that's all for tonight. "with all due respect" starts eight seconds late. i like people that weren't captured, okay? i hate to tell you. >> you could see there was blood coming out of her wherever. >> ah, i don't know what i said, ah, i don't remember. >> this judge is of mexican heritage. i'm building a wall. >> maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. you tell me. >> you can get the baby out of here.

>> it's been less than two weeks since the republican party rallied behind its presidential nominee in cleveland at the national convention. but instead of polling bumps and gop harmony, donald j. trump seems to be dealing with just the opposite these days. gallup is now calling his convention the first in its polling history that made voters less likely to vote for the republican nominee and new cracks are forming in the party's already fragile unity project. on a day when trump was trying to turn the page, targeting hillary clinton and talking about the economy, as republicans want him to do, at a morning rally in ashburn, virginia, the fallout from his comments about the parents of gold star soldier humayun khan continues. today in trenton, new jersey, one of trump's strongest defenders usually, governor chris christie became the latest republican unwilling to defend his party's nominee over the

khan matter. >> the idea of me losing any one of our four children is unthinkable and so you're not going to find me being critical of mr. and mrs. khan no matter what they do, even if i disagree with any one particular statement they might make. it's just inappropriate for us in this context to be criticizing them and i'm not going to participate in that. >> this morning, what the press has been speculating about for months finally happened. a capitol hill republican, in this case new york congressman richard hanna, who is not running for re-election, announced in an op-ed that he's going to vote for hillary clinton, not donald trump in november. that makes him the first gop member of congress to cross party lines and say he'll vote for clinton this year. then at the white house, this morning, during a joint news conference with the prime minister of singapore, a very nondisinterested figure called trump woefully unprepared to be

president and tried to drive a wedge between the candidate and the gop officials who have endorsed him. >> the question i think that they have to ask themselves is, if you are repeatedly having to say in very strong terms that what he has said is unacceptable, why are you still endorsing him? this is daily and weekly where they are distancing themselves from statements he's making. there has to be a point at which you say this is not somebody i can support for president of the united states. the fact that that has not yet happened makes some of these deannunciations ring hollow. >> but wait, there's more. as if tensions between trump and his party weren't bad enough, this afternoon, in an extraordinary interview published by "the washington post" trump said he's not yet willing to endorse house speaker paul ryan or arizona senator

john mccain ahead of their respective primary contests later this month. trump also had some pretty harsh words for new hampshire senator kelly ayotte who faces a tough re-election and is one of the most beloved figures in the gop. john, where do today's events leave donald trump's relationship with his own party? >> in a shambles is where it leaves them. you made the point that barack obama is trying to drive a wedge between trump and his party. he was doing that, unnecessary at this point. donald trump has said repeatedly and believes, he does not care about party unity and every day the way he behaves, especially today, saying what he said to "the washington post," everything else he's been doing, suggests that that is what he really believes. he does not think he needs the republican party and increasingly, the republican party watching him, they think he's a threat to their political futures and as you guys talked about on "morning joe" there are a lot of conservatives and republicans who think he's emotionally and mentally unstable and this is going to be a nightmare from now until november for them and for him. >> president obama and the clinton campaign are trying to

break the back of the republican operation right now. they are tying to drive a wedge so strong that republicans believe they are better off abandoning trump than running with him and trump, rather than trying to fight back and get everybody on board, he loses christie today partially, chris christie's communications -- former communications director announced today she's voting for hillary clinton. for trump to say he's not supporting necessarily ryan, he might support his opponent, not to say he's not necessarily supporting mccain, trump has proven again and again that he just does not like to make nice and turn the other cheek with people who have not been nice to him. kelly ayotte has been critical of trump, to be sure, but any other republican nominee we have ever seen, any nominee of either party, would be desperate to save that senate seat. >> he doesn't give a damn. he don't give a damn about the republican party. he doesn't give a damn about these people. as i said, a lot of them have had deep concerns about him. a lot of them don't think hep'sa

