixture. we are trying to work through the process to connect through the adult and some of the adults are given an ankle monitoring system and an ankle bel they get a notice to appear hearing and as you put in your done. the flores settlement from 1997 says that you can only hold that job for 20 days and it takes

about 35 days to get a hearing. what the court set up in 1997 was this conundrum. you have to either release them as they come as a family when they come into the country and hope they show up. to be very clear, only 2% of the family units that come to the united states illegally actually go through and actually had the notice to appear, finished up with the notice of removal and actually leave the country. so the family units that are 98% of them end up somewhere in the country, most of them illegally because they never actually leave after they're given the responsibility for an order of removal. >> your congressional fix here and let's get to the 20-day conundrum. the trump administration's asking for relief from the courts. they're probably not going to get it because the obama administration asked for the very same relief. they didn't get it either. you want to defund it. how is that going to make the matter easier to deal with? if you don't fund the flores

settlement essentially, not allow any money to go to it, how is that going to help the situation? i'm a bit confused. >> so let me give you three different options. one is to say we don't fund it, push it back to the court and say we don't give the executive branch the ability to be able to operate this, and we want to go to the court and be able to resolve it. the next is to change the dates on it. to say it's not 20 days or maybe 60 days to gives enough time to get through a hearing and soe f that. we've got to add additional judges which we've asked for country to be the lowest level i'm trying to find the lowest common denominator so we can make sure we funk together. the best thing to do is to reform it so that we actually keep families together and keep them there long enough that we can get through a proper hearing. >> are you in favor of using military bases to house these families? it appears dhs has made a request to the defense

department. is that y is that something you think is a good idea. >> >> president obama used basis for the minors and some were in my home state in oklahoma which by the way, members of congress from my state tried to visit those facilities that are in my state where president obama was holding the unaccompanied minors and they were turned away and t allowed in. this is something new the trump administration is doing blocking people out. no, it's the exact same policy hhs had before. we made an appointment and after we made an appointment we were able to go through the process. >> should that be the process or should there be more been fully transparent with the american public about what they're trying to do here? >> i don't, actually. this has been one of the great frustrations. the white house has not been clear on how bad the flores settlement is. they tried to say it, say it and say it. you shouldn't allow just anyone

to view a spot with children. this has been policy, if you're coming to the location where there's children, we need to know who you are and we have to know background and we can't trust that you have an chlt i.d if you do that you can get in as a member of congress just like president obama had the children at a military base as well. >> my final question is whether the president is creating more problems or making it harder to solve by the rhetoric he's using. this is how he's described people coming across the border just this week, senator. take a listen. >> they could be murderers and thieves. >> they endanger all of our children. >> millions of people flowing up and just overtaking the country. >> they're human traffickers, they're coyotes. we're getting some real beauties. >> we want people in our country based on merit. not based on a draw where other countries put their absolute worse in a bin and they start drawing people. >> do you believe that rhetoric

demonizes immigrants and makes your job harder? >> it does, actually, but the challenge of it is there is a percentage where the president is absolutely correct on that. >> what's the percentage? the percentage is pretty small. >> it is. it is pretty small. >> to do two for two -- go ahead, sorry. >> i would prefer the president would say the folks are coming for check reasons they want to be flee into an area where they have greater economic opportunities. every family wants to be able to see that for their family, but there are also some individuals that are there. on average, every day dhs stops or interdicts ten people that are on the terror watch list trying to come into the country. so i have a real concern that we're demonizing law enforcement folks that really are trying to be able to do their job because there are very real threats, but the vast majority of individualses are coming for economic reasons and they're coming from central america and they're not fleeing to costa rica, belize or ecuador who have great asylum laws.

they're coming to the united states because they want the economic opportunities and not just asylum and they're trying to come for economic gains and i don't blame them for that, but to tell you the truth, 1.1 million people a year become citizens legally and this can be done legally, but the challenge is for those individuals that's a much smaller number that are doing it illegally, how do you process that? >> senator langford, i'm going to leave it there. thank you for coming on and sharing your views. much appreciate it. >> thank you. joining me from brunswick, maine, is independent. i want a perspective from the other side of the aisle. >> good to be with you, chuck. >> are we misnamed this? is this a refugee crisis more than it is a migrant or immigration crisis? >> think it is. i think that's exactly right. it's more of an asylum and refugee. it's important to make

