diagnosed with breast cancer is about 60. so why do it only every other year as women start entering that age group where there's a problem? >> thank you so much, dr. port. >> appreciate it. >> that does it for this hour. i'm kate snow. "mtp daily" starts right now. >> if it's tuesday, who's closer to a decision, paul ryan on running for joe biden on running for the white house. the clock is ticking and one of them might make it clear tonight. this is "mtp daily" and it starts right now. >> and good evening, i'm steve kornacki in for chuck todd, who's going to be joining us a moment from now in iowa. also two hours from now, house republicans are going to hold a closed-door meeting where they will talk about their road

ahead. is paul ryan ready to speak out about running for house speaker? meanwhile, our new poll speaks volumes about vice president joe biden's prospects for the presidency. also tonight, senator cory booker from new jersey, on a rare bipartisan push for criminal justice reform. and also, a look at the man presiding over hillary clinton's testimony less than 48 hours from now. benghazi committee chair, trey gowdy. all of that coming up, but first, let's hit the press box. luke russert is on capitol hill. kristin welker is at the white house. and chuck todd is in sioux city, iowa, with more on our new poll numbers, the 2016 race, and mucher month. we start, though, on capitol hill where less than two hours from now, house republicans will hold that closed-door meeting, all eyes of course on paul ryan. earlier today, luke russert tried to get some clue from him about what he's going to say tonight? >> congressman ryan, how you doing? are you going to run?

>> good to see you. got nothing new for you. >> ryan got back to d.c. earlier today. now the entire republican conference awaits his answer. is he going to run? allies say he's open to doing so, but he doesn't want to face the running threat of a rebellion that loomed over speaker john boehner's time in the job. he also wants votes from 235 of the members in the election for speaker. that would many a majority of the freedom caucus members who have given boehner so much trouble. joining me now is luke russert on capitol hill. luke, looks like a bank of telephones there behind you. where are you and also, you got a glimpse of paul ryan earlier. what is he expected to say tonight? >> so let's start about where i am. i'm in front of some old 1980s and '90s era phone booths, steve. and the reason why, it's because the man of the hour, paul ryan is right through this door next to me. and this is the staff office of

the ways and means committee that he chairs, and it's expected that in that room, he's going to conduct a meeting with members of the house freedom caucus, jim jordan, raul aber dor and ralph meadows to name a few. and we expect him to talk with them, and that's a sure sign that perhaps he really is considering the speaker's job, sort of getting a lay of the land, what a path forward would be. now, we talked about the number 235. that's what i'm told he would like to see in terms of the number of support he would get from the house gop conference if this were to go to the floor for the speaker's vote. the reason why, he doesn't want to tread water like john boehner's had to do over the last year. he wants a clear mandate. he wants his colleagues to believe in him, to enact his vision for the republican party and not move to take him out so far in the beginning of the job. so we'll see if that happens. but having these types of meetings with members of the house freedom caucus, sure is a first step to gauging how much support there could be for him,

or how strong the desire is from those members. >> luke russert on capitol hill, keeping a close eye on things. thank you. obviously we'll keep tabs on what happens there tonight. the other decision coming down the line is from vice president joe biden. he hasn't said that he's going to enter the race for president, but he did make a point today to note a distinction between being vice president and secretary of state. >> if you notice, i will get sent to go speak to putin or go speak to erdogan or whomever, and it's because the secretary of state, we've had two great secretaries of state, but when i go, they know that i am speaking for the president. >> so that's the vice president, directly comparing himself to the front-runner in the democratic race right now. hillary clinton. we're waiting to hear if the comparison turns into competition. joining me live from the white house is kristin welker with all

the latest. kristin, i want to set this up, by playing what the vice president, something else he said today that made some waves. he was talking about that decision in 2011 to go ahead with the raid on osama bin laden's compound. the story was biden was against the raid, clinton was for it, but this is what biden said about that today. >> i didn't want to take a position to go if that was not where he was going to go. so as we walked out of the room and walked upstairs, i told him my opinion, that i thought he should go, but to follow his own instincts. imagine if i had said in front of everyone, don't go, or go, and his decision was a different decision. >> so interesting, now he's saying he offered no opinion in front of the group four years ago, but that privately he told the president he should do it. the story that's been out there has been that he did tell the president in front of his top advisers that he shouldn't go.