republican. they don't. then they prayed he would kind of behave more like a republican, that somehow he would make a pivot and none of it's happened. as i say, he's endangering their political futures and acting like a lunatic most of the time. just today, he lied about the guy who gave him a copy of his purple heart. he said this thing about how he wishes he had won a purple heart in the wake of stories in the "new york times" that have raised the question opened by the khan controversy over whether he's a draft dodger, he talks about how he wishes he had a purple heart, he takes a guy's purple heart, says it's a real purple heart. the guy says actually it's not, it's a copy. again, in a normal candidacy it would be a huge scandal. in the context of this one, it's just another time he's lying. >> what's that camera number right there? >> i don't know. camera one. >> reince priebus, meet me at camera one. you think you have had a hard time dealing with donald trump and mediating between him and other people in the party, just you wait until they read the

story in "the washington post" because failing to endorse paul ryan, who has endorsed trump, trump used virtually the same language ryan used when ryan was he hesitating about endorsing trump. what is reince priebus going to say when republicans say he's not trying to help kelly ayotte -- >> the nominee is trying to blow the party up. there's no other way to interpret what's happening. >> amazing day. >> out of control. moving on to lesser controversies there's yet another one coming out of donald trump's mouth. his campaign has been trying to deal with it today. asked by "usa today" what his reaction would be if his daughter, ivanka was sexually harassed at the workplace, in particular if she were treated in the way former fox news ceo roger ailes has been accused of treating his female subordinates, trump said quote, i would like to think she would find another career or find another company if that was the case, end quote. amid concerns that trump was at best trivializing workplace harassment, another one of his children, eric, tried to walk

back or clarify depending on your point of view, his father's comment during an interview on cbs this morning. >> what you're saying is ivanka is a strong powerful woman. she wouldn't allow herself to be subjected to it. by the way, you should certainly take it up with human resources. i think she definitely would as a strong person. at the same time, i don't think she would allow herself to be subjected to that. i think that's a point he was making. i think he did so well. >> so in the context of all else that is happening in this insane campaign of ours, is this particular problem that trump brought upon himself today, is this a small problem, medium sized problem or another huge problem for donald trump? >> i would say medium today, but can grow. one of the things that has been a little disgusting is yes, you see these broad messages and campaign ads in surrogate activity, and in hillary clinton's own conference but eventually and probably already under way, the clinton camp will micro-target and you can bet that women will be getting those

comments and will be, i think it's fair to say donald trump's ability to win female votes is not going to be enhanced by this "usa today" interview. >> college educated white women and men is a demographic republicans have dominated for 50 years. hillary clinton is ahead with that demographic now. suburban college educated white women hearing that, having that message driven deeply in the way you are talking about, microtargeted, that's a problem he has to solve if he's going to win and this hurts him with those women a lot. >> eric trump talked about it. we saw that there. ivanka has not, as far as i know. fascinating to hear what she thinks about what her father said. >> there's a tweet here, too, amanda carpenter who tweeted strong women may flee sexual harassment, eric trump. strong women may also fight, endure and one day gain power to protect other women. eric trump then retweeted that tweet and wrote i think this is well said, amanda carpenter. so he tried to clean up his

dad's mess and made another mess of his own and now is trying to clean up his cleanup effort. >> yes. >> things going real well for the trump campaign. >> that brings us to another topic. trump's surrogates. eric trump isn't the only one trying to reframe controversial statements made by donald trump. in fact, trump's family and surrogates have become increasingly important players in a campaign that has required a lot of translating of what the gop candidate quote, meant to say. here are a few examples of the lines of defense from just the past 36 hours. >> every time i go on a tv show it's to correct the record or to explain something that a journalist or the democrats have taken out of context. >> i was there at the dnc. i saw the speech. let me start with this. i myself, the trump campaign, katrina, mr. trump, have utmost respect for captain khan, for his parents, for their loss, for their supreme sacrifice. that is a baseline we do not want to move off of. >> would it have been better if he had emphasized that in his

initial comments? >> he as somebody who was attacked by mr. khan from the dnc, and -- >> would your father be willing to apologize and move on? >> that's a great question for him. i think he has by calling them a hero. in terms of whether you have made a sacrifice, i think my father has. that's certainly not the ultimate sacrifice. the ultimate sacrifice is a soldier dying for the nation. no question about it. >> he didn't start the fight. this is a typical media when donald trump responds to somebody, they say he's attacking. he's not. he's counter punching. >> donald trump and i both have said that captain khan is an american hero and we honor his service and his sacrifice, and we honor his family. >> so john, how effective is that surrogate operation in trying to help trump's color within the lines after he's already colored himself outside the lines? >> common phrase in politics about how you can't put lipstick on a pig. what that means is you can't spin -- >> i thought you were going to

