chris? >> tony, thank you so much. that does it for this hour. luckily, miller stadium is closed in, so they're not freezing their butts off there. i'm chris hayes. i'll be back tonight at 8:00 p.m. for "all in" from the lakefront brewery. come by and see us and take some selfies. "mtp daily" starts now. if it's monday, what could put donald trump in cahoots with the man he calls lyin' ted? maybe it's the threat of a contested convention and john kasich. voters keep voting, but it's going to be delegates who do the deciding. this is "mtp daily" and it starts right now. and good evening from new york, i'm steve kornacki in for

chuck todd. welcome to "mtp daily." we are now just 15 hours until the polls open in wisconsin. this is a state that could dramatically change the course of the races on both sides. it also means that we are now just under 24 hours until chuck kicks off our live primary night coverage of the wisconsin, that's going to start at 5:00 p.m. eastern tuesday. so lets get that countdown clock ticking. you you can see on the lower right-hand side of your screen, we begin tonight's take with a badger state battle royal, as donald trump and ted cruz unite in a massive effort to force john kasich out of the race before a possible contested convention. >> there are only two candidates' whose names will appear on the ballot. donald trump and myself. under the rules, you have to have won eight states. there are only two candidates under that threshold. >> he's 1 in 30. he ought to get the hell out, honestly. it's very, very unfair to have a

stubborn guy like that to be campaigning. >> and as our own ari melber reports, trump and cruz are leading a big effort behind the scenes that would block kasich from availability at this summer's convention. we're going to get the inside scoop from ari on that in just a moment. kasich, meanwhile, is firing back against both trump and cruz today. at a rally today in new york state and in a news conference with reporters, kasich bristled at the criticisms from trump and cruz, that he should get out. >> donald trump said that i need to get out of the race, because i'm getting his voters. i've got news for him. i'm going to get a heck of a lot of his voters, that's what's going to happen. >> i'm not getting out. why would i get out? particularly when trump's worried i'm going to get his votes? i've spent $1 million including smearing me, senator ted, i'm not going to be a pin cushion or a marshmallow. >> and kasich insists he has no intention of going anywhere, regardless of the outcome in

wisconsin tomorrow night. but the anti-trump forces are looking to notch a big win. a turning point for the stop-trump movement. cruz has held sizable leads in wisconsin. there's a new one that shows cruz up five points, so trump still very much within striking distance there. what makes this race so intriguing are the wild spins in delicate allocation that we could see depending on the results. it is possible that donald trump could get shut out completely in wisconsin. it's also possible that even if he loses to ted cruz, he could cobble together a number of delegates, anyway. let's explain, because in this tight race, every delegate is going to matter. now, overall, there are 42 delegates up for grabs tomorrow night on the republican side in wisconsin. if you win the statewide vote, you get 18 of those 42. 18 to the statewide winner. the other 24, that gets a little more complicated.

each of wisconsin's eight congressional districts will also award delegates in a winner-take-all contest by district. for every congressional district you win, you get three delegates to the national convention. now, if you look at the map, wisconsin's congressional districts are not all created equally. but right now, most of them appear to be favoring cruz. ewe know this because in that emerson college poll, i was just mentioning, they crunched the numbers, they broke it down by congressional district and found cruz leading in most of those districts right now. they did show, though, trump having a slight lead in the second district. that's around madison. also, a big lead in the third district. that's in la crosse, in that area. that's about it. so under those -- under that breakdown, trump right now would have six delegates in the state. 6 of the 42. if cruz wins the state and wins most of the congressional districts, that means trump could get blown out. and that is what makes wisconsin such a wild card here. but we've also been here before. it is also possible that trump

loses wisconsin tomorrow, that the headlines are really bad for him, but then on april 19th, he rebounds with a huge win and then a week later on the 26th throughout the northeast, when a bunch of northeast states hold primaries. we just don't know what is going to happen in this race, but there are cracks in trump's towering campaign. at least there appear to be. while trump has dominated the national narrative, his campaign has struggled at the local level. he appears to have been outmaneuvered in north dakota's state convention, where they picked 25 national convention delegates. it looks like cruz's preferred delegates won a vast majority of the slots there. although, a key asterisk here, north dakota's delegates are all officially unbound. so it remains to be seen who they will ultimately support when they get to the national convention this summer. in tennessee, meanwhile, that's the state where donald trump won big in the primary. his campaign says that the state's republican party chose some of its convention delegates unfairly in an attempt to steal