this sounds and has the feel of a precampaign reversal. is that how people are reading this? >> well, i think people are reading it as an extra layer to this story that we've all heard so many times. the vice president being careful to say it was a conversation that occurred in private once the cabinet meeting was over. we know he made similar comments on "meet the press" a while ago, however he didn't go so far as to say that he said to the president that he should go. so he's giving himself some room, if he does decide to get in the race. this issue could have been a thorny one for him, could have people questioning his foreign policy credentials. he's getting ahead of that debate, and essentially saying, i was in lock step with the president, and that was so fascinating about his remarks today. he really seemed to stress that he was going to be the standard bearer of the obama legacy if he were to get into this race and of course we're all waiting with bated breath to see if that's

what happens. we know he's in the final hours of his decision-making process. but i want to be very clear, those close to him saying, look, only the vice president knows when he's going to decide. he's taking a hard look at this, to see if he thinks that there's a path for him to win. steve? >> kristin welker at the white house, thank you for that. as for active democratic candidates, there's one fewer tonight. jim webb said today, he's dropping his bid for the democratic nomination. webb was barely registering in the polls, so it's not as though his departure creates an opening for vice president biden and that's even clearer in our poll, which shows that 38% of democratic primary voters would prefer that biden not enter the race. that is more the 30% who say he should jump in. another 31% saying they don't have an opinion. and it's hillary clinton who's enjoying a big bounce out of that first presidential debate last week. she's now increasing her lead over bernie sanders to a full 20

points with biden in the race. with him out of the picture, and clinton's lead jumps to 25 points over sanders. a big week still ahead in the democratic contest with clinton testifying thursday before the house benghazi committee. brand new poll numbers find that 44% of voters say they are not satisfied with clinton's response to the benghazi attack. but 36% do believe the benghazi committee is unfair and too partisan. how will it play out with voters in the crucial early states? chuck todd joins us now live from the first in the nation caucus state of iowa. he's in sioux city. chuck, welcome to your show. let's start on the democratic side. biden is facing this decision. you have a plurality of democrats say, don't get in. hillary clinton taking a seven-point jump since that debate last week. politically, forget his personal calculation, but is there room for biden now to get in the race? >> well, look, yes, there's

room. i've actually been looking through the cross tabs all afternoon and three hours ago, i would have said, boy, i don't know if there's a lot of room. but you do see where the room is. but it's a bank shot, steve. meaning, it's this. he gets in and he helps bernie sanders, right? that's number one. we know this is true. and that's actually then his path to the nomination, which is, his hope has got to be that it solidifies sanders, particularly with the labor unions and young voters, that the two of clinton and biden sort of splitting traditional democrats in iowa and new hampshire, allows for sanders to win both. and then it becomes a competition for hispanics and african americans. and what's interesting in the cross tabs, when you look in here, steve, is that biden is at par with hillary clinton among these groups, when it comes to favorable ratings and things like that. not obviously right now in the head to head. but that's where you see the path. it is letting sanders blow up the primary by winning iowa and

new hampshire, and then biden then competing with hillary clinton for the other part of the democratic electorate, the non-white part of the democratic electorate. that's his path. it's a narrow path, but after looking in the cross tabs, it's there if he chooses to go that route. >> that's interesting. on the republican side, our new numbers, which we put out yesterday, donald trump continuing to lead the pack with 25%. but what jumped out at me, you ask that question, could you see yourself potentially voting for these candidates. and trump's number is now near 60%. he's up a full ten points in the last month. meanwhile, jeb bush is barely at 50%. >> it is. and in fact, i think our poll is clarifying in the republican field for the first time. i know people are going to say what, it's not clarifying. trump is carson are still on the top of the establishment. but we now have, just six candidates now that are in combined first and second choice that get double-digits. so your nominee is likely to come from one of those six.