distinctions. these are almost entirely people coming from central america and not mexico, particularly honduras, el salvador and guatemala, and they're fleeing violence and that's one of the reasons that this deterrent may not work, if you're looking down the barrel of a gun in your home community, whatever your chances are to get to a free country, you're going to take it in order to save your family's life. so if that really is what we're talking about here and this is different from, very different from the waves of illegal immigrants coming across the border 15, 20 years ago, mostly from mexico, simply looking for jobs. mexican migration has diminished enormously. >> if it is -- if you believe it should be treated more as a refugee crisis. for instance, how we handled the cubans in the '50s and the '60s ands. how has the approximately see changed -- does the government

intervention, should it be different if it's a refugee crisis? well, yeah, because if you're crossing the border illegally with no claim of asylum or refugee status, then that's a crime and we have a process for deportation. people have -- people coming to claim asylum are not illegal immigrants and under the law they have a right to establish in legitimate their m that are life and they're fleeing persecution in their country and that to people from other parts of the world, but you have tprlem is james langfo mentioned this. we don't have enough judges and theria there's a bureaucratic backlog to get adjudicated. what do you do with the people in the interim and the administration made a terrible choice of separating children from their parents and now they're saying well, we'll keep

them together and we'll keep them together in detention. i don't think that's a necessary choice either. there's a lot of data that there are alternatives to detention that can still ensure that people show up for their court hearing which by the way are a lot cheaper for the taxpayers. >> very quickly on this senator langford, he's leaving to fix the flores amendment and you heard a lot of ways to do that, defund it completely and make it something and the administration ca 20 days. what do you favor and i know a bill wi senator fieinstein, but there's no republican support, and i assume it's a bipartisan deal. are there things that you can support? >> well, there are a number of proposals kicking around and i was in a meeting in a it was ve interesting sitting next to dianne feinstein and ted cruz. ted cruz and dianne both have a

bill. the opportunity to vote for a feinstein/cruz bill. they're talking about not separating and talking about some alternatives and this is where the discussion is, does it have to be detention? i don't like the defunding idea and that's essentially saying, you know, the courts, we're not going to listen to you. i don't think that makes sense, but i think some additional time may be true, but i want to talk about how do we deal with these people? the other thing, chuck, we've got to talk about is what's going on in these countries and why is this surgeg tord us. >> right. >> in fact, before the program this morning james and i were talking about going to central america. he's been there a couple of times. >> right. >> and trying to figure out what can we do to stabilize those regimes so people don't feel they have to run for their lives to america. >> i'm curious, considering what happened in 2014 when the obama administration was tackling essentially the same surge of folks coming from central america.

the obama administration didn't exactly welcome those folks with open arms either. the goal was, while they didn't separate, the goal was to get them back to the home country as quickly as possible. was that a mistake in hindsight? >> i think they were overwhelmed. if you go back and read about that period, and i went with a couple of other senators to mcallen, texas, during that period to see how these kids were being treated. the difference between then and now, three years ago they were unaccompd kids. what's happened this time is kids are coming with their families, with their parents and they're being separated and that's what i think caused this firestorm, but there clearly has to be a better way to deal with this, and i think there are alternatives to detention, more judges and more timely processing of these things because we're a nation of immigrants, number one, except for the african-americans who were brought here, against their will and the native american, but all the rest of us are

immigrants and also asylum seekers. the pilgrims were escaping religious persecution. >> right. >> andrew sullivan argues this week, just give trump his wall. he used more colorful language than that and go get something for it if you're the decmocrats. give him his wall because maybe there will be more heart in the rest of these policies and the rest of this migrant crisis. are you there yet? give the president has wall and figure this out? >> ironically, chuck, we did that. mike grounds and i had an amendment and it was the one that got the most votes on the floor of the senate. we got 54 votes. it was in a senly the democratic caucus voted, i think, 46 out of 48 but the funded. white house itself torpedoed the bill. they threatened to veto and they sent out a scurrilous press release from dhs and we had the votes. we had probably 65, 67 votes.