support away from trump. at a rally just a few hours ago, trump ripped into the party's nominating process. let's watch. >> we're dealing with a corrupt system. we're dealing with a system that's not fair. and i say to people, i don't care what it said. any won, i should get more delegates. like, i don't care. >> and i'm going to be joined momentarily by the trump campaign's senior adviser, barry bennett, who is leading their delegate strategy. and i'm going to be joined by "the washington post'" dan balz who thinks wisconsin should reshape the republican contest mathematically and psychologically. we'll begin this hour with msnbc's chief legal correspondent, ari melber. he's been all over this war for delegates playing out on the republican side. ari, take us through it. it looks line trump and cruz have both decided, it's in their interests not to have kasich around at that convention. >> that's right, steve. and as you know from following this, that could change. but right now we have word from both those aides, that's what i

determined in this story, that that's going to be their approach. now, the arguments for that either, we've done it this way before, or we want to do it, we have the power, we're going to do it. and i'm sure you could talk to barry bennett about that. here's what ted cruz said about that second argument, we have the power, today. >> if there's a contested convention, 80% of the delegates will be cruz delegates or trump delegates. both donald and i have been very clear that we shouldn't be changing the rules because washington is unhappy with how the people are voting. >> what he's saying there, to be precise, is that they are going to have the majority of delegates, both on likely the rules committee, the rights of first draft, and tonight floor, so they can decide on who goes on the ballot. i also spoke to north blackwell, who is a really interesting guy who's been on the past seven convention rules committee and was a critic and wanted to change the very rule that limits the ballot. he's a cruz supporter and said there was a time to change it and that time is passed. here's what he told me. under the rules, it appears

kasich can't meet the eight-state threshold. they were established for people who largely all for kasich right now, the establishment, and changing the rules in the middle of the game is quite generally understood as unfair, steve. >> but if we get to june and the cruz campaign determines or the trump campaign, for that matter, hey, it's now in our best interests to open this thing up as wide as possible, all bets are off. >> and that's what makes this so interesting and so much like a "game of thrones" or "house of cards" scenario. no one is thinking these rules are some sacrosanct thing. you would expect the convention to pursue the rules that help them. the cruz team has had a very focused approach here. and because they are second, it's pretty obvious they want anything to narrow this and make them the alternative. the trump calculations, i know you're going to explore in this broadcast, could change more over time. >> ari melber with the start of probably months of wrangling. i'm joined by barry bennett, the

trump campaign senior adviser. i want to start with a piece of sound. this was donald trump today talking about what we were just talking about here, this idea of john kasich and his role or lack thereof of the convention. here was trump today, sending a different message, saying, hey, he wants john kasich to be placed in nomination. at least that's what it sounded like. let me play that. >> let minimum go to the convention. he's the governor, you know, governor, we're talking about cleveland. let him put his name in contention and if things don't work out, let him be. >> so barry, do you want kasich to be nominated at the convention or do you want him out of the race? >> we've had these rules now for three years and three months. and the rules state that you have to win a majority of the delegates in eight states. john kasich is not going to achieve that. and now in the ninth inning, he wants to change the rules to allow more outs. it's not going to happen. >> barry, the clip we just

played, your own candidate says let him go there and put his name in nomination. your candidate is saying, he wants his name on the ballot in cleveland. >> what he's saying is, let him try. he's not going to be able to get i done. in order to be nominated, you have to get the majority of delegates from eight states to sign a piece of paper to take to the secretary to get on the nomination process. he's not going to be able to accomplish that. >> let me ask you this, though, if we get to june, if we get to the end of this primary process here. do you have any doubt that if ted cruz and his campaign determine then for whatever reason that it's in their best interests to open this thing up to kasich or somebody else, that they would change their tune from where they are right now? >> oh, probably, but they won't, because as soon as the establishment has someone else to choose other than ted cruz, they will. it will be ted who? so he's never going to let him do that. >> what about the -- where we stand right now in terms of wisconsin. the stop-trump movement, the