trump and carson, and then bush, rubio, cruz and fiorina. after that, there's a big drop-off. that lesser part of the field now includes people like huckabee, christie, paul, people we thought might make it into the top six, they're not there right now. so i think one hand, we're getting a clarifying there. but, look, trump got stronger in our poll. there's no other way to put it. he got stronger in his raw number, stronger in his ability to p.appeal to a cross section republicans. that said, i'll still rather be ben carson in a republican primary at least here in iowa, a more conservative, than trump, because carson is stronger, particularly with evangelicals. >> when you talk about optimism and pessimism, running through the list of candidates, asking voters for their responses, very negative stuff there. what do you make of it? >> our pollsters are the ones that want this highlighted

because they've never had it before. we asked this question. does so and so, if they become president, does that make you optimistic, or is it satisfying, or make you pessimistic? not a single candidate we tested, the top six republicans, the top three democrats, none of them got a positive, potential view about their president. joe biden was the highest. every single presidential candidate under water. i think that tells you, the voters are not satisfied with the choices that they've been handed right now, and maybe nobody is satisfactory to them. but it's a reminder of how pessimistic this electorate is on both sides of the aisle. >> chuck todd in sioux city, iowa. we'll see you back here later in the show as we await word from capitol hill on paul ryan's plans. as we are about 100 minutes from that big house republican meeting, will paul ryan make his intentions known? coming up after hillary clinton listed her enemies in the first

debate, today vice president biden offered a different take approximate. i'll ask clinton and sanders whether the strategy will win over voters. and later, could there actually be cooperation in congress? senator cory booker on a bipartisan push to overhaul the criminal justice system. stay tuned. you're watching "mtp daily." why put up with that? but the quicksilver card from capital one likes to keep it simple. real simple. i'm talking easy like-a- walk-in-the-park, nothing-to-worry-about, man-that-feels-good simple. quicksilver earns you unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase, everywhere. it's a simple question. what's in your wallet? life'asking questions........ having new experiences. are you ready? the key to a happy satisfying life

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back now with more "mtp daily" and more of our brand new nbc news/"wall street journal" poll numbers. it shows the president's approval rating is ticking down. putting the president back under water, as they say, meaning more people disapprove of his work than approve. right now, 46% say they approve of the job president obama is doing. 49% say they disapprove. it was 47-47 a month ago. one place the president's approval rating, though, is technically going up, that is his handling of the situation in

syria. americans aren't exactly giving the president high marks for his handling of syria. a majority, 54%, say they disapprove of the job he's done handling the crisis. while 34% approve. but that is a slight improvement from last month when only 28% approved of his handling of the situation, and 57% disapproved. can help me with frog protection? sure, we help with fraud protection. if there are unauthorized purchases on your discover card, you're never held responsible. you are saying "frog protection"? fraud. frog. fraud! i think we're on the same page. show your team pride at discover.com/nhlcard. and sometimes i struggle to sleep at night,blind. and stay awake during the day. this is called non-24. learn more by calling 844-824-2424. or visit your24info.com. well, right now you can get 15 gigs for the price of 10. that's 5 extra gigs for the same price. so five more gigs for the same price? yea, allow me to demonstrate. you like that pretzel? yea.

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and continue once a year until they are 54. after that, they should do it every other year. >> and now for today's where, it's canada. and a changing of the guard. a big one in the great white north. justin trudeau's liberal party won a commanding majority last night, ending the reign of a conservative government that's been in place since 2006. liberals plan to raise taxes on the wealthy and reinvest in infrastructure spending. now to the when. take a listen. >> when are we? >> we're descending toward hill valley, california, at 4:29 p.m. on wednesday, october 21st, 2015. >> 2015? you mean we're in the future? >> that's right, it's here, tomorrow is the day marty mcfly and doc brown landed in 2015 in the movie "back to the future" part 2. and because this is "mtp daily," back to the future day has us thinking about this classic line

from the original "back to the future" and it's today's why. >> tell me, future boy, who's president of the united states in 1985? >> ronald reagan. >> ronald reagan? the actor? then who's vice president? jerry lewis? >> as for the why, in 1955, the thought of actor ronald reagan in the white house would have been shocking to most people. can imagine if marty mcfly went back to 1985 and told doc that donald trump was leading the republican presidential field. we can only imagine who doc would speculate as a running mate. and before we break, a quick how. how could we not show part of the new "star wars" trailer. well, here you go. ♪ ♪ >> those stories about what happened.