say you can't put the lipstick back in the tube. >> true, too. hard to spin the unspinable. there have been -- some of these are better, some are worse just as performers, but they are given really difficult material to work with. but trump is such a huge figure, he's so big that most of his surrogates who are largely unknown figures, it's just hard for them even if they had material that was more spinnable, it would be hard for them to kind of correct for trump because he leaves such a large impression because of who he is. >> look, on the ground, locally, you are seeing probably more success for mike pence and others than the national framing would suggest. but coming out of the convention, mike pence had some momentum. the trump children for sure had some momentum. i think one of the costs of trump creating all these controversies, particularly the khan fight, is that they can't do anything but play defense. the brand of don jr., eric and

ivanka and mike pence is kind of dissipated now because all they are doing is trying to clean up. >> let's remember, a surrogate operation in an ideal world exists to try to amplify and push forward the messages you want to push forward. it shouldn't be just a defensive brigade at all times. that's the position he's putting them in. >> they are all trying to go after hillary clinton. eric this morning did what paul manafort and others have done, try to turn it to go after hillary clinton. there's plenty to go after there but the problem is the filter, this is not a case of liberal bias. the filter can only handle a few stories at a time. trump is creating the biggest stories through his errors. >> those efforts are just efforts to change the subject. in the end, the subject is the subject. all right. when we come back, donald trump dips into the old rigged system rhetoric well and later, we talk with bill rucker, the incredible interview we just referenced with donald trump earlier today.

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both vice presidential candidates have hit the campaign trail hard since their conventions, holding high profile events across the country. after tim kaine's bus tour with hillary clinton over the weekend, kaine held a hometown rally in richmond, virginia yesterday before heading to the battleground state of florida today. on the republican side, mike pence campaigned in arizona this afternoon but spent yesterday in nevada, where he got some pretty decent local news coverage on all four local affiliates in the reno market. here's a sampling of what that sounded like. >> pence spoke at a rally at the gsr in reno last night and at a town hall event inside the carson nugget earlier in the day. he laid down his qualifications to be vice president. >> taking a question from a military mom, her question sparking boos from the audience. >> the indiana governor had a lot to say about our nation's soldiers and even addressed the controversy surrounding captain khan. supporters at the rally say they

appreciated the governor's time and attention he gave to the u.s. military. >> -- spoke with several people who were at that speech, many hope pence is able to smooth trump's rough edges. >> all right, so pence, kaine, how they doing? >> they are laboring under some obscurity which running mates always do until their debate. pence as we said before is laboring and having to do a lot of cleanup. i actually think they are both proving to be what the people who picked them thought they would be which is total pros handling themselves with not a lot of infrastructure in a way that is very professional, very serviceable, driving message in local markets. >> i agree with that. i think they are both doing quite well. they are both kind of relatively bland on the scale of bland to spicy hot, but' i watch mike pence going through this and think what is that man thinking as he tries to deal, he's got a kid in the military. he's dealing with the situation with trump. he's saying the right things

about the khan controversy but in the end, he can only do so much because of the fact he's working for who he's working for. >> he will come under an extraordinary amount of pressure. he's in arizona supposedly meeting with john mccain today. that will be an interesting meeting. i suspect pence supports mccain in his primary. and kaine is doing a good job as well. all right. by now, you have probably heard that donald trump billionaire started repurposing his quote unquote, rigged system mantra for the general election. he mentioned the phrase only in passing today during his rally in virginia but yesterday afternoon in ohio, trump made the somewhat alarming statement that he was quote, afraid that the election is going to be rigged in november. john, trump talked about a rigged system to good effect for himself in the nomination fight. is it going to be effective politically for him now to help him win rather than as a justification if he loses? >> well, no. look, again, the realm of the unprecedented, the idea of a major party nominee suggesting somehow the american election is