they killed it. they had the wall in their hand and they let it go because they wanted more and the question is they keep sort of raising the ante and saying you have to limit legal immigration. you've got to change this. you've got to change that and that's one of the problems is we never know what the goal line is. >> want to show you a movement growing on the democratic side of the aisle and a hash tag, abolish rferring to t enforcement agency when it comes to immigration. listen to kamala harris said about the idea of abolishing i.c.e. >> i think there's no question that we have to critically and the way it is being administered and we probably need to think about starting from scratch. >> what do you make of that? is i.c.e. the bigger problem here? >> i don't -- i don't know how you abolish an agency without

abolishing the function and i think the function is necessary. as far as what she said about examining what they're doing, that's absolutely what we should do and it's our responsibility to provide oversight and ultimately there would have to be an agency. before i.c.e. there was ins and there was a way to enforce the mi maine a couple of weeks ago. ap patrol stop up here in is that constitutional? do we stop american citizens in the middle of a highway and ask for their papers? there are a lot of questions to be answered. i don't know if i say abolish. i don't think that makes a lot of sense, but i do think looking at it makes a hell of a lot of sense. >> senator angus king, independent maine, thanks for coming on and sharing your views, sir. >> thanks, chuck. when we come back, more on what's behind the border crisis. you heard both senators refer to the issue in central america. nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel is

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this is our era. this is america's energy era. nextera energy. as i mentioned earlier, what we are seeing on the border is really a bit of a refugee crisis more than an immigration crisis. people from central america, places like guatemala, honduras and el salvador are coming here to find work in the united states than to escape the life at home. gang violence is so prevalence in honduras and el salvador that according to the united nations, those two countries have the highest homicide rates in the world. highest homicide rates in the world and you wonder why people are fleeing. richard engel returned last night from a trip to el salvador where he reported why people are willing to risk this dangerous journey and family separation to come to the united states and richard joins me now from seaside, california, where we

made him stop here to get on our show. richard, thanks very much. let me start with this. normally i'm talking to you and you're in a war zone somewhere, maybe you're in syria, maybe you're in north africa or maybe somewhere in asia, but here you are in central america. does it feel like the war zones you cover when you cover the war? >> reporter: it felt very much like a war zone, a low-grade war zone and there were places in el salvador where you can't go, and where the police and government don't feel safe to go. we're talking about a population of 100,000 active gang members and when you have that many people with guns and when you have a government that doesn't feel in control of the capital city, then you're having a war zone dynamic. people we talked to said they're afraid to go out in the countryside. when they do they see gang members carrying their weapons

openly. there are gang checkpoints stopping you, asking you where you're from and what affiliation you have and if they don't like your answers they will kill you and drop you in the street. we went to a prison and met very hard-core gang members and one of them bragged to us that he'd killed 35 people just himself and when you have that number of dangerous people who feel that emboldened it is not surprising that people want to leave the country and seek different opportunities and don't want their children to get sucked into the gang life and have them become the next generation of killers or victims. >> in some ways you've spent way too much time in syria for us at nbc. compare the story in el salvador. how much of that country are they actually governing and how much of it are the gangs in charge of this. is it like syria where you had parts of the country governed by certain entities? >> reporter: well, not just the

100,000 people or so who are active gang members, there are some estimates that you have to multiply that number by five or ten to get the real number of people who are actually affiliated with gangs, supported with gangs, make their lively hood with gangs and this is a small country, el salvador. we're only talking 6.5 million people. that is roughly one in ten people there is either a gang member or makes their livelihood from a gang member. we're talkingbo 10% of the population, just of the population living outside the law, and this is a population that is armed. so they are able to control and exert their will over a lot more of the percentage than that. so there are large parts of the country that are not fully under the government's control. >> i'm curious, you spent a lot of times on the front lines covering the migrant crisis into southern europe. give me some similarities, differences between what you witnessed with this migrant crisis coming up from central

america. >> so you were talking to a lot of your guests earlier. is this a refugee crisis from central america or a migrant crisis? usually they're always mixed together. you have people fleeing from war zones and people actively afraid for their lives and want more economic opportunities. but what i haven't seen before is this family separation. as i was there in central america, watching the people try to leave, watching them be deported back home i remembered covering this massive migration crisis that was in europe a few years ago, and we saw lots and lots of refugees and lots and lots of migrants, but we didn't see authorities deliberately separating people from families. they didn't see it as necessary and productive. i was in hun garry and hungary has most aggressive, hardline, anti-immigration crisis and people are coming into hungary,

and i remember one image seared in my brain, they were on the bus and people on the bus started becoming hysterical. they were shouting and under guard and very agitated. what happened is one of the family members on the bus had gotten separated from their child so everybody on the bus started to scream. the bus stopped. they opened the windows and people on the ground lowered -- raised the child, raised the babe o baby on to the bus so the family could stay together and the family drove off, the bus drove off. even in hungary that has one of the most anti-immigration policy in the world right now, they were stopping the busses and making sure the people could be reunited with their families because they didn't want to inflict any more trauma on to the people, so they could control the situation and not cause unnecessary agitation and stress. >> richard engel, you've seen quite a bit of this in your travels around the world, richard. thanks for your reporting. much appreciated. before we go to break, a

quick programming note. jac jacob soboroff, tonight he'll be reporting on the crisis on dateline sunday called "the dividing line" it airs at 7:00, dividing line" it airs at 7:00, 6:00 centr us. dividing line" it airs at 7:00, 6:00 centr it's what this country is made of. but right now, our bond is fraying.