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speculation about vice president joe biden goes into overdrive. no surprise his every word is under heavy scrutiny. so today it was another perceived swipe at hillary clinton, as biden touted his history of engaging with republicans in congress. >> i really respect the members up there, and i still have a lot of republican friends. i don't think my chief enemy is the republican party. this is a matter of, you know, making things work. >> biden made similar statements at an event on climate change yesterday. hillary clinton, of course, cited republicans as some of the enemies she is most proud of having during the democratic debate last week, a debate after which she saw her support grow, against the competition, which of course begs the question. are republican enemies a better

way to win over democratic primary voters? i'm joined now by a bernie sanders' supporter. congressman from arizona and president of the senator for american progress, and an informal adviser to the clinton campaign. this is twice now in two days that joe biden has gone out of his way with this line, i don't think of republicans as my enemy, coming a week after hillary clinton bragged about having republicans as her enemy. he also said that in the obama administration, we've had two great secretaries of state, but when i go overseas, i'm speaking for the president. he's taking some shots at your candidate, isn't he? >> you know, i have a lot of respect for the vice president, and if he enters this race, i think that there will be a good discussion of different leadership styles, different visions for the country. hillary's put out a number of ideas on that score. i would say on the issue of democrats and republicans, look, i think we have a situation

where the republican party has moved very far right, in fact, so far right they can't even manage to have a speaker in the house of representatives, can't manage to select one, and democrats want candidates who can make compromises with republicans, but also know how to stand up for our values, stand up for democratic values, and know when to really stand our ground. so, you know, i think hillary is not going to shy away from taking the fight to republicans and we'll see where the vice president goes. >> congressman, i'm curious of what you made in the moment in the debate last week, where every candidate was asked which enemy are you most proud of and she cited the republicans. the republican party. obviously that's a hit with the democratic audience, but when you think ahead to the general election, when you think ahead to swing voters, do you think that's the kind of talk people in this country, swing voters in this country, want to hear? i see my enemy as the other party.

>> i think the general election is going to be a battle of ideas. it's going to be a battle of visions. and i think you got to be very clear about where you stand on certain issues. and if that differentiates you from the republican candidate, so be it. but right now, i think the american people, as this election continues to evolve and the anticipated entrance of vice president biden into this race, it will continue to evolve. but, you know, senator sanders has been pretty clear about making a clear line of distinction on where he stands in economic issues, in terms of the role of government in the lives of american people. those distinctions are not going to go away. if there's common ground on those, i think we need to work toward that. but i think there will be distinctions made all the way through this. >> and this new nbc news/"wall street journal" poll we've been talking about, interesting numbers in here, and a lot of these are continuations of things we've been talking about.

we asked, do you consider hillary clinton honest and straightforward? 50% saying no. 54% saying they're not satisfied with her response to the benghazi attack. she does slightly worse against the republican field. when you move outside the democratic primary, a lot of good news on the democratic side, but when you move outside of it, there seems to be a lot of resistance to her. what do you make of that? >> well, look, we spent months and months and months talking about e-mails, and republicans have had a single focus on attacking hillary's character, and so there's going to be an effect of that. but i think we all look forward to the hearings on thursday where after answering a lot of questions from reporters and going through a hearing already, she's going to take a series of questions, really answer all the questions people have and, you know, i think we can move on from that. i think the reality is that