somehow going to be fraudulent affair, i -- >> john kerry worried about that in 2004. >> i'm not saying they haven't worried about it. i'm saying they have not accused it. >> spent three months talking about it. >> you worry about voting machines, voter suppression. you talk about those things but you don't say the system is somehow rigged. >> trump doesn't have a traditional turnout operation. i'm not saying it's a good idea. i think it's a bad idea for the country but if he can scare people to the polls, if he can emotionally get them to go saying we can't let them rig it, we need to win by so much that even a rigged -- some rigging won't keep us from winning, maybe he can scare people to the polls. it undermines what everyone running for president should want which is confidence in the system. >> the honest truth is we both know what this is. if trump loses in november, there's no way, no way he's going to be a gracious loser and say the american people have spoken, hillary clinton is now president. >> why would you think that?

>> he will want to have an excuse. i think he may say this all the way to november so that especially if it's a close election, he will be able to say you know, if it wasn't for this rigged system i would have won. i just don't imagine on the basis of anything we have seen that trump will be like a normal loser if he loses. >> you're right. >> up next, we break down new polling figures that figure out where hillary clinton's post convention bounce is coming from. also, the amazing interview with donald trump today. ♪

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the polls have been coming in fast and furious this week, most of them telling the same story. hillary clinton is getting a pretty solid bounce coming out of her philadelphia convention. today, there was a new survey from nbc news survey monkey shows her leading trump f50% to 42 percent. yesterday we talked about a cnn poll showing her beating trump 52% to 43%. we will take a deeper dive in the numbers with our chief pollster, who joins us now from des moines. so ann, it seems pretty clear that clinton has gotten some edge out of her convention. let's talk about independents first. what has happened to independents in these surveys over pre and post convention? >> well, one of the things that you want a convention to do for you is to not just solidify your base, which we will talk about in a minute, but also to bring in new people, to convince those

that might have been straddling the fence to come on board and join the party. we have got two cnn polls to take a look at. one was conducted before the democratic convention and one conducted afterward. same methodology. gives us really good confidence that we are looking at real change. the poll that cnn published in july showed trump leading by 15 points. the poll published after the democratic convention had hillary clinton up by seven points. so those independents either kind of were loosely affiliated with trump or are not really chosen a candidate yet. what they saw at the convention for now appears to have made them decide, more of them to decide to join the hillary clinton camp. >> let's talk about gender. looking at these numbers, what do you see when it comes to the breakdown between men and women? >> well, one of the other things that conventions need to do is

help you shore up your base. women who tend to vote democratic and then you have the woman card, shall we say, that hillary clinton wanted to play up at the convention, she's up ten points with women. she now has a strong majority, 57% saying that they are supporting hillary clinton. she's also up with men by six points. now, she didn't pull those men over from trump. he stayed steady, interestingly enough, in those two polls at 50%. so it was more those undecided or perhaps looking at a different party who decided they had seen what they needed for now, to say that hillary clinton is their candidate. >> before and after the conventions, clinton obviously had an advantage with non-white voters as democrats do. has that changed at all to account for any of her increase? >> it has changed indeed and it has changed in her favor. she is up 14 points with the non-white voter. that brings her to 80%.

that's a stratospheric number which must mean by the complementary rule that donald trump is really, really lagging. he now gets 12% of the non-white vote, down several percentage points for him. that's the part of the electorate that's the fastest growing, the one that the republicans talked about after 2012 as where they really needed to focus. donald trump is moving in the wrong direction with that group. >> so ann, in the history of bounces, how often are they enduring and how often do they settle back down? >> you know, it is so different from convention to convention, candidate to candidate. i have been spending a lot of time thinking about newton's laws of physics. one is for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction so you would expect from a bounce that the elasticity is going to bring it back into some sort of place where it's kind of

settled, but i think what you have got to take a look at now, i'm getting a physics lecture now, is what happens with the campaigns next. you have august, where it tends to not be an active campaign month, and really things rev up after labor day. you have to think that the clinton campaign with resources that it has may think it can win this thing in august, given that they have the resources, given that trump is having kind of daily difficulties. i'm especially curious what the campaign tees up in august. >> ann, thank you very much. coming up, we talk more about donald trump's extraordinary interview with "washington post" and his relationship with the republican party after this. if you have moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis, and you're talking to your doctor about your medication... this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain

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we are joined from washington by the "washington post" reporter with the big trump interview today, phil rucker. phil, tell us what happened when you got to see donald trump. you have been banned for awhile before this interview. >> we have been. well, i was at his rally earlier today, and he had me over at the golf course in northern virginia and we had lunch, and talked for awhile about a range of subjects, but the newsiest might be his announcement that he's not yet ready to endorse paul ryan, the house speaker. he's the top ranked republican in washington. he's in a primary challenge, republican primary in wisconsin. that election is on tuesday of next week. trump said quote, i'm just not there yet in terms of endorsing ryan. he also complimented paul ryan's primary opponent. so this is a pretty extraordinary breach of sort of party unity and expected to quorum in these circumstances and i think underscores just how divided the republican party is right now. >> phil, did he come into the interview you think fixing to say this stuff, or were you

pressing him on it? >> i pressed him on it. i actually asked him about a tweet that he made last night where he complimented ryan's opponent and said look, can you explain what's going on here, are you endorsing the opponent, are you endorsing paul ryan, where do you stand. he just said that he's giving an endorsement of ryan serious consideration but that he's not there yet and he repeated that point several times in the interview. he left no doubt that that's where he stood. he is simply not ready tone dooto endorse ryan. >> what was his tone in talking about ryan, mccain and kelly ayotte? >> you know, i think he feels like he's the republican nominee here, he's in charge of the party and he's very upset that these people are not in lockstep behind him. he criticized mccain, criticized ayotte. both of them came out with statements criticizing trump over the last few days over his treatment of the khan family. but trump feels like he's in charge, it's his party and these people need to get in line behind him. >> katy, playing off what phil

just said a second ago, it would seem to me and to anybody who has ever covered a presidential campaign that given everything that's happened over the course of the last 96 hours or so, this would be a campaign in utter meltdown. just complete crisis. what does it feel like to you as you watch them move through the day? >> it doesn't feel like utter meltdown. i just had a conversation with one of trump's aides and they were pretty calm. i think the state of controversy that this campaign has been in has become the norm for this campaign. it's rolling with donald trump's whims and rolling with what he said. was this a calculated move? i think that phil pressing him means that it was not, but i would point out that guys, in the past two weeks, there's been five different donald trump controversies. melania's controversy over her speech, the plagiarism, excuse me, there was donald trump fighting with ted cruz again, again linking his father to the assassination of jfk, then donald trump and russia, donald trump fighting with the khans

and those controversies, those last two were not going away. so what is going on now, donald trump is talking about maybe not endorsing paul ryan. he has operated this way and when you talk to people about why he would do this, they say he does this so he doesn't have to talk about policy. he's talking about controversies, he's in his comfort zone which is being himself, not necessarily going in and talking about a fleshed-out idea about how to fix the education system in this country or how he would reform the tax plan further to what he's already said or how he would actually beat isis. >> did he seem at all distracted by or concerned with the khan controversy when you talked to him? >> he did not. we talked about the khans briefly in the interview and he basically repeated what he's been saying the last few days which is that in his view, he was viciously attacked on the stage at the democratic national convention by mr. khan and that he has every right to respond in the way that he did.

i will say during the interview he was sort of watching himself on fox news across the room on the tv and was pretty impressed with the statement he put out responding to obama and how much attention that was getting on fox news. look, he's like katy said, rolling with the punches, trying to take this campaign one hour at a time. i think he gave me a frank answer about paul ryan which is he has not endorsed ryan, is not ready to do so and actually said he thinks he likes paul ryan but thinks the country needs strong leaders because we are in dangerous times. so he's clearly not on board. >> the khan controversy, as you pointed out, is not going away. president obama, his statement obviously as we were talking about earlier, trying to drive a wedge between trump and the republican party, does trump get that now with the republican who said, first one has moved away to say he will vote for hillary clinton, with all the things, does he fear the possibility the party may come apart at the seams? >> no. i don't think he does.