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and monitor certain liver tests. tell your doctor if you were in a region where fungal infections are common and if you have had tb, hepatitis b or c, or are prone to infections. xeljanz xr can reduce the symptoms of ra, back now with the panel. steve hayes, president trump had his first retreat, and you would argue that it was the first guardrail, that got him to reverse himself. what does that mean?

>> it was the public pressure. the president didn't do this easily and this is an ad hoc president leaving his staff and congressional republicans to scramble in his wake and try to make things right. if you think about the white house line on this, the line that the president's supporters took. they went from separating families was the right thing to do, to the separating families were terrible, but democrats made us do it, it's awful and only congress can fix it to the president's executive order has solved the problem and obviously there's inconsistency there. you're seeing the president scramble and he doesn't know what he thinks and this is a president who has a history of a variety of positions on this broad immigration issue. remember he in 2012 criticized mitt romney for his self-deportation plan as maniacal, crazy and mean spirited and he's pushing a plan that i think we'd all agree is more aggressive than mitt romney's. >> heather? >> i think this is what the president of the united states' thinks is hiss political ace in

the hole. he was very clear. my people love the family separation thing. you would think the president saying my people would mean all of us, but no. he's talking about a friend who's been weaned on these negative images as immigrants and gang members and doubled down by saying holding that press conference by saying that we have an epidemic of people being killed by undocumented immigrants when we know that immigrants, whether they're undocumented or not, commit crimes at lower rates than native-born americans. this is a political strategy to divide americans to make us feel like there's a sense of panic and fear and actually think any time we use the word crisis to talk about border crossings that are at a 40-year low, we're actually feeding into that. frankly, there are things he's doing to the economy, threats to health care, tax handout to the very wealthy that are things that he wants to distract from and that's what's happening right now.

>> eric, he made the case, it's good for me, and good for the party. and i thought i understand why he thinks it's good for him. it's been good for his political career. what do you make of his claim that it's good for the party for the midterms? >> this is the first time that i can remember some of his whicis significant when you've had evangelicals who stood up with him through everything and criticizing him and having to walk back and having the president who is the best negotiator, supposedly, walking this back himself, i don't think that's good for the party. he thinks there are 2 billion news cycles between now and november. this isn't going to anchor the party and the tariffs and what's going to happen to the economy. >> kasie, this is the first time that i thought a subject that i think about this sunday is now the same subject, that i'm questioning this sunday. that is a rare occasion and i think it tells you the potency of the issue. >> i'm with you, chuck and i remember thinking the same thing last sunday as we were heading into the news week. you wonder is this the story

that will be different and will carry through? you're absolutely right that this one did, and i also think it's the first time and erick mentioned the evangelical leaders and it's the first time congressional republicans looked at something the president did and said no way. how many times have we asked ourselves, charlottesville, the muslim ban, when will republican leaders stand up to the president? and the answer was when we saw these awful images of children being separated and there was not a person that i could find saying this is what we should be doing. no, yes, we have problems at the border and there were disagreements among republicans about thou to handle asylum claims and should we build the wall, but to a person, nobody wanted to defend this. >> what's the bigger threat? how he's handling the issue of immigration or how he handles the cleanup of this. i want to bring up people who said this is his, quote, katrina. i want to put up a quote and george w. bush wrote about katrina.

because i thought it could apply here. he said, just as katrina was more than a hurricane, this is what president bush wrote, it's impact was more than physical construction and it cast a cloud over my second term. i thought that was an interesting observation of how it is possible, heather and steve that how they reunite or don't reunify, becomes a competency issue and not a partisan issue. >> i would say maria has been president trump's katrina and i think this is another similar issue where there's just this callousness and particularly to the latino community in this country and in this part of the world, that shows that they really don't care and when a government doesn't care, you begin to erode the trust, and i think part of what's happened here is that we now have even with the executive order. we now have in every single state hundreds of thousands of people pledging to go to the border, to go to their state capitals on june 30th to rally. this has become a cultural flash point.