democrats liked her response during the debates where she was talking about issues and her vision. i think if she's able to do that over the next several months, her number will move the country as well. >> congressman, also from this poll, we asked 70%, 7 in 10 voters saying they have reservations, or are uncomfortable with the idea of having a socialist as president. bernie sanders, a self-described democratic socialist. that number there, 70%, that prohibitive in terms of him winning a presidential election? >> i don't think so. i think as we go through it, i said that the american people will reach a point where they're listening to issues. right now, it's about the message and the messenger and bernie sanders. whether people accept that or not, it's kind of irrelevant. there's a huge base in the democratic party, and i would suggest with the american voter, that listen to what he's saying, listen to that message, support

it, and it behooves all candidates to not only pay attention to that message, but not to sell it short, ignore it, or put it on the back burner. and i think what bernie's done, whether he calls himself whatever, is to bring those issues to the forefront. >> thank you both for joining us. and still ahead, senator cory booker on reforming the criminal justice system, and how it's garnering support from both sides of the aisle. now here's hampton pearson with a cnbc market wrap. >> thanks, steve. we had stocks finishing with modest losses. the dow was off by about 13 points. declines in ibm. the s&p ended lower by two points, the nasdaq slipping 24. shares of yahoo are sinking after hours. fourth quarter guidance also disappointed. and results from chipotle failing to impress investors. but revenue was in line.

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the chronic condition of mass incarceration has been plaguing the country's criminal software system for years now. some key stats paint a daunting picture. mandatory sentencing laws have landed over a third of the u.s. prison population behind bars. 132 months, the average sentence for a drug offender in the u.s. as of 2010, the country spent more than $80 billion a year en masse incarceration. president obama has renewed his push for criminal justice reform, announcing a nationwide move in the coming weeks, and a bipartisan group of senators is pushing their own reform bill. >> it has already been called

the most significant criminal justice reform bill in a generation. >> while it doesn't contain everything i might like, it doesn't contain everything senator grassley would like, that's the nature of a compromise. >> i think at the end, we have a product well worth the title of meaningful, historic reform. >> joining nme now, new jersey democratic senator cory booker. thank you for taking a few minutes. dick durban there, calling it historic. democrats and republicans working together on something, that is something we don't see that often these days. so tell us, specifically, what is it in this bill, how will life be different if this bill is passed? >> well, first of all, it reverses a trend that you've already said, that federal prison population since 1980 has been going up and up and up. 800%. so after years of going in the wrong direction, we finally say, time-out, enough, and we start moving in the right direction by

lowering the prison population. so this will do things like make the crack cocaine, powder cocaine disparity retroactive, it will help to lower mandatory minimums, get rid of three strikes you're out, help people in prison earn time to get out of prison. it will end some pretty horrific practices like juvenile solitary confinement. so this bill has a bunch of things in it. there's not a much as i'd like to see in it, but it really does finally begin to turn us back, moving in the right direction. and it follows the progress made in some states, including red states, who are saying we can save taxpayer dollars and lower our prison populations and lower crime at the same time pn. >> you have the three strikes and you're out, a lot of that grew out of the tough on crime era of the late 1980s, the crime bill clinton championed in 1994.

you go back to the era when the laws were put on the books in the first place, you look at where violent crime was then, where it is now, there's been a massive reduction, don't some of these things deserve credit for that? >> absolutely not. and there's a lot of detailed studies that have shown that the drops in crime which we're seeing, not only in the united states, but across globally, in other industrialized countries, that doesn't incarcerate such high levels of their population. america is unique. we're seeing the same drops in crimes as a lot of other countries, but we're also incarcerating 1 out of 4 people on the globe and we're only about 5% of the population. and deeper studies have shown there's no correlation between how much we're incarcerating and what's happening with the crime drop. so the time is now to do things that are just common sense. we know if you release people out and you haven't treated their addiction, they're still going to have problems. we know we take non-violent people and put them behind bars, at exorbitant costs, that that

disproportionate sentence costs taxpayers money and it hurts the community in which they come from, the children that they have. so we are starting to see that common sense stuff, that everybody from grover norquist and the koch brothers can get behind, along with people like me and senator dick durban. we can do common-sense stuff, that's not fantasy, it's already being done in some states in america, we can achieve the trifecta of lowering crime, lower incarceration rates, lowering taxpayer expense and readsing up the ability f-- ris ability for people to get back. we talk about poverty all the time. please understand that there are studies that show we would have 20% less poverty in america, 20%, if we had incarceration rates that were more like our global peers. so what i see that's really happening and this is where the discussion gets very personal, is because this has been tough on all americans, whether they know it or not.