never-trump movement, whatever you want to call it, they are looking at wisconsin tomorrow and they are saying, this is going to be the start of a domino effect. donald trump, they say, is going to lose wisconsin, a state that he should win. that is going to make him look week. that's going to be the story, and then he'll start losing other places he's supposed to win. what do you say to that? >> well, they haven't been right about anything so far. we'll start with that. two weeks ago, we were probably down about 15 points in wisconsin. today, we're down probably within the margin of error of the polls, it's getting very tight. it's an open primary, that changes the dynamics. we could equal it out tomorrow. if we do, then this race is over. frankly, if we win any delegates tomorrow, i think this race is over. because ted cruz just can't afford to lose anymore delegates. >> donald trump also gave that interview over the weekend. it appeared over the weekend, at least, maureen dowd in "the new york times," and he actually had a couple of lines in there that i think people were surprised to hear. one thing he said was that he thought that it actually had been a mistake on his part to send that re-tweet out, that

picture of heidi, of heidi cruz, that unflattering pictuue of heidi cruz. we've been asking for a while, but are we going to see a different tone at all from donald trump going forward? >> i think, especially once we get the primary process behind us, right now we're battling in 56 states and territories, over delegates, rule committees, primaries, you name it. we've got a lot going on. but once we get past this primary and get back to focusing on the issues, why druonald tru decided to run. the safety of our border, the security of our border, keeping drugs and illegal immigrants out of our country, those kind of things we need to get back to and i know that we'll do really well once we get back to talking about those issues. >> barry bennett with the trump campaign, thanks for the time. >> thank you. we'll turn now to dan balz, the chief political correspondent with "the washington post." dan, thanks for taking a few minutes. let me ask you the same -- a variation of the same question i just asked barry bennett there. he says he doesn't think

wisconsin is any kind of a turning point. he says, actually, if you look at his polling, had them down a few weeks ago, he said they made up ground. but you asked that question today, could wisconsin be a turning point for this republican race nationally? how do you look at it? >> i think if ted cruz has a very good night on tuesday night, it could be a turning point. a very good night would be to sweep all the delegates and to shut out donald trump. it's not at all clear that's going to happen the late polls show that this is a closer race than the polls last week. it's anybody's guess. i think, what it's going to end up as, cruz is clearly the favorite at this point. if trump brings a surprise, barry's probably right, that that is a feather in trump's cap and away he goes. but, there's still a ways -- you know, we've still got a number of events to take place. clearly, the calendar after wisconsin, the immediate calendar favors trump. but if he doesn't do well tomorrow night in wisconsin, it's not likely that he can get

to 1,237 before california and even with california. so there's so much yet to play out. i think what we're dealing with is that he's come off of two difficult weeks, with a variety of self-inflicted wounds. and i think if he takes a lumping in wisconsin, people are going to equate part of the result to the problems he's created for himself. >> that's the other question, too. that the events of the last two weeks may not just be jeopardizing his position in wisconsin, but when we talk about all of these scenarios at the convention this summer where republicans could deny him the nomination, all of these delegate maneuverings we see in all of these places, do you think this has added a sense of urgency? has strengthened the resolve of the republican establishment to take advantage of any loophole they can find to deny trump the nomination this summer? >> there's two realities. one is that the convention can

write its own rules. when barry says the rules have been in effect, they're not actually in effect for this convention. they're the carryover from 2012. but as both the cruz and trump campaigns have been saying, if they have the overwhelming majority of the delegates, they will probably be able to write rules that are more favorable to them. that's what mitt romney and his folks were able to do in 2012, to keep ron paul from having his name put in nomination. so -- but, you know, the other thing, steve, is, you know, just think of -- we've been through february and march. we're now in early april. we have to go through april, may, early june primaries, and then maneuvering before the convention. there is so much time, it is impossible to predict what the circumstances are going to look like, by the time we get to the eve of cleveland. >> and it also seems, we are talking with ari, talking to barry, too, just a minute ago, about this idea of trump and cruz, at least for now. and like you say, there's a lot that can change between now and convention, but at least for now, calculating that not having