for people who want their country to stand for something better. >> i would just add to that, the main difference what you said about president trump is that president trump wants to exacerbate these decisions. president bush regretted what he did. and the think, one of the reasons you don't have solutions to the broader immigration problem is because it works politically for both parties and extremes of both parties. kamala harris talking about abolishing i.c.e., that's the solution where we'll abolish the bureaucracy that's been responsible for enforcing these things? >> this is an agency, that's not the point. >> the point is, she's offering an extreme solution that doesn't actually solve any problem because somebody -- >> to build on heather's point here and i want to get kasie in

here, is this in the way conservatives will say abolish the irs which is ofroposition a going to become that abolish the irs chant? >> i think it's becoming a litmus test for this issue in potentially a 2020 primary situation and if you think about kamala harris in particular, she has been very consistent, quite frankly, if you're an activist on immigration, she is one of your people. she took a vote in the senate and one of only three democrats that bucked her own party on compromise. she is to the -- i don't quite want to describe it as farther to the left. she is setting the bar for where that is. s >> of the mainstream presidential on this issue. she is setting the bar for where that is and people, frankly, are responding and the event we went to cover and she went to visit a detention center where mothers were separated and they didn't organize a rally, but there were hundreds of people that showed up on the street and some with organizations and the aclu and others and they came to see her. >> it will be a fascinating debate if that percolates. you have angus king there and you will have the debate about i.c.e. in these primaries and

let me take a quick break. when we come back, we'll change gears a bit and president trump said it's easy to win a trade war and there are losers in the united states and guess who most of them voted for? before we go to break, a word about someone we lost this week and charles krauthammer began a became a diving accident at the 22 left him a quadriplegic. krauthammer was a neoconservative. in his tv appearances, he was tough and rigorous and never disagreeable. he appeared on "meet the press" six times and most recently he was on fox news the morning of election day with quite the far-sighted prediction of what a trump presidency might mean. >> the first thing he will do is he will irreversibly re-shape the party. this was the party of reagan, and the bush years were sort of an echo of the reagan years. reagan defined the contours of the party. trump will do that and it will be changed, particularly the most obvious issues are going to

be immigration and trade. this will be a -- it will be a this will be a -- it will be a populist party. the digital divide is splitting this country. we have parents who are trying to get their kids their children have access. off of too much social media co middle school is a really key transition point, right. the stakes start changing. students begin to really start thinking about their futures. what i like about verizon's approach is that it's not limited to just giving kids new tools, it's really about empowering educators to teach in different ways, and exposing kids to more active forms of learning. giving technology is not a total solution. teaching technology, now that is.

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maybe that's why most of our clients come from fisher investments. clearly better money management. ♪ ♪ welcome back. "data download" time, the escalating trade war president trump has started between the united states and, well, everybody, hasn't had a direct impact on the lives of most americans yet, but the one place where people are starting to already feel the pain, the agricultural midwest. farmers who grow crops like wheat and corn or who produce pork and guess what? they're getting hit hard and when the u.s. hit china with tariffs china knew exactly where to hit back, for instance, soybeans. china is the number one soybean importer in the world and they announced retaliatory tariffs on u.s. soybeans in april. previously china got 40% of its soy from the united states. in 2014, 57% of all soybean

exports went to china. so what's happened? soybean prices have already fallen 15% since china announced the tariff more than a two-year des moines register example, estimates the new tariffs could cost soybean farmers in the state, and the political consequences could be significant for the president's part especially going into the mid-terms this november. these are the top ten soy-producing states in the united states. eight of them voted for donald trump in 2016 and guess what? he came really close and won more, minnesota. a whopping 95%. the repercussions of president trump's trade policies are hurting the very people who supported him the most. the top soybean states all have either a governor's race, senate race or both this year. minnesota has two senate seats up. these red or trending red places

could very well turn back into toss-ups or even go blue after november. of course, there are lots of reasons folks in these states support donald trump, and some like the tough talk, it has a lot of front, steel, aluminum and cars are on the horizon. when we're seeing now in the midwest may only be the beginning. when we come back, endgame and how our political culture wars, whatever you want to with only a kite, a house key and a wet hemp string, benjamin franklin captured lightening in a bottle. over 260 years later, with a little resourcefulness, ingenuity, and grit, we're not only capturing energy from the sun and wind, we're storing it. as the nation's leader in energy storage, we're ensuring americans have the energy they need, whenever they need it. this is our era. this is america's energy era. nextera energy. ♪