but this has devastated so many of our communities, particularly communities of color in our country, that we now see more african americans under criminal supervision in america than there were slaves in 1850, overwhelmingly for non-violent drug offenses. young whites have a little bit of a higher rate of dealing drugs than young blacks, but yet blacks are arrested for usage of drugs almost more times more than some of the whites. latinos, twice more than someone that's white. so if we want to address issues deeper than just the criminal justice system, that range from poverty, to equality under the law, equal opportunity, we've got to start approaching our criminal justice system in a way that empowers, as opposed to something that's so destructive to our own country. >> i'm curious, what is it about this issue, because the story of washington, d.c. has been democrats on one side, republicans on the other, and

gridlock is the rule. what is it about this issue in particular that gets republicans and democrats to the table compromising? >> well, that's what's inspiring for me. i authored another bill right before this one, about banning the box, lingo for which is people with criminal convictions, 10, 20, 30 years in the application process, the federal government, the biggest employer in the country, and their contractors, we remove checking that bock until they have a conditional offer. it was the first time i had a bipartisan bill where everybody came together from issa to cummings. so there's something about this that is so grievous to american ideals, the fairness, of equity, of prudence with our fiscal resources and the idea of second chances, grace and mercy, in this country, it really violates those principles that are held by libertarians and fiscal conservatives, and christian evangelicals. i think this is why this is such

a unifying issue, to do the right thing, the common sense thing and get smart on crime, not just tough on crime. >> i know you back hillary clinton in the presidential race. joe biden's trying to make up his mind. do you think there's room in the democratic race for joe biden? >> absolutely. look, i think hillary is the right candidate. i think that the more she goes forward, like we saw in the last debate, the more it's going to become obvious to more and more democrats, that she's a person that can not only win, but do an extraordinary job in the white house. but i love senator biden and i'm kind of a believer that all this action in our presidency, from donald trump and other candidates are attracting so much attention, that's nothing but good for our democracy. so that's okay it's a vibrant race, so i hope joe makes a decision that's best for vice president biden. >> senator cory booker from new jersey, thank you for your time. appreciate it. all right, let's turn now to our washington bureau and nbc justice correspondent pete williams for some reaction to what we just heard.

so pete, let's just start on the basic prospects of what cory booker is describing, this bipartisan, criminal justice reform package. we don't see many bipartisan things get through congress these days. we don't see much of anything get through congress these days. what are the chances for this? >> one of the people in the picture of the this is charles . i remember he was dead set against repealing mandatory minimums. i think the biggest thing that's happened here, the blom is off the rose. that was the idea in the '90s, you could reduce violent crimes with mandatory minimums. the feeling now, it hasn't worked. all it's done is clog up the priso prisons. that's the change here. you have conservative republicans, liberal democrats, all saying this is a good idea. the problem here, you have this senate bill, you were talking to senator booker about, you have separate legislation in the house. that's going too have to be

worked out. that's going to take some time. it's not exactly working beautifully in the congress right now. so is the real question about whether it will get through this session, but it does seem like there's enough momentum that maybe this one or the next one. >> and in terms of what this would actually mean, you have dick durban describing this as a major sea change. practically speaking, what would the impact be? >> it would reduce overpopulation in the federal prison. most of the prisoners in america are in state prisons. >> i want to ask you too about this hacking story, involving john brennan, the cia director. apparently the secret service, the fbi both looking into this. right now it's a high school student. it's his personal e-mail account. do we know anything here for the potential of sensitive information being exposed? >> well, sensitive, yes. some of that's already been put onto a twitter account by one of these hackers, a spread sheet that shows names, e-mails and social security numbers of some current and former intelligence