kasich on that ballot, not having kasich up for a nomination would benefit both of them. i'm trying to think about that from the cruz standpoint, and maybe one of the things they're worried about there, is the idea of the dark horse candidate, the white knight. the candidate who's not currently out there. paul ryan's name gets mentioned a lot. if you put kasich on the ballot, if the thing extends for a few ballots, that possibility enters into the mix more, doesn't it? >> it certainly does. it's always been the cruz campaign's position that they would like john kasich and everybody else out of this race. they have wanted to have a head-to-head contest with donald trump for many, many weeks. so we know that that's in their interests. given what the audio you played from donald trump, and from what he said versus what barry said, it's impossible, at this point, to know what the trump campaign really thinks about that. >> that's right. dan balz from "the washington post," thanks for the time. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> all right. and coming up, recesssive traits. could donald trump's predictions

of an economy on the brink send his campaign over the edge? plus, the evolution of the sanders' revolution. campaign insiders look backward to give a new take on their candidate's path forward. stay tuned. there are two billion people who don't have access to basic banking, but that is changing. at temenos, with the microsoft cloud, we can enable a banker to travel to the most remote locations with nothing but a phone and a tablet. everywhere where there's a phone, you have a bank. now a person is able to start a business, and employ somebody for the first time. the microsoft cloud helped us to bring banking to ten million people in just two years. it's transforming our world. whewhat does it look like?ss, is it becoming a better professor by being a more adventurous student? is it one day giving your daughter the opportunity she deserves?

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welcome back. all eyes will be on america's dairy land tomorrow. 86 democratic delegates going to be up for grabs in the primary there. and 42 on the republican side. and here are some key areas to watch as the votes srt coming in tomorrow night. we'll start with the wow counties. these are the suburban areas densely populated suburban areas, just outside milwaukee. this is where ted cruz is getting his strength from right now, in this state. these areas th s that propellet walker to victory in 2010, in his recall, in his 2014 re-election bid. they are the heart of

conservatism in wisconsin. at least scott walker conservatism. next is milwaukee county. in theory, this should be good for donald trump. he's been successful in areas where white voters live near more diverse communities. but, wisconsin's racial divides are much more stark than in other parts of the country. in the milwaukee journal senathnell broke down marquette polling data from inside milwaukee county and found this. they found that trump has a negative 28% favorableility sco there. that's terrible. the third, seventh, and eighth congressional districts, those could be more fertile territory for donald trump tomorrow. these are the types of rural, working class whites that boosted trump in ohio. and in michigan, these tended to be lower education levels. that's been the formula for trump so far. finally, there is dane county. this has the state capitol, the university of wisconsin, madison. if john kasich can do anything in wisconsin tomorrow, this is where he's going to find his

support. right in and around madison. now, polls in wisconsin are going to close at nine o'clock p.m. eastern tomorrow night and you can see the votes come in with our all-star team right here on msnbc. we'll have all the numbers and all the analysis. make sure to tune in tomorrow night, so we'll be right back next more "mtp daily." ♪ ♪ for your retirement, you want to celebrate the little things, because they're big to you. and that is why you invest. the best returns aren't just measured in dollars. td ameritrade®. wrely on the us postal service? because when they ship with us, their business becomes our business.

that's why we make more e-commerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country. here, there, everywhere. united states postal service priority: you between you and me, i don't want to get hillary clinton more nervous than she already is. she's already under a lot of pressure. so don't tell her this, but i think we win here, we win in new york city, we're on our way to the white house. >> that was bernie sanders earlier today in wisconsin, sounding very confident about his prospects in that state's primary tomorrow. it would launch another round of stufftories for hillary clinton and her campaign.

but it won't really change the delegate math in the democratic race. sanders would have to beat her in new york in two week for clinton to really be in trouble. he would have to do more than that down the road. that's the bare minimum. in today's "new york times," it seems like the sanders' campaign is all but admitting defeat. quote, allies and advisers of mr. sanders say they missed opportunities to run an aggressive political operation in 2015 that would have presented more of a challenge to mrs. clinton. that is the tone of an autopsy report. tad devine, a senior adviser for the sanders' campaign responded to the article today on msnbc. he says the campaign is far from throwing in the towel. >> i think they determined if bernie sanders had run a tough, personal, negative campaign, he could have defeated hillary clinton. but he was never going to run that campaign. that's not who he is. >> kasie hunt is following the sanders' campaign and joins us