i think donald trump sees this as his party, not paul ryan's party, not the republican leadership. remember back in may when he was in west virginia and paul ryan was saying he wasn't ready to endorse donald trump. donald trump shot back that he wasn't ready to endorse paul ryan's agenda. i spoke to cory lewandowski, who was campaign manager at that time, he told me very frankly this is not paul ryan's party. this is donald trump's party. he is the leader of the republican party. and that is how donald trump has been operating since day one. the fact that he had -- has won the primaries, he feels there's a mandate and his rhetoric and his ideas are what is leading the party forward, not necessarily the leadership in washington. remember when you talk to republican voters and the ones who decided that donald trump was going to be their flag carrier, they didn't like what was going on in washington. they didn't believe that the people they voted into power there were doing a good job. they didn't believe they were representing them. so donald trump does have that on his side.

that's not the entirety of the republican party. he did get a plurality of the republican party to get this nomination. the thing with donald trump is he will have to expand that out and find independent voters and do independent voters find him appealing if he's fighting with everybody and that does include the republican party. i'm not so sure it does. >> phil, we talked about trump's comments on mccain and ryan and kelly ayotte, and you said briefly about the khans. tell us what other topics you covered with him. >> we covered a range of topics and we will be publishing more of the interview later into the evening. we talked about the sexual harassment issue. he brought this up the other day regarding his daughter ivanka. and we talked about the debates. he wants to negotiate these debates so he laid out a little bit of what he hopes to happen there and some -- >> can you give us a preview of that, what kind of things he said? >> i will tell you he says, he absolutely thinks the debates should be a head-to-head with

hillary clinton only. that jill stein and the libertarian candidate should not qualify for the debate stage. >> regardless of whether they get to 15% or not? >> exactly. >> that's big news. that's big news, fella. >> does he want three debates or fewer, from what you can tell? >> he wants to negotiate the debate schedule on the best terms possible for himself. he feels like he was able to have an influence in negotiating the debates during the primaries and plans to try to do that here. he doesn't think they should be up against nfl games or the world series or any other major competing televised event. >> katy tur, he kicked a baby out of his event today. how did that go with the crowd? >> he was joking. he was joking, guys. the baby was crying and he stopped midsentence and said he loves babies and he went on and a moment later, he said get that baby out of here. it was very clear that he was joking. there were a number of mothers with babies there. >> did they actually leave? >> no, the baby stayed. >> i was there, too.

it was a joke. it was definitely a joke. >> the baby stayed. >> sometimes those jokes don't translate to television but that was very clearly just a colorful aside. >> donald trump, the only candidate i have ever heard of who would even risk making a joke about kicking a baby out of an event. thank you guys. >> congratulations, phil. up next, john dickerson of cbs news and "washington post" when we come back. isn't it time to let the real you shine through? introducing otezla (apremilast). otezla is not an injection or a cream. it's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable after just 4 months, with reduced redness, thickness, and scaliness of plaques. and the otezla prescribing information has no requirement for routine lab monitoring. don't take otezla if you are allergic to any of its ingredients. otezla may increase the risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression

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two political heavyweights join us now, ironically both very thin in a good way. "washington post" chief correspondent dan balsma and host of "face the nation" john dickerson. he has a new book out we will talk about called "whistle stop, my favorite stories from presidential campaign history." john, let's start with today's news. it's common to say something happened with donald trump. it's the biggest, it's unprecedented, never happened. today with both president obama going after him and his statements about paul ryan and john mccain, ever seen anything like this in the general election? >> i can't think of it. i mean, the president's been saying unfit, been trying to drive this wedge between obama and the republicans -- >> trump. >> sorry. has been trying to draw these wedges as he did in his convention speech. but then to be -- basically donald trump is fighting a two-front war between his own

party and the president. all related to this question of temperament. is he fit for the job. which you could say is a trap the democrats set for him except when you talk to the trump campaign they see the key threshold is whether people will see that he has the temperament and judgment for the job. >> dan, you know paul ryan and john mccain pretty well. how do you think they will react to donald trump's unwillingness to endorse them in the month of their contested primaries? >> privately they have to be furious about it. publicly, i have no idea how they will deal with it because they have managed over the course of several months to try to put some distance between themselves and things that donald trump has said and done without actually repudiating him outright. so i think he's put them in a terrible position and i'm frankly curious to know how they will respond. >> you made this point, they repudiated him at various times but not withdrawn their endorsement. isn't the obvious next step here that they are going to have to,