officials. it appears to be about eight years old, but some of that is still current, the social security numbers, for example. both of the twitter accounts connected with this hacker have now gone dark. one of them that released that spread sheet i was talking about, went down last night. a second one that one of these hackers was using, the one who's been talking to the "new york post," that one went down this afternoon. i think it's fair to say there's a very aggressive effort by the fbi to find this person and i would suspect that will move along very rapidly here within the next few days. >> pete williams, thank you for that. we are just over an hour away from the house gop leadership meeting. will we know more about the future of the house speakership? chuck will be back to preview the big meteeting. >> and this just in, breaking news on vice president joe biden's possible run. andrea mitchell is reporting that the head of the firefighters union has talked again to joe biden and they are

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arrived in jerusalem to meeting with israeli and palestinian leaders. while he's here trying to calm the situation down and perhaps restore some trust between the two sides to put an end to the current round of violence, the violence very much continued on this the street. today there were a series of incidents, mostly in and around hebron that resulted in the killing of palestinians and israelis. now, according to the israeli military, there were at least two incidents in which palestinians attempted or attacked israeli soldiers in the occupied west bank. and as a result, israel says that it was forced to shoot and kill those palestinian assailants. meanwhile, in the gaza strip, the palestinian health ministry there says at least one palestinian was shot and killed by israeli forces during protests in that territory. now, the palestinian authority says israel's continued actions in both the west bank and east jerusalem are the cause for that violence. so tomorrow, the u.n. secretary-general will be hearing from the palestinian authority about their list of grievances and complaints and

what can be done to possibly end this latest cycle of violence. for now, though, as the u.n. secretary-general continues his diplomatic efforts, so too does the violence on the ground. steve, back to you. >> thanks, ayman. and we'll be write back with more "mtp daily." secretary-general continues his ♪ the way i see it, you have two choices; the easy way or the hard way. you could choose a card that limits where you earn bonus cash back. or, you could make things easier on yourself. that's right, the quicksilver card from capital one. with quicksilver you earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase, everywhere. so, let's try this again. what's in your wallet?

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in a way that no white house hopeful has had to face in modern times, maybe even ever. but the spotlight will also be on that committee's chairman. this will be a make break moment for congressman trey gowdy, as his committee has gone through its share of troubles in the last few weeks. msnbc's kasie hunt has more for us on the man at the center of it all. >> reporter: many washington insiders knew hillary clinton used private e-mail, but it was a south carolina congressman who made it public. >> we discovered former secretary clinton relied exclusively on private e-mail accounts to send and receive e-mails. >> trey gowdy's aggressive investigation into the attacks in benghazi have rattled a presidential campaign that once seemed unshakable. >> i take responsibility. i should have had two accounts. one for personal and one for work-related. at the end of the day, i am sorry that this has been confusing to people and has raised a lot of questions. >> reporter: goudy was a federal

prosecutor who knocked out an incumbent in a nasty primary, the year the tea party swept the house of representatives. >> what do you mean by "their bailouts," because you voted for the wall street bailout, not once, but twice. >> reporter: it's that background that earned him trust with the right wing in the house. there have been calls for him to run for speaker. and even john boehner reportedly urged him to run for majority leader. but gowdy has refused. those close to him say he doesn't want to stay in congress for very long, and that might be especially true after the last several weeks. gowdy has been forced on defense, after majority leader kevin mccarthy said the benghazi committee was political. >> everybody thought hillary clinton was unbeatable, right? but we put together a benghazi special committee, a select committee. what are her numbers today? her numbers are dropping. >> reporter: that helped knock mccarthy out of the race for speaker. now with clinton set to testify on thursday, gowdy is begging

his own party. keep your mouths shut. >> i have told my own republican colleagues and friends, shut up, talking about things that you don't know anything about. and unless you're on the committee, you have no idea what we've done, why we've done it, and what new facts we have found. >> and kasie hunt joins us now. so kasie, thursday is the big day for trey gowdy. how do you expect he's going to handle this? >> reporter: steve, gowdy has been a key force in this drip, drip, drip of e-mail information that we've been dealing with over the past couple of months. but as that pressure has mounted on him, as members of his own party have said things to insinuate that this is political, he's had to be a lot more careful. i think you saw some evidence of that in the aftermath of huma abedin's testimony up on capitol hill. there were notably fewer leaks. hillary clinton's campaign put out a statement saying, they hope there aren't any leaks out of this. so on thursday, he's going to be in a notably smaller box and will have to be a lot more careful in how he's perceived as