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♪ back now with "endgame." all right, we had a couple of interesting former republicans, i guess, calling for democrats to take control of house. first you had michael bloom berke, he's going to support flipping the house. he says republicans in congress have had almost two years to prove they can govern responsibly and they failed and it's critical we elect people who lead in ways this congress don't. you can argue if he was a real

republican before he switched to deat take your point. but how about george will, guys? the congressional republican caucuses must be substantially reduced, that they'll be stripped of the article 1 powers that they've been too invertebrate to use to wield against article 2 powers. they worked so ave leisure time hard to achieve membership in a legislature whose unexercised muscles have been atrophied because of them. >> i believe that congress has had their muscles atrophy. congress is a class of pundits as opposed to a class of legislators and it's a problem on both sides of the aisle where both sides want the issue to campaign on. i do think there is a danger for democrats though, in that typically in the midterms you depend on an incumbent party that doesn't turn out and the progressive culture war, the immigration issues and what not aren't firing up the republican base. >> kasie? >> you know, one risk here that

i do think when i read george will's column about diminishing these majorities, for some republicans they don't realize if they get really close, but republican majorities and that will hand all of the power to the far right of the conference. so if republicans, if never trump republicans want democrats to win the house they better get their act together and work as hard as they can because otherwise the consequences will be worse. >> you know, listen, i have been asking for republicans to put country over party since trump walked down those stairs. so i absolutely believe that this is the beginning of the change and rebirth of the republican party which is going to be necessary. it is too far into the fringe and we have the fringe in the i will not be able to be a bipartisan country if the republicans continue t t >> steve, i would say you're in the middle of this fight inside

the conservative movement, i won't call it your party, but the conservative movement, right, basically one wing versus this trump wing? >> yes. it's not my party. there's no question that what you're seeing is an ideological scramble and what george will is doing is making a long-term argument and most members of congress are living in the short term and they're living between here and then, and that's the big challenge. >> very diplomatic, by the way. the culture wars reared their ugly head this weekend and we've had sarah sanders get kicked out of a restaurant by the owner because she worked for president trump. you had mike huckabee use a pretty disgusting sort of tweet, and her campaign scribe nancy committee using gang members on that. erick eriksson you were critical of all of it and you were almost apologetic and you said your younger self might have participated in some of this. is this a new normal and will

this get even uglier? >> i think it is going to get uglier. i think he is less than anomaly and an inflexion point. we're heading towards an argument if both sides don't turn out. it's not enough to say well, you started it. no, you started it, this happened or this happened. it is, we have -- i had trump supporters show up on my front porch to threaten my family. you have the secretary of homeland security as progressive activists show up in your house to protest. you have people thrown out of restaurants and if we can't agree and disagree and let be, and beneath ever si-- and neith side wants to do that, as religion in the country fades and society becomes more and more secular people are finding their salvation and morals in politics and that's a bad thing. >> sarah huckabee sanders, using her official government platform to claim victim status, and what she's doing is trying to distract from the way that that administration's policies are actually victimizing some of the least powerful people on the planet. you know, refugee children. there is a difference between being discriminated against for who you are and being judged for

what you do and that's what we saw. >> chuck, i think one thing, too, here is people, the tenor of the debate on whether or not there are people across the other side of the aisle who you might be able to work with has completely fallen apart. i feel like even -- >> even in the senate every day. there were these great lions and friendships and ted kennedy, and john warner, people worked together and quite frankly, you saw that reflected in voters, as well. >> voters who were willing to consider voting for someone else. the tribalism of this, i just fail to see if you think that just because you're a member of the other party that there's no circumstance under which you can work with that person? that's scary. >> all i know is whatever happened to the golden rule is everyone just did golden rule we might be in a tiny bit better place. that's all for today. thank for watchitionndand for now we'll be back next week because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press." ♪

a hazmat situation sends dozens to various salem hospitals overnight. we'll have the latest. the situation at the border turns to zprags for some seeking loved ones while nbc news take you behind the scenes of various border crossing. >> new details surrounding prince william and jared kushner's separate trips to the middle east. >> it's a new date in saudiarab exercise the legal rights to drive a car. >> and wicked weekend weather causing havoc in various parts of the country. early today starts right now. >> and jj stone wints wits more

frances rivera. we