or doesn't it feel like trump is daring them to abandon him completely and withdraw their endorsements? >> in some way or another he seems to be doing that although i'm not sure that's exactly what he's doing. i think he's baiting them a little bit, taunting them a little bit. i don't know whether that's his ultimate goal to force them to repudiate him. i'm not sure that serves him in any specific way to try to win the presidency. he's a person you are either with him or he's against you. we have seen another example of that today. >> the khan controversy, everyone agrees, is kind of different qualitatively from other past controversies. it's now opened the door to discussions of donald trump's military non-service. the discussion today about when he wore the guy's purple heart. how long-term dangerous do you think the khan issue and all the doors it's opening are to trump? >> i think dangerous in this sense, which is that republicans have been concerned about the volatility of donald trump and the unpredictability in a

political context ever since he came on the scene. when he picked mike pence, the thing republicans were saying to me, they kept using the word stabilize. that was they were worried about the volatility and mike pence was going to stabilize him. there's no stability. the khan controversy and then the controversies that attach to it and the kind of you're all over the map feeling, the number days to the election are counting down. so you got to get things in line for the presidential but also for their futures, for their campaigns. now they are all having to respond to the daily explosions. that's what worries republicans. >> you have had a top aide to chris christie, top aide to jeb bush and now retiring republican congressman all say they will vote for hillary clinton and not for donald trump. is that opening the flood gates or do you think everybody else, most everybody else will stand in place? >> i think -- i don't think it opens the flood gates. >> john first. >> i don't think it opens the flood gates. i think it gives those republicans who were curious, who were worried about donald

trump, it represents their feeling, i mean regular voters. i don't think they are looking at what sally bradshaw does in florida, the jeb bush staffer, but it's representative of the feeling we see with the college educated white voters he's having such trouble with. >> sally bradshaw says she would only vote for hillary clinton if the race in florida was close but she's not voting for trump. >> right. well, you know, here's the way one could think about this, which is that these are people who are part of the political establishment, the political elite, if you will. they have been in high campaign positions for other republicans who tried to take donald trump down. trump's path to the presidency, pa put aside the electoral math path, is to rally an anti-establishment electorate in this country to make it as big and boisterous as he possibly can. so every time he kind of pokes the establishment in the eye, as he has been doing, conceivably

helps him try to do that. i'm not convinced that that's the case but i think he knows kind of what he is trying to do and where his constituency is and his constituency is not that of the party elites or the party regulars. >> so there's no doubt that dan is right in that trump is rallying an anti-establishment electorate. does at the electricorate look at the military as part of the establishment? one of the striking things the last few days has been the retired military officers and others coming forward denouncing trump for the khan controversy. we all know people who are in the military, out of the military, foreign policy people, who right now are never going to vote for trump. the only question is how public they are going to be or will they vote for clinton. >> right. i think it gets back to this is it too dangerous to be president problem for him. that's something the clinton people are going to talk about regardless. he's just giving evidence to that argument. when you have -- when military officials speak or former military, they speak with a

weight and they are outside of the political system and i think that's a charismatic voice in this conversation, it's not just left or right. >> dan, let me ask you this. lots going wrong with the trump campaign right now according to republicans, democrats, journalists alike. is there anything going on with the trump campaign that's not getting sufficient attention that's going well? >> not that is very visible at this point. there's nothing that we can see that would suggest things are going well. donald trump is still the captain of the ship and he's steering it in the directions he wants to go. he had an opportunity given the lousy growth numbers that came out on friday to begin to kind of trample on hillary clinton's convention and to suppress her bounce. he chose to do just the opposite which is to help her over the last several days and he continues to do that. now in this interview that he did with phil rucker this afternoon, you know, roiling up his own party to cause further controversy. i would say at this point it's not clear that there's anything

essential that's going right in his campaign. >> as we say, here on set, tomorrow is another day. dan, thank you very much. we are holding john dickerson behind for story time. for lower back pain sufferers, the search for relief often leads to places like... this... this... or this. today, there's a new option. introducing drug-free aleve direct therapy. a tens device with high intensity power that uses technology once only available in doctors' offices. its wireless remote lets you control the intensity, and helps you get back to things like... this... this... or this. and back to being yourself. introducing new aleve direct therapy. find yours in the pain relief aisle. he wrecked the rec room this summer. his stellar notebooks will last through june. get back to great. this week, these items just one cent each. office depot officemax. gear up for school. gear up for great. spending the day with my niece. that make me smile.