from milwaukee, wisconsin. kristen welker joins us from albany, new york. let's start with this "new york times" article. i thought the framing of this article, i found it a little odd, to be honest. to me, when i look at bernie sanders, this is a guy who's won more than a dozen states. he could wind up with more than 1,800 delegates. this is a self-declared socialist running against a former secretary of state, a former first lady. to me the story of his campaign is that he's overachieved, not that he's underachieved? >> reporter: steve, i think that's right. and if you look at it from the flip side, hillary clinton is pretty lucky that that's what she's up against this time around. because he really has challenged her in ways we didn't expect. and i will say many of these quotes in this story have been given to me and to many other reporters over the past couple of months, very close to what is printed in this story. they've always said, all the way long, and i asked bernie sanders

himself this back in iowa, when it was looking like he had a good shot to win and maybe if she had gone negative, maybe if he had done things a little bit differently, he was going to be at the point to push it over the top. the second-guessing on that has always been there and it's also always been true that bernie sanders himself is the one who is reluctant to go negative on hillary clinton. there have been plenty of people around him, advising him, telling him, hey, you really should do this. if you want to win, this is the way to go aide ahead and do it. tad devine has worked with bernie sanders for a long time. many of his other aids around him know that that is not. he does not believe that that is a part of his brand. that's what he told me in iowa. he told me that again in vermont, when we were going into some of those other states. i think the question is, how much has bernie sanders changed from feeling as though his campaign was a cause to really actually believing that he could become the nominee. the one major turning point for him is nevada, where they really

misset the expectations and that changed the trajectory. >> it is interesting. i guess we have the tendency, when things don't seem to be working out for a campaign, we go back and say, they must have made a million mistakes. i think there's a sports analogy here. it's possible to play a really good game and still lose. it's possible to rub a good campaign and still lose, depending on what kind of campaign you're up against. kristen, what's your sense when they look at the sanders' campaign? do they look back and say, wow, we dodged a bullet? how do they look at it? >> i don't think. if you talk to the clinton campaign, they would say, he's been pretty critical of her as of late. that's been a big point of contention. one of the arguments the clinton campaign has made, they have been so negative, they initially weren't sure they wanteded to debate him. that was a political tactic. it underscores you have seen this significant shift in senator sanders and in his strategy in terms of how hard

he's been going after secretary clinton. still, there is a reality about all of this, which you talked about at the top, which is that, look, senator sanders is leading by a slim margin in wisconsin, even if he wins that state by that very narrow margin he's not going to get a whole lot of delegates. he will gain some momentum heading into new york. in order for him to really start making a significant play for the nomination he has to start winning by large margins, not only gaining momentums, but cutting into her delegate lead and he has yet to do that. they still feel fairly confident. but they would argue, he has run a robust campaign, and i think secretary clinton has felt more challenged than she thought she would. steve? >> that's my takeaway. when i think back to a year ago, i don't think anyone thought they would be here now. i think it's a little funny, look at all the mistakes they made. thanks for the time. appreciate that. up next, donald trump's bubble

trouble. how his economic doomsday prophesies are playing out on the trail. stay with us. ♪ ♪ take on the unexpected. the new 2016 nissan altima. built to stand out.

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it's covered by most health plans. still ahead, trumpanomics 101. the republican front-runner now says the country is sitting on a financial bubble. but do his talking points really add up? we are going to dive headlong into that, next. but first, hampton pearson has today's cnbc market wrap. >> hi, steve. yeah, we had stocks ending the day lower. the dow sinking by 55 points. the s&p was off by 6. the nasdaq following by 22 points. alaska airlines is buying virgin america for $2.6 billion, creating the nation's fifth largest airline. the company outed by jetblue in that contest. factory orders slid 1.7% in february. they've fallen in 14 of the last 19 months. and crude oil prices sank nearly