handling this hearing, steve. >> kaca kaci hundredth, thank yr that. and up next, the house meeting expected to start over an hour from now. and more on that breaking news that the firefighter's news is preparing for a biden presidential run. stay tuned. when you're not confident your company's data is secure, the possibility of a breach can quickly become the only thing you think about. that's where at&t can help. at at&t we monitor our network traffic so we can see things others can't. mitigating risks across your business. leaving you free to focus on what matters most. and sometimes i struggle to sleep at night,blind. and stay awake during the day. this is called non-24.

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time now for "the lid." and more on that breaking news that the firefighters' union say it is preparing for a biden presidential run. joining me again now out of sioux city, iowa, is chuck todd. so chuck, we have the firefighters' union. they say, look, we've been on the phone with biden. we're preparing for him to get in. you have biden saying a bunch of things today at this walter mondale event, that if you want to read it as the prelude to a presidential campaign, you certainly could. we're all doing tea leaf reading right now. what do you make of the news coming out of biden land right now? >> i think you have to sit and see what the candidate himself is saying. and today he sounded like a gun preparing to run. that said, outside of what we're hearing out of the firefighters' union, i don't hear, and steve, i'm curious if you have. i don't hear about a future iowa team being set up. the south carolina team being set up. the new hampshire -- you know, i actually remember what happened in '91 with cuomo, you know?

and there were -- there was, we knew people, i remember at the time, you knew people that were looking for office space. you knew people that were making sort of hires without the, you know, filling out your w-9s yet and things like that. so that's the only part of this that has me a little scratching my head. so i feel like joe biden the candidate today sounded like he was preparing to run, but there aren't a lot of behind the scenes maneuverings that are providing evidence that were somehow, that a decision is imminent. >> that cuomo comparison is so interesting. i spoke to a guy a few months ago, he had the form from cuomo signed, ready to submit it. he had office space and everything. we're a little over an hour away from this big house republican meeting in d.c. with paul ryan. here's what i'm curious about. even if paul ryan gets what he wants, he gets the near-total majority of republicans onboard, would he, as speaker, be able to avoid the same trap that boehner fell into when it comes to debt ceiling, government funding,

those must-pass bills? >> you know, i think if john boehner wants to do him a favor, he does the debt ceiling before he takes the speakership. because, no, you don't feel like there's a way to do this. that said, you talk about tea leaf reading. look, there is a lot of -- while we don't know what biden is going to do, and some of us are convinced that maybe the vice president isn't fully sure what he's going to do. paul ryan today is making every move that you would make if you were about to do this. having that meeting, unofficial meeting with the freedom caucus, having this meeting tonight that he's going to have, laying out the terms that are out there. it seems to me that barring some sort of total revolt by the freedom caucus, this -- it looks like the stars are aligning and that we may have our -- and that paul ryan may emerge as this consensus candidate. by the way, look at our poll among republican primary voters. paul ryan is strongest, his favorable ratings are highest among tea party conservatives.

among the very constituency of the freedom caucus. >> all right, chuck todd in sioux city. thank you for joining us. of course, chuck will be back tomorrow for mtp daily. and don't miss "hardball" tonight. harold shapeburger, the president of the international association of firefighters, he will be chris matthews' guest tonight. richard wolf picks up our coverage next. >> right now on msnbc live, in just one hour, house republicans meet behind closed doors to supposedly discuss the month ahead. that's going to be very hard toot without answering a much bigger question. who will be the new house speaker? hillary clinton takes a big jump in the polls. and does donald trump have more national security smarts than george w. bush? did he see the 9/11 attacks coming years before they happened. hello. i'm richard wofe