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back with our old friend john dickerson, host of "face the nation" and author of a new book called "whistle stop, my favorite stories from presidential campaign history." thanks for sticking around. there are an incredible array of good stories in this book. it's a page-turning fantastic read. what's the most relevant story in the book to understanding what's happening in 2016? >> have yyou have to go to wall '68. he tapped into anger and disappointment with regular blue collar workers and the elites. and got really at the crux of it, which was that the fancypants elites makes all these decisions that you pay for and we are not going to stand for it anymore. i feel like that is a very

similar sentiment. then of course you get the idea that wallace was basically, the voters always said he speaks his mind. there was this sense that, and the sense that wallace said something other people weren't and that just feels like the most echoes. there are lots of them in here. >> you get into one of the most enduring mysteries in the history of presidential politics. muskey in new hampshire denouncing the union leader, snow on his face or tears out of his eyes? >> i think tears, but not the burbling mess he was written about. he gets this flatbed truck, calls all the reporters in it's snowing. he starts talking about his wife. that's the key. so there's the canuck letter, the accusation he used a slur in an event but what gets him undone, he's talking about his wife in an editorial that ran on the front page of "the union leader" which makes fun of her. she sacrificed a lot for him to run. he gets emotional but one of the accounts has him being like a faceful of tears watching the

video. you know it's not a faceful of tears but that account took off and that was it in terms of basically everybody thinking he was in tears. >> you write about goldwater in this book and obviously some people hope and fear that trump will be the goldwater for the republican party this time around. tell us about barry goldwater. >> goldwater was an idealogical movement in a way that trump isn't but there was a stop goldwater movement that was much more robust than the never trump movement. 19 republican governors tried to stop goldwater and couldn't do it. nixon's line is the best when he tells buchanan if there was ever a stop x movement you want to be with x because that means they doing well enough, they have people behind them that they will prevail. but when you hear governor rockefeller speak at the '64 convention and get booed it feels very similar to what happened to ted cruz in this last republican convention. another parallel. >> another great story about jfk. obviously incredibly gifted political athlete. as a catholic going into west virginia and trying to win over

people in west virginia. >> yeah. he's furious that all of us at the time or versions of us at the time say his win in wisconsin was just a catholic win. in other words he's trying to build' his credentials by winning primaries and suddenly it's written off as a religious thing. he goes to west virginia, there's only 5% of the state that's catholic. one woman said of course catholics shouldn't be president. if so it would be in the constitution. so he starts to run television ads that talk about it all the time and basically grab the issue by the throat and take it on head-on. when he wins in west virginia he's allowed to say i went into a state where they didn't like me because i was a catholic and i still won, the issue's dead. it wasn't quite dead but that helped him pretend it was for the purposes of the primary. convention. >> i will ask you about another mystery, one of the great photo ops ever. mike dukakis in the tank. why was he in that tank?

>> he was in the tank because the bush campaign had been about a systematic effort to tear him down going point by point by point. he wasn't patriotic, he was too weak, he was far left card-carrying member of the aclu. this was an attempt to build up his bona fides as a national security candidate. he gave a big speech on national security that was thoughtful, had lots of good ideas in it but the picture was supposed to match with that. they were going to take the photo op without the helmet on in the tank standing there and the problem was that when the tank was moving he had to wear the helmet. given the photo op with the helmet off or on, everybody went with the helmet on and it made it look like somebody who wasn't comfortable in his own skin, somebody who was doing something just for the show. there was a big manhood fight in that campaign because as you both remember, the cover of "newsweek" magazine, the wimp factor with george w. bush, both candidates trying to prove they were men who could handle the office. >> thank you so much.

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we have advice for donald trump before we go. for your next in-flight meal, go ahead and lose the fork. you don't need it for chicken. >> sayonara. >> "hardball with chris matthews" is next. have you no decency? let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews in new york. in his strongest comments to date on donald trump, president obama today called the republican presidential nominee woefully unprepared to be president. he also questioned his judgment and temperament for the job. obama said trump is in a different league from past republican nominees like john mccain and mitt romney.