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republican presidential front-runner donald trump says the country is on the verge of a, quote, very massive recession, speaking to "the washington post," trump gave what reporters bob woodward and robert costa described as a gloomy view of the economy. trump says it's a, quote, terrible time right now to invest in the stock market, and that the unemployment rate is, quote, probably into the 20s if you look at the real number. end quote, i think we're sitting on an economic bubble, a financial bubble. trump says he's the only one who could steer the country in the right direction and he repeated

those comments on the trail in wisconsin today. >> i was interviewed by bob woodward and bob costa at "the washington post," two great reporters and they did a story and it was -- i thought it was a pretty good story. it was pretty accurate. and what i said is that we're going to go into a massive recession, but i also say, if i'm president, that's not going to happen. because i'm going to straighten things out before it happens. >> now, even some prominent right-leaning economists are calling trump's predictions irresponsible and wrong. and we're going to talk to one of them in just a moment. first, nbc's gabe gutierrez joins me now from superior, wisconsin, where trump just wrapped up an event a short while ago. gabe, that kind of talk, that kind of doom and gloom economic talk, did you hear that again this afternoon? >> reporter: yeah within we did, steve. certainly, the crowd here, more than 2,000 strong, was very receptive to trump's comments on the economy. and once again, donald trump really went after ted cruz,

something he has continued to do. he also called for john kasich, as you've been mentioning, to drop out of the race. we also had some harsh words for the rnc, saying that he will continue to keep his eyes wide open. basically lying that trial balloon just in case he does walk into that vnconvention wita plurality of the delegates. of course, that sweet talking about louisiana, him winning the popular vote, but ted cruz getting more delegates. expect to see that more from donald trump over the next coming days. here in wisconsin, of course, he faces an uphill climb. the polls have him down potentially by double digits. but he is downplaying the endorsement of scott walker, saying that that's similar to governor nikki haley's endorsement, down in south carolina. she endorsed marco rubio, of course, and yet trump still won. so his campaign thinking he could pull out a victory here and get a bunch of those 42 delegates. steve? >> all right.

thanks, gabe, for that. joining me now, economist doug holtz-eakin who said this about trump's economic predictions. quote, it's irresponsible and baffling he would do this and also substantively wrong. there is no recession in site. doug is president of the american action forum. he was the top economic adviser to john mccain's 2008 campaign and he's a former member of the noncongressional budget office. let me start with this. donald trump said the real employment rate somewhere in the in the 20s. he says we're sitting on a financial bubble and a recession is in sight. that's his take on the economy. how would you describe the state of the american economy right now? >> well, i think everyone know it's not as strong as we would like it to be. there's been a lot of pain in the labor market during the recovery. but, look, you can't get a recession without having household spending, which is two-thirds of the economy, actually falling. and right now the combination of wage growth, job growth, and hours growth adds up to

something that looks like almost 6 percentage point of growth per year in payrolls. that's the kind of income growth that will support household spending. you're not going to get a recession with that kind of an outlook. let me you ask about this claim about the unemployment rate. this kind of looks at the employment level going back, really to the start of the obama -- this is the current one, in the most recent report, more than 200,000 jobs added in march. the unemployment rate sitting at 5%. six years ago, it was up near 10%. now half of that at 5%. i've heard others throw numbers like this around. i'm curious as an economist, when trump makes that claim, the real unemployment rate is in the 20s. do you have any idea what kind of math he's using to get that kind of -- where he's getting that from? >> i don't know where he's getting his number s. i know you can adjust the typical unemployment rate for the kind of workers that are marginally attached in the labor force, working less than they would like to, part-time work, a variety of measures that actually are put out by the

labor department and the broadest measures known as the u u6 employment rate. that's at 9. it's hard to get to 20. we know that unemployment has come down and the combination of those two things just gets you to a point where you can't be saying that 20% of americans who want to have a job don't have a job. >> so he is tapping into something, though, clearly. and when you look at the raw statistics, an unemployment rate being cut in half over the last five to six years, down to 5%, what is it, though? you say the economy is not as strong as we think. what are the things you think he's specifically tapping into? are there economic indicators, numbers, pieces of data you would look at and say, this is where trump resonates when he says things like this? >> i think the key is very simple. if 5% is the unemployment rate, that means 95% of those who want to work are at work, but they haven't had a raise. they haven't had a raise since before the great recession.

they've lived through their house prices collapsing, really bad wage growth, the median family income declining during the recovery. and that has generated some real economic distress out there. he's tapping into that. and, you know, people don't know what the numbers are. i promise you, i live by the numbers and people find that the least interesting thing you can talk about. they know they're not doing well. they hear donald trump say, hey, we have a big recession coming. we've got big problems in the stock market and 20% of people are out of employment. that resonates with them. >> and finally, there's also this subject of the national debt. it sits near $20 trillion right now, $19 trillion. and donald trump promising in this article, he says he can get rid of that, he can wipe that away in eight years. when you look at the numbers, this is a guy, he says he does not want to touch entitlement spending or social security or medicare. he says he does favor a tax cut. so he would reduce revenue coming in, he would not be

cutting a big source of expenditures, entitlement programs. what would it take with those parameters, what would it take to accomplish what he's talking about? >> look, this is pretty simple. he will inherit $6 trillion of deficits on, you know, baked into the budget from this administration. so first, he's going to take care of that. then there's another $14 trillion in debt in the hands of the public. that's $20 trillion he's got to somehow get his arms around in eight years. $2.5 trillion a year. well, right now we spend, for entitlements, about $2.5 trillion a year. he could wipe out all the entitlements and get there. but as you pointed out, he's promised not to touch social security or medicare. there isn't enough defense and non-defense annual spending to cover that. we can't go there. so he would have to raise taxes, but he's already promised to cut taxes. the bottom line is it doesn't add up and it's not going to happen. >> doug holtz-eakin, thanks for the time. >> sure. still ahead, who counts as a person? the supreme court takes a stand on the one-person, one-vote argument. the story ahead on "mtp daily."

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home is about 15 miles from indian point, has called to improve operations at the plant, which experienced a leak in february. now to the where. it is new york and california. governors in both states signing bills today, putting their respective states on the path to a $15/hour minimum wage. both bernie sanders and hillary clinton celebrated the move. the when? well, it is tonight and tomorrow. the ncaa men's and women's basketball championship games, villanova and north carolina and the men's game tonight. syracuse and uconn tomorrow in the women's final. new york and connecticut all have presidential primaries happening in the next month, so there are plenty of pandering opportunities available. i'm not pandering when i say, go villanova, tonight. now to the why. new hampshire senator kelly ayotte will be meeting with a supreme court nominee, merrick garland, on april 13th. according to our count, there are 13 republican senators who are at least open to meeting with garland. and here's why that matters.

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all right, big voting news on capitol hill today, not in congress, though. but across the street from congress, as the eight justices who currently sit on the supreme court unanimously reject an attempt by conservative republicans to reduce the voting power of hispanics and other minority groups. the justices agreed that states cannot be required to draw their

electoral districts based on just the eligible voting population. but the court didn't say that states must use total population to determine districts. nbc's justice correspondent, pete williams, joins me with more. pete, play translator here. voting eligible population, total population, what exactly are we talking about here and what happened today? >> well, this was a challenge brought by two residents of texas, who live in areas with large minority populations, that include many people who aren't eligible to vote, by drawing the boundaries for state legislative districts, based on total population, they said their vote was diluted compared to people in districts where the total and the voter populations are closer to equal. they wanted the supreme court to rule that the states have to draw their boundaries, based on voter population, meaning eligible or registered voters. texas opposed that. it asked the court to rule that at least that it could do it, but today the court ruled unanimously that when a state draws the boundary based on total population, that is constitutional.

justice ruth bader ginsburg wrote the opinion. she said, adopting voter-eligible apportionment as constitutional command would upset a well-functioning approach to districting that all 50 states and countless local jurisdictions have followed for decades, even centuries. she said the challengescenturie. the challengers have found no reason for the court to do that. in essence, the court says it requires using the total population report, so how it can be unconstitutional for states to do the same with their legislative districts. the court did not say whether a state may draw boundaries based on the voter and not the total population. that's a question for another day. >> pete williams, justin krauntd in washington. thanks for that. a lot to talk about from the presidential campaign trail, and our roundtable is going to join us next for the lid, so keep it right here. g great burgers, or building the best houses in town. or becoming the next highly-unlikely

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because we should fit into your life. not the other way around. all right, welcome to "the lid." a lot to talk about today. we have with us elise jordan, an msnbc political analyst, former rand paul adviser and bush white house official. kai wright, and ozzy is a senior reported for politico. let's start on the republican side. looking ahead to wisconsin. talking about this. donald trump, maybe he'll pull a rabbit out of the hat. let's say the polls are right and donald trump loses. the question is, is this going to change anything nationally in the republican race or is this

just an only in wisconsin win? >> i think his momentum has shifted. i know everyone has made this prediction thousands of times. i think this narrative has set in with women that he is against them and he is anti-women. imagine why women would think that after all of the really disturbing incidents from the trump campaign over the past year, but also the past week especially. assaulting a reporter, and then trump's comments on abortion and women deserving punishment if they get an abortion. i think it's the start of a trend where women are completely writing donald off and there's no way he can be successful in a general. maybe he'll be able to eke out a few more delegates. >> okay, so elise is saying he's not going to be able to get there. we have new york after wisconsin. donald trump's home state. can he turn it back around here two weeks later? >> he's expected to do well in new york. remember the expectations game. everyone has tried to write off donald trump, and even if he comes out losing and gives a speech that night that is not crazy, he looks like an adult.

therefore, people will -- can look at him as someone who is matured as a candidate. >> this is -- you're setting the bar a little low. you're basically saying -- >> i think donald trump has set his bar low. some people in the media have helped him, but the expectations game. the bar is low. he'll either low and thump his chest or lose and if he reacts calmly, people will look at him favorerably and he'll get past this and do something outrageous to get our attention the next day. >> kai, let me ask what you think of what elise said. she said this is baked in. and here's the question, and probably other voters too, but this is a guy who has reinvented himself an awful lot of times. if he gets the republican nomnails, he's going to turn around and try to do it again. do you think he can pull it off? >> it would be very difficult to reinvent himself in the general, but the idea he's on a downward slide is wishful thinking. we have been in this conversation several times already in the course of this primary. >> you think he's still going to

be the republican nominee when all is said and done? >> anybody who tells you they know what's going to happen is lying to themselves or you. but there's no reason why he couldn't be the republican nominee and no reason why he wouldn't continue to run. >> you know the numbers so well. how difficult is it for donald trump to retach 1237 delegates f he doesn't win wisconsin. gles, it makes it tougher, but does it spill over? if he goes to new york and dominates, does it mean he loses indiana? he does a lot less in california. then he can't get there. my question is it is only a wisconsin state, or is it a bigger national thing. i want to get to the democratic race. we were talking about this earlier. there's this "new york times" story today, all these sanders people basically, it's framed at least, the article is framed and the sanders campaign is arguing with the framing, but it makes sound like if only bernie sanders had done x, why he could have beaten lik hik. to me, i think they got that all wrong. to me the stories of the sanders

campaign is he's overachieved, not underachieved. >> that's exactly right. first off, to ding the guy for being a senator doesn't seem right. but more to the point, if you're looking back, if we're looking at history, it is shocking to remember how far off conventional wisdom was from accurate about the sanders campaign, and what that says about what we know, what we think we understand about what voters want, particularly democratic voters. if we're looking back, the main thing to do is what are the lessons we learned from this? there's a strong, real democratic constituency for the kinds of message bernie sanders has for whoever is going to lead the party. >> i can remember when this started last year, when sanders was first getting in, the conventional wisdom was he going to finish behind martin o'malley. new york, by the way, could be one of the states. there's polling that shows sanders wib striking distant. >> this is the home of not only wall street, but occupy, the movement that helped bake in the

conversation what bernie sanders is talking about. the "new york times" has dup a lot of excellent coverage, but one of the things they have been criticized for is not taking bernie sanders seriously early on. they did not put on the front page his campaign announcement. now, i think there's a lot of room for outlets to look back and think what campaigns and reporters should have done differently to understand better what was happening this year. >> it essentially was a postmortem, he's not dead yet, hasn't dropped. i really felt that it was unfair in the sense that it hit him up for being there in the senate, for actually showing up to his day job, and then it also hit him for not attacking hillary hard which is part of his appeal, he really has been a issues message candidate that really is going to rise above all that. i felt that part of what it was hitting was what's propelled him so far. >> the subtext really was, why didn't you go negative sooner than you did. >> we forget, how much did he raise off the i don't care about

your e-mails line at the debate. thank you for joining us. chuck is going to be back tomorrow with more mtp daily, and with all due respect starts right now. the donald is calling himself the lone ranger. >> i am who i am. i'm a problem solver. i know how to solve problems. >> i'm killing everybody. i have been tough. takes gutsz, believe me, folks. it takes guts. i have very powerful hands and large hands. >> if he's the lone ranger, who's tanto. >> no more orange. >> hi-ho, halperin, on this, the eve of the wisconsin primary election